Aug-06
04
What’s wrong with this picture?
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I think a student should graduate with the ability to read, write, do basic math, and have a beginning of critical thinking skills set and a basic historical overview of at US history.
Gavel, on the blog last night
At UW-Stout in 2002, 50.9 percent of freshman needed math remedial work and in 2004 that number was up to 54.6. Students needing English remedial work went from 17.2 percent in 2002 down to 14.3 percent in 2004.
rivertowns.net, today
And these are the kids going to college!
No related posts.
This shouldn’t be a shock, but for some reason it still is. I just graduated from UWRF last December and saw much of the same. As someone who home schooled, the only barometer I had for success was really my own. I didn’t realize how completely deficient our public education system had become until I became a part of an environment in which some of the most uneducated people existed.
Kids aren’t learning. Too bad John Stossel’s “Stupid in America” has fallen on many deaf ears.
No wonder the “pro” education and Vote YES NR crowd in New Richmond talk so much about sports.
New WISTAX Report Questions College Readiness
Having taken the UW-system entrance exams earlier this summer, I have to honestly say that those statistics are shocking. I feel embaraced for anyone who found those exams difficult, let alone find the need for remedial course work after taking them.
So what are we paying them for and why do they want more money? Government schools have no competition and thus are a monpoly. I have always advocated for a voucher system in Western Wisconsin, like they have in the Eastern ghetto of this state because government schools are deliquent themselves in regards to education so parents can send their child to any type of school there. The god of government schools is sports.
I do not advocate for a voucher system like the one in Milwaukee. It is means tested and limited. I prefer tax credits for everyone.
This post backups what I said recently about this blog site’s agenda. I notice you didn’t mention the remedial statistics for UWEC or UWRF. Those statistics are quite low. Instead you post the worst stats you can find without any background information on the reason for the stats. Why do you think there is such a difference between Stout and UWRF/UWEC?
Brick, look up the word embaraced in the dictionary and see if you can find it.
How many branches are there of the UW system? There are so many of them that statistically some of them should have low remedial rates. It would be interesting to see what the factors are that lead to the differences. I would bet it may be the demographics of the students originating high schools and the choice of majors.
I think there are way to many branches which lead to inefficiencies of beaucracies. See UW throws away 26 Million Additionally, they should not teach remedial classes. If the students aren’t prepared, how did they get into the college to begin with?
N. did point out some good. He pointed out that “Students needing English remedial work went from 17.2 percent in 2002 down to 14.3 percent in 2004.” Could be that your looking for the bad.
Here’s link that will give you the breakdown by UW branches: Remediation Report 2006
You’ll notice that Superior, Stout and Parkside tower above the other branches. Stout draws many none traditional students into its rehabilitation programs in the area of drug and alcohol counseling. Parkside and Superior draw a good share of its students from some of the poorest school districts in the state.
Of course you are expressing your opinion on who should and should not be allowed into college. Since we don’t know your educational background, we don’t know from what position your argument. There are many non-traditional students who turn their lives in a different direction and decide to go to college. There are many of those students who start on slippery ground and get their educational sea legs as they progress through the college education. Often times, universities steer the older non-traditional students to remedial course to get them up to speed.
Does hodagjoey know how that remedial percentages breakout by K-12 schooling, i.e., home schooled, public or private school? Do we know how academically successful he/she was?
I stand by my comment about pulling out the worst data point to validate the agenda here.
Concerning the $26 million waste, it’s pretty ugly and the same thing happens in private industry.
em¡bar¡ace
tr.v. em¡bar¡aced, em¡bar¡ac¡ing, em¡bar¡ac¡es
1. Severe embarrassment
2. To cause to feel severely self-conscious or ill at ease; severe disconcert
Sorry about my “powerword.” I’ll stick to more classic English from now on.
Gavel,
I think the point trying to be conveyed is that Basic math, Basic reading & Basic writing is not being taught well enough to our kids according to the current scores for our district. You canât fluff those numbers.
But hey, letâs get in some International Cooking Classes; that should help them get into Le Cordon Bleu. But they wonât be able to even open up their own business because they can read very well or do advance math. OOPS, I guess when it comes to education; it looks like that takes a back seat sometimes. But we always can go & watch them play sports because that is what REALLY important! Right?
Hey Gavel, perhaps you should write an appologist tome for government monopolized education using “educational sea legs” as a title.
What a hoot…
We’re not responsible to the taxpayers based upon actual results. No no, we really do provide a “quality education” it’s just that some kids don’t have their “educational sea legs” yet. Give me a fricking break. Either a child can read at a dumbed down 12th grade level or he cannot. Either a child can perform Algebra II or he cannot. Either a child understands the history of this country in the context of the development of western civilization going all the way back to the Greeks or he does not. Either a child has been immersed and can deal objectively with physics and geometry or he cannot.
Gavel would simply pass any shortcomings in the above list to the fact that rather than mandate and require such learning you pass it off as not having “educational sea legs.” That because of your “quality education” your data points (what we call children) were too busy to learn about reality – entertainment and the “high school experience” got in the way. You and your ilk are simply enablers of such nonsense and then create lousy sorry excuses when your little data points enter a competitive university or, for that matter, a glorified technical school such as Stout or River Falls.
I’ll tell you what, such claptrap is simply code for an appologist of Wisconsin’s K-12 monopoly, its welfare state mentality, and government schooling in general. Since you cannot possibly defend your soviet styled system philosophically, you rely on the age-old arguments of the mystics.
Not even a nice try.
Excellent points donttreadonme. The point of the posting was to point out that our government run monopoly is accountable to no one:
1) What do you do when a teacher is tenured and incompetent? If she is a physics teacher at the Hudson High School you simply create a new layer of bureaucracy called “Literacy Coach” and get her away from those evil parents who have complained about her job performance.
2) What do you do when a superintendent submits fraudulent expense reports and steals money from the taxpayers? Only when called on the abuse publicly does the school board acknowledge the deceit and then do absolutely nothing about it, allowing the crook to retire with a full pension and taxpayer funded health care.
3) What do you do when a person is unhappy with the education that their child is receiving in this system? You punish them by forcing them to subsidize the government run monopoly, while at the same time paying out of pocket for a private school.
I could go on about the lack of accountability but there’s not enough room. Gavel can cry all he wants about how we should “support” this system, but he has no solid arguments as to why. It’s all a feel good mantra that is not supported by facts. The funny thing about government run education is that regardless of whether you consider your school district to be achieving the desired results or not, the answer is always more funding. Government education is a black hole with absolutely no boundaries or accountability. If it were a patient on the operating table the cure would not be a few more bandages, but instead would require major surgery.
Stout, Stout,
The easy way out.
If you can’t get in there,
Goto Eau Claire