You Go Judge! Debate: Cut the Cr*p. Save our Children. All of them. 

~ Live & Learn

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“Connecticut State Superior Court Judge Thomas G. Moukawsher threw out the state’s school financing system as unconstitutional, his unsparing 90-page ruling read and resonated like a cry from the heart on the failings of American public education.”

Some excerpts from NYTimes: An F-Minus for America’s Schools From a Fed-Up Judge:

  •  “Uselessly perfect teacher evaluations” that found “virtually every teacher in the state” proficient or exemplary, while a third of students in many of the poorest communities cannot read even at basic levels.
  • He attacked a task force charged with setting meaningful high school graduation requirements for how its “biggest thought on how to fix the problem turned out to be another task force,” and called it “a kind of a spoof.”
  • Too many American high school graduates are “let down by patronizing and illusory degrees”
  • Too many decisions and too much debate about schools seem, as he wrote, “completely disconnected to the teaching of children.”
  • Nearly all high school students in affluent communities like Darien and Westport scored on state tests as “advanced” in math and approached the same level in reading. But one out of three students in nearby Bridgeport and other poor cities did not reach the most basic level in math, and did only slightly better in reading.
  • It was a strikingly blunt way of saying what many people feel: The system is broken.
  • He added, “Just doing more of the same is unlikely to lead to a different result.”
  • The judge called for a radical reimagining that starts with the question of what schools should do: What are the goals for elementary students, or high school graduates? Then, he said, the state should decide how much money schools require so that all students, rich and poor, reach those goals.
  • 46 percent of white fourth graders across the country read at or above “proficient,” compared with just 18 percent of their black peers.
  • He criticized “uselessly perfect teacher evaluations” as part of a rating system “that is little more than cotton candy in a rainstorm.” He described the state’s efforts to define high school proficiency as “like a sugar cube boat,” adding, “It dissolves before it’s half-launched.”

Read entire article: NYTimes: An F-Minus for America’s Schools From a Fed-Up Judge

Photo: Hartford Courant

15 thoughts on “You Go Judge! Debate: Cut the Cr*p. Save our Children. All of them. ”

  6. It’s not just schools that are broken…it’s families too. We are a broken society, period. Too many parents do not take the responsibility of parenting seriously, leaving their children to be raised by the schools…and the schools are taking the easy way out. Our children deserve so much more.

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  7. AMEN! As a former teacher in a parochial school system I can tell you that 90% plus of our high school grads went on to good colleges and successfully completed their studies. What parents and students need is a challenge to the federally run public school system. A voucher system, private school options and turn education over to the state and local governments, and the parents must be involved. Who better knows their needs than they. The students are failing because the system has failed them. And, NO, more tax dollars won’t help. When a school seriously cares about the success of the student then the student will seriously care about school.
    -Alan

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  8. Pingback: You Go Judge! Debate: Cut the Cr*p. Save our Children. All of them.  — Live & Learn | Site Title Adventures in Learning k-12 Inc.

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