Stossel also brings up the issue of monopolies. In every other area of life competition has brought down prices and improved service - he uses the very effective example of phone companies. Only in education do we allow monopolies to dominate and the result is a callous disregard for providing quality service to the customers. Later in the report Stossel points out how valuable personal service is and brings up the example of a hugely successful charter school where teachers are paid incentives for success and fired if they don't do a good job. T
he key point here is made by a Belgian principal who points out that "if we dont offer them what they want for their child they won't come to our school." And that's it in a nutshell. If you have to compete for students you're going to do a better job. Kevin Chavous points out "If you shut down bad schools that's healthy, because it says to people that incompetence won't work." Monopolies have no reason to change, and that means that the educational system won't improve so long as it's a monopoly.
Later in the report Stossel comes back to this issue and brings on Ruth Holmes Cameron, a Florida teacher who sued to stop vouchers in her state and won. She provides the classic quote "To say that competition is going to improve education, it's just not going to work. Competition is not for children, it's not for human beings, it's not for education. It never has been, it never will be." If competition isn't for human beings we're in serious trouble. And if she's representative of our educators it explains a lot about the problems the schools are having. The lack of competition pretty much guarantees a lack of achievement.
Teachers Unions Are the Problem
Inevitably Stossel gets to the teachers unions when he starts talking about his home town of New York City where they are particularly powerful. They command enormous amount of money and resources, and as they did in South Carolina they work very aggressively to stop any attempt at school reform or even measures to impose accountability on teachers and schools.
Stossel brings up the fact that because of the unions it's virtually impossible to fire teachers who are incompetent or even criminal, revealing the fact that in the New York schools they have what they call a 'rubber room' where they send teachers who are too dangerous to let in the classrooms with kids - including sex offenders and teachers who have attacked students - and the teachers sit there all day doing nothing and drawing a salary just because the unions make it so difficult to fire them. The city is spending $20 million a year to pay dangerous and incompetent teachers not to teach. Out of 80,000 teachers in New York City only 2 have been fired in the last year for incompetence. The reason is obvious if you look at the flowchart Stossel got from the reform group Common Good, which shows the insanely complex procedure required to actually fire a teacher.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Shark
The Education Problem in America is simple, except it will never be fixed by the government, legislation, vouchers, standardized tests, etc.
...unless the government can make a law stating that all parents must actively participate in their childrens' educations.
(doesn't appear Stossel addressed this, but) ...PARENTS are the critical/primary variable -- all the rest of that stuff = distractions to avoid the truth; many parents are morons who aren't interested in their children's learning.
-- and for the most part, Morons Breed Morons.
Admirable concerns, but yer pissin' in the wind, Dave.
2 - Shark
Aside:
just for the record, Stossel, as you intimate -- is one of the most irritating, arrogant, pedantic, and downright creepy pricks on television.
A Favorite Memory:
Woo-hoo! -- John "Mr. Investigative Reporter" Stossel exposes -- get this -- PRO WRESTLING IS FAKE!
Can you believe it!?
Stossel confronts big steroid gorrilla in funny costume: Gorrilla slaps him up side the head, bursting Stossel's eardrum.
And Woodward and Bernstein thought they took risks!
~ahahaha!
Excellent TV!
3 - Bill B
Hello Dave
Mammoth topic it is. You make some good points.
First as to the voucher issue. I kinda feel that when the religious institutions pay taxes, I'd consider a voucher system. They're not gonna skate on the tax issue and then GET public dollars for education. I realize not all private schools are religious, but most are where I live, and I'm not sure of the national numbers. I don't have all the usual trepidation with respect to public monies "supporting" religious teaching. I figure if it's accross the board there's no endorsment of a particular faith. If someone would disagree I'd question does the government endorse "non-faith" or atheism in public schools? I would however not want a reduction in public school funds except to the extent that it reflects enrollment and reform. I'll certainly agree that much of public school education is top heavy. Not enough gets to the student in any meaningful way.
Anecdotal example; My wife teaches in the Bronx. Not sure of the exact dollar figure per student but it's not low and yet she spends a good amount of her own cash on supplies. They get a $200 reimbursement payment that doesn't come close to being adequate.
Reform? yes. Difficult? yes.
As for the teachers union and school management there should be a sensible process by which unfit teachers can be fired. Period. As a manager I could tell you that it's easy to be lazy and not document a paper trail by which to support the firing of an individual. It's more work to do it properly and fairly.
Another thing I see is how they seem to continually apply the latest education approach in the hopes of reinventing the wheel. All it seems to do is confuse people and give the teachers a whole new curriculum to learn and teach. It's insane. KISS
This brings me to a question I have for you. Why are you so quick to disregard and forget our own public school experience? Granted it was a somewhat simpler time but I'd guess we were much happier with the results then as there wasn't nearly the amount of hand wringing as today and there was no more competition then than now.
I'd bet we have a few lessons to learn from that time.
One other issue not really touched upon is poverty and the situation at home. To discuss education without a meaningful discussion on these issues is like discussing the structural integrity of a baseball bat without considering the material from which it is made.
As mentioned before reform is needed and much of the top heavy bureaucracy needs to be axed. Successful charter schools that bypass this bureaucracy need to be emulated but one must remeber that if all schools followed this path a bureaucracy would evolve to manage them. Let it be a sensible one.
Many people know that pre-school prep is important. Yet I'd bet the higher you are on the income ladder, the more likely you will both have the time and inclination to spend quality educational time with your child both before entering school and after school hours when enrolled.
Many of my wire's students are from poor, single parent households.
Poverty breeds despair and indifference. The parent able to rise above poverty and provide their children with the proper home instruction is the exception and not the rule.
There's so much more on these issues. Like I said, it's a mommoth topic.
BTW I agree with Shark. I don't much care for Stossel.
4 - Dave Nalle
...unless the government can make a law stating that all parents must actively participate in their childrens' educations.
(doesn't appear Stossel addressed this, but) ...PARENTS are the critical/primary variable -- all the rest of that stuff = distractions to avoid the truth; many parents are morons who aren't interested in their children's learning.
Actually, Stossel did address this in a very effective, but indirect way. What he did was put a LOT of parents on the air sprinkled among the other people he interviewed, giving them a chance to express their frustration with the system. What he makes clear by doing this is that as the system exists now it doesn't matter if the parents care of not;. Even when they care enormously about their kids, there's nothing they can do. The system makes it impossible for them to get their kids a better education if they don't have the time to teach them at home or the money to send them somewhere else. He had a lot of poor, but very well meaning parents on expressing their frustration.
What he also demonstrated very clearly is that the movement for vouchers is NOT a movement of rich white people trying to get their taxes back. It's increasingly a movement of poor blacks and hispanics trying to escape the ghettoization which has made inner city schools so awful.
Dave
5 - Bennett
THANK YOU DAVE!
I watched this program with my wife and as you note "It made me think and it made me rage, and it made me despair"
My wife is expecting, late March, and I started talking about home schooling after the program finished. It will be tough, but I swear I can teach more in two hours that the local elementary school can in a full day (my two step kids attended this school, and surrounded by chronic underachievers they adjusted their efforts to fit the norm).
It was a GREAT program, and Stossel's pricklyness not withstanding, the program was (or SHOULD be) a wake up call for Americans.
I never thought too much about vouchers until seeing how they impact the quality of education for ALL Americans by creating competition for the money,competition base on the quality of education provided.
I'm all for vouchers. I don't care if other folks use them for parochial schools, as long as I can send my child to the school that will give him the best chance at being a successful and productive member of society.
6 - Dave Nalle
Yes, Shark. Stossel can be irritating. He even has a kind of whiney voice and a terrible habit of asking rhetorical questions. This does not in any way change the fact that he's dead right on this issue and has finally put together such an overwhelming body of evidence in this report that no one can deny it.
Dave
7 - Mark Saleski
except for all of the other factors he's left out.
gee, i wish i could get rich like stossel, shooting fish in a barrel for a living.
8 - Dave Nalle
Ok, Mark. What are some of those factors he left out. If you've got some evidence let's hear it, because I've looked at an awful lot of data researching the background of Stossel's story and the evidence seems pretty overwhelming.
Dave
9 - Mark Saleski
some of it has to do with what shark mentioned: parental involvement (or lack thereof).
also, there are a great many societal (and inti-intellectual)pressures against learning these days that are just plain screwing everything up. we talk out of one side of our mouth about how important education is, but then lob around crap about the "intellectual elites".
face it, in our society it's not 'cool' to be smart.
cool to be a star athlete, perhaps...but not a valedictorian.
the issue is way, way more complicated that the picture stossel painted.
and this is not to say that teachers' unions haven't played their part, because they certainly have made some bad decicions.
10 - Dave Nalle
Mark, if parents go down and bitch at the school the net result is zero. I did that for 6 years and got nowhere except a lot of sympathy from other parents and elected to positions of pseudo-power which could not implement any actual change.
The only way for involved parents to actually achieve anything is to get them out of the failing schools and the system won't allow that.
And BTW, peer pressure is an issue which is also better addressed in an alternative school where things like uniforms and discipline are possible.
Oh, and to make learning 'cool' all you need is teachers who love to teach, which is hard for them in the government schools - something Stossel's report also shows very effectively, contrasting the happy, dedicated and better paid teachers at charter schools with the grumpy, self-centered and incompetent union teachers.
Dave
11 - Mark Saleski
...the grumpy, self-centered and incompetent union teachers
and of course, they're ALL grumpy, self-centered and incompetent.
we'll send you flowers at the hospital after your hernia-from-carrying-the-ginormous-broad-brush.
12 - Dave Nalle
Give me a break, Mark. Of course there are good teachers in the public schools, but the point is still valid. It's a system which tolerates incompetence and holds no one accountable for their actions.
I kind of wonder if you actually watched the report.
Dave
13 - Mark Saleski
whatever dave. your 'style' of argument has driven many people away from this site.
i'm not leaving, but it's become more and more obvious that i'm wasting my time as, like in nearly every thread you're involved in, you are 'right' and everybody else is wrong.
oh, and it's someone ironic that you're choosing to back somebody like stossel. i lost any respect for him i might have had when he openly lied in his organic farming report on 20/20. and shame on the network for keeping him on.
14 - Shark
re: seleski's points -- I think some studies have shown that regardless of the school, income of parents, etc -- the main factor was parental involvement.
As I said, the rest is just smoke-screen.
Oh, and did I mention that Stossel is a LYING, MANIPULTAIVE RIGHT-WING shill who has been caught with 'creative editing, fudging the facts, and outright falsehoods?
15 - Duane
Mark (#9) makes a good point, I think, concerning the "image" presented by the various media of "smart" people vs. "glamorous" people. Just to give one gross example, have a look (a quick look) at Ashton Kutcher's so-called sociological experiment called "Beauty and the Geek" (WB network).
Evidently, the idea is along the lines of matching up female beauties with male geeks. Along the way the geekiness of the socially inept male participants is put on display for the audience to marvel at. One is a Rubik's Cube expert, one can name all he world capitals, one is a biology student who has never kissed a girl, etc. Their clothes and overall appearance is a great joke, of course. They are interviewed while surrounded by stacks of books. That should give you the general idea.
The young women are evidently selected according to an optimum mix of physical attractiveness and apalling ignorance. But whereas the geeks are obviously uncomfortable about their geekiness, the women come off as giggly proud of the fact that they managed to get through high school (some are even in college) without knowing much beyond which makeup combinations best enhance their beauty, and how to give effective massages.
That's all I know about this series (yes, it's a series). I had to flip away.
The extreme examples of geekdom no doubt plant the idea in impressionable minds (i.e., your TV viewers) that intellectual endeavor is diametrically opposed to scoring with a hot babe. But the women come off OK. The message is "With good looks, you will never be seen as a loser."
This is a complex subject. No doubt, there are some truths in the stereotypes being pushed here. An extension of the stereotype is that intellectuals have been given the time and effort to become intellectuals simply because they had nothing "better" to do, given that they couldn't get a date -- social ineptitude and failure breeds intellectuals.
I'm fairly sure that the kind of images foisted upon high school students by shows of this type have a decisive and negative influence.
16 - Dave Nalle
whatever dave. your 'style' of argument has driven many people away from this site.
i'm not leaving, but it's become more and more obvious that i'm wasting my time as, like in nearly every thread you're involved in, you are 'right' and everybody else is wrong.
I wouldn't have opinions if I didn't think they were right. What else do you expect? The same is true of everyone, you included.
As for my 'style' of argument, it is to exchange ideas and try to evaluate them and come up with the best undestanding of an issue I can.
What I don't understand is why you can't engage in a constructive discussion and have to resort to personal insults and defensiveness as you have here.
oh, and it's someone ironic that you're choosing to back somebody like stossel. i lost any respect for him i might have had when he openly lied in his organic farming report on 20/20. and shame on the network for keeping him on.
I'm not backing Stossel so much as I'm backing this particular report. I think much of his other work is trivial. I'm not familiar with the organic farming report. Can you fill me in on it?
Dave
17 - Mark Saleski
you accuse me of not watching the show in question, then bring up defensiveness and personal insult. right.
18 - Dave Nalle
And back to the issue of parental involvement, again what that ultimately comes down to is parents finding a way to get their kids out of a failing school once they give up on trying to change the system. That will either involve a great deal of work (home schooling), a great deal of money (private schools), moving (which can also be expensive) or some subterfuge (setting up a false residence in another district). If parents who care are having to go to these lengths to get their kids a decent education, there's something wrong with the system not necessarily the parents.
Dave
19 - Dave Nalle
I was just wondering if you'd watched it, Mark. I just don't see how anyone could watch it and not be moved.
Dave
20 - Mark Saleski
the kind of 'parental involvement' that i referred to and that shark speaks of is about being involved in what the child is working on...not just being involved at bitching out the schools (which do indeed often need to be bitched at)
21 - Shark
re: Duane and Saleski's point --
I do think our culture seems to value a lot of the wrong things -- and a low to no value put on intelligence & creativity.
Boys nowadays see to want to be athletes, rock stars, & skateboard heroes. Girls wanna be attractive.
Welcome to America: Money money money. Whore whore whore.
~Gotta run -- the "Girls Gone Wild" commercial is on.
22 - Son of Liberty
I have mixed feelings regarding Stossel, but in general I tend to agree with the thrust of this report.
I live in Alabama, and the single most powerful man in the Alabama Legislature is Paul Hubbert. Mr. Hubbert is the head of the Alabama Education Association, the local teacher's union. The fact that a non-elected official with no official standing in the state government is regarded as the "800 lb. gorilla" in state politics speaks for itself. The clout of the teacher's union here is far out of porportion.
I also have to agree with Stossel's position regarding city schools. My family moved to an expensive suburb and rented an apartment in order to get access to one of the best schools systems in the state. People who don't have the means to do something of that nature and have to educate their children in the Birmingham City or Jefferson County Schools get stuck with a substandard education for their children. To some degree, people get the local government they deserve... but to some degree, they also get the government that is inflicted on them.
I'm not sure I like the voucher solution for education, but I don't have any easy answers. Public education in this country is broken, and we need to find some way to fix it. The future of our children, and indeed our country, depends on it.
23 - SonnyD
About parental involvement: Look at this example. There is a single parent, unemployed, likes to spend the day at the bar, wants the kid out of the house, kid spends the day in a lousy school and learns nothing, comes home with homework, parent says, "Shut up, I'm trying to watch Fear Factor."
Is this a reason for the rest of us to throw up our hands and say, "Oh, well, it's not my responsibility?"
Today's student is tomorrow's adult citizen, tax payer and voter. An uneducated adult works at a lower paying job and pays less in taxes that pay for your Social Security. An uneducated adult votes for or against things like your future health care. Tomorrw's adult determines the future of our country.
If you sit there and look for excuses why you shouldn't care about today's schools or why somebody else should be responsible, then you just aren't thinking at all. You need to get your priorities straight.
24 - Andy Marsh
I always heard...educate 'em now or incarcerate 'em later!
25 - lumpy
having the highest incarceration rate in the free world goes hand in hand with having the worst school system. two sides of the same coin.