I assume you’re talking about blockquote

I have convinced a few. http://harriettubmanagenda.blogspot.com/2008/08/whats-linear-differential-operator.html

(btw, what are the html tags which embed the url?)

Why not more? I’m up against 150 years of successful State-worshipful indoctrination, an institution with a $500 billion per-year budget, AND College of Education faculty, who are articulate, have a lot of free time, and strong incentives to protect their $80,000 per year, do-nothing jobs.

I suggest that these are related, alomst restatements of the same position.

Physics Teacher has suggested that reform proposals which involve parent control (“choice”: expanded charter schools, school vouchers) will not pass the political process. Basically “Who will bell the cat?” This makes sense. It’s why I recommend homeschooling. Parents cannot afford to wait for the politicians to fix this mess.

(Steve): “I’ve been fighting against fuzzy, low expectation math for years and years. It’s not all disorganized.”
(PT): “Good. But you’ve likely been fighting it pretty much alone because people with potential clout know nothing about it because it’s too local an issue.”
(Steve)”You’re clueless”
(PT): “I see you’re a scholar and a gentleman (That’s sarcasm too)”
(Steve):

“You’re clueless.”

This wasn’t a random evaluation. It related to a specific comment you made and showed that you really don’t know what’s been going on. This affects your whole position, and it showed me that I’m wasting my time

This was my impression also, but it’s a bit abrupt. We are all ignorant. That’s not a problem. The problem here is that Physics Teacher won’t listen to someone who spent time in the trenches.

Lame curricula are not accidental, as we agree (see Physics teacher’s comments on Whole Language as well as inept Math instruction). The NCTM had to be pulled down the hall by the scalp, kicking and screaming all the way, to get them to concede that kids won’t invent Math notation by themselves and need to practice.

One problem with clear, self-paced Math instruction is that it would demonstrate the irrelevance of most teachers. That was the point of my credit-by-exam proposal. Once kids learn to read and to add and subtract rational numbers, which parents of normal kids can accomplish by the time their kids are six years old, they can move at their own speed through well-scripted curricula faster than a class moves. Colleges of Education maintain the pretext of “expertise” on which 90$ of the ponderous education industry relies. The State-monopoly education industry has no interest in efficient operation. “Public education” has become an employment program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, a source of padded construction and supply contracts for politically-connected insiders, and a venue for State-worshipful indoctrination.

This wasn’t a random evaluation. It related to a specific comment you made and showed that you really don’t know what’s been going on. This affects your whole position, and it showed me that I’m wasting my time.

Watch that “pretend” stuff,
The conditional “if” in the above puzzles me. I gave an example of the level of centralization I would accept (the credit-by-exam proposal). Here’s another:…

http://harriettubmanagenda.blogspot.com/2005/12/proposal.html

Numerous lines of evidence indicate that overall system performance rises as policy-makers shift authority over curricular (and institutional) decisions away from bureaucrats and to parents. “Choice” is not yes/no but a matter of degree.

But I have; parents do not have to be the ones to provide instruction. Ten parents get together, petition to homeschool, hire a college-graduate daughter of a neighbor, send their kids to her house, and go to work. It’s legally possible now (although the bureaucracy threatens parents who propose this). What is missing is support.

How, do tell, are you going to convince people to do this, and why haven’t you?

In theory, 300 million Americans could simultaneously moon George Bush on Jan 20. Talking everyone into it, I suspect, won’t be that simple.

I think it would be far easier to get Americans to pressure government to ditch crappy math programs. Yet, your intellectual ally thinks this is “clueless”. If we can’t convince a small number of people to do what we want how are we supposed to get millions to do it.

Malcolm, this exchange has been fun, but it’s late here on the east coast. Have a good weekend.

But I have; parents do not have to be the ones to provide instruction. Ten parents get together, petition to homeschool, hire a college-graduate daughter of a neighbor, send their kids to her house, and go to work. It’s legally possible now (although the bureaucracy threatens parents who propose this). What is missing is support.

The State of Alaska subsidizes homeschooling a $3000 per student, last I looked. It works: homeschooled children of parents with no education beyond highschool outperform the students of the college-educated teachers in Alaska’s conventional schools. The homeschoolers’ 50th percentile score is close to the 80th percentile score of the students in conventional schools, on Alaska’s standardized assessments. The program is so popular, according to __Education Week__, that some districts lost enrollment to the homeschooling policy.

It’s not much of an argument against choice if the experiment studies a policy which restricts parents’ options to schools operated by the State monopoly. At that level, I’d expect marginal gains, below statistical significance

If I went out and put a Mermaid trap in my backyard I suspect I would not catch any mermaids. In my report, I’d be obligated to state the conditions of my experiment, adding in my discussion the greater likelyhood of find mermaids on the Jersey Shore.

Certainly wouldn’t be an argument against mermaids, and I suspect that on the Jersey Shore there are at least creatures with fins.

What you seemingly ignore given the links I’ve posted is the fact that school choice is by no means as rosy and as cut and dried as you and others pretend. If you could make it “work” in a nation of 300 million you’d likely need far more centralization than someone like you is comfortable with. But this is precisely what the choice crowd insists is impossible to do even marginally well.

It’s not much of an argument against choice if the experiment studies a policy which restricts parents’ options to schools operated by the State monopoly. At that level, I’d expect marginal gains, below statistical significance.