#school system reform

[dear-shaun]

"Gifted kids are just entitled, sorry people thought you were smart and now you're not!"

It was instilled in me from the time of elementary school that I was naturally more gifted and so my teachers never felt the need to give me resources I needed. I was expected to just know it or be able to figure it out without help. And then I was called a disappointed and told that I just wasn't trying my best when I struggled.

I was expected to be good in math because I was excellent in English. I was expected to be perfectly behaved because I had good grades in things. I was expected to never need help because I was an advanced reader in third grade.

I had so much pressure put on me in classes growing up that by the time I reached college, I was tired of trying. Because if I had to work so hard and still not be good enough, why keep pushing myself.

Being a "gifted kid" does not mean we had more resources. It does not mean people "believed in us more." It means we were judged by arbitrary standards and then held to a higher expectation that no kid should ever be held to. And then mocked, berated, and shamed when we couldn't live up to those.

[taxationis-theft]

School System Reform: How And Why is A Priceless Tale with Dr. John Merrifield

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. John Merrifield covers school reform and the obstacles that come with it.

Education reform is the name given to the goal of changing public education. Education reformers desire to make public education into a market (in the form of an input-output system), where accountability creates high-stakes from curriculum standards tied to standardized tests.

The studies most widely cited in the United States based their findings on small-scale, restriction-laden U.S. programs, and a handful of larger, but still restriction-laden, foreign school choice programs. The extensive restrictions and small size of those programs make them virtually irrelevant to the widely acknowledged transformational change imperative. Because the most intensely studied programs lack most, and sometimes all, of the key elements of market systems, such as profit, price change, market-entry, and product differentiation, they don't help us determine whether the unleashing market forces will produce more desired than undesired effects.

Indirect benefits from compulsory schooling reforms include lower crime rates.