President (To Win Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 03, 2007 12:13 AM UTC
37 Comments
The problems with Colorado schools are not financial, they’re intellectual, as in intellectual integrity.
Stop the blame shifting and deal with the real issues.
Otherwise I’ll assume you’re just talking out of your butt reflexively.
We’ve discussed this before.
Have you set foot in a public school in the past 10 years? Ever been responsible for the education of 25-30 elementary students with differing needs, talents, personalities, and abilities for 1440 hours a year — at a salary that’s maybe 1/4 a first-year attorney? Ever thought about how you attract the best and brightest to a profession that is thoughtlessly derided, under paid (yes — under paid), and expected to overcome every outside force like poverty, disability, neglect, hunger, and language barriers, without assistance from counselors, nurses or social workers?
I’m sure you’ll find a glib way to discount these questions, but I hope you’ll put aside your reflexive opposition to public schools, and actually think for a minute about the public servants who, while not perfect, are doing their best and devoting their lives to educate the kids who will eventually be caring for you when you are ill, paying for your Social Security checks, and making the world livable.
(I apologize to my favorite high school English teacher who would be appalled at the last run-on sentence. But that’s my fault — not his.)
Since the teachers are underpaid, does that mean that the teachers we currently have are not the “best and brightest”?
I always suspected that public school teachers were mostly idiots, thanks for the confirmation.
Most of the DPS teachers I work with are heroes. Some (5%?) are totally worthless, but that’s society.
If the bulk of the sickening amounts of money we put into education went to teachers, we’d probably be better off, but, it doesn’t.
A 35% graduation rate for minorities is going to get us nothing other than more crime in the coming years. Thank God we have the CEA to protect the status quo with results like this, eh?
And this is the type of corruption you get when put the so-called “free-market” into schools. http://www.chieftain…
$3.9 Million is missing, not from the hands of unions, but from the likes of publicly funded, privately run charter schools. So much for the private industry being more efficient.
It’s not missing, they’re just not getting credit for some students they thought they were, so now they’re going to repay the district.
How much money did it cost to run Manual High School the year before it was shut down? What did they graduate? Less than fifty students, I believe.
That’s theft.
This one really bothers me. Even after I re-read both your post and the article inside.
The story is not about missing money or inefficient schools.
Why would you just blatantly make something like that up?
Shame on you! Disagree with me if you wish, but please don’t just pull stuff out of your ass like that.
the dribble that Go Blue writes but after reading your replies, I read that article and agree with you.
Go Blue is simply trying (but failing) to put charter schools in a bad light with false accusations.
Typical for that lefty wacko.
Heroes? Words have meanings. Please clarify.
From the time I entered the public school system till the time I left I had exactly ONE (1) teacher who settled for nothing less than absolute perfection. He would get pissed, very pissed, and he let us know in no uncertain terms. Every student was singled out and ridiculed at least once for being unprepared. Though no homework was ever assigned, we all knew who didn’t do any in the next days’ class. The result is that we were the best we could possibly be (we were rigorously tested and compared with other schools).
The final day of classes he spent the whole hour talking about how joyous it was to be our teacher and how absolutely proud he was of our achievement. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place because we felt the same way. We knew we were the best, and he knew he was.
Who knew that being singled out and ridiculed by a teacher for not knowing a lesson would be so good for a child’s self esteem? How about knowing that you are better than most others at a certain task? That’s REAL self esteem, not the mushy crap jammed down our kids’ throats nowadays.
The point was iterated by several at my 20-year reunion last year. When asked why he was the best, the answer was always the same: because he DEMANDED absolute perfection.
That said, I still wouldn’t call him a “hero”. He was simply what every teacher ought to be. To expect less is to receive less (he taught me that).
Most of my other teachers were limp-wristed socialists. Sure they cared and were enthusiastic about their jobs, but showing the propensity to care for children and being enthusiastic about your job ain’t cuttin’ it.
BTW, I’ve been inside a public school recently. I know, and I am related to DPS employees, both teachers and administrators. And yes, I have stories.
I for one am sick of hearing how if we don’t continually throw more and more money at the teachers union, that our poor helpless children will suffer.
Oh my god, think of the children……..
Com’on. When does this shit end?
Isn’t it possible, just possible, that the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough money being dumped in our school districts, but maybe the system itself is flawed?
But since the teacher’s union has all the power, and since the teacher’s union has the dimocrats in their back pockets, the root cause of the alledged problems will NEVER EVER be addressed.
The bleeding hearts will simply post pictures of dying stupid babies and say “see, this is what you get by being so selfish with your money.”
While you little r’s are spending so much trying to make the case that the eqaulization of local school is funding is a bad thing, here’s your chance to take those billions upon billions out of the back pockets of contractors, homebuilders, and oil companies and invest in schools. WHAT A CONCEPT!
We wouldn’t want jobs for those students, once they graduate thanks to wealth redistribution.
First you teach them to walk…
…and then claim unemployment when the economy is in the toilet because you made it impossible to do business.
Great plan.
How about Referendums E&F? Maybe we could have a state sales tax around 10%. I think we need to do both.
Maybe we should do away with TABOR altogether. Taxpayers don’t know what’s really important and are actually an impedement to taking care of their own children. You all know the saying, “The masses are asses and cannot be trusted to rule wisely.”
I mean, who’ll save the children? Please, please, please, won’t somebody think of the children?
Anybody who doesn’t think of the children should go to hell.
They could raise the state sales tax to 30%, raise the county tax to 20%, and the city sales tax to 30%, and the lefties would still be pushing for bond issues, Referendums, etc.
When the government gets 100% of what we make, MAYBE then they will be happy.
Of course then there will be no incentive for anyone to work period, so the schools will eventually again fall into disrepair, and we’ll be right where we are now.
Dumb kids bumping into walls.
And it will be the Republican’s fault.
Recruit, recruit, recruit!
You know you laughed at “dumb kids bumping into walls”:):)
Looks like DICK WADhams hired his “regoue” bloggers. Even with $100,000 in his back pocket, the fat cat can’t learn any new tricks. http://www.slate.com…
You mean I can get paid for making fun of leftists? Where do I sign up?
Unfortunately for me, leftists do a pretty good job of making fun of themselves, so there may be too much competition for the job.
Are you a current DPS pupil?
because the crap has begun to flow.
http://colorado.medi…
Can school board members and ex school board members bid on school constrution projects? In Steamboat Springs, a school board member anonymously gave the newspaper gossipy emails written by another school board member sent thru the school computer three years earlier. The one who sent the newspaper, the Steamboat Pilot, the gossipy emails is in the construction business. What restrictions are there on him for bidding on school contracts? His public statement was that he was resigning because he didn’t want to be on the same board as someone who sent gossipy emails 3 years earlier. This doesn’t make sense to me.
First of all, let me absolve DPS of all responsibility for my bad spelling. It is one thing which is not their fault. We don’t have accountability in public education for money already spent. In Denver, in 2003, we approved a mil levy increase which raises $20 million ANNUALLY to “revitalize” schools and provide for art and music education. What happened to that money? Now the schools which were “revitalized” are going to be closed because DPS is going broke. Do we get our money back?
In 2004 (or 05?) Denver voters approved a mil levy increase to implement the PAY for PERFORMACE plan to reward teachers for improved outcomes. That is an annual influx of money to the school system. Preliminary report? Nothing.
A lot of good teachers got the hell out of Dodge. What are we getting for this money?
We need to have a better accounting of where our money is going NOW before we gave them any more.
Is this the first thing we’ve agreed on?
First Parsing, now Dwyer. Next week, I’ll be at a Code Pink rally with Sir Robin!
🙂
All you public schools bashers might want to take a look at an editorial by Gerald Bracey in the op-ed pages of today’s Washington Post. (Bracey used to be the assessment director in the Cherry Creek schools.)
The piece describes the use of bogus international comparisons of students by government officials, public school critics and “leaders” like Bill Gates to convince the public that its schools are failing.
http://tinyurl.com/y…
I work with DPS students. I don’t need a jackass writing in the WaPo to tell me that the schools have failed. If you want, I’ll forward over some writing from these kids. Judge for yourself.
So your personal experience is more accurate in describing the state of American schools than actual research?
The “jackass” was the assessment director for both the Cherry Creek School District and the Virginia Department of Education. He’s a fellow with High/Scope Educational Research Foundation and Arizona State University. He had a regular column in Phi Delta Kappan and has written books on the misuse of statistics in education.
My point was that political leaders from the left and right love to say that the schools are failing, and they often do so by comparing American kids with kids in other countries. (See the Tough Choices or Tough Times report for the latest example.) But the comparisons are bogus. They don’t take into account the socioeconomic diversity of our student population.
I don’t doubt that the kids you work with can’t write. But I’d guess that most of them don’t come from two-parent, middle-class families who live in their own homes in nice neighborhoods. When you compare kids in the U.S. with kids of similar S.E.S. in other countries, we stack up pretty well.
Rather than just assuming your own experience represents reality, do some research.
What kind of research other than getting to know and aid some of these kids should I do?
You’re the one speaking in platitudes, not me. Reading an essay from the former blah blah of one of the wealthier school districts in the state isn’t worth a hill of beans on the front lines with these kids. We bury them every week, and that’s the source of my anger. hey deserve better from us than a “…special place in hell”.
In my original post, I was merely trying to make the point that many who characterize American public schools as failing do so using faulty assumptions and statistical obfuscation. I used a current op-ed as an example of how people like Bill Gates can use their money and influence to perpetuate the belief that schools are failing, using these same faulty assumptions and bogus apples-to-oranges comparisons.
Your argument is that American schools really are failing because you work with DPS kids who are bad students and terrible writers, and that you know more about the effectiveness of American schools than a guy with a PhD in educational assessment, who has worked as a district and state assessment director and has a career’s worth of knowledge and research on this topic under his belt. Your typical conservative anti-intellectualism is showing. Did you even read the op-ed before you characterized the writer as a “jackass?”
Do the terrible students you work with come from homes in which both parents live, speak English, read the newspaper and have middle-class jobs? Do they go to summer camp or the museum or on family vacations? Do they have books in their homes? Did their parents read to them when they were younger? Do their parents help them with their homework, or even make sure they do it? Do they have adults other than their parents to whom they come for advice, or to whom they tell things they can’t tell their parents?
I had all of these things when I was a kid. So I did well in school. Many kids don’t have these things. Is that the schools’ fault? Should schools be expected to provide all these assets for kids who don’t have them? I don’t think so. If we do expect schools to make up for all of the problems of poverty and inequality, then we are indeed going to have to spend a whole lot more money on them. A better alternative is to try to reduce inequality so poor families and communities can support kids themselves.
Schools should help kids as much as possible. But so should the rest of us. You’re doing your part, and I commend you for it. But to say that the kids you work with do poorly because the schools are failing them is to ignore the responsibility we all share for those kids’ success. It ignores the larger context in which schools and your students exist.
Schools are going to continue to “fail” as long as they are held responsible for things they can’t control, and as long as the rest of us are reassured by our “leaders” that it’s the schools’ fault, not ours.
..and it’s very simple.
Schools are by and large not held accountable, and their structure is determined by an aging bureaucracy that cares much more about retaining power than in enriching the students they are supposed to be serving.
It’s not money, it’s not teachers.
James Dobson is a PhD. Do you agree with his views on child development because of his academic status?
Anyone that thinks we’re doing a good job educating our kids is a jackass, IMO.
You say, “Schools are by and large not held accountable.”
Um…have you heard of CSAP? How would you make them more accountable? What kind of accountability do you propose? And under whatever accountability system you propose, how would you ensure that schools–if run the way you want–could conceivably succeed?
You say, “James Dobson is a PhD. Do you agree with his views on child development because of his academic status?”
OK, forget the stupid PhD. Just READ THE DAMN ARTICLE and tell me what about THE ARTICLE is wrong!
You say we’re not doing a good job of educating our kids. I say we’re going a great job with some kids, and a terrible job with some kids. But the kids we’re not educating are, by and large, from backgrounds that virtually guarantee that no matter how good the schools are, they’re not going to do well.
If we’re doing such a terrible job in K-12, why is higher education such a huge industry in this country? Why did the World Economic Forum rank the U.S. #1 in global competitiveness — until this year, when we dropped to #6 — among 100 nations?
Your claim that we’re failing because the few kids you know aren’t doing well just doesn’t hold water. You haven’t yet refuted any of the arguments I’ve made. You know nothing about education except what you personally experienced as a student and what you see in your work as a tutor, or whatever it is you do. Yet you believe you know more about it than a guy who has spent his adult life studying it.
It’s the typical conservative M.O.: Never let the facts get in the way of a strongly-held belief.
A bureaucrat denying accountability.
I can’t figure out which is the better lifestyle, a public school teacher or an illegal alien.
The PUBLIC school teacher gets steady raises, pensions, summers and every friggin’ holiday off, lifetime employment (unless they fondle a kid or espouse a conservative viewpoint), and a bureaucracy hell-bent on lowering standards thereby making the job all the easier. Plus they get to indoctrinate little skulls full of mush with a daily dose of looney leftist BS.
The illegal alien gets free education, free healthcare, and a free pass from the cops, mayor, and governor. Now I hear that many are getting the Earned Income Tax Credit. What a gig.
I think I’d rather be an illegal. It’s more honest. Besides, hanging out with a bunch of whiny leftist public school teachers would probably hurt my knuckles too much.