Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Reading gap is nation's worst

This story shows once again, how people do not get it.

"It's upsetting to me," said William Andrekopoulos, superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools. "This is the very reason why I've been talking about improving instruction over and over again."

This statements implies that it is the teachers fault that black kids can't read. That also means that, if teachers are the problem, that teachers must teach differently to the white kids than to the black kids. Until you address the REAL problem, NOTHING will EVER change.

Then finally, at the end of the article, someone shows they get it:

Wendell Harris, chairman of the education committee of the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP, said, "I know we've got to do better in school, there's no question about that."
But, he said, "really, from my standpoint, (it's) families. . . . We can't keep making excuses for parents."

Instead of listening to this guy, and putting massive peer pressure on the criminal behavior of many of the black parents in the inner city regarding the lack of parenting of their children, we will keep blaming teachers and the economy and anything else we can come up with.

A teacher at my school told me THIS MORNING how she was at a New Berlin volleyball game......and the kids were doing their homework in the stands!!!!
What do you see when you go to an MPS sporting event, kids watching their kids in the stands.

Then you get moer vomit of the mouth from two liberals who don't get it:

"If you have quality instruction in the classroom, you're going to reduce the achievement gap," Andrekopoulos said. "We have a lot more work to do, there's no question about that."

and

It's not just an achievement gap," she said. "It's an economic gap. It's a gap in health. It's a quality of life gap. All of those things influence student achievement."

Again, whose fault is it? Everyone but the people not doing the job.

23 comments:

Jim said...

So what EXACTLY is your point here and what does "liberal thought" have to do with it?

hashfanatic said...

"A teacher at my school told me THIS MORNING how she was at a New Berlin volleyball game......and the kids were doing their homework in the stands!!!!
What do you see when you go to an MPS sporting event, kids watching their kids in the stands."

Maybe the schools need to get back to the business of teaching REAL subjects like math, science, history, geography (NOT "social studies"), stop teaching kids how to take bullshit standardized tests and start actually teaching the curriculum, and get out of the sports business.

It's not 1950 anymore.

The nonsensical emphasis on team sports is what is breeding both incompentent, uneducated graduates, and the latest epidemic of criminal-mindedness within the inner city.

The Game said...

Jim, it is liberal thought that says we have to give these kids and people everything. The govt needs to take care of them, pass the buck.
It is not an 18 year old girls fault that she has 3 kids from three guys...its the economies fault, its slavery's fault.
That is liberal thought.

Hash makes no sense once again.

Jim said...

What liberal says that we have to give these kids everything? Please cite one.

I think you should go tell those black parents to get off their asses and change. Just like I think you should bomb the shit out of A-rabs that hate America.

You should never try to approach these things from the perspective of why they don't teach their children or why they hate us.

Realism said...

Game, you are spreading a stereotype with no basis in fact. No liberal is saying that parents don't have the main responsibility in answering the question "is our children learning?".

But, in politics, we have to address the problems we can solve. The government can't make people better parents. But they can address problems like income inequality and social injustice. They can also work to improve the quality of the teachers in the classroom (as much as that might make you feel threatened). But again, the government cannot enforce good parenting, so it makes sense to focus on problems you can help to solve.

Andy said...

To elaborate on realism's point, we can also approach problems from a policy and intellectual standpoint with the belief that they are complicated and require more than one solution.

hashfanatic said...

Well, we've had twenty-seven years of conservatives screwing up our educational system (and succeeding)...

Why not move on to policies that WORK?

The Game said...

Which liberal policies work?

hashfanatic said...

Who said anything about LIBERAL policies, you simpleton?

Incidentally, what is your opinion of the Head Start program? You ducked this question earlier...

jhbowden said...

Game--

In the mind of the left, the collective is responsible for all, and the individual is responsible for nothing. The smaller the social unit, the less responsibility leftists believe it possesses.

I would go a step further and argue that there is not a quick solution to this situation in the inner city. That's why I oppose the policies of the welfare-statists, the feminazis, proponents of drug abuse, and the sexual liberationists-- you cannot destroy a social fabric that takes decades, if not centuries, to weave, and then expect to resurrect it overnight.

Of course, the left likes to blame the mess they created on the legacy of slavery. Which is nonsense-- black marriage rates, for example, never diverged more than 5% from their white counterparts until the 1960s. You can also make contrasts with black immigrants from countries with a history of slavery, who don't have the same problems many American blacks have. It follows that progressive do-gooders accomplished what centuries of slavers and segregationists could not-- the destruction of the black family. You guys must be real proud of yourselves.

The Game said...

bravo

jhbowden said...

"Why don't you put it to use by creating and promoting solutions to these problems"

Again, because I do not see the world in terms of problems and solutions. Life is not Star Trek. All actions have costs, many of which cannot be seen in advance.

You would greatly benefit from reading Thomas Sowell's Vision of the Anointed, which is a solid critique of Utopian thinking.

"spewing this useless diatribe about societies that no longer exist."

Jim, government controls most of our schools, forces everyone into a compulsory retirement program where people have no control over their lousy investment, and underwrites almost 50% of medical costs in the United States. Some people want to dramatically expand that, and want to pretend they are free market capitalists while pushing socialism in a big way. That'll fly with the retards at Kos, but it won't fly with me.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Jim, there are many problems in the inner city which were directly caused by liberals who didn't understand human nature. Game and Jason are right in their views.
How do you account for intact black families in the 1950's in Harlem and the surge in single mothers after the Great Society programs. AFDC destroyed the black family because if made the male unimportant for everything but producing children. These children and moms only received money if they were unmarried with no assets.

What do you expect people to do? Get married and lose money? We finally had welfare reform, but the damage was done. How do you expect a 15 year old to help her child with school when she is looking for the next hunk? The reason the reading gap is there is because of the statistics of intact families. Compare middle class blacks to whites and there will be no gap. The differnce is the family and caring about education.

hashfanatic said...

"You would greatly benefit from reading Thomas Sowell's Vision of the Anointed, which is a solid critique of Utopian thinking."

Yeah, THAT would be a relevant and revealing, real-world exercise...

"That'll fly with the retards at Kos, but it won't fly with me."

You have ONE reason and one reason alone to hate on Kos and the like...most of them don't buy into your philo-Semetic bullshit and free-market shell game for the oligarchs.

Jim said...

Jason again with your ignorance regarding retirement accounts. Most government-regulated retirement savings can be invested any f**king way you want. It's call a 401(k), or an IRA. Invest it any way you want. Invest your savings toward retirement any way you want. Social Security is a safety net. The rest, invest any way you want. And pass it on to your heirs.

Got it?

hashfanatic said...

No, no, the neocons want the money that the elderly worked all their lives for, just for themselves.

That's how they became corporatists.

Remember the strategic timing of the Bush Crime Family's anti-retirement money grab?

In chaos, they can steal.

PCD said...

Hash would rather a socialist government steal everything from everyone. Hash is the thief here.

Private ownership is proven to be the best. Socialist Democrats fear the loss of power from privatization.

The Game said...

anon, you should say who you are...your comment was so damn perfect the stupid liberals here can not refute...I have said the same thing many times...they don't get it, and that is the problem

hashfanatic said...

Why?

That little hop down "Armstrong Williams' Lane" was based completely on a popular right-wing fever dream, that the nuclear black family was intact prior to the Great Society...anyone who has dealt with ACTUAL BLACK PEOPLE (gasp!) knows this concept is ridiculous....rates of common-law marriages, children out of wedlock, etc. were ALWAYS out of control...


"they don't get it, and that is the problem..."

Game, we don't "get it", because you're offering a pat explanation that misses the mark completely, and when any of us tries to call you on it, you take the lazy man's way out and just refuse to develop your own premise...

The pure fact of the matter is blacks live differently than we do, and the family structures no longer affect the payouts of AFDC (and haven't, for over a DECADE), so what is your explanation?

When you are talking about means-tested qualifications for public assistance, it's NUMBERS...when you speak of the moral decline of a community, the other social factors come into play. You cannot always blame the end results of one scenario on the root causes of another.

jhbowden said...

Jim--

I'm aware of how saving for retirement works.

The irony of social security, which is compulsory, is that

1) It is a regressive tax. Again, it is not a progressive tax, and it is not even a flat tax. It is a regressive tax on working people. Isn't the left supposed to be against such things?

2) SS reinforces inter-generational income inequality -- middle class people have extra money to invest, but if you're working class, you will be forced to make the lousy govt regressive tax before putting the money in, let us say, a house. If your income is small, the govt gets the money first-- like all universal comprehensive socialist "plans," you don't have a choice.

3) SS is a kick in the nuts for small businesses. Large businesses can absorb the tax better than small businesses because of the economy of scale. So the progressives end up helping corporations like Walmart crush their smaller competitors, which is the opposite of their good intentions.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Game, I am actually football mom but I accidentally clicked on the anonymous circle. A

Marshal Art said...

If the problem is rooted in the families, what solutions can society enact that will impact that? How can one even gauge quality teaching when the students have no desire to learn and can even be disruptive to those who do? The problem began when someone decided that we can't legislate morality, that we can't define what is or isn't good parenting, that a nasty kid shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. It began when corporal punishment was banned, when teachers are prohibited from physically restraining two combatants. It began when we removed God from the schools and replaced Him with nothing. Throw billions at this problem and it'll have no effect on a mindset that has been crafted to believe that one is entitled to everything no matter what.

hashfanatic said...

"It began when corporal punishment was banned, when teachers are prohibited from physically restraining two combatants. It began when we removed God from the schools and replaced Him with nothing."

Keep your filthy apostate "JudeoChristian" cultic gods the fuck out of our goddamned schools...

We'll stick with the real churches, founded by the real Jesus Christ of Nazareth....

You can go burn in the Synagogue of Satan instead. You've claimed enough souls for him....