The statistical significance may be questionable as to some types of inferences, however it is more than sufficient to support the statement that our public education system is not as great teachers like yourself think it is.
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<br>To be fair I don't blame the teachers at all. I blame the system. I blame a system that assumes there is one accepted way to teach every child in this country and one that herds 40 of them into a classroom that moves as slow as the stupidest child in that classroom (excuse the political incorrectness but damned if it isn't true). Those two facts in my opinion are very damning and it is no wonder that home schooled kids do so well.
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<br>I also blame the culture because we don't value intelligence as much as we should.
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<br>But it doesn't serve us to just sit here and argue about who is to blame for the results being disappointing, it serves us better to try to fix things. And in order to fix things you need to come to a basic concensus that throwing more money at the problem won't fix it (we spend more per child than other countries that fair better) and start to really examine what the actual problems are and how to deal with those problems.
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<br>And we need to do it on fair and open minded terms. Which means we cannot accept excuses like "We do really well, given how many students we have to cram in each classroom." If that's the problem then that's what we need to fix, but we might have to skimp in other areas to make that happen.
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<br>That means not pulling out the "all religious people are backwater ignorant fucks" when they're beating your kid on exams as well, because when you make those judgements you need to back them up and our system has failed in that regard.