on any and everything public.

The largest block of money comes from taxes, and they want it.

So, since it's easier to "steal" money than to "earn" it, they turn to ways to transfer that money to themselves.

That's what privatization is. They buy the legislators and then don't have to worry about any competition. They just rake in the money. No-bid contracts and no time-limited contracts are their favorites, for obvious reasons.

How soon will someone blame this on the tea-baggers and the Republicans instead of Democrats like Arne Duncan and others who could actually do something to stop or slow this?

In Chicago, how soon will someone blame this on the tea-baggers and the Republicans instead of Rahm Emanuel and his friends?

...applied to education.

at this point, it is rather common to see disaster capitalism evolve and spread. Like a rapidly adapting organism, it is gradually eating away what's left of what we have.

The most interesting thing is how it camouflages itself like a chameleon in the sense that it blends in well when it is not hiding under a rock and the tendrils of its media maintain a dutiful, (owned) distance from a phenomena that, as it increases exponentially, will eventually leave most people wondering what the heck happened as they brush the ashes and debris off their heads.

The shock and awe has just begun and watch out for the vultures you see flying overhead and waiting to pick any meat left off your financial bones. Don't be too shocked when someone you know falls victim to the conscripted imprisonment system brought to you by private prisons. More draconian laws and stiffer sentences will be the solution to the pesky unemployment problem we have.

You could almost parody that with a futuristic scenario that rivals the Stasi. Instead of one half of us 99-percent watching the other, it will be one half of us guarding the other half who are in prison. Now that's profit and it is a perfect, disaster capitalist solution. Anybody who sees the stats about imprisonment per-capita can extrapolate where that's going, no matter how far-fetched it may seem.

Uncle Milton would be proud of his monster if he could see it now. It makes Frankenstein look like an old-school punk.

this should not be a surprise.

I can understand the Repukes wanting to destroy education - having an ignorant electorate is good for them. But President Hope & Change doing it makes me

I'll let you take the fire, but I agree 100% The fact that Democrats are aiding in this destruction is nauseating to me. And it's a double whammy for me because it's Democrats being anti-Public education and anti-unions at the same time.

Pathetic.

Keystone XL, chained CPI, raise the Medicare eligibility age, raise the SS eligibility age...

that's our "Dem" president - the best in history according to some DUers.

Once the Repukes drop their anti-gay marriage stance, MY once-great party will have nothing to run on.

"The Republicans would be worse!!!!"

That's pretty much all they have and the excuse they've given for their hard, rightward shift and their failure to effectively communicate a progressive vision.

And even on gay marriage it wasn't until the tide had all but turned that our brave leader had the courage to come out in support of it.

See below.

Do I hate the Presidents education policy? Yes, and I always have, however the other side really is worse. Here in Michigan all you ever heard was how bad Granholm was and the people elected the Republicans as a response. Look at what has happened in two years! Right to work, a state wide take over of communities and schools, unlimited charter private schools using taxpayer money, 1.6 billion drained from the educational funds and 1.8 billion tax cut to business. No republican responds to their constituents pleas anymore, it's deform on steroids. Complain all you want about Democrats it is good for them to hear you, but there is nothing as vile as a Republican majority.

What have *you* contributed here, besides trying to excuse Democrats by whining that Republicans are worse? Naysaying the concerns being discussed here is hardly a helpful response.

People all over DU talk about what can and should be and is being done every single day, ranging from primarying those who support this shit, to public protests, to massive citizens' attempts to get the corporate money out of government.

You have contributed nothing to this thread except apologism.

"Republicans would be worse" is not a helpful response, and you know it.

Secondly, it is your opinion that I was not giving helpful advice, and I am living the advice I'm giving. I protested in Lansing more than once and have posted about it. I write to my congress people on every issue. You don't know me, don't assume I'm not trying to be helpful. Also, don't assume I don't agree with you, I said all of our reps need to hear from us, not just Republicans. Sorry my post didn't meet your high standards.

Why is your post all about excusing Democrats and naysaying people who WANT to hold them accountable, rather than about how to hold them accountable?

Don't get all huffy that nobody understood your urge to force current Democrats to change what they are doing, when all you posted here was apologism for Democrats.

I'm not going to support politicians doing the wrong thing and taken the wrong stance and trying to destroy our education system and destroy unions, and funnel tax dollars to charter school pyramid schemes just because they have D after their name.

It's not a question of whether I'll vote for the D or not, but I'm not going to pretend they are something they are not, including our president. I'm going yell and scream. Them seeing and hearing us admit that they other side would be worse only gives them more cover and more excuse to screw us over because they know we'll continue to vote for them.

it is that the propaganda is strongly bent toward encouraging passivity or, at the very least, quiet protest.

They don't give a damn about quiet protest. This is not a case of their not knowing what the American people think and needing their input about what to do. They have an agenda that is going to make them billions, and their goal is to keep us as quiet and passive as possible while they implement it.

Why do we always have to go with.."well the other side is worse?" !!
WE DON'T HAVE A SIDE!!!!

We all need to band together in Michigan and fight.

I was absolutely shocked at how much love Rhee got on this forum when her little movie was out...Ironically the only posters who saw her ruse from day one were all current/former schoolteachers....

and other Republican initiatives. I now know the voters that the DLC are courting. They are counting on the real Dems vote for them because "the Repukes are worse". At some point I believe this strategy will break down.

but the weaving of evidence to prove the case of deceptive education "reform" isn't entirely necessary, though it is satisfying for those of us who like evidence. The "reformers" are up front about their agenda.

The agenda of privatization schemers was manifest at last August’s American Legislative Exchange Council meeting in New Orleans where ALEC members urged that the government, meaning the people, should not own buildings but should sell them to the private sector, which could then lease the space back to the government at a profit. Their aim is to make the private sector the landlords of our public spaces to accrue more profit for the few while rendering “we the people” the tenants of corporations in the halls of our democracy. In 2009, the state of Arizona even mortgaged its own capitol complex to investors and turned the legislature itself into a tenant.

Oh, how I would love to buy it and throw Brewer, Pearce et al. onto the street!

The repukes have said they hate government and want to destroy it. And they are.

Wealthy individuals and corporations have so much money they need to create places to invest it. In education, there is also the issue of religion. Education is an enemy of religion - unless they can arrange for the teaching of their dogma, creationism for example. The two biggest problems on the planet are greed and religion. What would the middle east be without greed and religion?

virtually across the board.

We cannot solve a problem until we are honest about what is causing it. Republicans have wanted to privatize for years. Until recently, Democrats were the only ones standing between Americans and these predatory policies.

We have this problem now precisely because too many Democrats are now purchased, as wel, and have abandoned that role.

Schools and prisons are two perfect examples of this line of thinking. Now these business criminals are going after the Post Office and soon they'll be going after police and fire. Wealth addiction - it's a deadly disease.

Conservatives everywhere search for something to rail against. It's easy to defund education in the guise of making it more efficient.

The fact of the matter is that every attempted school closing should be met with angry marches of parents.

But they're not.

...the consequences. There is no 'top' in the GOP. ALEC may be behind some of this but other defunding of public schools appears to be done by state legislatures so I don't see an overall 'plot' behind it.

The money to be made from charter schools replacing public schools is not that much in the larger scheme of things.

The main impetus for all of this appears to be reducing property taxes, or at least not increasing them to the point where schools can be fully funded. And of course money is the overriding concern in Conservative circles.

what is going on now is the culmination of year's of experimenting with ways to take over the public school system merely to milk it for the taxpayers money to go directly to corporations.
If you think the concern is taxes just watch when corporations get control of most of the schools in an area and watch the funding and payments to the corporations rise like a loaf of bread. They are selling the tax cuts today.....

The chickens are coming home to roost.

9/11, the Wars and Recession didn't do it, now it's time for them to kill this Nation for the long-term.

but I'm glad to see this is getting traction out there in mainstream land...

K&R.

Its purposeful destruction of public education. Its been a sustained effort now for more than a few years. Its way past time to begin a major pushback if we want to preserve the future.

It goes back to the John Birch Society in the 60s...that was one of their major works to destroy public education...cause it was full of communist and unconstitutional.
And some of those same assholes are now in power in the right wing.

If people don't open their eyes to what is happening...there will be no such thing as public schools...Only the rich will receive an education.....

That's exactly a big part of their rationale. Make it so that poor & working class kids can't get a good education, don't have a future so have to work for slave wages. This dovetails with the plans to arrest a good percentage of young americans, make them ineligibile to vote or have a decent job = more slave workers. This is stupendously short sighted, because who will be there to do the hard things that require more brainpower? Their rich kids certainly don't want to work hard, if at all? Will they ship all jobs off-shore except for those that require hands on and just hope there's enough upper middle class kids for those? Do they even think about the future, other than the profits they intend to get and keeping their paid spokespeople (aka poliiticians) in power? I think not.

The system the 1% proposes will cycle the taxes and the once-pubic assets, and the resulting profits, into their own pockets, making the high and rising cost of obtaining an education affordable by ONLY their class. Well, in a sense that is receiving, without merit or sacrifice. Just MHO.

Punch one is of course to destroy public education and install 'private' control.

Punch two is that once private is entrenched, to have our taxes fund the private industry - with the government acting as bagman to collect.

They don't want to destroy it all, just the control of it....

And some of my members criticized me for it, saying I was paranoid. They have now called to apologize, they wish they had listened. I am in grief for my wonderful teachers who have to stay because they need the money, but now they have no power and no say. When I would try to get them to fight they didn't want to make waves, now they can't make waves. So sad for my schools, their teachers, and the students especially who are getting the most short changed. By the way, I'm from Michigan, the once great state.

Everybody knows there's a problem but what is the solution?

We're too splintered. If there were some way to get the attention of all the disgruntled school folks with the outsourced job folks with the ill-treated and forgotten military folks with the union folks under fire, etc., etc., etc. and unite them under a common cause, THEN we would have something.

There is ONE change that would solve all of these problems and 99.9% of the rest. Getting money and lobbyists out of elections would collapse the foundation of the plutocracy. If we could all unite in this common purpose we could save our country.

same as always.

, at least, initiatives. Both involving uniting around: a) pushing back against the robbing of public money for the benefit of private gain, as in our public schools, and b) getting our elected officials to listen to us - and not to the moolah - which means no more money in politics.

Last edited Mon Mar 25, 2013, 06:26 PM - Edit history (2)

until we take back our representation. We will get fake Democrats until we end the one percent's ability to purchase elections and install fake Democrats.

post office, public schools, it's a pattern.

Remember that Skull & Bones members are schooled in the ways to profit from chaos. Really.

privatized. All that money, it's just too tempting. The HC bill eg, succeeded in funnelling Medicaid funds through the hands of the Private Health Care Corps. But anyone who pointed that out was pretty much vilified.

Had enough yet, America? Ready to give up the Red vs. Blue wagon circling and become the 99 percent?

This whole assault on education began in the 1980's with Reagan's manufactured education crises when he commissioned a report called "A Nation At Risk" in which it was asserted that the nation's public schools were "mediocre" at best.
At that time, the U.S. led the world in virtually everything from manufacturing to technology to agriculture and was the world's only military AND economic superpower. All this had been accomplished with 95% of our population having a public school education.

As noted in other responses, this wouldn't wash because the 1% were not making their due profit off a successful enterprise and that simply HAD to change. This was accelerated under Bush and now Obama has fallen right into lockstep to continue the destruction of one of the worlds most beneficial endeavors ever witnessed.

This is not a new phenomena that started with the newly elected Tea Party. This didn't even start with No Child Left Behind. This has been going on for decades and both parties are at fault.

They can't get any smarter or keep up, so the plan it to slow everyone else down.

Yes, there is a profit motive, but the Republi_Cons and their enablers, such as Fox Propaganda, New York Post, and others, have been dumbing down America for years and years. Where else would they get their voters from?

Your job is to expose these FFascists by printing out objective articles from the Internet and distribute them into you community. Use articles such as "Democratic party accomplishments, Fox and other FFascist news outlets that tell the "Big Lie" and repeat it over and over to fool, and to even brainwash Americans.

Michelle Rhee's been trying to destroy public schools for more than a decade, along with every corrupt repug that got behind the complete fraud of "no child left behind".

Of course the corrupt 1%ers are trying to cash in on privatizing schools.

The anti-union as anti-liberal agenda dates to Reagan.

and to be able to read TV programme. Much easier to keep populace under control that way.

So just enough to make an X or print a name or number maybe will be all that is needed
All this is going on right when I have kids in public school and it is so sad what they are not learning (and they are all all A's students)
Plus I know friends and relatives who are teaching and it is bad already

I told my kids without cursive knowledge others would just tell you what the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence says and you 'd have to take their word for it!!

I was half joking in my post without even thinking some of what I said could be true.

More I think about it though, more I realise that dumbing down general population is the best way to keep all of us under control. It doesn't really start yet here in UK but there are arseholes who at least try to raise some noise about Great New American School System. Thankfully with the latest wave of scandals and revelations about what is really going on they likely will never have a chance to implement that atrocity.

I don't have children myself but I can still understand how it makes you feel, knowing that your kids don't get the education they deserve, unless you are rich and can afford the best schools and tutors. To me things like public education and free healthcare are sacrosanct and should be always available. I don't care how much taxes I have to pay to keep it going, I will gladly pay more as long as I know that no one is going to die for the lack of healthcare and the new generation of kids is equipped with enough knowledge to understand what is going around them and how to fight for better feature.

Take care and I are really sorry you have to deal with that shit. Best wishes to your kids and make sure they learn cursive, even if you have to teach them yourself.

Thank you for the link.

the way in destroying quality free public education. Rhee is another puppet used in the corporate takeover of public funds earmarked for public education.

with his hostility toward experienced teachers, etc.

All of this has been disguised as "concern for the children" when it's really another big wave of corporate takeover (making a profit) of government function.

The further dumbing-down of this country will eventually be noticed, but so far they've been successful enough to have gotten away with it without much protest. The spin and propaganda have worked.

to see people calling this what it is: a deliberate corporate takeover, by Democrats in collusion with Republicans.

No more apologism. We are seeing clear-eyed now.

Thank you.

1. Find problems where there aren't any.
2. If it ain't broke, attempt to fix it.
3. If it is indeed broken, say you're going to fix it but instead grab the money and run.
4. Buy politicians who allow you to profit from destruction.
5. Repeat until: $$$$$$$$$$$$!
6. Never declare problem solved.

The rest of them are from the "Ignorance is strength" wing.

CONCERN overall... The building of charter schools (the Waltons are planning to run 25-30 charter schools in CA alone, and they are already on the way).

Something MUST be done!

Therefore they are gearing what's left of the public schools to train them to learn what they want, and not teach them how to learn things for themselves.
They are training us for their menial jobs, and only those who can afford it can get into schools that teach them how to learn for themselves.
They want to suppress the mass of people, because if they ever realize that they are being played, like cheap violins, there will be a massive revolt.

read my post, #12, at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022539171

It's quite different than everyone else's theory.

Big time.

... in the dark about the social engineering they are up to, groping around for an explanation. It's just a theory my mind veered off to after reading an article a week or so ago in The Atlantic about GE bringing jobs back to the U.S. I tried to link it here, but it won't go through for some reason. Maybe they have taken it down? It was entitled "The Insourcing Boom" by Charles Fishman with date of 11-28-2012.

... have already seen it and posted on the thread. Thank you for thinking of me. I do have some trouble sometimes keeping up with you young whipper snappers.

It never hurts to re-read.....

in the name of what.

Oh, yeah, freedumb, libtea, justus, etc.

The idea isn't to generate a good product and build a market. The goal now is to find large streams of money and by what ever means necessary, funnel it into the corporation.
When I completed my undergraduate (in biology) I went to work in a lab for a gentleman from Taiwan who was a PhD. He told me that it used to be that companies were happy with a 8-10% profit margin and Wall Street considered them to be doing great. He said now (1987) companies weren't even considered marginally successful at less than 20%.
We all know those expectations have been growing and things to cut have been less and less. Work shipped to China, quality down (on most things), pensions cut, benefits cut, so now the search is on for more and more to satiate the thirst (like Carcharoth in "The Silmarilion&quot .
This won't end well.

Not only do they want to loot the treasury of the money directed toward education, they want to SHUT EDUCATION DOWN ALTOGETHER! It is, as Jefferson said, the enemy of the brand of tyranny they want to establish over us all. Educated people who are able to think clearly for themselves, and not just swallow the corporate line, are an impediment to their goals; they are harder to repress.

American auto's would have continued to be unreliable, gas guzzlers and garrishly designed. American cars I bought after 1977 have been head and shoulders above the cars I bought before that year.

Public schools are not performing in relation to the money spent per student.
That is obvious when one compares student test scores in US versus other industrialized countries based on money spent per student.
Public schools will benefit from competition from for profit schools.

bait and switch, offer good stuff at first and then serve round steak instead of sirloin...
Public schools will benefit when society realizes how dedicated the teachers are and quits buying the propaganda shoveled at them about how selfish teachers are. Oh, I have seen plenty of bad teachers. They are usually the ones listening to rightwing radio instead of working on ways to be better teachers.

The teachers are not the main problem why US students do not perform well.
It is the lack of competition which gives no incentive to the public schools to perform. I spent 24 years working in 3 privately owned companies. It was dog eat dog competition and that forced us to deliver the best possible product.

Then I worked 12 years in a quasi-government outfit, and what a switch...no pressure, very relaxed atmosphere. We had no competition!

Monopolies are the worst performers whether they are private or public. For example I have only ONE cable company I can sign up with because others do not have the fiber optics infrastructure serving my area. Guess what, if I want cable, there is only one choice...Comcast, and my bills are going up faster than inflation with no better service. I can go the Dish route but their prices miraculously match the cable prices.

Same deal with health insurers. I am allowed only those licensed in my state. That limits competition.

Competition is America's best weapon.

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http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/

Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland?
Really?

Take some really major countries like China & India where more people live than continents of Europe+America+Africa+Australia combined.

Chinese and Indian teachers are paid so little they failed to make your list.
Yet Chinese & Indian students hold higher GPA in US colleges & universities than US born and educated students. And these two countries had more foreign students than all other countries combined when I was a student at a Big-10 University. Proof is in the pudding. Teacher salaries have no direct correlation to student performance.

are some of the highest paid in the world. That simply isn't true.

Also note that the worst performing schools in US are in areas
where the teachers make highest salaries. Such as Wash DC, cities in
NJ, NY etc. Teachers in rural areas are usually way lower in scale and yet
the students perform just fine.

So to compare apples with apples, in a very large country such USA,
it is not kosher to use overall average. Even that US average in your chart
is pretty high excepting some much smaller countries.

Growing up in just turned independent India, economic conditions were
much poorer than it is today. My teachers through high school made very
meager salaries. They could barely afford a bicycle. We had 100 or so
students crammed into every classrooms.

Again, the problem is not teacher salaries. The problem is public schools are
a monopoly with little competition. I do not wish to dismantle public schools.
Because then private schools become a monopoly. IMO a 50-50 ratio of public
and private schools would improve student performance in all schools significantly. Teacher salaries in every schools should be based on student
performance. Good teachers should make much more than bad teachers.

Competition makes US of America stronger!

places to teach in -- mainly because they're very poor, with all the associated problems -- crime, special needs, etc.

Rural schools do not 'perform just fine'. Some do, others don't. Many rural areas have the same problems of poverty & dysfunction as urban areas; just with lower population concentrations.

Your teachers in India probably made more than the parents of the students they taught.

According to the OECD, indian teachers are pretty well paid in terms of gdp, ppp, and the large percentage of people living in poverty in india:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001466/146696e.pdf

My main point is that student performance is not directly proportional to teacher salaries. Several MILLION students, product of very meager teacher salaries have arrived in US from China and India and performed superbly in US colleges and universities, during the last 50 years. Teacher salaries certainly did not hold them down. And as a side note, immigrants from India have the highest median income of any ethnic group including whites, in US.

chinese & indian elites (the main kind of chinese and indian student coming to the US, & I worked with university ESL students, so don't try to tell me different) taught by chinese teachers making chinese wages in a country where the average worker's income is $300, and US students generally are just illegitimate.

chinese teachers don't compare themselves to american teachers. they compare themselves to other chinese workers, and they exist in an environment where their wages are not 'low' -- and where, apparently, they can double them with 'gifts' from parents.

that's been the case for ages.

indian nationals that immigrate to the US tend to bring significant capital with them, as do chinese immigrants, and indian immigrants in particular typically get here through association with a few well-paying fields. The average immigrant to the US from either india or china is not the average indian or chinese.

Despite growing investment in education, 25% of India's population is still illiterate; only 15% of Indian students reach high school, and just 7% graduate. India currently has the largest illiterate population.

if your opinion is that one's pay level demonstrates the superiority of one's schooling, i'd say that opinion demonstrates a certain lacuna in your own.

your posts are starting to have a certain smell about them so forgive me if i leave you to it. else i might say something rude.

That to me is an indication of inferiority complex and under-education.

Of course India has high number of illiterates. It is 4 times bigger than US population. And Us has not been a colony of foreign powers in 230 some years.
India, as I am sure you must be well aware, gained independence from British rule in 1947. The economic progress in India since 1980's has been phenomenal. That was the period when Indians finally recognized the folly of central planning and Soviet style 5 year plans, and encouraged foreign investment.

Again, my main point is that student performance has little to do with teacher salaries. Let us stick to that point instead of pointing out number of illiterates in India. I can name a few things about US which are not so good either. We have the highest armed robberies, very high gun violence, very high rapes, very high murders, we practiced slavery, and we are the only country to have dropped nukes on cities full of civilians. India can claim superiority on those issues.

all of the US, while pretending to compare all Indians and their teachers.

When you are ready to compare apples to apples i will listen to you.

And sorry, as you've just demonstrated, it's not me who's doing the invidious comparison, it's you. That was the smell I detected in your post, & you've confirmed it.

My point in posting the information about illiteracy and schools attendance rates was to show you were comparing a select group of Indian/chinese students/teachers to all american students/teachers.

Which means the comparison is invalid and irrelevant.

you took it as some kind of attack on india & responded with more invidious comparison.

which means that was where your mind was.

student performance is directly related to teacher salaries?

i had already said previously i don't have any such theory that student performance is directly related to teacher salaries.

but that's irrelevant to the more fundamental point:

all the 'evidence' you've presented is based on invalid comparisons: invalid both statistically and sociologically.

I'm fairly sure that if i compare teacher salaries *within* india i'll find that the teachers of elite students are paid more than the teachers of poor & rural students.

and i'll bet i'll also find a larger gap between the performance of rural/poor students v. elite students in india than in the US, and that hypothesis is supported by analysis of the very international test results you cite.

I'll also bet that if you compare the top 7% of US students to the top 7% of Indian students (which is a more valid comparison than comparing the top 7% of Indian students to *all* US students, as you did), the two groups would test at least equally well.

I doubt you'd be interested in such a comparison, though, because the results wouldn't suit your agenda.

As far as I know, there are very few private schools in India K thru 14.
Which means "elite" school is a rarity, and students from rich families
indeed enroll in elite private schools there, but in my observation, they
are not in most cases the best students. The rich kids in India have too
many outside interests.

"Despite growing investment in education, 25% of its population is still illiterate; only 15% of Indian students reach high school, and just 7% graduate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India

This 7% that graduates is the 'elite' I speak of. It's the population that goes on to higher education. This elite is composed both of rich students and India's best students from all income brackets.

However, I doubt the accuracy of your anecdotal observations. If true, it would mean that India is a major anomaly in the world; international research shows that academic performance increases stepwise with income in every other country on the globe where it's been studied.

Chinese teachers to american teachers and say americans are paid too much?

In terms of average workers' salaries, Chinese teachers are paid quite well. In terms of international exchange rates, they're paid poorly. Inside china, it's the first that counts, not the second. Teaching is a prestigious occupation in china.

In terms of its wealth, the US does not pay its teachers very well:



Chinese seem to think teachers are paid fairly well: In fact, they seem to think chinese teachers take bribes:

American students did surprisingly well on last year’s international tests. That is especially true in reading, where American fourth-graders, the only grade tested, pretty much kicked the ass of the world.

Why was this performance “surprising?” Let us count two ways:

In part, the performance may seem surprising because so much effort has been made, in recent years, to denigrate American teachers, students and schools. Everybody knows this script—and this script was extended in last week’s reporting about the new test scores.

To its credit, USA Today broke the mold, focusing on some of our students' surprising success. But in the New York Times, the AP and the Washington Post, gloom and doom prevailed again, just as it has been scripted.

American students did surprisingly well. The American people weren’t told.

http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2012/12/fooled-about-schools-black-kids-beat.html

1. The math scores of American students as a whole were 'not measurably different" from the Finns' (iow, the nominal Finnish scores were 'higher' but the difference was not statistically significant).

2. White American students outscored the Finns in math by a mile (572 v. 514). (You may think this is an illegitimate comparison, but it has some validity because Finland has lower poverty rates & a lower percent of minorities and non-native speakers.)

3. Massachusets African-American students outscored the Finns in 8th-grade math (516 v. 514). (A few states disaggregated their scores, which is how we know this. There may be other similar cases).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1002&pid=2567426

I needed this data the other 100 times I've seen people here say "US education sucks".

Not to mention a constant struggle for the unions that are under attack.

N/t

Just a big, fat military and a dumb populace.

When you make something mandatory for all citizens, there tends to be a significant amount of profit within it. Take health insurance, for instance... not that I'm saying that either mandatory public education or health insurance are bad ideas. They are certainly managed the wrong way though. So many of these wealthy reformers, individuals, corporate types... who have no real experience with the system of public education - who are not educators - think that they have both the intellect and the right to determine how our schools should be run. Who should we listen to regarding education? Public school teachers... who have been teaching for decades... or Michelle Rhee, perhaps, or even our beloved Mayor Bloomberg?

From what I know of the reformation movement, it's leaders are generally wealthy individuals who stand to earn significant profits from it's implementation. Given the current state of affairs in our Country, with money serving in place of justice, integrity, or principle... well, this doesn't come as a surprise.

It's despicable... but what are we going to do about it? The problem, I frequently find... is that we increasingly have no solutions to the problems being manufactured by our wealthy leaders.

and my career has taken some hits for being outspoken about it.

I'm glad to see that some people are starting to notice. If enough stand with us, we can turn the tide.

No one seems to have a solution to stem the tide and even our president has bought into the Reaganesque model.

It's been posted about so many times here on DU with the links and even the BILL Language they are using...but the posts fall off to archives and it's like every post about it has to start from scratch.

I'm too tired to post the links and if no one cares then what's the point.