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Systemic failure of education

My first year as a teacher is now over, and I learned a lot about the things that are happening in our schools. It was an eye opening experience, to say the least. For years, I had thought that the problem was incompetent teachers, and I was wrong. That isn’t to say that all of the teachers are brilliant and hard working. No, there are good teachers and bad, hard working teachers and lazy ones, just like any other profession. The problems in our education system are widespread and systemic. I am not sure if the system is fixable. Let me explain where I saw the problems:

The parents:
Each and every parent has an outcome that they want for their kids. That desired outcome has NOTHING to do with educating their child. What they want is for their child to receive good grades, so that child can “get into a good college.” The parents don’t care if the child actually learns anything. The goal is good grades. If their child doesn’t receive high marks, then they blame the teacher for picking on the child, claiming favoritism. Even when you show them that the exams are all multiple choice, and the correct answer was not selected by the child, the parent continues blaming the teacher. I even had one parent accuse me of substituting an incorrectly marked test for their child’s test, so I could make her look bad.

The State legislature and State Department of Education:
The state continuously changes the standards that each course must meet, and the tests that the students must take at the end of the course in order for the child to demonstrate that he or she has met that standard. These benchmarks mirror common core. I don’t necessarily have a problem with common core itself. As I have blogged in the past, the benchmarks make sense, it’s just that there are so many things that the students must learn in only 189 days of class.

That brings me to my next point: There are 189 days of school. In those 189 days, the students spend 36 of them taking standardized tests that are required by the state. That does’t count my tests, nor does it count other things like pep rallies and other school events. That leaves only about 140 days for actual learning to take place, and there were 83 benchmarks for the students in Biology last year. Benchmarks like:

  • Analyze strategies for prevention, detection, and treatment of communicable and chronic diseases.
  • Follow precisely a complex multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks, attending to special cases or exceptions defined in the text.
  • Analyze the movement of matter and energy through the different biogeochemical cycles, including water and carbon.
  • Identify the reactants, products, and basic functions of aerobic and anaerobic cellular respiration.
and so on. This coming school year, that has been expanded to 85 benchmarks. 
The school administration:
The schools take the upper half of the students who are doing well, and put them in an ‘honors’ course. This means that the kids who are below average in learning are segregated into ‘regular’ classes. At the end of the year, the students for honors and regular classes take the same state exam, so the honors classes have much higher test scores than the regular classes, and they get a bonus point towards their GPA ( an A gets you 5 points on a 4 point scale, instead of 4 points.)
This has the effect of making the regular kids look even more under performing than the honors kids.
The Federal government:
The Feds have a law which says that kids with a learning disability get ‘accommodations’ to helping them take exams. They are allowed to have extra study guides, extended time on tests, and other perks, but that the student’s school transcripts and diplomas will not reflect the extra help. Granted, many of the students who receive them are truly in need of the extra help. The problem is that there are parents who are gaming the system, and in my opinion, these parents are not only hurting their own children, but are placing the children who are truly in need of these services at a disadvantage. 
The students:
Students have always tried to game the system, and get away with doing little. The students don’t do their assignments. The problem is even worse. Things have gotten to the point where they will physically attack staff and teachers. Kids are doing and selling drugs on campus. Because of the threats of lawsuits, the achool administrators are afraid to do anything about it.
The teachers
There are teachers who, in response to the above, have simply given up. They give all of the kids at least a C. They don’t enforce rules, and do all in their power to ensure that students and parents like them. Of course, there is standardized testing to worry about, but they do their best to feed students the answers to the tests at the end of the year, so they do well enough that the teacher keeps their job. Since there are no raises for teachers based on performance, there is no real incentive to excel. In fact, the only incentive is not to get hassled and to keep your job, and that only ensures that some work just hard enough not to get fired.
This year, I had the under performing half of the students. The state testing at the end of the year is graded on a scale of 1-5. A three indicates that the student was on grade level in the subject. A one indicates that they are significantly below grade level, and a five indicates that they are significantly above. The honors kids averaged a 3.82. My under performing students averaged a 2.73. Not bad, considering that many of those kids have not done well on state testing in previous years. I only had three kids score a 1: two of them failed the final exams in two other classes, and the third of them doesn’t really speak English all that well. 54% of my kids scored a 3 or higher on the exam, and that makes me happy. 
I have been hired for next year to teach Biology to tenth graders, and Chemistry to the Eleventh graders. I will again be teaching the under performing kids, and  did so well that I am losing five of them to the honors track.I wish them well.
As for the system, it is broken, but I will refuse to hand out passing grades just to keep everyone happy. 
By Divemedic, ago

Lessons of Zimmerman

A friend of mine owns a pool cleaning business. He has several employees, who drive his service trucks out to clean the pools of his customers. Last night at 8:30 PM, he saw a man breaking into his trucks. He was a black man wearing a dark hoodie and black gloves. Yesterday in Orlando, it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no reason to wear a hoodie and gloves, except to conceal your identity.

My friend called 911. The police did not arrive for over two hours. My friend told me that it wasn’t worth it to confront the thief, because shooting him would cost him so much in legal fees, that it wasn’t worth the risk of having your life ruined like George Zimmerman.

THAT is the reason why people say George should have stayed in his truck: the thugs need a safe work environment.

By Divemedic, ago

Figures don’t lie, but anti gunners do.

The congress critters from Connecticut are proposing that everyone in the nation who owns a pistol will have to have a pistol purchase permit.  Applicants would have to submit to background checks and fingerprinting, prove they’re at least 21 and a lawful U.S. resident, and be eligible to purchase a handgun under federal law.
The Connecticut lawmakers are claiming that a state law passed in 1995 that is similar to this is associated with a 40% in gun homicides in the first ten years it was in place. Let’s fact check that claim, shall we?
All numbers that follow according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, as accessed here.

The law took effect on October 1, 1995. So we will begin with the murder rate in 1995:
In 1995, 4.6 murders per 100,000
In 2005, 3 murders per 100,000. This rate is 34.8% lower than 1995. So they are correct, there was a significant reduction in the murder rate over that ten year period.

Lets see if this was due to the law, or if this was a nationwide trend. We will compare these numbers to the nationwide statistics as a control.
In 1995, the murder rate for the US was 8.2 per 100,000. In 2005, the rate was 5.9 per 100,000, or 28.2% lower than 1995.

This would seem to indicate that Connecticut had a slightly larger reduction reduction in the murder rate than the rest of the nation experienced. Then it occurred to me: Why stop in 2005? Why not go all the way to 2013?

The US had a rate of 4.5 per 100,000 in 2013. This rate is 45.2% lower than 1995, and 23.8 percent lower than 2005.

Connecticut had rate of 2.4 murders per 100,000 in 2013. That is 48 percent lower than 1995, and 20 percent lower than 2005.

In other words, this gun control law had little, if any impact on murder rates. In fact, the trend of reduction becomes even less significant when we compare Connecticut to s state with similar population, but lax gun control laws.

Kentucky had a murder rate of 7.2 in 1995.
In 2005, the rate was 4.6, or 36.2% lower.
In 2013, the rate was 3.8, which is 47.3% lower than 1995, and 27.4% lower than 2005.

In other words, Kentucky saw a larger decrease in their murder rate than did Connecticut, and without passing any gun control laws. The US murder rate also sharply declined during the same period.
However, when you graph the above data points, you see that the slopes are identical. The differences between them are statistically insignificant.

By Divemedic, ago

Unbalanced Felon

A man allegedly shot up the Dallas Police Headquarters this morning. According to police, his name is James Lance Boulware. It turns out that he has a felony criminal record from 2013 for Felony Domestic Battery, and he was making comments about “shooting up schools and churches.” He also reportedly complained about religion, Jews, Christians, and Korea. At the end of the argument, he reportedly fled with firearms, body armor, and ammunition.

I am not sureif he was convicted, pled out, or whatever, but even if this was pled to Misdemeanor DV, he was a prohibited person. What always gets me about these shooters is that it always turns out that they had previous serious brushes with the law, and the law always lets them go free.

Plan on this being used to push for the nationwide pistol license bill, which would require that everyone apply for a license and be fingerprinted to purchase a handgun, even through a private seller. Isn’t it funny that every time a new gun law is proposed, an incident occurs that is tailor made to push its agenda?

By Divemedic, ago

A fool and his money…

So a woman claiming to be a fortune teller gets her mark to give her $700,000 over the course of two years, and after the 32 year old finally realized he was being taken for a ride, goes to the police. The police charge the woman with a crime.

He wanted the medium to tell him how to get a woman to fall in love with him who was not interested in him. One year and $200,000 later, the idiot found out that the target of his affection had died, so he gave the medium another half a million, so that he could locate the woman in her reincarnated state.

If you go to any person who claims that they can talk to the spirits of the dead and pay that person money, you are an idiot. You compound that if you continue to pay them to locate the reincarnated version of the woman you are pining for. Even if you believe in that reincarnation nonsense, the woman would be reincarnated as an infant.

What bothers me the most about this story is that the police are going to waste taxpayer resources to prosecute the medium. There are fortune tellers and mediums all over this country, and they are only going to prosecute the one who manages to rip off the guy who has more dollars than he does sense?

By Divemedic, ago

Vince Vaughn

Vince Vaughn just gained a bit of respect from me.

“In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f***ing schools because they know there are no guns there,” he said. “They are monsters killing six-year-olds. You think the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to?” he asked. “They do. And we should be allowed the same rights.”




By Divemedic, ago

Communism

The left is claiming that there is nowhere in the country where a minimum wage job can rent an apartment and then using that as a talking point to push for a higher minimum wage. This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts, and based upon several false assumptions.

First, this is based upon the fact that housing should not be more than 30% of a person’s income. They refer to the “Housing Wage” which is defined as:  an estimate of the full time hourly wage
that a household must earn to afford a decent
apartment at HUD’s estimated Fair Market Rent
(FMR), while spending no more than 30% of income on housing costs.”

Also, the term “decent apartment” is not defined. This esoteric definition allows the numbers to mean whatever the author wants it to mean.

Socialist Propaganda?

These numbers are all based upon a report that was generated by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. According to their website, “the National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that assures people with the lowest incomes in the United States have affordable and decent homes.”(emphasis added) In other words, they are part of the “Social Justice” movement.
In fact, the founder of the group was a woman named Cushing Dolbeare, a known communist. In 1974, she even sent a cablegram to the members of the Communist Coup in Portugal. This cablegram was a message of support from America’s Socialists. Ms. Dolbeare was a speaker for a workshop titled “Housing: The National Issue” at the 1979 Democratic Agenda Conference of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.
Ms. Colbeare was also the vice President of the Independent Voters of Illinois- Independent Precinct Organization, a Socialist group of  “community organizers.” This is the same group of community organizers that included Democratic Socialists of America and Committees of Correspondence member Timuel Black, David Orr, Carol Moseley Braun, one time Communist Party USA member David Canter, and Barack Obama.

Calculating the numbers

According to Housing and Urban Development, a person who lives in Orange County, Florida MSA can expect to rent a one bedroom apartment for $836, on average. Since this is an average, one could expect to find apartments that are far below this figure. In fact, according to Rent.com, apartments can be had for nearly half that amount in the Orlando MSA, with the lowest price for a one bedroom apartment coming in at $477 a month. That is just using rent.com, I am sure that there are cheaper apartments to be had.
How does HUD calculate the market rent? According to the HUD website, the rent used to calculate the FMR is the rate paid for a 40th percentile 2 bedroom apartment, meaning that 40% of the rents in the MSA will be lower than the one used to calculate the FMR. This figure is then ‘adjusted’ with a government formula, and the higher of the state average from the previous year or this figure is used.
Anyone who understands math can tell you two things about this method:
1 Nearly half of all apartments will rent for an amount below the FMR.
2 The FMR will be higher than the actual average, due to rounding and the fact that no FMR can be less than the state average.

Minimum Wage

A minimum wage is just that: The MINIMUM that a person will earn if hired to work in the United States. How, mathematically, can a person who is making the minimum wage expect to make enough money to afford an average apartment?
In Florida, the minimum wage is $8.05 an hour. A person making this wage would take home $1100 a  month.

Thirty percent, playing with the numbers

They claim that no one should pay more than 30% of their income towards rent. Where did the 30% number come from? Per 24 CFR Part 92.252, HUD provides the following maximum rent limits. The maximum HOME rents are the lesser of:

1. The fair market rent for existing housing for comparable units in the area as established by HUD under 24 CFR 888.111; or

2. A rent that does not exceed 30 percent of the adjusted income of a family whose annual income equals 65 percent of the median income for the area, as determined by HUD, with adjustments for number of bedrooms in the unit. The HOME rent limits provided by HUD will include average occupancy per unit and adjusted income assumptions.

Confusing, right? This 30% number is actually circular logic. Remember that adjustment HUD makes? The adjustment comes from this: The rent is adjusted to be 30% of the income that a FAMILY (not an individual) takes home, if that family were making 65% of the median. So if the median income for a working family in Orlando is more than $25,000 a year, the formula will ensure that an individual who is working a minimum wage job can never afford the calculated rent, because $25K times 65% is equal to $16,250. That number happens to be minimum wage.

The way that the math works out, there is no way for ANY minimum wage to EVER allow a person to rent an apartment using HUD’s numbers, unless the minimum wage is equal to the median wage. This is the essence of communism: everyone makes the same wage and pays the same bills.

By Divemedic, ago

Wish list

In a recent online debate about crime, a poster stated that I should support “reasonable gun control” to eliminate crime. I asked what he considered “reasonable” and this is the list he came up with:

– No automatic or semi-automatic weapons (i.e. only manually operated actions allowed – e.g. break, block, bolt, pump or lever action)
– No external magazines or clips (these are too easily re-loaded)
– No speed strips or loaders
– No ammunition capacity greater than five rounds (give the poor deer a chance)
– No expanding (e.g. hollow-tip or soft point) or +P ammunition (hollow-tips are banned by the Geneva Convention)
– No steel core or tipped ammunition (can penetrate Law Enforcement vests)
– No lead bullets or shot (too harmful to the environment)
– No bimetallic jacketed or tracer bullets (can cause forest fires)
– No bayonet lugs
– No handgun capable of muzzle energy greater than 250 ft-lbs
– No long gun capable of muzzle energy greater than 850 ft-lbs
– No handgun with a barrel shorter than 5 inches
– No plastic or “polymer” framed firearms (can defeat metal detectors)
– No rifle or shotgun with a barrel shorter than 20 inches
– No rifle or shotgun with a pistol style grip or retractable/folding stock
– No silencers, flash suppressors, muzzle breaks, compensators or threaded barrels
– No laser or night sights
– No pistol “stabilizing braces”
– All firearms must be stored and transported unloaded
– 100% registration of all firearms (with serial number & ballistic print on file)
– A 10 business day waiting period on all firearm sales
– No concealed or open carry
– Background checks and fees for all ammunition sales or transfers
– No sales of firearms or ammunition through the mail
– No sale or possession of more than 100 rounds of a particular cartridge type
– Gun locks required for firearm transport and in homes with minors under the age of 21
– Limit gun purchases to 1 per month / 2 per year / 4 maximum
– A 80% sales tariff on all gun and ammunition sales
– No private assembly of ammunition or reloading of spent cases
– All gun owners required to perform inventory inspections every 10 days and report all missing firearms
– All gun owners required to purchase mandatory liability insurance
– Federal annual permit required for all gun ownership… includes safety training, fingerprinting, photo, drug testing and mental health evaluation
Don’t let anyone tell you that they don’t want your guns…
By Divemedic, ago