Chicago Mayor Calls For "Brainiac High" 419
theodp writes "In a private lunch with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, BusinessWeek's Michael Arndt was taken aback by the mayor's candid monologues against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failure of public schools — Chicago's included — to adequately train kids today in technology, math, and science. Among the education fixes Daley said he's contemplating are a fifth year of high school and elite math and science academies for Chicago's brainiest students. Endless wars that divert hundreds of billions a year from schools and job training are also undermining America's competitiveness, Daley added, wondering where the public outrage is."
Too Dumb To Protest (Score:2, Interesting)
Infested with the lies of corporatism and capitalism our general public is far too dumb to make intelligent demands for education. It
has reached the sad point where one supposed leader has remarked that education should be run like a business. That translates rather
easily into giving students as little as possible while taking as much from the public as they can get.
Limit summer holidays to three weeks in total. Stop honoring lesser holidays. Get rid of teacher work days. Make school a 8 am to
5 pm activity with half days on Saturday. Get rid of equivalency diplomas and be quick to permanently expel students who either show
little interest in academic life or have behavior problems. Let the parents pay for private schooling for the expelled.
In essence every student should know that endless help is at hand for excellence but endless rejection and failure are also very real and immediate consequences. Make courses just hard enough so that some good students can not pass them.
Be certain that Texas has no influence over text books. And isolate schools from parental influence or complaints. Pay teachers as if they were professionals in the same sense that doctors or lawyers or CPAs get paid.
That will do the trick. Do less and we will serve foreign masters.
Re:Public outrage? (Score:1, Interesting)
There were plenty of riots and massive demonstrations here in the UK. The issue in Britain is not lack of a public outcry but lack of anyone in Westminster who payed, or is paying, even the slightest attention with the two major parties having backed the war despite obvious massive popular opposition, and despite the extremely transparent nature of the nonsense regarding WMD, `hand of history on my shoulder' etc etc from Tony Blair.
Re:Missed the mark (Score:1, Interesting)
Why don't you train the kids that can apply those skills to creating things, and let them worry about making money? It used to work so well for us in the early 20th century. We had people who were smart and created things that they knew would be useful. They then attempted to sell those things.
Enough with the attitude that corporatism is neccessary for the progression of society and that we won't ever be able to move forward from our current position.
Re:More money? (Score:1, Interesting)
No, we need to privatize education. When schools are forced to seek profit and keep themselves afloat people will really value education because they will see exactly how much it costs them. Schools will finally be forced to innovate in order to differentiate themselves from mainstream education and bad teachers will finally be fireable.
All your approach has done is hamstring teachers and students with ridiculous academic requirements that most students should not need to survive life outside of school. I have never seen anyone use algebra in a work environment, yet it is still a high school requirement. Why? Why do requirements have to be so specific? Are we preparing ALL students to study in a rigorous academic environment? All I've seen come from that movement is a dumbing down of undergraduate courses so that all students can take them and not flunk. I graded coursework for 180 undergraduate students at my school and if I had been teaching the class I would have flunked 160 of them. They didnt try, they didn't even care that they were in college. The attitude from high school of doing the absolute minimum had perpetuated itself because most of them were getting a free ride paid for by you and yours.
I'm a little bitter because I'm still paying off my loans and I actually learned something from my education. So fuck your return to the fundamentals. Teach the kids that don't belong in college skills that they can sell in the real world, and track the students who do belong in college into college.
College is not for everyone. It shouldn't be for everyone. It should be for people who have the potential to advance the world by their study of something. If that sounds like elitism to anyone they are correct. But look at what is happening to our country every time you push for equality of the mind! You are killing our country by destroying the elite. They are the ones who drive us forward, and they need our moral support to continue. Things are not equal which are not equal. Elite used to have such wonderful connotations. Now it is a word spat into the faces of the bright, the wealthy, and the gifted.
British television could help with this. (Score:3, Interesting)
On British TV, there have been some Brainiac shows about science [wikipedia.org] and history [wikipedia.org] that I dare say are more engaging than any typical American curriculum.
Re:Public outrage? (Score:3, Interesting)
Same thing here in Spain ... we had massive anti-war protests here and for weeks on end everybody would go out on the street at 8pm and bang frying pans with spoons to make a huge noise all over the city.
Did anybody listen? Nope. It took a change of government to get us out of Iraq.
(But hey, at least the 'democracy' part worked in the long term...)
You're missing something here (Score:2, Interesting)
His point is that if we stop spending so much money on wars in far away lands and put that money into out school systems, our own people and nation will be much better off in the long run.
I have to concur with this view ..
All our national wealth is spent on military industrial complex while the nation is slipping away into 3rd world status. The majority of Americans are morons that still believe Saddam was behind 9/11. Education can fix this
We need to redirect our priorities sooner than later. The longer we continue to dick around not dealing with our social problems, the worse things will become. Improving our school system is a great place to begin
Re:5th year? (Score:3, Interesting)
For the student in the last year of high school, at least those that are college material, they are mostly taking near college level courses, often for dual credit. of course the two problems with this system is that high school teacher does not, in many cases, have the freedom to grade on a college level, and most students are not going to apply the appropriate effort, as most students see the last year as a time to relax rather than engage in a big finish. As such I see the last year as a time to give them a preview of what is expected in college. Though the may be required in college, more college prep work may help the up to 25% freshman drop out rate.
Here is where the Mayor is on point. There are schools that teach to the college level, but these are mostly for the top 10% of the population. These schools are in urban and suburban districts, and are cost effective because students are bussed in from 20 miles away to make up the student body of much less than 500. These will only serve the highly motivated student who will live on six hours of sleep due to homework and travel time. The question is how we deliver comparable opportunities to the local school. This requires money and trained teachers. Equipment like $50,000 computer labs with large format and 3D printers, pro 3D rendering and design software, pro circuit and aerospace simulation software. A grand of consumables per student. Funding these for the top 10% of motivated students is easy. Funding these for everyone else requires a redirection of funds. But without the funds, kids that do not have parents of friends with such equipment simply aren't ready for the required work.
Re:Schools vs. Killing brown people (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Schools vs. Killing brown people (Score:2, Interesting)
There are, however, such things as schools that will not do a better job educating kids if given more money.
It always amazes me that this isn't more obvious. Doubling the salaries of poor quality 30k teachers does not produce good quality 60k teachers, but the same poor teachers with inflated salaries. Unions contribute to this in that they seek to limit teacher turnover from year to year. So in a school that only averages 2-3% turnover year to year, doubling salaries will produce results, but only after a decade or so. In contrast, were the old school closed down and a new one opened with the new salary rate, and management given the ability to deny roll-over from the previous school, I can imagine the result would be quite different.
(why is "brown people" a part of the parent? It's silly and distracting.
Money DOES NOT equal better schools (Score:3, Interesting)
"Like it or not, there's no such thing as a school that couldn't do a better job educating kids with more money. It does take money to teach kids. The more the better."
That's absolutely farcical, and further, is demonstrably untrue. And the argument about public vs. private here doesn't wash, because the rankings for school spending and test scores don't even take private schools into account. The rankings for dollar per kid are for public schools only.
Washington D.C. spends more per pupil than any other major city, and far more money than most states. And yet they have arguably the worst school system in the nation. And if you look around the country, you'll see that in terms of dollars-per-child, most of the worst performing systems are those with the highest average spending. Money will not fix schools. Period. If you're spending enough for books, teachers, and keeping the lights on, then the success of your students depends overwhelmingly on factors completely unrelated to cash. While DC spends more for less results, Utah public schools [epodunk.com]spend less than anyone per pupil, and yet has test scores and graduation rates well above the national average. So D.C. spends money comparable to many fine private schools, and they still stink, while Utah public schools spend a pittance. Again, money is not the problem here.
And BTW, it's not like the US is skimping on education spending when compared to our competitors, either. The US is third globally in spending-per-pupil [nationmaster.com], far ahead of other countries that regularly beat us in math and science scores, like Germany and Japan. Only Austria and Switzerland spend more per child, so again, the notion that "more education money = always better" is just flat wrong.
"Anybody who parrots the right-wing talking point that the problem is teachers unions has never taught in both public and private schools."
Unions by themselves are not the only problem, but they are a big one. And I come from a family of teachers in both public and private schools. Go to a unionized public school and take a private survey. Ask how many teachers send their kids to non-unionized private schools. You're going to be surprised just how many do. Many teachers join the union because they basically have to do so to get a job at a public school. Further, every boneheaded "reform" of the last 50 years... new math, whole language instruction, bussing students, etc, were all firmly backed by the teachers unions. Any real reform... pay for performance, charter schools, making it easier to fire bad teachers, etc, have all been fought with a scorched earth campaign by the same unions.
" She went to public schools here in Chicago and got a first-rate education (she's in grad school now). "
What a shock. The daughter of a professional academic does well in school wherever she is. No one saw that one coming. I mean, it had nothing to do with parents that expected her to perform, right?
"The problems are many, but at the top are funding,"
Again, bull.
"shitty parenting"
We agree on something
"a growing socially and economically-impoverished underclass (thank you Ronald Reagan)"
We've always had an underclass. We always WILL have an underclass. That's humanity. That's never going to change. And yet we never had the systematic problems in school with that underclass that we have now until the 1960's. I look forward to your explanation of how Ronald Reagan is responsible for that, or how he caused black kids to decide that academic success is "acting white", or how despite the fact there is more opportunity to better yourself than in any time in history... more colleges, weaker entrance requirements, more pell grants available... some kids just don't give a ****.
"that is increasingly anti-educ
based on my HS experience (Score:1, Interesting)
The extra year will most likely be used for the following things: programming with Pascal, Calc 2 or 3, web design, photoshop class, CAD, etc. The problem is that the math/engineering types will need to retake calc 2 in college at a higher level along with way more coursework. The web design/photoshop group will have only scratched the surface and probably learn bad habits, and the Pascal kids will still need to complete a BS and possible MS in comp sci to get a decent job. So...its just a waste of money.
They should spend less on wars and more on education, but it should work like this. If you go to a college and get good marks, you get reimbursed by the gov't depending on your marks and the price of your states in-state tuition (you don't get more money for going to an expensive school):
4.0: 100% reimburement
3.5+: 80%
3.2+: 60%
3.0+: 50%
2.75+: 25%
You can get a bonus of 0.3 on your GPA if you're in math, science, engineering, pharmacy, etc.