This is a public school in the United States

[Wonkish1]

I'm not sure where this goes, but since this board is for General Discussion I'll put it here.

http://www.aimschools.org/aim_faq.shtml

The school's program is alternately condescending and merely classist and racist. Poor minority students don't deserve sports (except golf, because that leads to business connections) or arts classes or anything but draconian rules and teaching to standardized tests. It's an appalling bit of work, and it epitomizes the beliefs of the rich white man who thinks he has earned his place in society and thinks that poor minorities need simply to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (and who also apparently has trouble with spelling and grammar, judging from that page). It's not surprising that the kid I know who goes there (or, it should be said, went there until he transferred out) remarked on the complete lack of anything approximating independent thought.

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This school receives public monies.

So your post is to belittle a school and call it racist because they are actually trying to improve the lives of minorities in this country. I don't know how can live with your contemptuous attitude that prefers to just give up on improving the lot of minorities and criticize those that try.

Most black leaders would tell you that education is the biggest civil rights issue of the 21st century and if they saw your post they would call you the worst kind of racist pig!

[Wonkish1]

What's hilarious is that these guys still get better test scores across all races than the unionized schools do.

^^^^


How people could decry a school like this that has success in getting minority students to college is beyond me! Maybe the OP just prefers having minorities being severely uneducated and poor.

[Wonkish1]

What's hilarious is that these guys still get better test scores across all races than the unionized schools do.

I would think that teaching designed solely to improve scores on those tests would do that, yes.

I guess its a bad thing to have students focused on accumulating information and knowledge and having that determined via test taking(given a lack of better ways to assess knowledge and information accumulation). Should have known that throwing paint at pictures was a much more productive way for students to learn.

Maybe we need to convince all the universities and employers that is what should be higher in their determinations for admissions/employment because being able to answer a long division question on a piece of paper or be able to write coherent paragraphs that demonstrate knowledge of a subject is just way overrated.

[Wonkish1]

What's hilarious is that these guys still get better test scores across all races than the unionized schools do.

^^^^


How people could decry a school like this that has success in getting minority students to college is beyond me! Maybe the OP just prefers having minorities being severely uneducated and poor.

Yes, because test scores are the ONLY measure of educational quality

It is so far the best way to determine knowledge and information accumulation. The real issue here isn't the tests. If you created and used 5 different ways to try to measure the quantity of information learned, people would still b*tch about it. Its the idea of devoting 100% of the school day on just continuous learning and stacking that somehow pisses people like you off. Somehow art, music, physical education, and multicultural studies are supposed to get more attention when none of that is cared about by employers 1 bit.  Furthermore, they want the speed of the curriculum slowed down and more time devoted to things allow people to perform for effort instead of results. As soon as you switchback to a rigorous schedule of teaching and "you're teaching to the test". What a joke!

[Wonkish1]

But things like mathematics and formal/standardised 'persuasive writing' are, to an extent, overrated on a societal level relative to things like creative writing, art, music, and increasingly history. It's a similar phenomenon to how a college education is increasingly perceived as necessary to be a productive member of society with the hope of good employment even though it's if anything less affordable than ever and no more useful for many occupations than it ever was. The simple fact is that not every facet of society requires or even calls for the kinds of skills that our schools are placing almost fetishistic emphasis on through this sort of testing.

Please point to me all the employers that give 2 $hits about your background in music and art.

[Wonkish1]

there is, or at least used to be, more to being human than renting oneself for another's accumulation of capital.

You know sometimes I just really can't believe the absolutely retarded statements some people make on here. Way to advertise yourself as an entitled person that is all but guaranteed to be near dirt poor the rest of your life.

[Wonkish1]

Anyone who advocates for charter schools has never been to a charter school.

So you think that minority parents and students that care about education are just idiots then? Because they actually choose to enroll in the charter schools. They aren't forced to go there. And the parents and kids that start crying in happiness when their ball is picked, they must just be ignorant dummies, right?

I'll tell you what why don't you talk to the parents that will tell you that the difference between their kid going to college and being at risk of going to jail is the pick of their ball, and you can tell that parent to their face that they are just stupid and naive.

[Wonkish1]

So either go to college or you are at risk of going to jail?

You know, not everybody can have some highly specialized job that requires a lot of math/science education, at the expense of (mostly) everything else. Surely you recognize this.

Yet the problem, of course, is when those jobs are very well-paying while a mechanic, or musician, or artist, or *anything* that doesn't require a highly specialized and expensive education is increasingly paid less and less.

Furthermore, this is in a society that increasingly measures one's personal worth by their net worth. So the people who make a sh*load of money are "winners", and everyone else is a "loser", and you only have yourself to blame if you're a "loser".

What kind of a society is that? And why anyone, even those who benefit the most from it (an increasingly elite and small group, proportionate to the population), would want that society is beyond me.

I was paraphrasing quotes from intercity parents. They aren't my words they are theirs.

Look there is another thread created here decrying the large disparity in wealth between the wealthiest and everybody else. I actually think that is a real issue. Yet when you try to remedy that by advocating for things that would improve the incomes of impoverished people in the intercity then "your focusing too much on the roll of income and wealth in society". So it appears our would be friends on the left don't really care about about improving the financial success of poor people if that actually means things like tougher schools and more work.

I don't consider the wealthy "winners" and the poor "losers", but I actually care about issues of poverty and the disgusting cycle of poverty in the intercity. But apparently when the chips are down many on the left including yourself don't really care.

[Wonkish1]

The reason I don't like the things you advocate is because only a small number of people would actually ever break out of poverty under those things. And more and more people would be left behind. It's social Darwinism, plain and simple, applied to education and employment.

Please explain!

[Wonkish1]

The reason I don't like the things you advocate is because only a small number of people would actually ever break out of poverty under those things. And more and more people would be left behind. It's social Darwinism, plain and simple, applied to education and employment.

Please explain!

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