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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (33848)	3/11/2004 7:38:24 AM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 793963

Well now we have a situation where every kid in the country is being left behind. Is that really better? Guess at least it's "fair".

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (33848)	3/11/2004 9:16:35 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793963

The situation in our country is novel. In my grandparents' generation, it was still an achievement to finish grade school (that is, 8th grade), and getting a high school diploma was socially similar to having a college degree now. In the post- War period, the increase in prosperity and the GI- Bill, along with related measures to improve our competitiveness in human capital, made graduation from high school the norm, and increased attendance at college to between 20 and 30% (of high school graduates). The rate of graduation from college has hovered a little under 25% for most of this period, seeming to have found the natural limit, as it were, in terms of innate intelligence. However, the numbers of people who attend college in the first place went from about 25% in the Fifties to about 45% in the last 20 years or so. This means that a lot of people are taking academic curricula and tests like the SAT who would not have 50 years ago, and who are not likely to graduate (take a bachelor's degree). In addition, the dirty little secret of international comparisons is that most countries have a two track system of education that is more rigid than ours. Although we do have vo- tech programs, they are stigmatized, and therefore have a low rate of participation, whereas it is not unusual for Europeans to go to technical high schools. Anyway, we compare our students in general studies as well as academic studies with international students in strictly academic programs. If we were more rigorous in the comparisons, we would do better. You are correct that mainstreaming has had a strange effect on the classroom, although most students are not held back by the "problem children", as long as they are not disruptive. In addition, as the first choice of immigrants, the major coastal cities, and a few inland, have to deal with major linguistic and preparation hurdles from some immigrant groups. Beyond that, there are a number of rural migrants, both black and white, who moved to cities like Detroit and Chicago in the '60s and '70s, who had previously been "off the radar" in terms of school issues, many of whom were illiterate or merely "functional". Since they have fallen into various social pathologies, including a high rate of illegitimacy, they are over- represented in urban schools, and furnish many of the hard cases. The hillbilly underclass shares many of the problems of the black underclass. Still, Lindy is right that the unions have fought many measures that were worth trying to get a handle on some of these problems........