| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"Way Back Jack" |
| Date: |
04 Dec 2005 05:22:51 PM |
| Object: |
Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
This country's doomed. Get a load of the latest plan to reach our
disinterested, disruptive, dangerous dumbbells:
EXCERPT: Among the magazines the schools are using to engage children:
CosmoGIRL!, which has a feature this month called "Five Hot New
Kisses," with explicit tips on making out, and Teen People, whose
November issue includes the articles "Hot Boy Next Door" and "Flirt
Better!" One lesson defines a noun as "stuff" and a verb as "what
stuff does."
________________
Schools rush into change
To raise middle school literacy, the city adopts with little
preparation an unproved curriculum
By Sara Neufeld
Sun reporter
Originally published December 4, 2005
After a dismal performance on state standardized tests this spring,
the Baltimore school system decided to overhaul the way it teaches
reading and writing in middle schools.
Putting convention aside, officials spent at least $2 million on
Studio Course, a curriculum that uses teen magazines, places grammar
on the back burner and lets kids write about whatever they want.
But if better test results are what they're after, they have no
evidence that Studio will deliver. The program has a track record in
only one other city, Denver, where middle schools have seen reading
and writing scores stagnate.
"I can't imagine Baltimore would be so ignorant to think it's
research-based," said Kay Landon, a sixth-grade teacher in Denver.
"They can look at our test scores. Our test scores have not gone up.
The kids are getting shortchanged."
The implementation of the curriculum in Baltimore has been marked by
some teachers starting the school year with no training, schools
struggling to buy the necessary materials, and lesson plans being
scrapped and rewritten, a review by The Sun has found.
School system officials, who say Studio is based on the latest reading
theory, dismiss criticism that they implemented the curriculum too
quickly.
"When the boat is sinking, you don't follow the manual," said Frank
DeStefano, the system's deputy chief academic officer. "You fix it."
Studio is being used in all 21 of Baltimore's traditional middle
schools, where more than 60 percent of pupils last school year failed
the state reading test, plus two alternative schools and one
kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.
Among the magazines the schools are using to engage children:
CosmoGIRL!, which has a feature this month called "Five Hot New
Kisses," with explicit tips on making out, and Teen People, whose
November issue includes the articles "Hot Boy Next Door" and "Flirt
Better!" One lesson defines a noun as "stuff" and a verb as "what
stuff does."
http://tinyurl.com/7dtqa
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| User: "Byker" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
04 Dec 2005 05:29:39 PM |
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"Way Back Jack" <doit@home.net> wrote in message
news:43937a4c.41665109@news.prodigy.net...
"When the boat is sinking, you don't follow the manual," said Frank
DeStefano, the system's deputy chief academic officer. "You fix it."
They better get hoppin': As it stands now, Baltimorgue schools are running
a close second to their shithole cousins in New Orleans prior to Katrina...
----------------------------------------------------------------
Baltimore Schools Face Financial Struggles
December 04, 2005
BALTIMORE (AP) - David Guth was ready and eager for swim team practice until
he learned that his high school's pool had been shut down by the state
health department.
That meant that every pool at the city's 15 high schools had been closed
because of problems ranging from minor maintenance to major structural
issues.
The pool where Guth is a senior, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, couldn't
be used because it didn't have any chlorine, thanks to a broken pump.
"I was furious," Guth said Friday, a day after the closure. "The fact that
there's no chlorine, I mean, that's one of the basic ingredients for a
pool."
Many basics have long been hard to come by in the financially troubled
Baltimore City Public School System, which is struggling with $1 billion in
deferred maintenance.
The school system's total budget for fiscal 2005 is roughly $900 million.
Last year, it had to increase class sizes and reduce its work force by 1,000
people, leaving it with about 11,000 employees to deal with 90,000 students.
The pools used by the eight city school swim teams are only a small portion
of the problem, said Roger Wrenn, athletic director at Patterson High
School. He said insufficient preventive maintenance over the past 10 to 15
years also has led to problems with school roofs and plumbing, as well as
other athletic facilities such as tracks.
"There would be two or three that were functional, nice tracks and many
others would look like a street in Beirut or in Baghdad that just looked
bombed out," Wrenn said.
Officials hope to reopen six of the 15 high school pools this week, said
Eric Letsinger, the system's chief operating officer. At schools where the
facilities can't be repaired quickly, students are practicing at nearby
recreational centers, he said.
Swim team members at Digital Harbor High School have been running in the
halls to try to keep in shape, said athletic director Chris Vaccaro. He
fears the lack of swimming time and possibly competition could hurt some
students' athletic scholarship opportunities.
"It shouldn't have to get this far," he said.
Part of the problem, Letsinger said, is that engineers have been busy
repairing boilers that heat the schools.
"The Baltimore city school system is a perfect example of decades of
neglect, from a resource standpoint and from a management standpoint," he
said in an interview at the pool that Poly shares with Western High School.
Letsinger said the administration is committed to making changes.
Wrenn said the pool problems also highlight the disparity between schools in
the city and in neighboring counties such as Howard, where his nieces attend
high school.
"Where they have in excess of 1,000 Internet-connected working computers,
our number is probably not 100," he said. "It's just not fair. It's a
microcosm of the whole thing."
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2005/dec/04/120403675.html
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| User: "Cleopatra" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
04 Dec 2005 06:16:16 PM |
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X-No-archive: yes
Yeah, that's what they're missing, computers! That'll make these Mau
Maus geniuses overnight. I can see it now. Twenty slack-jawed apes
grabbing their crotches as they peruse a few porn sites yukking it up
in de classroom - white gals, natch. What's next? Field trips to the
Mustang Ranch?
Cleopatra
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
05 Dec 2005 08:45:31 AM |
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you mean just throwing money at the problem doesnt make it go bye bye
anymore? I thought the liberals said that more money is always the
solution?
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| User: "Bob LeChevalier" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
05 Dec 2005 02:31:06 PM |
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wrote:
you mean just throwing money at the problem doesnt make it go bye bye
anymore? I thought the liberals said that more money is always the
solution?
No. That is the strawman that the right wing extremists like to
pretend is what "liberals" (i.e. anyone but a right-wing extremist)
said
lojbab
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
06 Dec 2005 09:18:59 AM |
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<<No. That is the strawman that the right wing extremists like to
pretend is what "liberals" >>
yeah? try that up here here in philly!
the school board whines about more money needed when the curriculum
here has alot to be desired.
for example, spelling tests are banned because they feel that the
students are just going to forget the words anyway. stupid!
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| User: "Way Back Jack" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
05 Dec 2005 02:40:02 PM |
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On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 15:31:06 -0500, Bob LeChevalier
<lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
darth_sidious70@yahoo.com wrote:
you mean just throwing money at the problem doesnt make it go bye bye
anymore? I thought the liberals said that more money is always the
solution?
No. That is the strawman that the right wing extremists like to
pretend is what "liberals" (i.e. anyone but a right-wing extremist)
said
Damn straight, that's exactly what the leftists continue to say.
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| User: "Gray Shockley" |
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| Title: Re: Baltimore's Latest Educational Excursion Into Dumb-Down Land |
05 Dec 2005 07:37:02 PM |
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On Mon, 5 Dec 2005 08:45, anonymous poster wrote:
you mean just throwing money at the problem
doesnt make it go bye bye anymore?
Not always but it's generally at - or near - the top.
However, with that $$$, it has to have, -->
I thought
An, as of yet, unproved assertion.
the liberals said that more
money is always the solution?
<-- coupled with the $$$, someone who knows
what the objective is and how best to reach
that objective. Best, a competent leader; next
best, a competent manager.
There is no third best.
Gray Shockley
------------------------
You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.
- Leonard Cohen
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