Reason.tv: Fix The Schools!: Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey, episode 2
by Nick GillespieCleveland’s public schools are failing to prepare students for their futures and as a result, all parents who can afford to have been fleeing to the suburbs for decades. Yet some urban schools, like Think College Now in Oakland, California are finding out that a combination of administrative autonomy and accountability can lead to amazing results. Within Cleveland’s own boundaries, charter schools are booming and delivering quality education at a fraction of the cost of traditional public schools. Does Cleveland have what it takes to fundamentally reform its K-12 education system and become a leader in 21st-century education?
Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey is written and produced by Paul Feine; camera and editing by Roger Richards and Alex Manning; narrated by Nick Gillespie; music by the Cleveland band Cats on Holiday. This is the second of six episodes that will air March 15-19, 2010.
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34 Comments
As the father of public school children I have found that cyber school a great alternative to the brick and mortar school, my child who was labeled in need of supervision worked at his own pace to outpace his friends in his old school. Schools recieve more funds if they can document a child has problems, and children always drop to the expectations of the public school system.
as you so well know and understand, kids almost always emulate their parents, environment, surroundings….then perhaps later influenced by outside forces like schools…..so fix the parents. Give these kids better role models. Stop wasting our tax dollars on losers in loser neighborhoods that provide no example of self driven pride and confidence in making it on their own without government assistance. Yeah, that's right. I am saying they were better off working for their colonial masters….had a roof over their heads, food on the table and all they had to do was put in a days work. I have been to Ghana, and I have toured the dundgeons where slaves waited to board the ships to the Americas…..and trust me, they live much better over here on section 8 housing, welfare, food stamps, SSI, Medicare or Medicaid….than their cousins in Ghana….nough said.
Here's my idea for saving Cleveland's schools: Drew Carey takes some of the money he's earned in Hollywood and opens Drew Carey Academy in Cleveland. (It shouldn't be difficult to find a building because there are a lot of empty ones all over the place.)
Drew Carey Academy would provide an alternative to the Cleveland public schools because Drew Carey would let anyone attend for free. There would be no physical education classes, and the cafeteria would offer cheeseburgers and pizza for breakfast and lunch.
The only catch is you'll have to have a flat top hair cut, and wear Buddy Holly style eye glasses to get in.
It is wonderful seeing solutions that work. I get so angry with our public education system, the teacher's unions, and politicians who lack the courage to do what's right because they're bought off. Education is hugely important and we could reduce so many other problems if we could get our public system on track.
I loathe the teacher's unions; they are truly evil.
Schools who separate from the status flow of government control have mentally healthier students. it should be a warning of how centralized "Health care" will turn out as we do the opposite and move toward it!!! The government treat children as pieces of meat, the same as they do the sickly!!
Don't give Drew Carey any ideas!!
I have a friend that is a retired Oakland,CA high school teacher.The stories he tells are outrageous.I dread even talking to him sometimes…
That reminds me, why should anyone trust Obama to fix our schools when the city of Chicago and state of Illinois are broke, and they have one of the highest drop out rates in the country?
In fact, Dems control virtually all the largest cities and school districts in the country and that's really why they're failing. Everything they touch is destroyed.
.
They are horrible, and my parents and grandparents were all teachers, but old school types.
Teachers unions only care about themselves anymore, they forgot the kids. Oh, 2500 reported cases of sexual abuse reported each year, many more unreported. Where's Bill Maher on that?
.
Obama: I thought i shut that school down Rham?//
Rham: That school was in DC Barrack,…this one is in Cleveland.
Obama: Damn it, I thought I made it perfectly clear, I want all children to have a union teacher,….
no child left behind,………i want all these charter schools shut down.
It is all about the unions. The NEA and their ilk and the whole falacy of tenure work at odds to advancing quality in anything. The money that gets wasted in the education system is at the administrative level with very little translating to the classrooms. The answer would be to take half the money we spend on each student and give it to the parents to spend on the school of their choice. (don't literally give them the money) but give them the power of choice. Let the schools that fail, fail. Let the ones that excell take off.
We need to get back to a system that rewards performance rather than shooting for the lowest common denominator.
Compare Department of Defense schools with public schools. Each has a fairly representative cross-section of American ethnic groups.
DOD school students out perform their peers in public schools. Why? Parental expectations and discipline at home, that's why.
If we're going to improve our educational system, it is high time for someone in a position of power to show some guts and demand that parents start providing the proper home environment for these kids.
The rot is at home and everything else done to improve out system will ultimately be useless until that problem is fixed. Everything else will just be tinkering with the symptoms.
Lol! Love it!
The concept of "….schools of choice, that is the way to go, that's what you do when you go to college…" No truer words than that one statement. If you open it up to a competitive based system, you save the students, the schools and the nation. If we stay on the course we are on we will be a 2nd rate country very soon.
Eventually the teachers unions will gain control and 'level' these schools!
It is simply UNFAIR for some kids to get a chance to learn while others are tought by unionized teachers!
"I think I might go to Ohio State."
I think you might, too! Go, kid!
When I started elementary school in the late 40s (Miles Elementary, Cleveland 5, Ohio), new teachers first had to do their internship out in the 'burbs' before they would even be considered for teaching positions in the exceptional Cleveland City school system. Somewhere, somehow between then and now, it all went to hell. I blame 'social justice'.
So wait, spending obscene amounts of money on school regardless of graduation rate and performance doesn't work? Couldn't have seen this coming…..
"Put bluntly, (public school) failure attracts more money than success." – Thomas Sowell
http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html
I really do not get how these teacher unions get away with this garbage. My parents are both special-needs teachers in NJ and the bureaucracy some people get put through is ridiculous even at that level of education.
Too bad most kids in those cities don't have parents around to emulate….
The Cleveland Public High Schools, a few years back, had an absentee rate of around 25% on a daily basis.
Its amazing when you teach traditional values to our children they learn to become achievers and learn to find pride in their own accomplishements.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Cleveland is slowly turning into Detroit. Want the feel of a post-apocalyptic world? Drive downtown Cleveland around lunch time. I got out in '98. Charter schools work, vouchers work, but they do not lend themselves to the power of the union/government. Nothing will change.
Dishes need washing, and ditches need digging. Someone will have to do those jobs, and it doesn't take a lot of education to do them. Luckily, it looks like we know who those future workers are.
You know you actually have to want to learn. As bad as the public schools may be, every teacher has the capacity to teach something to someone. You just have to want to learn. It seems to me that the heavier responsibility is on the students themselves. Everybody wants to be a victim, be it student or teacher.
Here's my idea…come up with a better solution instead of just snark. Your "comedy" indicates that you have nothing constructive to bring to the conversation. Go away and let the adults talk.
"Somewhere, somehow between then and now, it all went to hell."
Considering the Dems have had a stranglehold on Northeast Ohio for God knows how long, you could start there.
Considering that the Dems have had control of Northeast Ohio for a while now, I don't see things changing anytime soon. The County Commissioners have been under Federal investigation for at least two years with some amazing evidence yet they still sit in power lacking any indictments. Dennis Kucinich bankrupted the city and now wastes space in DC.
Rather than making any true changes, the entitled electorate vote the same enabling Democrats back in. After all, they do keep the handouts coming in.
He's working on getting a teacher's certificate.
Oh chill. We need to laugh a little, at least until they outlaw laughter!
I wrote my earlier post out of frustration because I've lived in Cleveland (and the burbs) all my life and have seen countless "let's save the schools and the city" programs during that time—"Cleveland's a Plum!" is my favorite. But Cleveland (Cuyahoga County) is controlled by the democrats and unions. The fact that since 1970 probably 400,000 people have bailed on the city doesn't matter to them…it's business as usual. Countless common sense suggestions like Drew Carey's have been floated in the past and ignored. They've pretty much killed the city (except for downtown and the University Circle area.)
If you want to see how the rest of the nation will look if Obama and the democrats have their way, visit Cleveland or Detroit.
I think Andrew Breitbart has it figured out. You quit playing by their rules and create new infrastructure controlled by your rules. Old media doesn't matter as much because Breitbart is creating a new media empire that doesn't rely in any way on old media. Why not try the same idea, only with education?
Perhaps the best way to fix the schools in Cleveland would be to quit playing by their rules. Create new schools that are free from all their failures. I was serious about there being a lot of empty buildings in downtown Cleveland. Maybe enough people could kick in to finance the creation of a libertarian school in one of those empty buildings. Maybe Drew Carey could use his celebrity to create a foundation that could raise funds for such an endeavor. It would be centrally located and would pull in kids from the east and west sides of town.
To make Drew happy it could be set up as a libertarian school. Provide tuition assistance, establish rules for attending, and actually teach them something. Call it an experiment in freedom. And yeah, the kids could eat pizza and cheeseburgers instead of tofu and bean sprouts. Maybe they'd enjoy attending school a bit more.
Would this be difficult to do? Yep. And expensive too, but by creating a new education system free from the destructive control of the old system, you might be able to create schools that actually work.
And SFCMAC, I'm sorry if I offended you with my original post. That wasn't my intent.
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