Reading and writing skills among high school graduates are also often seriously deficient, which is why high school diplomas have become a joke credential. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year to produce young adults who are completely unprepared for college and career success, and we see the sad results everywhere we look. Stupidity is an epidemic throughout America today.
Aldeman: Nationwide, states' high school graduation rates far exceed the percentage of their students who are proficient in math, by up to 5
I have to rant but I'm going to try to say this as nicely as possible with hopes that it will actually help people.
To the young people who will be going to college soon, please do your professors a favor:
LEARN TO READ INSTRUCTIONS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE TAKING ONLINE CLASSES.
I created an assignment for one of my online, no lecture courses that required students to reply to at least two of their classmates. You know how many of my students ACTUALLY fulfilled this part of the assignment? TWO!--TWO of the TWENTY-THREE students who submitted.
Also, the amount of students who lose points and don't know why and ask me what they missed when there is a rubric RIGHT THERE next to their grade is too many.
I know this is not completely your fault. You were cheated. You were not taught to read and comprehend instructions, but this is making you incredibly unprepared for adulthood and it's also making our jobs as educators harder than what it needs to be. You should have been given this type of instruction very early on--like kindergarten through sixth grade...and we're having to teach you all how to do this which takes away from teaching you the skills we are supposed to be teaching you at your level.
I probably sound grumpy, but I promise it's coming from a good place. Just, please learn to read instructions...and if the instructions are too challenging for you to understand, learn to reach out to us and ask us questions!
Simplistic attacks on Yeshiva education ignore the question of what religious families want and get from their schools
BY
FRIEDA VIZEL
Hasidic boys’ schools have come a long way from the days of Rabbi Eli Hecht, who, in his memoir, Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, recalls a miserable cheydar in 1950s Brooklyn. At the helm of Hecht’s class was an intimidating, if not abusive, Holocaust survivor who terrorized the students with his shteken—his dreaded stick. Today’s Hasidic parents would hardly stand for such things. They demand well-orchestrated Chumash parties, upgraded arts and crafts programs, gentler and more energetic teachers, and swim and other summer programs. They are attuned to the trends in treatment for ADHD, dyslexia, and other learning issues. Things are changing, albeit in ways more complicated than state metrics can capture.
When it comes to secular education in yeshiva, however, change can be much harder, as it can be perceived as a demand for less Torah—and thus an assault on the sacred. The issue brings up old fault lines from the days of yore, when reformers in Europe tried to get religious Jews to get with the times by forcing change in the yeshivas. Just a few years ago I came across a Yiddish poster in Hasidic Williamsburg that read: “In the year 1887 the government forced secular subjects into the Yeshiva of Volozhin … The yeshiva had to be closed ... And therefore the Ntzi”v warned his son to stand guard and not to allow in the mixing of secular with the holy in yeshivas.” The poster ended with a cry: “We’ll stand for pure education, without negotiations!”
In other words, these debates about yeshivas are debates about values. Some in the community have told me that they believe the government wants to push things like LGBTQ, race theory, and other “leftist agendas.” But even among those who are less politically minded, there’s a lot of anxiety about being able to raise children according to Hasidic values. After all, while some Hasidic schools may not teach traditional history, the community is not ignorant of the long history of religious persecution.
So how do you change some things without losing others? How do you change the curriculum without destroying the essence of a system that many in the community feel is working well?
The poor state of secular education in many Hasidic schools doesn’t come from apathy or negligence. Rather, these schools have several competing priorities. There are ways in which the schools fail but also, importantly, ways in which they deliver. This is why, despite all the damning reports, Hasidic schools continue to prosper.
'We can’t pretend that Ofsted judgements are not lower in certain areas – many of them with a high proportion of white working-class children. But that shouldn’t surprise us'
Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted, has said it should not be a “surprise” that judgements of schools in areas serving more poorer white children are lower. Speaking at the Festival of Education at Wellington College, Ms Spielman said many working-class communities have felt the “brunt of economic dislocation” and can lack motivation. Her comments come after Tes revealed that nearly half of the most deprived secondary schools with a “high percentage” of white British pupils are rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement”, compared to just 18 per cent for similarly deprived schools where most pupils are non-white British...“That debate hasn’t been limited to the UK and our coastal towns. It has also echoed throughout continental Europe and across the Atlantic.
More evidence of the decline of the west. No wonder "populists" are gaining ground.
Okla. — A few weeks ago, Oklahoma teachers left the classroom to protest at the state’s capital against decades of educational funding cuts. Sadly, they were let down and only received half of their initial demand.
On Monday, educators returned to classrooms across Sooner country to the harsh reality that Oklahoma still ranks third…
