Dr. George Lord

On March 27, 2008, Dr. George Lord from Partners of Public Education came to talk to us about our education system. He said he does research and policy analysis. Also, he does research on school assessment. The 10th Amendment says the government can spell out some things states cannot do, but the rest of the rule and regulations are left to the states. That's a little crazy to me. However, there is a way around this rule because the government has involvment in agricultural school. Another interesting fact is that the budget on K-12 education is a trillion dollars. That is amazing and ridiculous at the same time. We spend a trillion dollars on education, but it still sucks. There is something really wrong with that picture. Dr. Lord had lots of interesting information that I did not know. Another piece of informaton was in 1958 Russians launched the satelite Sputnik (sorry for incorrect spelling). Due to this satellite, people thought America was far behind in technology and knowledge, so Dwight Eisenhower decided to put money into science, engineering, and mathematics. He wanted to create NASA. He also said in the 1960s most of the urban riots about civil rights, anti-war, etc. were all blamed on education. We have over 200 public schools in Tennessee. (Something else I did not know) Lots of really information was that there are 41 failing schools in Tennessee. 17 failed last year. 17 schools have not met the standards for six years. 45 schools met the goal but not the benchmark. 103 schools did not meet state benchmarks. 34 met the benchmarks and inproved. Supposedly, White Station is one of the best public schools, and it did not make adequate yearly progress because of an increase in special needs students. He said there is a 15% dropout rate and a 70% graduation rate. Dr. Lord has so many interesting facts. I just cannot believe some of them because they are so ridiculous to me. I don't know really anything about public schools because I went to a public school for 12 years. My boyfriend went to Millington, and he has told me a lot about what it's like, but I could not imagine. One time I was in Millington Youth Leadership, and we had to do a presentation at Millington High School, and I have never felt so out of place in my life. I was also only in the freshman building. There were so many people, and it was so loud. I also had to walk so far to get to everything. I had no idea where anything was. It was so scary and weird. I was one of those sheltered private school kids, but I do appreciate some aspects of a private school. I really enjoyed Dr. Lord's presentation. He was very interesting, and he made the subject very interesting.