April 18, 2006
Seattle's Math-challenged School District
Ripped from the headlines in Tuesday's P-I:
"Seattle's teaching of math adds up to much confusion"
And it's not just the students who have difficulty with numbers:
"School district faces higher budget shortfalls"
Seattle Public Schools faces even higher budget shortfalls than previously expected, district budget officials announced Monday.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 18, 2006
09:34 AM | Email This
1. This looks like a dressed up version of the "new math" that Seattle Schools tried when I was a student 25 years ago. It was a failure then and this obviously isn't working either. It just looks like another attempt to water down the subject and explains why we, as a nation, have dropped from first to 24th in mathematics worldwide. However, as long as the NEA remains firmly in charge of all education in this country it will continue to get worse. School choice, anyone?
2. All the families bolting for the suburbs and to other counties to find affordable housing, and sending kids to private school are starting to have an impact. Not enough students. So, they will close some schools but that won't be enough.
Hold on to your wallets folks. The next sound you hear will be the usual suspects telling you that property taxes must increase to make up for this budget shortfall.
3. I very much dislike the math they are teaching in SEattle public schools and my husband is doing back-up work with our son. It's just patently dumb and is not going to help kids do better. A Seattle math coach told me, "it's math for kids who don't like math!" I said, "And what about the kids who do like math?" He just shrugged.
BUT the NEA has no control over curriculum in the schools; that power belongs to elected school boards. That "the NEA is the anti-Christ and is responsible for every bad thing in the public school system" is old and tired.
4. What's *really* old and tired is the idea that government should have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with educating your children. It's much to important a job to hand over to the parasite class.
5. I didn't say that the NEA was "the anti-Christ". However, they ARE the biggest single reason for the decline in the quality of the public education system becuase of their absolute refusal to reward good teachers and remove lousy teachers. According to Randi Weingarten, head of the New York City Education Association, "There are no bad teachers!" Many, if not most, of the people who go into teaching do so with the best of motives. BUT, there are too many PC ideas in education which excuse poor teaching methods and allow too many kids to fall through the cracks. The NEA may not have direct control over the textbooks used in each district but they do exercise a great deal of influence over the direction of what is offered and it has become more watered down each year.
6. To add to Suzihomemaker... The NY school district has approx. 80,000 teachers. Over the past few years only two have been fired. Do you know of
ANY business at anytime in this country's history that a business of that size only had two employees that didn't meet the requirements?
The people responsible for hiring would be billionaires if they were that good at selecting quality employees just on book sales and speaking tours alone.
7. The assessed value of my home has gone up over 22% in the last three years, so the relative tax burden I must pay for school levys has gone up accordingly.
And still they can't make ends meet.
Palouse is right...hold on to your wallets.
8. You may be on to something Fred.
They want to close 11 schools but can only save $4.8 million? Hhhmmmm... I suspect goverment math is at work here.
I'll assume 30 faculty and staff per school with an averaged salary of $30k/year. That is 330 people to be laid off with a savings of $9.9 million without even getting into facility savings.
9. The left is heavily invested in 'educated' morons, it is their life blood. If even 50% of the population could test the statistics they spout it would be devestating to their cause.
10. westlello,
"BUT the NEA has no control over curriculum in the schools; that power belongs to elected school boards."
Really now, and just who do think is the major force in the content of new text books?
The NEA or 5000+ school boards
Which spends more lobbying money with text book makers?
The NEA or 5000+ school boards
Which lobbies Congress?
The NEA or 5000+ school boards
Get a clue.
The NEA is the reason for this bastardized "New Math" that they called "Reform Math".
11. Mike,
Please see our website and come to our math meeting. You need to understand the source of the reform math.
www.wheresthemath.com
12. 1 big taxpayer base
+ 1 inflexible educational breaucracy with taxing
powers
----------------------------
= 1 ineffective, frustrating Gordian knot