Florida lowers passing grade for state writing exam after over 70 percent of fourth-graders fail

http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/1075-u-s-students-compare.gs

The United States may be a superpower but in education we lag behind. In a recent comparison of academic performance in 57 countries, students in Finland came out on top overall. Finnish 15-year-olds did the best in science and came in second in math. Other top-performing countries were: Hong Kong, Canada, Taiwan, Estonia, Japan and Korea.

Sixteen other countries scored better than the USA did academically. The kids in these other countries want to go to school and get a good education. Many American kids only go because they are forced too; not making it very pleasant for the teachers.

This really doesn’t surprise me. The USA seems to have a pattern of the way they operate, always take the easy route. If they cannot get students or persons taking tests for civil servant jobs up to the basic level required to pass a test, they just lower the requirements. So what do you have as an end result, a dummy that passed a test.

Years back when the government was trying to fill quotas to get more minorities into government jobs, they had to lower the test scoring requirements so some of the minorities could pass the test. Quite a few of the educated minorities were insulted by this.

Example:

A white guy that was applying for a firemen/policemen job needed a 75% to pass the test, the minority only needed a 60% to pass. Isn’t that called reverse discrimination? Again, what do we have, a dummy firemen/policeman who is probably a danger to the people he/she is working with. Quotas just are not a good idea.

At one time some brilliant  government officials tried to initiate an issue that would make it a requirement that all Americans learn the sub-par lingo of Ebonics; a dialog that the street “dudes and homies” use that can only be understood between themselves.

I still can see Jesse Jackson in the forefront leading the charge to push this issue through just as he always does whenever he thinks he can get his nose in front of a camera. He fit right in there. To this day I still can’t understand a word this guy says.

The governments’ objective was to teach Ebonics in all class rooms in the country so the average Joe citizen could comprehend what these “jitterbugs” are talking about. Does it make a little more sense to try and educate these aborigines to speak understandable English instead of trying to make it mandatory that the rest of the country try to decipher what they are saying? Fortunately and surprisingly the issue did not pass.

Similar in case but not exactly the same. Busing, one of the biggest and most costly failures this country ever had.

In order to try and bring equality in education to the lower income students up to the level of the higher income students, the Supreme Court came up with the brilliant idea of busing the students.  The new law required a kid that lived across the street from a school, the reason his/her parents moved there in the first place, to go 40 miles away to another school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing_in_the_United_States

Desegregation busing in the United States (also known as forced busing or simply busing) is the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools in such a manner as to redress prior racial segregation of schools, or to overcome the effects of residential segregation on local school demographics.

Logically thinking; what would be the least expensive, transporting the teachers to different schools, even if they were paid for the travel expenses or busing the kids? Is it easier and more cost effective to move 453,000 teachers to different schools or to buy buses and the expense involved to transport 76.5 million students miles away from their neighborhoods?

Is it the building and it’s location that is rendering the education or is it the teachers? If the majority of these kids had a good home structure, it wouldn’t matter where they went to school. Discipline and responsibility should be taught at home not in the school.  Again the country was trying to take the easier route.

After the fact, it was ascertained that busing the kids had little to no effect on the students’ education.

Following the same logic, why should the Americans set the bar high for our students so they will be able to function in the business world if and when they graduate? Just lower the prerequisites so they get shoved through the doors when they are 18. What teacher wants the same dunce in their class room year after year anyway? Those 6’ 2” kids are too big for the kindergarten desks anyway.

So to all of you educational experts in Florida; keep lowering the test requirements, that way if one of your students is a store and is buying something that cost more than 10 cents, they will have to take their shoes and socks off to count higher.

You are actually doing these kids a dis-service instead of helping them.