I'm *really* happy to see that one of the leaders of our whole financial system can't see that their may be some lurking variables here.
So our scores are higher than most in 4th grade. They aren't by 12th grade. Couldn't there be any other variables involved besides the school "system" that is creating less learning as years go by? Perhaps work ethic of the students or parents insisting that their children do well? I'm not saying that I would like a society like Japan's or China's with regard to their culture on education; I think that the students there may be pressured too much - Greenspan may disagree. But to say that the only reason that kids do worse relative to other countries is the fault of the schools is ridiculous. There are other variables too...most countries have centralized systems with very little community involvement in decision making, just the opposite of what Greenspan would probably want. By many standards, our college graduates are the best in the world. If you look at the way colleges and universities go about educating students and compare it to the way K-12 schools do, you'd see a lot of the things that are pushed by many "reform" groups, aren't there at the university level. I don't hear how Yale has to desegregate. (7% of Yale is black, 12.3% in the US. ---- 6% is Yale is Hispanic, 12.5% in the US) I don't hear how Yale being burdened with Special Ed services. I don't hear how Yale shouldn't be spending over $1.54 billion in operating income (over twice what Minneapolis spends) to educate 11,000 students (about 1/4 of what MPS has). I don't hear professors at Yale complaining about teaching 5 hours a day with only 1 hour to prepare. I don't hear Yale being told that if their ELL students don't do as well as white students that they will lose all federal funding in the form of research, for example. I don't hear Yale telling the people of people of New Haven "send us your tired and poor....", in fact they only accept 11% of the highly motivated students that apply from all over the world. And I bet even Yale has left a student behind. For those of you that want to put words in my mouth, I'm not saying that we could fix everything in MPS if $135,000 per student. We can't do too much students who do their hardest not to learn a thing. But for Greenspan to say that our schools are failing without looking into other factors that may affect why our kids don't do as well, or without noticing what kinds of things happen in places that do work well really gets me angry. Our schools do a great deal with what little they have to work with. Bill Towne CARAG ========================= Bill Towne Minneapolis, Minnesota www.billtowne.com ========================= REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
