Comments about ‘Utah schools beat some national averages, but make no strides on national report card’

Like everything else in life, we get what we pay for. There are no cheap solutions to providing an excellent education.

The problem is that our schools are public schools. Everyone knows that public schools are colossal failures. The only way we can save our children is to turn public schools over to schools that are privately owned by wealthy people who contribute generously to our Republican legislators' campaign funds.

Just ask Senator Stephenson or any of his cronies. They will set you straight about our socialistic educational system.

To "dalefarr | 11:13 a.m." you are wrong. There is one cheap solution to provide an excellent education.

Raise the educational standards, and if your child does not meet them one year, then they can repeat that year until they meet the standard.

There you go, no new costs and the education system does a better job.

public schools have produced great men and women in this country you get back wht you put into a school, the student , the teachers and the tax payers. private schools have more money, can pay teachers more, have new text books, etc. my son is in 8th grade and they dont have a math book for him. how do I help him with it, if I can not remeber how to do the problems. again thak you rich east side for breaking up the scool district

@RedShirt,

Interesting idea, but I have a couple of questions that will help me to better understand your position:

1) Could you explain how increasing the number of years that some students spend in public school (due to repeating years) will not increase costs?

2) If you suggest that costs won't increase because the class sizes will simply get bigger, then why would creating larger class sizes help the system to do a "better job?"

I agree with RedShirt. We have standards but the problem is that our students get promoted every year, regardless of whether or not they "pass" their particular grade, up through ninth grade. Then, all of a sudden with ninth grade school counts and a lot of students are shocked as to what they now have to do in order to pass classes. My own two solutions: Only students who attend 80% of a school have their test scores count for/against a teacher and their performance review. If a student does not attend then how can a teacher be judged fairly for what the student learned? Secondly, if a student does not pass the end of the year benchmark tests they do not advance. Remedial help is offered during the summer and if the student still does not pass the tests they remain in their grade. If you have standards and never hold people to them then what good are they? Finally, to all my teaching colleagues....dress like professionals. If we want to be treated/paid like professionals then dress like you are, not like you just crawled out of bed.

EJM... I agree on all your points but the last.

While I don't appreciate coworkers showing up in their worst clothes, I don't want to push dresses and ties. Many teachers are in very hot or very cold classes. Many deal with dangerous chemicals (science), uncomfortable positions (like in a song or story circle on the floor), or dangerous equipment (shop). I want them to dress NICELY, but appropriate to what they are doing.

Re: one old man | 11:19 a.m. Nov. 1, 2011

The people who complain most about charter schools are the same ones who enroll their own children in them. They will admit they are hypocritical but they want the best for their children.

And yes, our public school system is failing our children. In 2009 out of 34 countries we ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.

To "Hawkeye79 | 12:07 p.m." simple, you have to think about the human element. If a child is held back in school and not allowed to progress with their peers, they will feel shame. In order to remove the shame of not progressing, they have 2 choices. Work hard so they can re-test (this would have to be allowed prior to starting the next school year) and advance with their peers. The other choice is to accept their placement and avoid the same in the future.

Once that child is 18 years old, they are now an adult and can either finish thier HS diploma or not.

This doesn't add any cost because you still have nearly the same number of students in the system at any given time.

The class sizes would be an issue for the first few years, until the parents got involved with making sure that their kids learn. After that, the class size should remain fairly constant because statistically you probably have the approximately the same number of kids not advancing from one grade to another. The only class size that might increase would be Kindergarten.

Rifleman, you are comparing apples to oranges. Many of those countries don't require public education for all. They often have filtered out all of the "dumb" kids in a few years and only the best and brightest remain.

Given that, we have an awesome educational system. Yes, there are problems, as in all of life. However, bath and babywater... you can't expect to be at the top in comparison with nations that eliminate their bottom percentages to trade and votech schools.

Our children were not developmentally ready for the academics required for grades K-3. When they did catch up in about 3rd/fourth grade learning wasn't such a chore. It is too bad they had such a negative experience during K-3. We read to them, did homework, special projects, etc. They just didn't understand the concepts. They could memorize OK with many hours of working with them. It was really frustrating to them. Learning shouldn't be that difficult. Do we expect too much of them at a very young age? Maybe they need the learning experience of playing more and less pressure during the early years of education. They experienced burnout at an early age.

@RedShirt,

First: Concerning your confidence in the ability of shame to improve the performance of all students, I would kindly refer you to the following scientific research article:

Turner, J. E., & Schallert, D. L. (2001). Expectancy-Value Relationships of Shame Reactions and Shame Resiliency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(2), 320-329.

Although the article sampled college-age students, the authors make persuasive arguments as to why many primary and secondary school students would not achieve academic success in the face of a shame experience. Part of their reasoning revolves around the concept of "shame resiliency" that would suggest that students who accept their placement would become even less likely to succeed down the road.

Second: I am glad that you recognize that class sizes would increase. This has important implications for both costs and the quality of student experiences at school, even if the size doesn't keep increasing after initial growth. Also, you suggest that an increase in class size will result in more parental involvement with their child's learning. Why? Class sizes have been increasing for a while now, yet parental involvement does not seem to be improving.

Maybe a little Singapore math would help.

Good education is NOT a function of cost. Just check the results of students in Catholic or private schools. These numbers are bias by the increased number of illegals in the schools along with the Obamaists hatred for Utah. There are many factors in destroying the educational system of this country. Most could be solved by going to a voucher system. Other factors like teacher merit, lowering standards to help the slower kids, school size, and lack of parent involvement and control are all factors in turning out a poor product. The good news is that the problem is fairly easy to fix. The bad news is that liberals and teacher unions will not allow the solutions to be implemented. Politicians of both parties lack the courage to take constructive action.

To "Hawkeye79 | 2:00 p.m." I don't think that you quite understood what I said.

Overall, the class size will not increase, there may be some issues at the Kindergarten level, but that should not be a significant issue since the classes are already small, and would be able to handle adding 3 more kids.

The kids that exihibit "shame resiliency", are those the same kids that are going to grow up to be Doctors or other college educated professionals, or are they the ones who will be asking the professionals "Do you want fries with that?"

If the student feels no shame in failure, what is the point in moving them along?

As for parents getting involved, that will happen. Just look at the helicopter parents, and imagine if little Timmy or Jane was held back, and the only options were to get a tutor and study to get back to their peers or to accept a new peer group.

What I would really like to know is how did the same students perform. We tested 4th and 8th grade in 2009, now we tested 4th and 8th grade in 2011. Unless something out of the ordinary happened, we tested different kids. Hello, huge variables here. How can you even compare the data. If Utah schools are failing, it should follow that kids don't progress from year to year. The best way would be a pre-test compared to post-test formula. Instead, everyone gets up in arms because we compare one set of kids to another. All of you who have more than one child, do this at home and see the great results you get.

To Red Shirt. Repeating an underfunded mediocre educational process does not lead to an excellent education process or excellent results.
To: EJM grafting a high standard for success on to a mediocre process also does not lead to excellent results. If it did, the recent "qwest for perfection" BYU cougar football team would have been national champtions. Instead, the football team like Utah's educational system is mediocre. Excellence in education costs money.

Too much time testing and comparing.

Schools are for teaching and learning.

What's the report card or strides, of our political leaders? With historic highest funding for education, quit blaming teachers and schools. If government wants to run schools, than they need to be accountable and booted out.

To "dalefarr | 3:29 p.m." duh....I that is why at 11:44 a.m. I said that the educational standards must be raised. That way you don't have the mediocre process. With higher standards, the teachers will be required to improve what is being taught.

IMHO the problem is that too many elementary school teachers are dependant on technology to do the teaching, and don't actually interact with the kids. Reduce the number of classroom computers to 1 for the teachers to use for administrative tasks, not teaching. In other words, go back to the "old school" methods. Yes the school should have a computer lab, but limit computers in the classrooms.

You want to see scores improve.

1) Stratify by ability, not age.
2) Privatize or at least shift all control to local school boards.
3) Ban teachers unions in publicly funded schools
4) Votech, and apprenticeship programs for students who's natural abilities drive them that direction.
5) Allow parents to seek the school of their choice.
6) Allow children to fail as well as succeed.

Guiding principles behind these items are;
Most humans are not a generalist, why should we expect every student to do well across the board. Students do far better in school and in life when they can point to an area of excellence. We hold far to many students behind their potential in most areas to wait for those who are taking extra effort. Humans do far better when they have to compete for results, yes even teachers. We learn more from our failures that we do success. Local control allows schools to customize programs for students and meet specific community goals and challenges. We are going to suffer as long as we maintain central control, our nation is too large and diverse to deal with the same models as much of the world.