Education Sec. Paige Blasts NAACP Leaders

[WHITE DEVIL]

But the problems in low-income areas are so multi-threaded and deep rooted that it is absolute mental simplicity to say "Hey, the school just needs to teach harder! Harder teaching = higher scores!" This may be true in Yale or some dumbfuck prep school Bush or Kerry went to, but the sad fact is a kid who had a bag of cheetos for breakfast, lunch, and yesterday's dinner, and hopes he or his mom will not get beat up by his moms boyfriend, with no fuckin dad/mom/parent in sight and crackheads on the front porch is not going to suddenly wake up one day and say "Hey, I get it all now! Teach me harder!"

There are issues applicable to these type of situations that don't even factor in higher income or even middle class areas. NCLB's approach is singular and extremely simplistic. The higher test scores come after the proposed solution to problems, not the other way around. That would be like if I, as a supervisor, told someone "you see that job you're doing, do it 2 times better with no extra help, or you're fired." That's the premise behind NCLB.

 

[tadou]

Come on now. Not every school is gutter, and even then, not every kid that goes to those schools has crackheads hanging out on their doorsteps, and worries about mom getting kicked in the stomach. I understand what you are getting at, but the idea that 85 or 90% of kids at these schools "can't" be educated the same way someone in another city could, is ludicrous.

How does that old phrase go? "The Republicans are a party of bad ideas, and the Democrats are a party of no ideas"? Throw in "Hindsight is 20/20" as well.

NCLB is not about teaching harder, its about teaching EFFECTIVELY; the same concept behind me dissing Democrats for wanting to "throw money at problems" instead of going to root causes.

A High School diploma is and always will be about college. If someone didn't like that, perhaps they WOULD be well-suited for a GED. And last i checked, the FAFSA didn't discriminate between GED and HS diploma.