Most of the time police are exempt to and cell phone laws while driving.

@Mordhaus I agree with you, and I didn't mean to say that was the ONLY pinpoint that was worth noting. But as someone who graduated in 2002, I've seen a steady gradation of change over the past 16 years that can in a large part be traced back to those policy changes.

I'm also not blaming the textbook companies for being for-profit companies. But, much like healthcare in this country, education is something people NEED. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. I'm of the opinion that it should be treated like the social service that it is and the blame rests with lawmakers that force schools into patronage of testing producers with little or no oversight written into the law.

On your 1-5 list:

1) That can be a difficult subject, you're oftentimes doubling the cost of wardrobes for poor families, and it's the kid who can only afford 1 uniform that's full of tatters that gets bullied anyway.

2) I'm not anti-standards, but the way that those standards are assessed are not reflected in the tests the students take. Moreover, VERY FEW jobs (if any) require a person to answer A B C D over and over as a way to make a living. In other words, answering multiple choice questions is not a skill most people need.

3) Yes. My average classroom size is 28. 50 minutes with 28 kids in a room, you do the math on the individualized attention they get.

4) I've seen some counties near my locale that have instituted a no cell phone ordinance, banning them from the campus. It's possible, but one needs the support of the community.

5) Send your kid where you want, but I don't think my tax dollars should go to pay for Johnny to go to religious institutions. It feels, in that circumstance, that the government is endorsing a particular religious viewpoint to do so.

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)

@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"

*quality
*promote
Finally a good use for cell phones.

Footage retrieved later from a CCTV installed in the car wash showed more of the footage not seen on the cell phone video.

We havent lost it, we are just not looking for it hard enough sometimes. Too damn distracted by cell phones and religious books.

Please do not use religion to excuse you for being immoral.

No cell phone???

Please. I'm a Luddite, not a damn hippy.

May not have been a deliberate act; head down, looking into a cell phone, stepping off the bridge to use the head (toilet)--no watch, no radar alert---and then you have a lot of mass moving really pretty darn quick and a collision course.

Saw a cell phone video of this from another angle. It gets worse after this video cuts out.

I'm honestly amazed nobody was killed.

I'm starting a social media campaign to hurt the airline financially because they didn't provide a gluten-free organic lactose-free vegan low-fat meal option for my service rhino. And then I overheard two flight attendants sounding annoyed with my demands so I published the home phone number of the airline CEO. Fucking attention-whores.

Ever read Stephen King's book "The Cell", where people's brains are damaged by cell phones? Look for it in the non-fiction section.

Wallets, and cell phones, hair brushes, glasses cases, envelopes, small boxes, sticks, juice boxes, seat belts, toy trucks, cigarettes, cigars .....pretty much anything you can hold in your hand.
A better idea is just ban hands. No hands, you know there's no gun in their hands, problem solved. Then you don't even have to touch the second amendment to end gun violence, guns are pretty safe without fingers.
Glad that issue is resolved.

I wonder how these cell phone based VR setups compare to more traditional ones like Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. Are they as immersive, or are they more like a poor mans VR solution.