Michelle Obama Rallies the Education Troops

Supremely hollow words from an ignorant woman!

MayBee | Feb 2, 2009 7:36:17 PM – your post implies that students in the US are not motivated. Nobel prize winning economist James Heckman of the University of Chicago agrees with you, and so does President Obama. (BTW, Obama and Heckman were nearly neighbors in Chicago.)

Heckman’s research shows that high school graduation rates peaked in the U.S. in the late 1960s, at about 80 percent. Since then they have declined. In his study “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman says this decline is not due poor school quality or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman points to US family environments, which have DETERIORATED over the past 40 years. Ask any teacher - kids come to school in dirty clothes, up all night, poorly fed, and with parents who don't participate in their kids' education. How do we fix that?

Heckman reports that big gaps in educational attainment are present at age 5. Some kids are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes “human capital development” and, increasingly, more are not. By age 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t.

Sure I.Q. matters, but Heckman points to equally important traits that start and then build from those early years: motivation levels, emotional stability, self-control and sociability. You know, those traits that help kids to grow up and become employed.

Maybee, you state that the answer is not “to throw other citizens' money at the problem and hope something works.” You just described the past 8 years of No Child Left Behind and clearly we need to make worthwhile changes to our education system. The quote from Michelle Obama was to "imagine" what we can do with millions of dollars more investment. There were no specifics about programs in the First Lady’s answer, but based on President Obama’s strong belief in the benefits of expanding early childhood education, I suspect we will see more detailed proposals in this area.

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Mrs. Obama stressed the need for more education spending saying, "Imagine what we can do with millions of dollars more investment in this area. We can expand opportunities in low-income districts for all students, particularly for students with disabilities."
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Does this woman have any idea at all how many billions upon billions of dollars have been thrown at Education since the expansion of the Americans With disabilities Act?

Ever since Carter created this fiasco of a department, This Liberal Social Experiment called the Dept of Ed. has been a dismal failure!

For every "feel good" story they manage to dig up, you can find hundreds of schools that struggle to get the majority of kids through a just a rudimentary level. Go to your own twons and talk to the teachers and the teacher aides. Go examine your school budgets and see how much of that budget already goes to "special education".

This system pushes "coding" of kids in 1st & 2nd grade, many times when its completely unnecessary! Teachers have to plan not only for the normal class material they are trying to teach, but for toned down, cut back versions for those kids who have IEPs. We then have this brilliant system that tells a kid who 35 or 40 years ago would have been a solid "C" student, that he is now an "A" student because he can do 1/2 of what the rest of the class does, but he can do it all correctly.

You NEVER EVER hear anyone in the education system explain how this foolish concept is going to help this kid when he/she graduates and hits the job market. Do you know many buisnesses who are willing to take on employees who have been conditioned by the education system to only do part of the load shouldered by everyone else?

Because of this stupid policy of teaching to the lowest common denominator, our top students get bored and in some case become disiplinary promlems themselves. Many people take thier kids out of the public schools and head to private schools to give thier kids a chance to excel in an environment free of these ridiculous methods.

It is way past the time to throw out all this foolish liberal concepts and return to the fundemtals of education that made this country great! It is not the end of the world to be honest with a kid in the early grades and actually help them to LEARN. Contrary to foolish notion of destroying a child's ego because they were tld they did it wrong, It is the natural way we learn as children, we need to be told what was correct as well as what was not!

We certainly need to spend money on education, but lets actually spend it on educating the kids, not beefing up some useless bureaucracy!

Hmmmm!

huh, very convenient that corresponds to the Democrats marketing campaign from 2004. Not that these history departments are politicized or anything.
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Where was George Mason University supposed to get their historians- from viewers of the History Channel or from self professed historians on blogs? Of course, I would think they pooled the universities. I'm not aware that the marketing campaign from 2004 was advertising Bush as the worst president in history and citing Pew polls of disapproval. I must have been asleep and wasn't dreaming that dream.

" It's not unlikely that he could become by history's retrospect, the worst president in American history.
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huh, very convenient that corresponds to the Democrats marketing campaign from 2004. Not that these history departments are politicized or anything.

As long as we are still counting Carter as a US President, I dont think Bush is in any danger.

JustHow are we ever going to fix the Public School system if anyone with the ability to afford PRIVATE schools jump ship? How can the President who proclaims to be a man of the common folk send his daughters to a extremely expensive school? What kind of mesage is our President sending? It certainly isn't a mesage of hope!

ou accuse other people of being haters while doing your own little Code pink "worst president ever" hate dance a sentence away . . . .
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The actual "worst president ever" concerns are coming from historians and public opinion polls. With Pew and other surveys, Bush consistently receives disapproval ratings in the mid to high 80% range, which are historically low ratings. According to a George Mason University study, 8 out of 10 historians rated Bush as an overall failure, and about 6 out of 10 considered him the worst president in history. It's not unlikely that he could become by history's retrospect, the worst president in American history.

Omentum you have amnesia in your own post- you accuse other people of being haters while doing your own little Code pink "worst president ever" hate dance a sentence away.

The fact of the matter is that Obama and his children have gone to elite private schools so its a little thick for MO to try and tell the teachers what a great jobs they are doing.

I thought she wanted to be Mom-in-chief??

What happened, was that a campaign rhetoric as well?

Now we hear she is going to department of energy next???

It's funny that she says she is a product of public school but she put her own kids to private school and media is afraid to ask!

All the haters must have amnesia.

We have just had the worst president in history and now all of a sudden they have concern for what's going on in government.

Bush raped this country while padding the coffers of his cronies and most of you were had your mute button on.

Now you speak but now I have your mute button ON.

You are are extremely silly saying a bunch of nothing and still think you words have relevance.

HILARIOUS. How about juggling some balls and balancing on a unicycle why you do your circus act.

It is so sad to see where all this hate still comes from. No public or private school is perfect. Unless you were born in an out house in east bumble "you know what" you'd understand that the President of the United states is a target and so is his family. They really don't have the luxury of going to a public school.

Under Bush the DOE budget grew more than under any other president.
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If that's actually the case, the money failed to make it to public schools, where each year since 2000 cuts were incrementally made in staff and programs.

Its refreshing to have a couple in the white house who believe that education is important, and that knowledge is a value. They say the fish rots from the head, and there has been a terrible stink the last eight years. Those in the media who should know better have got to take stock of their enabling the philosophy of know-nothingism and anti-intellectualism that has been rotting our educational system. Of course, our pundits seem to be of the opinion that its all one big joke and the most important thing is to be in the in-crowd, so I doubt that this major change is going to be widely noted.

I recently came across a grammar school primer at a used bookstore. It was dated in the early 1920's. It was AMAZING what they were reading back then. It had samples of poetry and prose (often written in archaic English), sentence structure, stories from the Bible, samples from Greek histories and books etc. Compare to the tripe the the school systems give our children to read! And this was for use in 1-6 (sections of the book for different ages since, I assume, 1 room schoolhouse usuage.) We have "dumbed down" the education system and this is just one small example.

idahogirl-
If you go to the countries that are benefiting greatly from globalization- countries like China and India- you will see the students there take education very seriously in very trying conditions. In China you have giant class sizes, poor construction, lack of heat, and lack of transportation. Yet students go and pay attention in class. They strive to do well.

I had a friend who was teaching at an American International school. He was Indian, and he left to go back to India to teach because he could not believe how American students refuse to take education seriously. "They have everything," he said, "and they skip school talk over the teacher."

Oprah opened a school in South Africa partially, she said, because she was tired of watching American students be unappreciative of their amazing opportunities. She said, "First of all, I am doing a lot in the United States, I just don't talk about it. What is different about this country (South Africa) is that there is this desperate yearning to know better and do better that you just don't have in the United States. You just don't have it, because the opportunity has always been there. My idea was to understand, 'Yes, you come from nothing. But oh, what a something you will become if given the opportunity.'"

Yes, everyone will benefit in the US if those at the bottom of the socioeconomic gap become better educated. That doesn't mean the answer is to throw other citizens' money at the problem and hope something works.

Hey: taxed by Obama but not his friends!

YOU refuse to file your taxes! The rest of us will not even hear about it because you don't matter.
The First Lady means well and you know it, but all of your hate shines through anyway.

"What is definition of "hypocrite"?"

Someone espousing right wing views.

What do I win?

Back when baby-boomers started public school in the 1950s, no European country enrolled 30% of its teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70% went to High School. This gave America an ENORMOUS economic advantage.

However, between 1975 and 1990, our education stalled. Today this decline threatens the US in a global economy. Whenever education falls behind the speed of technological change, the gap between rich and poor widens. Today a small group of skilled workers (like Wall Street bankers) command high salaries, and the growing number of unskilled workers (like High School drop-outs) have few choices.

My liberal friends say what’s happened to jobs has been the result of globalization, outsourcing and nasty capitalism. My conservative friends say it’s a result of evil labor unions, lazy workers, and bumbling government intervention. Regardless where your politics fall, I think we can all agree the US must find new, innovative ways to improve our country's educational attainment. I applaud Michele Obama.

Stop being petty. So what if her kids go to private school. Everyone in America will benefit from stronger educational attainment at the bottom. Eliminating the skills gap means more tax payers, a stronger economy, and less need for government freebees. Isn’t that what we all want?

More Ayers ideology in education?

Michelle is an angry gal stuck in group think victim mode. She doesn't seem to get the victory mode of individuals.

Public schools and universiteis are no longer think tanks - they are brainwashing institutions.