I can really sympathize with the teachers having their hands tied and not being able to discipline. That all spirals in from our current lawyer problem… our highly litigious society and the lack of any self-responsibity anymore.

Years ago someone, whose name I have not retained, not sure why, gave the analogy that school is very similar to jail. Students are required to be kept in classrooms for predetermined amounts of time and are only allowed certain amounts of time to get to the next class or eat. They must ask to go to the bathroom and are only allowed if the teacher lets them. They must not talk or misbehave without consequences and are must remain in their seats at all times. They are allowed a certain amount of time for exercise and may only go from place to place with passes that have full descriptions of everything they will do. Keep in mind this is a suburban school and not a city school where they have true police presence to maintain control.

Another problem is that teachers are no longer allowed to enforce the rules because if one happens to look the wrong way at a student or heaven forbid speak to a student in a way that might be perceived by the student as wrong to them then the teacher faces abarrage of phone calls from parents threats of law suits and possible termination as an extreme. Keep in mind I am not in favor of corporal punishment but some discipline needs to be allowed without repercussions. Of course none of this would be necessary if it was properly taken care of at HOME. But thats a whole ‘nother post.

Thoughts??

The things I was tested on around 10th grade were some of the things I use the most often (or, like US and World History, are the things I most wish I remembered better).

SIDE NOTE: The comments come up as “waiting for moderation”.

SIDE NOTE :: I noticed that BA, Ken and Alissa have each had a comment flag for possible spam. Fear not, I always approve it and it goes up here. I think the length flags it but I’m not sure. I’ll check my filter and adjust it as necessary… I just didn’t want you guys freakin’ out. I don’t even know what it tells you if it doesn’t post your comment right away.

If given the space I would have written much more that targeted some seemingly more fundamental problems, but I already nearly doubled what the TU standards are for letter length, and I was trying to really counter the original person’s letter… oh well.

alissa :: I can see what you mean to an extent. I know that on the SATs if you don’t know the vocabulary word being asked you are left to guess… and if you do know it, great. If you only know the word because it was on a list of words to study for the SATs, then great again. That list of words could be called a curriculum. And the classes on how to “beat” the SATs are pretty much snake oil.

I never took the ACTs either, nor the GREs. I have no time for these tests.

In my years at private school, I took the Stanford Achievement Tests every year. During the homeschool years, I took the California Achievement Tests. My brother and I both had intensely lopsided scores (for instance, 99th percentile in everything except “addition of whole numbers”). We pretty much discounted the whole thing. Your actual grade in a course was a much more interesting representation of your ability to succeed, particularly in more quantifiable subjects like math.

You and I both know that the SATs don’t test anything except your ability to take tests - why else would they have classes on how to “beat” the test? And why would intensely intelligent kids And the scary thing is, it works. Never having had to take the ACTs (because I went to an East Coast college), I can’t speak for those, and not the APs either. I did take the GREs, though, and they are exactly the same as the SATs except the vocabulary portion is ridiculous.

Besides the Regents there are, of course, the SATs and the ACTs… and the advanced placement tests. During school we took the New York State tests almost every year, and we took the Iowa tests a couple times, too. Most of these had stuff on them that I still use all the time (basic math, reading, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, bull-fighting, astro-physics, etc.). Even the Regents with history and foreign language had some solid stuff (you can tell by how some people vote how very little they remember their history).

Dang, Alissa, how do you keep track of all those Latin global variables!? While standards-based education is a good mechanism for measuring, I’m sure the “system” has found a way to screw it up. I bet BA could expound more on that. Actually, now that we drag him in …how standards affect subjects like music is something I know nearly nothing about. I don’t remember ever taking a standardized music exam, except maybe NYSSMA solos, if they count.

In all reality, most of the things we learn in school past the eighth grade . . . or at least tenth . . . don’t have anything to do with “succeeding” in life, if by succeeding you mean surviving! That’s why we have compulsory attendance laws.

Human nature is to aim for the bare minimum. And therein lies the tragedy.

Honestly, I think the Europeans have a good system of secondary education going.

I’m fully behind the “the system is broken” movement. And perhaps the standardized tests are not ideal. But I’m going to have to disagree on the utility of the material that is included in standardized tests. Now, I only know about New York’s Regents curriculum… But I think the tests were attempting to test valuable material. They had English, history, math, science… All the basics. Because people have not learned material, I don’t see how that proves that tests themselves are a bad idea.

I think having a standard bar to aim for is a good thing. Enrichment things like art and music are great, and even the little high school Steve and I went to had a smattering of both. But for most people, those things are not going to make one lick of difference in you succeeding in the rest of your life. I suppose history or advanced alegebra probably won’t in most cases, either. This is a subject I could rant and ramble on for eons.