The Roanoke Slant

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Roanoke Times, 3-19-12, Pg 1 and 3: 25% of pupils don’t graduate

Roanoke Times, 3-20-12, Pg 3: Panel says schools are threat to security (75% of young adults don’t qualify to serve in the military)

WSJ, 3-20-12, Pg A14: Editorial: The Council on Foreign Relations endorses choice and competition
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577291742018552140.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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The fact that 25% of our students don’t graduate is not the bad news; The fact that 75% of our young people don’t qualify to serve in the military is not the bad news;
The bad news is that this great country refuses to fix the core problems that cause these dismal outcomes!
We are trapped in a system of acceptance of school rooms in which even the best teachers with the best resources with the best training with the best technology cannot teach in a broken teaching-learning environment of distraction and semi-chaos.
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American 15-year-olds rank 14th in reading, 25th in math and 17th in science compared to peers in industrial countries. We graduate fewer than 5% of college students with engineering degrees (in China its 33%).
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It’s not the money stupid! We spend over $12,000 per student per year!
We’re not going to change in our classrooms the dysfunctional family environments or fix the "crack-babies” or turn-around and rehabilitate incorrigible youths who ultimately are headed to Red Onion!
We must fix what we can fix – the classroom teaching –learning environment!
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We must stop the madness of enabling those who cannot or will not learn from stealing the education opportunities of those students who can and want to learn!
However politically incorrect it may be, we must perform a triage of learning and separate students into multiple streams of study consistent with their learning curve capabilities and behaviors and performance.
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Our teachers must be freed from fear! The fear of students-bullying them, the fear of parent’s lawyers, the fear of administrators turning on them instead of focusing on the problem students and the fear of fear itself. Teachers must revitalize their educational knowledge and skills and focus on their job and not their unions.
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The liberal-progressive parents, administrators, legislators, editors and judges have allowed and enabled this situation to develop to its current nonfunctional state. It’s way past time to fix the system. Physician heal thyself! (Luke 4-23).
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2012/03/chaos-in-classroom-challenged-students.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2010/12/too-dumb-to-serve.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2011/02/yet-more-roanoke-times-bias-against.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/12/who-are-failures.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-school-punishment-racist.html
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