75% of Highschoolers can't name our first President in AZ.

[trailmix 77]

"75% of Highschoolers can't name our first President in AZ"

Did Arizona ever have a president?

Or did you mean to say "75% of Arizona highschoolers could not name the first president of the USA"?

Who was the first president of the USA? Now that you brought this subject up, have me curious. Was even Arizona around during that era?

And I thought the first president was living in AZ

It is a rather astounding statistic. I don't think that you can blame only teachers who have worn out their welcome. 75% - that's huge, you would think that most social studies teachers would at least mention it in passing.

[NickD 203]

Maybe they never saw one of these:

And if they did, never asked whose picture that is.

[Heracles 417]

Folks think about it:

Public education

Public Health care.

Every city and county administers their own education system; as such, two systems are never the same. Remember an A in one county could be a C or D equivalent in another.

At the end of the day, this mini-government is something republicans want it and what you classify as smaller government. I see this as utter incompetence and a huge waste of money. All such a system does is pays the salaries of the bureaucracy that is duplicated in each city and county. Something known as artificial job creation.

The one thing I agree with republicans regarding education is the use of vouchers and allowing a parent to send their child to a school of their choice. This is something we have in AUS and works extremely well.

Edited September 19, 2009 by Booyah!

[Danno 1,228]

Folks think about it:

Public education

Public Health care.

Every city and county administers their own education system; as such, two systems are never the same. Remember an A in one county could be a C or D equivalent in another.

At the end of the day, this mini-government is something republicans want it and what you classify as smaller government. I see this as utter incompetence and a huge waste of money. All such a system does is pays the salaries of the bureaucracy that is duplicated in each city and county. Something known as artificial job creation.

The one thing I agree with republicans regarding education is the use of vouchers and allowing a parent to send their child to a school of their choice. This is something we have in AUS and works extremely well.

Sorry Dude but they are all working with the same model and more and more, they are under FED rules (less they loose the Fed money).

Each one is a monopoly with a pretty much captive customer base.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Folks think about it:

PublicFractured education

PublicFractured Health care.

Both are expensive and have very poor results. Glad you finally see it.

[Heracles 417]

Sorry Dude but they are all working with the same model and more and more, they are under FED rules (less they loose the Fed money).

Each one is a monopoly with a pretty much captive customer base.

So do you assume some private company could do it better? Furthermore, how efficient would these private companies be if they had to establish separate and unique divisions carrying out the same administrative work in every county and city? They'd be bankrupt. Hence, why the would consolidate. Consolidation works well int the private sector, as such, why not use it in the public domain too? This is something conservatives here seem to miss when compare to those in Aus.

Whatever practices work in private industries can and do work in the public domain too; they just need to be applied.

[AlHayatZween 2]

There have been some instances of large, decrepit public schools being sub-divided and partnered with private organizations to offer them additional funding and sort of take them under their wings. This is what has happened in many NY charter schools, and at least one i can think of in both Newark and Camden. So far, the results have been positive. i'm not saying that the public schools can't do it on their own, but it has been an interesting experiment.

As a former member of the UFT, i can say that i really think the Union & tenure rules need to be revised. If a teacher is messing up and not doing his or her job, he or she needs to get fired... and that's it. There ARE good teachers out there, and we should be rewarding them professionally and financially. Not stringing along the dead weight... it's not fair to the good teachers, the students, or the "institution" of American education in general.

Getting off soapbox now.