re: Smug PhD gets put in her place

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and this is teachers fault?

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Yes, but I would say it's a more systemic failure.

Look, public school is a universal, mass mandatory program controlled by the federal government in which kids from all backgrounds are forced to attend.

If anyone...ANYONE, conservative, liberal, moderate, whatever, thinks that system has a snowball's chance in hell of producing a good result, I don't know what to tell them.

No other country anywhere in the world anywhere near the size and diversity of the US tries anything like this. They know better.

The biggest predictor of school success is parental involvement. That's not something you can mandate or legislate. So you've got schools filled with kids who are there only because the law forces them to be there...neither they nor their parents care about them learning one GD thing. In fact, some of them are actively discouraged from doing so, lest they be "acting white."

So those students disrupt school all day for children who ARE trying to learn something and no one really gets much out of it.

For some reason, we still think we can force this situation instead of offering it as a public service but not requiring it, and instead requiring behavioral and academic performance standards for students. So that you don't get to go to public school just because you can fog a mirror. You actually have to behave and perform up to standards or you lose the privilege.

Poor teachers are a symptom of the system, which is doomed from the outset. The profession now attracts many candidates of questionable ability (because who else would want to wade into that mess if they had better options?) and the minority who are talented and purpose driven (at first) get burned out very quickly when they experience what they have to deal with. So they quit or at least to some degree coast.

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Who gets credited for the 4/5 of HS graduates that are literate?

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I agree that your private school education wasn't anything to brag about, because your math is off.

I gave you TWO stats, not one. The first is that 20% of all HS GRADUATES—this part is of paramount importance; we're not talking about dropouts or kids whom the system designated as failures...we're talking about the ones the system gave a stamp of approval to—are illterate. The second is that half of American adults can't read above a 6th grade level. And there's no telling what the standard of a 6th grade level is supposed to mean these days. It probably means they can read a Taco Bell menu and that's about it.

Anyway, that 80% is not really 80%. It's 80% of GRADUATES.

And it's not as though that 80% can read up a storm. Half of the total can't read past a 6th grade level.

So if you think 40% of students who were passed through 12 grades and can only read at a 6th grade level is an accomplishment worth giving credit for, you may give that credit to whomever you like. Whoever it is will doubtless consider it quite a dubious honor and will likely suspect sarcasm.

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Trump?

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What does that guy have to do with the price of eggs in China?