Monday, April 28, 2008

The BIG GAPS !!!

Some people wonder about why I am putting so much energy into this effort.

Here is the answer. Note the Clover Park School District uses TERC/Investigations for Elementary and Connected Math Project for Middle School. I've included CPSD scores for grade 4, 7, & 10

Why are we continuing to allow this to go on?

Please put a comment below to explain this.

These three districts followed Dr Bergeson's math recommendations to the letter.

School District Officials are waiting for what Dr Bergeson will say next.

Look at the results posted above.

VOTE Dr Rich Semler for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

4 comments:

  1. "We all must understand something...the slave element of a population of any well-organized state can have no political status whatsover. Their function in the new social order is a necessary one, but a purely economic one... This means education will play a less important role in our society as it progresses forward. In such a society, it will be impossible to tell the difference between a slave and their owner. Poltical leaders will call themselves slaves, to prevent their own condemnation by critics of the Democracy who charge it is subservile." - Libertarian Post, 2007.

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  2. The following is presented for the sake of discussion:


    Having worked and lived in a great variety of settings, it is easy to see where your phrase.... "the slave element of a population of any well-organized state can have no political status"... comes from.

    This is quite apparent in a great many places.

    When I asked a friend to join the NAACP, he said I'm not spending $30 a year to fund the complaint department. He said if the NAACP was the organization that still backed and instigated major actions to produce effective social changes, the NAACP would receive his $30 and more annually, but until they do something substantial in WA state education they get $0 from him.

    So now the question becomes what happened to the activism of the 1950's and 1960's? For we've seen that reform math has been allowed to devastate huge segments of the population? Look how things like Whole Language get started and continue until finally the non-slave elements of the population realize it is not working for all of the children and attempts to end it. All of the Children meaning their children.

    Seattle has over 10 years of clear data in regard to the failure of reform math to serve low income and non-Asian minority population.

    After 14.5 months of testimony the SPS Math administration still pushed IMP for high school adoption. SPS adopted (5-30-07) EDM for elementary school in spite of clear data that it was extremely discriminatory.

    How can this be happening????

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  3. Don't equate freedom with equality.

    Charter reform has overturned Brown v. Board of Education. The greatest lies in education are finance reform and standards-based curriculum.

    Below is a summary of Brown v. Board and I think it is evident, the Bush agenda has been undermining civil rights - e.g. Scalia, Alito, and Roberts.

    The fact that Brown has not been overturned by the Supreme Court suggests private interest groups (PIGs) are satisfied with the current state of school finance, which has been as much a failure as the WASL. For example, by not directing extra funding to communities with low levels of achievement.

    The second policy, which the public is even more misinformed about is the low quality of instruction that students are receiving.

    Teachers are coerced into teaching dogma. Even a monkey can write standards on the board for students to copy down.

    Of course, Parents that can afford to pay for private tutoring or private school or have other routes to achieve success through work, for instance, will always undermine equality achieved through public education.

    One of the problems is understanding the complexity of how schools are financed which is different for each state. If there was uniformity, then more progress could be made on civil rights.

    Washington laws should be updated to reflect what other states are doing especially regarding alternative programs and diversity. For example, some communities in Washington are very diverse, more reflective of Texas or California. While other communities are ethnically more like Wisconsin.

    Your laws fail to account for that diversity and therefore those communities remain underserved. This state has not even finished phasing in reforms that were initiated in 1983. Programs that have low graduation rates, should be looked at carefully - communities should decide if these are programs that really offer an alternative for students. I think they are a waste of student's time and it is misleading to enroll students in programs that they will probably not graduate from.

    A parent with a college education will not enroll their child in a program with a graduation rate of less than 20%. Most parents, however, don't understand the added risk of having a child waste several years of their life trying to obtain a diploma from a program that was created with a large degree of cynicism and the worst of intentions.

    If you've seen Harry Potter V - then you would understand that math and science are like the Hogwarts class -- Defense against the black arts. Rowling took a risk when she wrote about cutting, but I think she is closer to the truth, than what we want to imagine.

    For instance, we see students cut themselves at school, but not at home. Why is that? Cutters have to be differentiated from other types of self-mutilations or attempts at suicide. Cutters are a product of school culture - they will exist so long as you have classrooms the way they currently are.

    Wikipedia:
    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954),[1] was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, which overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, by declaring that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

    As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This victory paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.[2]

    We are a long way from achieving integration or equality. Brown v. Board was a step in the right direction, not a solution. Bush is an imbecile and people voted for him, knowing he was naive, stupid, and ineffective. Why is that?

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  4. The WASC accreditation process is flawed. It is a stamp of approval for programs that are so detrimental to student achievement, they don't even bother to hide policies that are overtly racist.

    e.g. The lack of direct instruction in alternative programs. Students are made to learn on their own with materials that are outdated (e.g. vocational ed) and far below academic standards.

    Children don't go beyond learning basic math skills or elementary science. Its a joke and a waste of one's time. You might as well learn a trade like washing dishes or selling vegetables at a fruit stand.

    That's what most of these kids do when they turn 17. I've talked to many who's plans encompasss everything from working in the sex industry to sliming fish in an Alaskan cannery.

    The WASL walk-throughs are made by administrators selected by the principal. Its meant to be friendly. School board members should represent the community, not defend their schools, especially schools that haven't a soul or a heart for educating all children.

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