Monday, January 7, 2013
Failing Students and Giving Them High Self Esteem. And More.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Unions, Tests, Accountabilty, LIFO
Should teachers be held accountable for student achievement? Of all union teachers surveyed, 40% support this notion and 60% oppose it. Of the rare breed of non-union teachers, 52% support this and 48% do not. So I got to thinking, well, what do I think?
I would have to abstain from answering in yes or no format. See, student achievement is part of teacher success, just like patient satisfaction and non-death rates is for doctors, for example. As much as I hate to make a business comparison to schools and children, they are a teacher’s client and product so there should be some accountability.
A similar question on the survey was, “use tests to measure achievement?” with a support/do not support response. Of all union teachers, 19% support it and 81% oppose it, and of non-union teachers, 29% support ad 71% oppose. The author argues that student achievement, especially via test scores, does, and should, matter. Teachers should be held accountable.
I say…kind of. I argue that standardized tests only test a certain amount and kind of knowledge. Tests have some validity, but the current weight given on just one test is ludicrous. I feel that the tests do not assess critical thinking, creativity, innovation… most 21st century skills, and those skills that colleges and employers look for and find lacking in today’s youth. Therefore, a blended model seems ideal, one that includes test scores (because yes, it is important to know if Billy knows how to add, how to spell, and certain common knowledge facts like what are the Bill of Rights, why does the sun rise, etc), and other “assessments”. By that I mean portfolios, projects, essays, presentation
s- things you would see and use outside of school. Yes, adults take assessments in the workplace but they do more than that. And skills and intellect are more than just a test. Also, we need to look at skills growth over time. An argument I hear teachers use, which I agree with, is that it is unfair to judge a teacher by his or her students. What I at least mean by this is, let’s say you are Teacher X and PVE, Prison View Elementary. Your children are all on free lunch, half are learning English, and they are on average, 2 grades below grade level. Due to poverty, mobility is high and so you end the school year with only 1/5 of the students you started with. Ok let’s also look at Teacher Y at PME, Prestigious Millionaire Elementary. Your students take IB courses, have private tutors, no one has free lunch, all speak other languages but that is due to private lessons to learn a language aside from English and…you get the point. Testing season comes and goes and X’s students at PVE are skewed so that 85% are basic and below. Y’s students at PME are skewed so that 85% are proficient and above. So with the logic of testing and teacher accountability in place, X is fired and Y gets a bonus. Is that fair?
But on the flip side, can teachers solely blame society’s ails on student performance? I am the first to notice demographics, a culture that does not value education, etc. It is my nature as a sociologist and data person. These are indeed HUGE factors in performance. We do need to work in changing our culture to value education, we need poverty to dwindle, blab la bla. I agree. BUT a teacher should have SOME accountability. First, she/he should be held accountable via test scores (and my blended model of other “assessments”). But it should not be via raw scores or percent proficient, but rather, growth. If Teacher X has 5 students who all scored 25% correct at the end of last year, and then under her guidance and teaching, scores 55% this year, shouldn’t there be some praise? Instead of our current and proposed models, saying “hey, X, those 5 kids are still “basic” and not the NCLB necessary proficient, bad-soundung buzz, fail, you are fired” they should praise growth. And Teacher Y, whose 5 students which scores 59%, basic, last year, and under her guidance scored….hmm… 60%, yay, proficient this year, should not be rewarded for “more proficiency” when the growth was only 1%, statistically invalid.
Culture, life at home, etc is certainly a large factor in educational attainment. A teacher cannot perform miracles on 100% of students. But then I think of Shanti Bhavan in India, which takes the Untouchables- kids way worse off than our worst at risk students, and educates them and guess what? They do great in school and become professors, engineers, doctors. Above all odds. Because of a teacher. But this cannot be quite replicated in America. Why? If our kids fail school, they will just go sell drugs or go on welfare. They will still have a home (perhaps a rented trailer, but it is a home nevertheless), food via EBT (you can get filet mignon and éclairs!), a tv, a cell phone, clothes….so why get an educati
on, work your butt off, to buy the same lifestyle? In India, for these untouchables, without an education they face true dire poverty, starvation, death. So that is a motivator. However, I do argue the case that if Shanti Bhavan can do what they do, we, us American educators, can do something. We need to be held somewhat accountable because hello, we’re educators, educating. If we can’t at least help some kids succeed, why the &&%$ are we in the classroom?But of course teachers in general will never support accountability based on student performance of any kind. Why? Unions. Unions were initiated to protect against the rare cases of abuse, i.e. 14 hour days without a break, parents suing over use of “emotionally damaging” red correcting pens, etc. Worker’s rights laws now exist, in and out of unions, to protect from this. However, unions today have gone beyond that and into protecting jobs at all costs. A teacher can cheat or even worse, physically harm students and keep a job ,or at least remain either in the classroom, or on paid leave, for years until the union can justify ridding of them. So of course teachers want no accountability because that could be an eventual threat to their job security. But how can they be so selfish? To let job security trump a child’s education?
Also, no one seems to mention the disposables. The teachers that are pre-tenure. They pay union dues but have little to no protection. Due to LIFO, they are the first to be let go in a budget crisis. Maybe their test scores are equal or better compared to the neighboring classroom, but merely because of (lack of) seniority, they’re gone. They don’t have to molest children to be placed on paid administrative leave for two years. No. They don’t have to do anything, they could be a model teacher, and they’re let go without cause. But because they’re new and thus inexperienced, dumb, second class citizens, who cares? They aren’t the great ones, the master, tenured teachers. They haven’t worked their way up, so who cares about them? And if they get laid off, better them than me. A common mentality which I have actually heard teachers discuss is, “no I won’t cut my pay for the probationary staff to keep their jobs. I need my full income, and at least it is not me losing my job. Besides, they’re new teachers, so they’re not as good at teaching as I am. So I deserve to keep my job.”
Friday, July 1, 2011
RTTT (Race to The Top): State takeover of our children
From Huff Po at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/01/race-to-the-top-draft-guidelines_n_888248.html I just have to give my two cents....well more like few dollars as I have quite a lot to say. The article is in blue italics and my response in regular or italic (stupid blogger acting up) blackish gray text.
A $500 million federal competition for early education money will stress assessment, teacher training and program alignment, according to an announcement Thursday by officials from the White House, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.
So first, what does the Dept. of Health and Human Services have to do with education? Cradle to the grave alright. School is good for your health? And why must it be a competition- what, the losing schools don't deserve funding? And our teachers are trained to death, the only way to can get "better" teachers in their meaning of better would be to do a frontal lobotomy. Then teachers would just follow the scripted curriculum, test kids like mad, not complain about wages or crowded classrooms or RTTT for that matter.
"We're really announcing something historic," Roberto Rodriguez, special assistant to the president for education in the White House Domestic Policy Council, said during an evening call with reporters to announce more details about the government's Race to the Top program. "We believe that this ... can really have the same kind of impact around some of the core challenges that we faced around our early learning community."
Errr....translation....get 'em while they're young, indoctrinate or brainwash or brain-dead 'em early. The family or community is too inept to care for or educate children so let it go to the state. To quote some folks here, and I'll make it in small text to avoid confusion (hopefully), "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because
he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers,
toward his parents, toward our elected officials, toward a belief in a
supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate
entity. It's up to you, teachers, to make all these sick children well by
creating the international child of the future." Chester M. Pierce,
Professor, Department of Educational Psychiatry, Harvard University.
"We really don't know how to raise children. If we want to talk about the
equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised
in families means there's no equality, we must take them away from families
and communally raise them." Dr. Mary Jo Bane: former Clinton Administration
assistant secretary of administration for children and families in the US
Department of Health and Human Services. (holy moly, now I know why the Dept. of Health and Human Services is all gung-ho about RTTT!)
“Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent.” Elwood Cubberley (I have many posts related to this jerk.) Yep. The kids NEED to belong to the state, an early learning community.
The Race to the Top competition, he said, is a White House priority, as it relates to Obama's goal of producing the highest proportion of college-educated people in the world.
"On behalf of the president, I just want to emphasize how important this Race to the Top program really is to our larger education agenda," he said.
Great. I'm all for educated people, but my fears are if we end up with the highest % of college educated people, will we dumb down college so everyone gets a degree? If so, then our highest-educated status is just a meaningless title.
And the term "agenda" tied to education simply makes my skin crawl.
The draft criteria for the early education competition, which is the third round of the Race to the Top program, stress quality programs, teacher training with a clear set of credentials, family engagement and assessments of student learning from a young age.
How young? Will we be giving standardize tests to pre-schoolers now?
“The Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge can transform the quality of early learning programs across the country,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement. “The proposed criteria aim to establish a comprehensive approach that better coordinates, implements and evaluates high quality early learning and development programs with a focus on giving families the information they need to select the best program for their child.”
Little Billy, do you want this indoctrination- err, program with scripted curriculum, or this one, or look, this one? What Billy? They're all the same?
The criteria are open to public comment, and the final guidelines will be released in August. States must submit applications in October and grants ranging from $50 million to $100 million will be rewarded before the end of the year.
"I think it is the beginning of the breakthrough," said Pedro Noguera, an education professor at New York University. "The fact that they're putting money into early education is a good thing."
Steven Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said in an email statement that federal dollars "can help offset some of the dramatic state budget cuts we have seen over the last few years, particularly in state-funded pre-K. We are optimistic that Race to the Top will help states expand upon their existing spectrum of programs or give a jump start to those states who have not yet prioritized early learning."
Aaah the goold old dangling of the money carrot with strings attached, how very government-y of them. And as you may deduce, I'm for early learning, but a schooling agenda for our toddlers, no no no and no.
Earlier iterations of Race to the Top stressed education standards and teacher evaluations, resulting in a slew of new laws that, in some cases, tied educator management to student performance on standardized tests. Michigan's RTTT-inspired law enabled a recently announced state takeover of Detroit's lowest-performing schools. The teacher review legislation created in New York as part of the earlier RTTT application sparked a lawsuit over its implementation this week.
With nearly $4 billion in funding, the competition has had a tremendous impact -- but has been met with mixed reviews. "Simply making more money available to states when they're so desperate is a good thing. Focusing on underperforming schools is a good thing," Noguera said.
"The bad thing is prescribing the remedies they have, which are way too narrow and don’t get at the underlying causes of school failure," he continued. "I don’t like the idea of a competitive grant process when all the states need help. I don’t like the idea that the federal government is dictating strategies that are based on little research. There's very little research on judging students based on test scores."
Yes!
This time around, the focus is on unifying a disparate system of pre-K programming, improving the quality of educators and expanding accessibility for impoverished children.
"We know that disparities in access to high quality early learning programs pose a significant challenge to our economic competitiveness moving forward," Rodriguez said.
According to the new guidelines, state applications must also establish metrics for kindergarten assessment. While Noguera said assessment can be important, he added that too much assessment could distract from the bigger picture.
"Collecting data is good. What's more important is to get kids the help they need," he said. "Some means of tracking is certainly important. These days, we spend more time tracking and monitoring than we do actually helping. I hope we find the balance we need."
Yep. Testing toddlers, nearly. We as teachers do need to know "where" kindergartners are academically, to help them succeed but that is different than testing. Sure, maybe RTTT means for us to informally assess kinders. However, I highly doubt "they" promote that, and instead promote standardized tests as the textbook and testing companies profit and those profits funnel into campaigns for the government and money talks. Teacher-made free assessments do not.
And tracking...I've got some posts on that, too. Yep. Let's decide little Susie is a moron in kindergarten because she drew a flower across her test instead of bubbling in "B". Now Susie will be tracked in the vocation bound track for life, denied chemistry, French, and the like because that's not her "path".
The guidelines give budget caps for each state and emphasize a focus on "states with large, high poverty rural communities," even if those states' applications rank lower than others.
“Meeting the needs of our youngest children so they are healthy and learning is critical to our nation’s competitiveness,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “This public comment period will provide us with vital input from states and communities, from child, family and education experts, and from teachers and program directors. Together, we can work to improve standards, promote health, engage and support families, and provide children with the building blocks for success.”"Together" my arse. Your little education experts are running the show, and is it the schools' job to promote health? Just more state takeover of our daily lives my dear, as we're too stupid to know what's good fro us so best we hand it over to the omniscient state experts.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Public or Government Schools? You Decide.
Discusses how some Republicans running for office (Presidential) claim our schools are “attempting to ‘socialize your children’” calling them“government-run schools.” And Michelle Rhee (made famous through Waiting for Superman) says schools provide“one fixed set of political beliefs.”
Sadly, as I do research, these folks may be on to something. I'm not promoting a nation of private schools or republican schools or what have you, just more choice as to the schools you can attend, and less government (esp. federal) intrusion.
Well you can decide if they're public or government but I'm casting my vote for government.
The article refutes government control of schools, stating that they are run by local school board. Yes, and no. Who decides the curriculum (i.e. textbooks, standardized tests, programs such as Reading First, standards) classes needed to graduate, teacher qualifications, performance sanctions, and laws and policies (i.e. from ed code, case studies) to name a few? Not the individual school/district's teachers, parents, students, or staff. Not the school board. It is a melange of state education representatives and federal education cronies....I mean representatives who mandate and dictate these laws, policies, and processes down on the teachers, students, etc. It is a prime case of top-down management and teachers and students are just government pawns. If you disagree with me, please tell me how "we" (teachers, students, school boards, etc) then can rid of NCLB, standards, mandated curriculum, etc (that is if we chose to).
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Entrance Essay
HERE IS MY COLLEGE (MASTER'S) ENTRANCE ESSAY FROM OVER TWO YEARS AGO...I FIND IT AN INTERESTING READ ABOUT ME AND MY EXPERIENCES.
Entrance Essay for MA + Certification in Educational Administration
I’ve floundered about in my educational career, product of budget cuts, student enrollment decreases, and brighter prospects. I’ve taught little snippets of every grade; my career looks like a hodgepodge of movie shorts. Pre-school, adult education, Native American, Title-1 program improvement, California Distinguished School, alternative education, charter school, I’ve dabbled in it all. In my short career of 5 ½ years (not counting, nor necessarily discounting, my student teaching and three summers of pre-school experience) I have seen what all grade levels and varieties of schools have to offer their students, staff, and community. No worries, I am not irresolute career-wise and I know my dabbling does not compete with a teacher of thirty years experience, but I feel I bring valuable experiences to wherever I go, and wish to contribute these while at U of R.
I also bring some valuable experiences for continuities sake. I am in my third year of full-time, year-long teaching experiences where I have begun to settle down and really learn the tricks and the trades of my own classroom. I feel these are the best to focus on while explaining my past and present experiences and history.
In the 2004-2005 school year, I taught fifth grade in Montclair, CA at a Title-1, Program Improvement, Reading First school. The student population was low SES (100% free lunch), with over 75% ELL students (in my class of thirty-some, I had one native speaker and two FEP). As many schools have experienced, we were under pressure from NCLB to raise test scores and implement recommended programs in a regimented manner to assure success. I gained many valuable perspectives from this job, as I sometimes felt powerless to teach when I had to be on the same page at the same time as the next door teacher, and had to teach word-for-word from the textbook. Certainly, low SES students whom are more likely kinesthetic learners (not to mention the language barrier interfering in linguistic activities) will benefit from a spelling lesson where they discover the patterns, similarities, and differences and then categorize them accordingly- in place of the rote-learning lesson where I as the teacher dictate the spelling terms and write them on the board in the proper categories! Oh my…I was much too innovative and wanted to change the system to help the students as that’s why I became a teacher! Besides, my brain was chock-full of ideas from my credentialing classes which taught me great differentiation skills and motivational activities (thank you U of R!). In retrospect, I should not have so grudgingly accepted the scripted lessons, and I should not have snuck in a kinesthetic lesson or two, as that was not my position. And I do realize that such programs exist for a reason, the theories of which are actually marvelous and revolutionary. I would love to actually go even more research-based and try and find what works for each child and teach accordingly whenever possible. Another valuable experience I gained from my position in Montclair was data-driven instruction which is a weird curiosity for me, as I actually enjoy looking over and analyzing data – what methods and practices are reflected in this data? What cultural, economical, and other outside forces may have had a mild contribution to the data? What standards are difficult for the student base? Were the questions worded strangely, or did the teachers browse over the standard thinking the students comprehended it when they did not? How can we change our teaching to increase the test scores across the board? What other alterable factors can we experiment with? I am currently the “data dude” for my school, or at least I’m in that position for our WASC visit, so I took it upon myself and tabulated some data in visually friendly graphs to help us being data-driven instruction, as we’re lagging behind the trend. I did this all on my own volition, as I did not want our school to appear disorganized, as we didn’t even have the data in one place before I got to it.
I have taught another year in 5th grade, during the 2007-2008 school year. I will not delve into so many details; while it was quite valuable, I have discussed rather unendingly about my previous experience in the same grade level. My school in Beaumont was a California Distinguished School, and we had API and AYP scores that were sufficient- around about 800. That does not mean we did not face obstacles, but we approached it often through data-driven instruction. We also had a great school culture, one of respect, understanding, and drive to achieve. Students were constantly praised and taught to do the same, and the school was full of smiles- so much that other schools teased us (in a friendly manner) that we were just too full of smiles.
I loved working with the elementary students, in fact I had originally decided while pursuing my initial credential, that kindergarten was my calling. I had loved my summer jobs in pre-school- a job which I had stumbled upon whilst fulfilling my community service requirements at Redlands- so Kindergarten was where I just had to be. However, I changed my mind when I had to be a student teacher in a 3rd grade classroom- wow, these students were very astute, and yet still full of childlike wonder. My next student teaching position was in 5th grade and I loved that, too. However, in between my 5th grade teaching experiences, I taught at an independent study program and had K-12 students and I really enjoyed the intellectual level of high school students. They have transitioned from concrete-operational thinking to the abstract, critical thinking level also known as “Formal Operations.” They begin to tie ideas together, challenge their thinking, and discover how what they are learning actually does relate to life. I was quite excited when I received a call to do a long-term position at a continuation school teaching science, computers, and P.E. Many ask me “you taught in continuation?” as if it is part of Hades Underworld. I instinctually knew that if I gave them the respect they deserved, they’d return the favor. Many of the students were so damaged from their life so far, that they did not respect authority, adults, or even education but deep down inside they were human beings- and they had a heart. When I left that position to teach 5th grade, many of my students were upset and jealous of my future students and asked me to come back.
I have now landed a position in a Charter School teaching English I-IV and I love connecting literature to history, the present, and their own lives. My school fosters preparation for life and allows students to set their own life path- University, Community College, Vocational, or Certificate of Completion. Their schedules are more individualized to reflect their path, and we are very keen on differentiated instruction. No wonder though, as our average class size is under twenty. In a much smaller environment, students do not get lost in the crowd. They get to know their instructors and vice versa, and they get the attention and differentiation they may need.
With such experiences, one may ask why I am pursuing Educational Administration. I feel that I am a mover and a shaker, a motivator and persuader. I am an engine for change when change is needed, yet I value tradition and proven methods. I feel that many times, teachers- especially newer ones- are not given the respect they deserve. We are to be quiet, listen, and follow directions. Many times we are “tsk-tsked” for recommending too many students to the SST process, or pursuing IEP’s, GATE, Redesignation (FEP), or retention. If we have an idea and it is more than just a worksheet, we are questioned as if it is wrong to challenge an idea or assist a student in need. It costs too much money, takes too much time, or is just not how we do things around here (unless it is thought up by a master teacher.) I do not want to sound bitter, as I am not. I am actually inspired by this. I want to listen to all perspectives as they are likely valuable, and some could even be enacted. No matter who you are, you should be as valuable as any other member of a school-site team, and I want to encourage that.
I have been intuitive and done some self discovery, and come to realize that I am quite a conundrum. I am creative, an out of the box thinker, a visionary. I also of course am empathetic, understanding, a good advisor. On the flip side, I am logical and see structure and patterns in the chaos of our world. I am often told I am business-like, professional, that I am “on top of things”. I go above and beyond the call of duty, and a self-motivator. As mentioned, I put together the test data as I saw a need for it. I get back to parents in a timely manner, and complete other tasks and paperwork before others. I see how things could be, and wish to implement them. For example, I was in a long staff meeting where we kept going off on tangents- albeit interesting and relevant, they were not on the agenda and doubled the time of our meeting. Setting goals and deadlines – ten minutes for announcements, fifteen for schedule changes, etc…and then if you want to stay and discuss your ideas and tangents, we will set aside a time afterwards, not necessarily mandatory, to get things off your chest. Those notes will be summarized for your review if not in attendance, as they likely have value but went past the agenda.
People in my profession become educators for many reasons, but a major reason is to help students in need. I am a child advocate and want a fair education for all. I feel a lot of students “fall through the cracks” until it is too late, when a simple intervention (often much simpler than an SST) could have solved the problem. I feel as an administrator I could help students, faculty, parents, the community... and together we could strive towards a common goal. It takes a village to raise a child, and I’d love to be a head facilitator.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Top Five Percent: A Conspiracy Theory of Governmental Control
an article I wrote for a website...
I read an article online at http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=35990 about schools skimming the cream of the crop, the top 5%, off and into select schools and this article reminded me of a book I’d read recently about the history of our education system. I began to find connections to socialism, eugenics, the Fabian Society, and a whole lot more. Big brother is controlling your every action from birth, and it is a complex situation I hope to help unravel it for you, so please bear with me as I approach it from an educational perspective, since that is my discipline.
In the beginning of the 19th century, a new method of schooling was popping up in America’s larger cities, one in which children of the lower-class were conditioned to obedience under pretext that they were learning. These were the Lancaster schools, which were also a Hindu invention, designed with the purpose of “dumbing us down.”
Educationalist Andrew Bell found an opportunity when he studied the structure Hindus arranged for training the lower castes, about 95 percent of the Indian population. He observed that the five-category ranking of the caste system was similar to those in schools. Prestige and authority are only for the top three castes which only comprise 5 percent of the total. And remember, in the caste system, you can fall but you cannot rise. His system influenced the Lancaster schools, however his exact system did not survive past his death, as it needed close and enthusiastic supervision and small classes and was only really useful when funds were sparse and teachers in very short supply. (However, such a situation seems eerily familiar, especially in California with billions of dollars cut, teachers fired, and class size increasing. Maybe this is NCLB’s utopian situation?)
So there is some of my “5%”. But wait, there’s more!
Our IQ tests are part of this grand 5% conspiracy. Prior to WWI, eugenicists[1] evaluated racial and national groups by comparing numbers of one group or another on "lists of distinction”. Psychology, wishing to attain higher status in science, claimed to be able to go deep into the hidden regions of the brain, through an invention of an "intelligence test," an "IQ" score which would aid in what eugenicists desired- a genetically and scientifically proven method of categorizing and marginalizing people. Psychologist Carl Brigham concluded in 1923 that "the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over Alpine, Mediterranean and Negro groups has been demonstrated." To emphasize the evil of eugenics, renowned Teachers College Professor Thorndike, and his fellow psychologist H.H. Goddard at Princeton, claimed 83 percent of all Jews and 79 percent of all Italians were in the mental defective class based upon the IQ test. These very such tests infiltrated the schools, and thus every child would now be given a number based on their score. And remember, IQ scores were unvarying, unchangeable, a true mark of ability. Mental ages were dutifully entered on permanent record cards with as much assurance as Barnas Sears, William Torrey Harris, Horace Mann, G. Stanley Hall, and John Dewey had accepted skull maps drawn by their favorite phrenologists, whom believed the shape of your skull indicated your intelligence. Oh, and these men all had stakes in our educational system.[2]
This all plays into eugenics, the Prussian Education system, and the Fabian Society, so stay with me.
To quote Gatto as he said it best, “The eugenics movement begun by [Sir Francis] Galton [Darwin’s first cousin] in England was energetically spread to the United States by his followers. Besides destroying lesser breeds (as they were routinely called) by abortion[3], sterilization, adoption, celibacy, two-job family separations, low-wage rates to zest for life, and, above all, schooling to dull the mind and debase the character, other methods were clinically discussed in journals, including a childlessness which could be induced through easy access to pornography. Galtonians advocated the notion of breeding a super race.” This is Eugenics in a nutshell, and milder versions are still alive and well in our nation, the aforementioned IQ tests are part of it as you can easily infer. How else do you prove the top 5% as being justified, and how else can you scientifically categorize and prove the remaining 95% as being inferior? Through eugenic science, my dear. In fact, the Progressive Era, through eugenic influence, has practiced exclusionary labor force practices, ridding of unfit workers labeled parasites, industrial residuum, and the unemployable[4]. This eerily echoes the statistics of the “type” of people generally incarcerated, uneducated, and on welfare. One must ask if it is coincidence or not.
The late business professor and progressive Simon Patten stated that we were training the unfit, and “every improvement increases the inefficiencies which the laboring class may possess without their being thereby overcome in the struggle for subsistence that the survival of the ignorant brings upon the society.” This, to me, sounds like a call for socialized health care, welfare, etc. It is a way to appease the 95% masses and simultaneously enslave and subordinate them. This idea will tie in later, but back to education.
You have likely begun to gain a perspective that public schools are generally not for the top 5% and you would be correct. To further emphasize, The NEA (National Education Association) reports of 1911 and 1918 attacked "the bookish curricula" which are "responsible for leading tens of thousands of boys and girls away from pursuits for which they are adapted," books gave children "false ideals of culture." An interim report of 1917 asked for emphasis to shift away from history to something called "social studies"; the thrust was away from the past so that attention might be focused on the future. Their 1917 report, "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," asked for schools to teach health, vocational training, and specified behaviors; the goals of education were no longer character or mental development.
Prussia[5], in present-day Germany, was a German military state, which consciously modeled itself after Sparta. The Prussians had a remarkable education system envied world wide; it was free and compulsory (that’s good, right?) and comprised of national testing for all students in order to classify them for specific job training. Students in the system learn their rank and learn to follow orders. Prussia’s aim was social obedience of the lower class. Horace Mann[6] was the leader in having brought the Prussian education system to America which changed the face of education forever. Under his and the Prussian influence, many American dignitaries went to Prussia to study their education system first hand; they brought the methods back with them and were subsequently placed in the major teacher preparation colleges and other universities across the nation. The Prussian system was initially only adopted in Massachusetts, then in New York by Mann’s sister in law, a Peabody of The Peabody Foundation, which then spread it to the South. With the culmination of their work and that of the Prussian trained professors, the system spread like wildfire across the nation. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a man with great influence upon the Prussian system as well as a man interested in Kant and Hegel ( as well as was paraphrased and written about by Socialist Bertrand Russell) said, "Although this science [of manipulation] will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.” Fichte, Hegel, and Kant’s ideas are part of the Fabian Societies beliefs.
I’d love to keep going, but really, this is where all the pieces come together. The Fabians supported many things including health services in order for "the breeding of even a moderately Imperial race" which would be more productive and better militarily than the "stunted, anemic, demoralized denizens...of our great cities"; and a national education system because "it is in the class-rooms that the future battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity are already being lost". Google or wikipedia Fabian society or Elitism and certain key terms are abound: universal health care, liberalism, liberal reform, socialism, labor unions, tax increase…the list goes on. Fabians believe that control must rest with the “experts” and thus oppose ideas of working class control and a mass participatory democracy. The working class mass does not understand the complexities of modern society economically, politically, socially, or in any other way.[7] Suddenly, this all seems to be a big, complex, master plan of sorts to control us all. The 95% working class, controlled mass, could never take over the top 5% elitists because we wouldn’t even being to think such a thing. We’ve been trained to not question authority and not to rise up, all under the guise of social reform and governmental aid.
However, I’m sorry to the Fabian Elitists that seem to surround me. Your plan is flawed. We wore gold sashes at our high school graduations, forever more labeling us at the top5%. We attended the same private universities. We read the same liberal philosophy and sociology texts. We acted as if we subscribed to your nonsense. But you know what? Sorry, there are some of us that believe all men are created equal. We’ve I will rise up, using the ladder your system provided to me, to free them from your servitude. I will work to my death to become one of your “status quo” in the education system and I will use my mind, my passions, my constitutionally and God-given right, to take your carefully controlled system crashing down for the good of the people. 
Sources:
Gatto, J.T. “The Underground History of American Education.”
Wikipedia.com (Andrew Bell, Horace Mann, Barnas Sears, WilliamTorrey Harris, John Dewey, and G. Stanley Hall, Prussia)
Neisser, Ulric. “The School Achievement of Minority Children.” at
http://www.justicematters.org/jmi_sec/jmi_dwnlds/forgotten_history.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic&feature=related
http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1198046178
[1] http://www.justicematters.org/jmi_sec/jmi_dwnlds/forgotten_history.pdf; http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NWBi9kyb8xUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR13&dq=%22in+the+name+of+eugenics%22&ots=9NIPgoqRMD&sig=yIk_QzHtDhHzV3IcMUGa1nk5vlY#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[2] On a related tangent, EDS, which develops California’s school exams, sub-contracts out to Metritech Inc, which has a CEO and founder, Dr. Samuel E Krug, who studied psychometrics, which relates to eugenics. He has written books on personality and ability testing, computer based behavioral assessments for education, anxiety and depression, and school leadership. He also wrote about the “16 PFs”, based on the 16PF Personality Questionnaire, which remains in use by universities and businesses for research personnel selection and the like. Research has indicated that the test is useful in predicting a wide variety of behaviors, such as creativity, academic success, cognitive style, empathy and interpersonal skills, leadership potential, conscientiousness, self-esteem, frustration tolerance, coping patterns, marital compatibility, and job performance. There is an adolescent version.
[3] http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=7030bd098cca768e72d111&skin_id=701&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url
[4] Leonard, TC. “Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era”
[6] http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1198046178
[7] Pritchard, C. Social Work. http://books.google.com/books?id=eF09AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=fabian+ideology&source=bl&ots=-IQFPJmyAr&sig=IPSumbxXyLDpiZysSr8-sfXsJBY&hl=en&ei=2pp8SuKLOZPgsQOttdHvCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=fabian%20ideology&f=false