Lean Production: Inside the war on public education

[knitter4democracy]

73. I'm the non-engineer in the family. I know and understand that.

By the way, I took Calc I and II in college even though I'm an English major because my mechanical engineer father made me. My brother's a mechanical engineer and CEO of his own company, his wife's an environmental engineer with a power company running their green energy programs, and I have many cousins who are engineers, physicists, and such. I was the one who got my ex-husband through med school, so yes, I am well aware of the difficulties those in the sciences can face and the sort of high-stakes tests they take on a regular basis. My dad worked for the MSU cyclotron lab (Head of Machining and Fabrication) for 37 years, and I practically grew up there. Just because I'm an English teacher doesn't mean that I don't know anything about any other discipline, the classes required for it, and the tests they have to take. If anything, it means I'm more likely to know because I have to make sure my students are prepared. What you have listed is what I tell my ACT prep students all the time.

By the way, in our state, the required test for juniors for NCLB and all of that is the ACT. Other states use their own tests, usually pretty watered down. We use the ACT, and every single junior in the class is required to pass it on a proficient level (22 or higher). That's the kind of high-stakes testing I deal with when I have students reading on an 8th grade level or lower and have to get them to college reading level in less than a year.

The reason I keep mentioning your availability bias is because you're not seeming to listen to any of us. You say one sentence, maybe two, to respond to the fact that you are not an educator and admit that there's a lot you don't know, but then you go on for many paragraphs about how you still have to be right. Again, you are basing your logical argument almost entirely upon your own experience rather than upon any real data. That's crappy education and even worse engineering, by the way.

I would love to have you come to my class and try to keep order when they have the computers and make sure that they get their work done. Heck--I'll even give you my AP English students, the cream of the crop, to practice on before I throw you to the wolves. I'll make sure you even get all of the IEPs, 504s, and documentation you have to keep as well as access to all previous data on those students. Then we'll see how well you fare.

Again, I am sorry about your daughter, and frankly, I can guarantee you that would not have happened in our district. I am fortunate to work in a great district that has amazing special ed teachers and programs. We're in a schools-of-choice state in which parents can choose to send their children anywhere regardless of where they live, and we get many parents sending their students to our school just for our special ed program. There's only one other district in the area that's better, in my opinion. I wish you had that kind of option for your daughter so that she could be in the best learning environment for her.

That said, the district is required by law to educate her. Instead of staying home, you should fight to make the school teach her.