I saw an interesting interview on the news about Boston proposing a 13th school grade to prepare their kids for college. This blog will explore the idea.
As I understand Boston's problem, fewer and fewer of their high school graduates can get in to their local colleges and universities. The idea behind the 13th grade is to prepare their students to score higher scores on the entrance exams and thus get into the local colleges and universities. Sound good to most "one movers", but is this really the solution? It sounds to me like their problem is the quality of there educational system for grades 1 thru 12. It also sound like what they are doing is "gaming the system" so their students get better scores without really being better qualified.
Here is another thing that we always see in deals like this. Rather than look for the true cause which would point to some thing or some one who did not do their job, adding some thing does not offend anyone! This is why you always see liberals "adding" special classes or programs without having to face the real problem and solve that. Think about how many times you have heard about "adding" some thing and how you fell for the whole thing. Looking into the mirror can often show you what you don't want to admit too.
What has been happening in our largest cities, like Boston, is that their populations are gradually shifting away from being intellectual centers to more and more lower quality students in their schools. The more intellectual and ambitious people have been shifting to the better quality suburbs, leaving the big cities lower quality places to live and their school student similarly of lower quality. I didn't create the this problem. It is a natural selection process that has been going on with in the human race for thousands of years. There are some ethnic groups, like asians, who concentrate in center cities and do exceptionally well in school. Boston College and Harvard are concerned that they have too many asians compared to other ethnic groups so they want to figure out how to keep asians out as a way of providing space for others. It seems that they don't see merit as a good reason.
In prior blogs, I challenged our school administrators to tell all of us what they were going to eliminate from our school's curriculum to make room for all their "new" programs. If you notice, they never tell us what they are eliminating. We all know that there is only so many hours of school and that we have to use those hours in the best way. If we are adding all this stuff, what have we been mistakenly made out children study in the past? Interesting!
I believe in merit and the great equalizer. When the government or some do gooder thinks that they can do better, they always turns out to be wrong!
As I understand Boston's problem, fewer and fewer of their high school graduates can get in to their local colleges and universities. The idea behind the 13th grade is to prepare their students to score higher scores on the entrance exams and thus get into the local colleges and universities. Sound good to most "one movers", but is this really the solution? It sounds to me like their problem is the quality of there educational system for grades 1 thru 12. It also sound like what they are doing is "gaming the system" so their students get better scores without really being better qualified.
Here is another thing that we always see in deals like this. Rather than look for the true cause which would point to some thing or some one who did not do their job, adding some thing does not offend anyone! This is why you always see liberals "adding" special classes or programs without having to face the real problem and solve that. Think about how many times you have heard about "adding" some thing and how you fell for the whole thing. Looking into the mirror can often show you what you don't want to admit too.
What has been happening in our largest cities, like Boston, is that their populations are gradually shifting away from being intellectual centers to more and more lower quality students in their schools. The more intellectual and ambitious people have been shifting to the better quality suburbs, leaving the big cities lower quality places to live and their school student similarly of lower quality. I didn't create the this problem. It is a natural selection process that has been going on with in the human race for thousands of years. There are some ethnic groups, like asians, who concentrate in center cities and do exceptionally well in school. Boston College and Harvard are concerned that they have too many asians compared to other ethnic groups so they want to figure out how to keep asians out as a way of providing space for others. It seems that they don't see merit as a good reason.
In prior blogs, I challenged our school administrators to tell all of us what they were going to eliminate from our school's curriculum to make room for all their "new" programs. If you notice, they never tell us what they are eliminating. We all know that there is only so many hours of school and that we have to use those hours in the best way. If we are adding all this stuff, what have we been mistakenly made out children study in the past? Interesting!
I believe in merit and the great equalizer. When the government or some do gooder thinks that they can do better, they always turns out to be wrong!
