Quote:AS IF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS WEREN'T DUMB ENOUGH ALREADY

Denver, Colorado has decided to dumb down what already is a government education. Denver Government Schools decided that its talented and gifted program wasn't diverse enough. So in order to "correct" this problem, it has decided to give minority and poor students extra credit in order to qualify them as highly gifted. Yes ... you heard me right. Since there aren't enough minority and poor students in the gifted programs, the government is just by God going to declare some minority and poor students as gifted anyway .. and then shove them right into the gifted program.

In a district that is mostly Latino, the gifted program drew mostly white students. The program used to rely on oral tests to measure the student's reasoning and IQ. But some educators complained that these tests are biased against students who didn't learn English as their first language and poor students who haven't had "the same life experiences as their richer peers."

I feel a tear coming on.

So what does the program look like now? Under the new system, extra credit is given to children who are "economically disadvantaged," which is often measured by whether or not the student receives federal meal benefits. Not getting a taxpayer funded lunch at school makes you dumb. Extra credit is also given to students if English is their second language. And rather than relying on "biased" reasoning and IQ tests, the district now uses a composite score of the child's cognitive tests, annual assessments, reading tests and teacher nominations. And it gets even better. Next year, the district will be considering artwork.

So before the changes, only 3% of students fit the highly gifted classification based on cognitive tests. I guess we could safely assume that students scoring somewhere in the 90th percentile would be admitted. Well in the new and improved system, students scoring as low as the 75th percentile on these cognitive tests would be considered, if they also demonstrated that they could paint a pretty picture of a rainbow, a flower or Che Guevara. Unbelievable. The whole scheme is nothing more than a feel good "everybody is a winner" attitude ... this is why we are creating a nation of ******* and candyasses who can't tell you the difference between a legislature and a ligature. So now in Colorado at what is supposed to be, the highest level of government education, we can only teach to the lowest common denominator including people who might not even be able to speak proper English!

Who's really to blame here? Let's address the parents of these truly gifted students. They should be making every necessary sacrifice to get their children the hell out of these hideous government indoctrination machines and into a private education facility where they can make the most of their talents. When all is said and done the true blame for these children not reaching their full potential will rest on the parents who turned them over to the government to be educated.

Neal Boortz

http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_8442882


Um, would it be insensitive to ask why East Indians and Asians who speak another language don't seem to have this problem?

Yes, it would be very insensitive. And politically incorrect too.

I think we should open up the gifted programs, merging it with the no child left behind mantra. All-inclusive. Everyone will be in the gifted class, to make all the kids feel supported.

Like the city on a hill, where the sun always shines and all the children are above-average.

RebelKev Wrote:

Quote:AS IF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS WEREN'T DUMB ENOUGH ALREADY

Denver, Colorado has decided to dumb down what already is a government education. Denver Government Schools decided that its talented and gifted program wasn't diverse enough. So in order to "correct" this problem, it has decided to give minority and poor students extra credit in order to qualify them as highly gifted. Yes ... you heard me right. Since there aren't enough minority and poor students in the gifted programs, the government is just by God going to declare some minority and poor students as gifted anyway .. and then shove them right into the gifted program.

In a district that is mostly Latino, the gifted program drew mostly white students. The program used to rely on oral tests to measure the student's reasoning and IQ. But some educators complained that these tests are biased against students who didn't learn English as their first language and poor students who haven't had "the same life experiences as their richer peers."

I feel a tear coming on.

So what does the program look like now? Under the new system, extra credit is given to children who are "economically disadvantaged," which is often measured by whether or not the student receives federal meal benefits. Not getting a taxpayer funded lunch at school makes you dumb. Extra credit is also given to students if English is their second language. And rather than relying on "biased" reasoning and IQ tests, the district now uses a composite score of the child's cognitive tests, annual assessments, reading tests and teacher nominations. And it gets even better. Next year, the district will be considering artwork.

So before the changes, only 3% of students fit the highly gifted classification based on cognitive tests. I guess we could safely assume that students scoring somewhere in the 90th percentile would be admitted. Well in the new and improved system, students scoring as low as the 75th percentile on these cognitive tests would be considered, if they also demonstrated that they could paint a pretty picture of a rainbow, a flower or Che Guevara. Unbelievable. The whole scheme is nothing more than a feel good "everybody is a winner" attitude ... this is why we are creating a nation of ******* and candyasses who can't tell you the difference between a legislature and a ligature. So now in Colorado at what is supposed to be, the highest level of government education, we can only teach to the lowest common denominator including people who might not even be able to speak proper English!

Who's really to blame here? Let's address the parents of these truly gifted students. They should be making every necessary sacrifice to get their children the hell out of these hideous government indoctrination machines and into a private education facility where they can make the most of their talents. When all is said and done the true blame for these children not reaching their full potential will rest on the parents who turned them over to the government to be educated.

Neal Boortz

http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_8442882


Um, would it be insensitive to ask why East Indians and Asians who speak another language don't seem to have this problem?

Are you beginning to feel as if the our American experiment is heading into its final death throw?...I used to believe that my daughter would inherit a better nation from me...But sadly Im not optimistic that we can turn around the decades of decline. As brilliant as the "Fathers" were at designing human history's greatest system of government..designed to be small,limited in power and with the liberty of its citizens in mind...We now have the largest,most powerful govt. in the history of man..that has totally forgotten its mission of liberty. Stories like this make me cry for our children and the nation we are leaving them.

Change through politics does not seem to be effective, regardless of who is in power...Government just devours us as the parasite it is.

Isnt it time for us to evolve into a better nation? One without this bloodsucking leach of a government. One that allows its people to interact voluntarilly with each other and respects property rights and liberty of its citizens. Isnt it becoming clear the government can not be limited...It will always grow and strangle the liberty of its citizens...Our own system has shown the futility of the exercize over time. Just as all the great republics throughout history have failed....Ours is in its decline.

NIU007 Wrote:Yes, it would be very insensitive. And politically incorrect too.

I think we should open up the gifted programs, merging it with the no child left behind mantra. All-inclusive. Everyone will be in the gifted class, to make all the kids feel supported.

Like the city on a hill, where the sun always shines and all the children are above-average.

Google A.R. Johnson and Davison Fine Arts. These are two magnet schools in Augusta with plenty of minorities. Difference is, the kids worked their asses off to get there and no one is telling them they need the government for them to succeed....I.e., you're a bunch of dumbasses who won't amount to nothing unless we intervene.

Black people and Hispanic people aren't stupid by ANY means. The current culture that's happening within BOTH communities is, and it's detrimental as hell to the health of their races. All over the nation kids of those backgrounds are being told that being smart is acting white. Liberals love this because it creates a victim mentality and garners them votes. Liberal Democrats don't give a rat's ass about black and Hispanic people. They care about power. Black people, in general, have entrusted their votes in the Democratic party for the past 40+ years. What have they seen? Record numbers of impoverished people, record numbers of black people on the government dole, record numbers of kids born out of wedlock, and record numbers of high-school dropouts.

Apparently they're not betters because if I saw those odds, I think I would eventually say "**** This".

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Are you beginning to feel as if the our American experiment is heading into its final death throw?...I used to believe that my daughter would inherit a better nation from me...But sadly Im not optimistic that we can turn around the decades of decline. As brilliant as the "Fathers" were at designing human history's greatest system of government..designed to be small,limited in power and with the liberty of its citizens in mind...We now have the largest,most powerful govt. in the history of man..that has totally forgotten its mission of liberty. Stories like this make me cry for our children and the nation we are leaving them.

Change through politics does not seem to be effective, regardless of who is in power...Government just devours us as the parasite it is.

Isnt it time for us to evolve into a better nation? One without this bloodsucking leach of a government. One that allows its people to interact voluntarilly with each other and respects property rights and liberty of its citizens. Isnt it becoming clear the government can not be limited...It will always grow and strangle the liberty of its citizens...Our own system has shown the futility of the exercize over time. Just as all the great republics throughout history have failed....Ours is in its decline.

The American experiment has been dead since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I don't understand why you think we'd be at odds about this just because I don't support Dr. Nutjob.

RebelKev Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Are you beginning to feel as if the our American experiment is heading into its final death throw?...I used to believe that my daughter would inherit a better nation from me...But sadly Im not optimistic that we can turn around the decades of decline. As brilliant as the "Fathers" were at designing human history's greatest system of government..designed to be small,limited in power and with the liberty of its citizens in mind...We now have the largest,most powerful govt. in the history of man..that has totally forgotten its mission of liberty. Stories like this make me cry for our children and the nation we are leaving them.

Change through politics does not seem to be effective, regardless of who is in power...Government just devours us as the parasite it is.

Isnt it time for us to evolve into a better nation? One without this bloodsucking leach of a government. One that allows its people to interact voluntarilly with each other and respects property rights and liberty of its citizens. Isnt it becoming clear the government can not be limited...It will always grow and strangle the liberty of its citizens...Our own system has shown the futility of the exercize over time. Just as all the great republics throughout history have failed....Ours is in its decline.

The American experiment has been dead since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I don't understand why you think we'd be at odds about this just because I don't support Dr. Nutjob.

Sorry for the misunderstanding...we are in total agreement...I just was ranting....You and I are in agreement the majority of the time on most subjects...The War is sticking point...but...We are there and I think we should not leave Iraq in worse condition than we found it....Hey...the Ad Hominen attack against the good Dr. was uncalled for....Lots of NutJobs throughout history were proven to be men and women of insight and virture.....Socrates...Plato...Aristotle...Jesus...Rand...ect...ect...ect

RebelKev Wrote:

NIU007 Wrote:Yes, it would be very insensitive. And politically incorrect too.

I think we should open up the gifted programs, merging it with the no child left behind mantra. All-inclusive. Everyone will be in the gifted class, to make all the kids feel supported.

Like the city on a hill, where the sun always shines and all the children are above-average.

Google A.R. Johnson and Davison Fine Arts. These are two magnet schools in Augusta with plenty of minorities. Difference is, the kids worked their asses off to get there and no one is telling them they need the government for them to succeed....I.e., you're a bunch of dumbasses who won't amount to nothing unless we intervene.

Black people and Hispanic people aren't stupid by ANY means. The current culture that's happening within BOTH communities is, and it's detrimental as hell to the health of their races. All over the nation kids of those backgrounds are being told that being smart is acting white. Liberals love this because it creates a victim mentality and garners them votes. Liberal Democrats don't give a rat's ass about black and Hispanic people. They care about power. Black people, in general, have entrusted their votes in the Democratic party for the past 40+ years. What have they seen? Record numbers of impoverished people, record numbers of black people on the government dole, record numbers of kids born out of wedlock, and record numbers of high-school dropouts.

Apparently they're not betters because if I saw those odds, I think I would eventually say "**** This".

Well I'd guess that Black people look at the Dems and Repubs and figure the Dems are the lesser of the two evils. Dems talk about health care for everyone, raising minimum wage, social programs. Repubs talk about NAFTA, bombing Iraq, globalization, laissez-faire capitalism, unlimited immigration, etc.

FDR might have put the country down the road of forgetting what the founding fathers wanted, but I can promise you they would not like the Patriot Act either, something you are in support of Kev.

NIU007 Wrote:Well I'd guess that Black people look at the Dems and Repubs and figure the Dems are the lesser of the two evils. Dems talk about health care for everyone, raising minimum wage, social programs.

So, they succeeded then. They turned a people that were self-reliant into a people that were government-reliant.

Great work! It's worked WONDERS for the black population thus far. Again, highest percentage of uneducated people, highest murder rate, highest drop-out rate, highest rate of births out of wedlock, and highest rate of single-parent households. ....but when anyone tries to criticize this, well....



They're trying to do the same f'n thing with global warming. Liberals have been on a mission to make ANY disagreement with the issues they support not politically correct.

People like to ***** about the South when it comes to racial issues, but I can tell you, as a cracka, white people have a vested f'n interest in seeing black people succeed. Moronic liberals in San Fran, Olympia, and Boston don't. Why? The major concentration of black people in this country are in the South. Hell no we don't want to see them fail.

Liberal policies have failed the black people. There is NO ******* other way of putting it. Don't believe me? Watch a black person go "off the plantation" and become a conservative. Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain, Walter Williams, Armstrong Williams, Bill Cosby, Ken Hamblin, Condy Rice.......ALL House Negroes according to the left. Why? They can't have their own views?

You wanna see a racist? IMO it's the f'n idiots that tell black people how they should think. ....and that is the GDamn left.

mlb Wrote:FDR might have put the country down the road of forgetting what the founding fathers wanted, but I can promise you they would not like the Patriot Act either, something you are in support of Kev.

Who said I was for the Patriot Act? I AM for certain practices written into the bill, however.

People, damnit, this is what liberals have brought you to:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/ar...ge_id=1773

"White Chicks" with the Wayans Brothers, I laughed my ass off.

Chappelle Show, when he was a white anchor, I laughed my ass off.

Eddie Murphy on SNL playing a white guy, I laughed my ass off.

It's friggin' Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr., what, is this going to be something serious like Saving Private Ryan? GDamn we need a rolleyes smilie.

RebelKev Wrote:

NIU007 Wrote:Well I'd guess that Black people look at the Dems and Repubs and figure the Dems are the lesser of the two evils. Dems talk about health care for everyone, raising minimum wage, social programs.

So, they succeeded then. They turned a people that were self-reliant into a people that were government-reliant.

Great work! It's worked WONDERS for the black population thus far. Again, highest percentage of uneducated people, highest murder rate, highest drop-out rate, highest rate of births out of wedlock, and highest rate of single-parent households. ....but when anyone tries to criticize this, well....



They're trying to do the same f'n thing with global warming. Liberals have been on a mission to make ANY disagreement with the issues they support not politically correct.

People like to ***** about the South when it comes to racial issues, but I can tell you, as a cracka, white people have a vested f'n interest in seeing black people succeed. Moronic liberals in San Fran, Olympia, and Boston don't. Why? The major concentration of black people in this country are in the South. Hell no we don't want to see them fail.

Liberal policies have failed the black people. There is NO ******* other way of putting it. Don't believe me? Watch a black person go "off the plantation" and become a conservative. Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain, Walter Williams, Armstrong Williams, Bill Cosby, Ken Hamblin, Condy Rice.......ALL House Negroes according to the left. Why? They can't have their own views?

You wanna see a racist? IMO it's the f'n idiots that tell black people how they should think. ....and that is the GDamn left.

I'm just sayin'....listen to the Republicans in their speeches, I don't really hear anything that would sound attractive to blacks in particular, or the lower and even middle classes in general. The Repubs want to lower taxes for businesses and the wealthy and expect it to trickle down to everyone else. And they want unfettered capitalism and globalization which is probably ideal for business but risks moving most of the high-paying jobs to other countries. It might work, it might not. But I can't speak for blacks of course, I'm just guessing here.

Your stats on the black population in general don't say much without a comparison of how they've done under Republicans. At what point were blacks self-reliant and then switched to government-reliant? Wasn't that long ago that blacks were still trying to get the same rights that whites had.

Straying off topic here...anyway, I pretty much agree with your assessment of the article you posted originally. BTW, my brother (twin brother, no less) was put in a "gifted" program in elementary school. He considered it mostly a punishment because they ended up doing more schoolwork than everybody else. Wasn't all it was cracked up to be. We used to razz him about being "gifted" too.

NIU007 Wrote:I'm just sayin'....listen to the Republicans in their speeches, I don't really hear anything that would sound attractive to blacks in particular, or the lower and even middle classes in general. The Repubs want to lower taxes for businesses and the wealthy and expect it to trickle down to everyone else. And they want unfettered capitalism and globalization which is probably ideal for business but risks moving most of the high-paying jobs to other countries. It might work, it might not. But I can't speak for blacks of course, I'm just guessing here.

...and that says a lot about you. I guess blacks are supposed to just keep voting Democrat and be relegated to second-class citizenship. Businesses should have NO taxes because, to be quite honest with you, they don't pay them anyway. They pass them off to their consumers. There should be ONE tax rate in this country. Read the GDamn Constitution for a change.

Quote:Your stats on the black population in general don't say much without a comparison of how they've done under Republicans. At what point were blacks self-reliant and then switched to government-reliant? Wasn't that long ago that blacks were still trying to get the same rights that whites had.

My stats? They're not my stats. Black people haven't voted Republican for decades.....their lives have gotten worse, but they STILL vote Democrat. Smart? Hell no. It's easy to call black Democrats morons. However, that would be "racist". ....even though I think anyone that votes that way is a moron. It's also quite condescending of you to discount how self-reliant black people actually were in the 50's and before. Black people had the strongest family unit in the country. Maybe you're biased, or haven't researched it, but it's true.

Quote:Straying off topic here...anyway, I pretty much agree with your assessment of the article you posted originally. BTW, my brother (twin brother, no less) was put in a "gifted" program in elementary school. He considered it mostly a punishment because they ended up doing more schoolwork than everybody else. Wasn't all it was cracked up to be. We used to razz him about being "gifted" too.

I felt the same way. My cousin was in the gifted program at Byram High School. He's either working on his PhD or already has it now in Music. He's conducted in Sochi, Russia and lives in Colorado now. His name is Sean Burns, graduate of the U of Colorado and Centenary College.

RebelKev Wrote:

NIU007 Wrote:I'm just sayin'....listen to the Republicans in their speeches, I don't really hear anything that would sound attractive to blacks in particular, or the lower and even middle classes in general. The Repubs want to lower taxes for businesses and the wealthy and expect it to trickle down to everyone else. And they want unfettered capitalism and globalization which is probably ideal for business but risks moving most of the high-paying jobs to other countries. It might work, it might not. But I can't speak for blacks of course, I'm just guessing here.

...and that says a lot about you. I guess blacks are supposed to just keep voting Democrat and be relegated to second-class citizenship. Businesses should have NO taxes because, to be quite honest with you, they don't pay them anyway. They pass them off to their consumers. There should be ONE tax rate in this country. Read the GDamn Constitution for a change.

Quote:Your stats on the black population in general don't say much without a comparison of how they've done under Republicans. At what point were blacks self-reliant and then switched to government-reliant? Wasn't that long ago that blacks were still trying to get the same rights that whites had.

My stats? They're not my stats. Black people haven't voted Republican for decades.....their lives have gotten worse, but they STILL vote Democrat. Smart? Hell no. It's easy to call black Democrats morons. However, that would be "racist". ....even though I think anyone that votes that way is a moron. It's also quite condescending of you to discount how self-reliant black people actually were in the 50's and before. Black people had the strongest family unit in the country. Maybe you're biased, or haven't researched it, but it's true.

Quote:Straying off topic here...anyway, I pretty much agree with your assessment of the article you posted originally. BTW, my brother (twin brother, no less) was put in a "gifted" program in elementary school. He considered it mostly a punishment because they ended up doing more schoolwork than everybody else. Wasn't all it was cracked up to be. We used to razz him about being "gifted" too.

I felt the same way. My cousin was in the gifted program at Byram High School. He's either working on his PhD or already has it now in Music. He's conducted in Sochi, Russia and lives in Colorado now. His name is Sean Burns, graduate of the U of Colorado and Centenary College.

It wasn't condescending, I was asking a serious, logical question. I wasn't around in the 50s or most of the 60s for that matter.

Are you saying that anybody that votes Democratic is a moron?