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"

in @eric3579's 1st reply above, there is video of such a box that prevents this attack. Similar idea to a 'faraday cage', but they found that cardboard box lined with aluminum foil was most effective.

Excitement for my plans to make myself a 9 string bass with the highest string betting guitar, using one single curved back neck in the creation of a dual fretted/single 9 string/highest guitar string etc. Opposing faced, designed to accommodate the most coil pickups/hummbuckers I can fit/ make fit. Farraday caging the parts with inconel 600 non magnetic foil (aviation grade). Use non solder crimping connections, platinum cable/wire & connectors with graduating switches/transition low to highest setting etc. Built in anti surge devices, connection.

Ok, then I'm (accidentally) correct, time lady is fine. What's the issue, then? Fan boys that gotta hate change?

She could be the best one ever...wouldn't make me a fan. Early episodes blew it all for me with the tin foil costumes and plunger armed garbage can monsters. Oddly, my wife is getting into the newer ones.
I can't get beyond an immortal Time traveling hero bothered by anything, there's more than all the time in the world to fix any problem, or go back enough to never allow a problem to exist. Any time the hero controls time, the story is blown for me, even when they invent some convoluted reason time travel won't solve this episode's problems. Kinda like the all seeing, all knowing, all powerful, all loving God that allows evil to flourish and innocence to suffer....just doesn't make sense.

They won't, ever, because they're totally full of shit tin foil hat folks making up bullshit because 1/4 of Americans will believe any insanity Trump tells them. Are you buying it?

Notice he offers zero actual specific charges that should be forthcoming, just some names of people he dislikes.
Lots of sound and fury over nothing, designed to delegitimize the investigation into Trump's crimes and those investigating them.

This is another Faux news birther/benghazi/email red herring conspiracy theory....hide and watch.

Politico has a long piece on Boehner. It includes this little gem:

On Sunday, July 17, it appeared they had a deal. Boehner and Virginia Representative Eric Cantor—whom the speaker had reluctantly brought into the negotiations, knowing the majority leader’s distrust of Obama could poison the talks—worked out some final details that morning at the White House. When the president returned from church, Boehner says, he invited them both into the Oval Office and shook their hands. Some fine-tuning remained, but in Boehner’s mind the so-called grand bargain was done. The framework included reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending; and $800 billion in new revenue. “I was one happy son of a bitch,” Boehner tells me.

The next 48 hours changed everything. On Tuesday morning, the so-called Gang of Six—three senators from each party who had been discussing their own sweeping fiscal agreement—announced a briefing for their colleagues at the Capitol. They unveiled a separate framework, totally unaware of what Obama and Boehner had agreed to. This deal included significantly more revenue. Chambliss, by then a senator, was one of the GOP Gang members and had no idea—because Boehner had been negotiating with the president in private—that their announcement would kill the speaker’s deal with the White House. Obama saw that Republican senators were endorsing a deal that included far more revenue, and knew there was no way he could sell the grand bargain to his liberal base. When he came back with a counteroffer, seeking a higher revenue number, it validated Cantor’s warnings about not trusting the president. And by that point Boehner’s members had heard enough about the grand bargain to know they didn’t like it—with the $800 billion revenue figure, much less something higher.

So the deal fell apart, and the two sides peddled their competing versions of events: Boehner’s team said the White House moved the goal posts, while Obama’s allies said the speaker couldn’t sell his own members on the deal.

@drradon -- It was cool to compare this with the limited stuff I can remember from taking an intro to fencing (foil) class in college.

There was a different parry for incoming attacks to each quarter of your body facing the opponent (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right). And that's just for 2 opponents both using the same general stance and weapon. I'd guess these guys would have different counters for each combination of stance/style, weapon of their opponent, and target area. That's a lot to remember -- although a lot would be relatively consistent across different combos.

I liked the high guard styles (two named "guard of the lady" stood out), because they seemed to pair nicely with "beat attacks" -- where you attack and swing to hit the opponent's weapon rather than their body. Gets their weapon out of position and leaves you in better position to make a second attack that they can't easily parry.

I wasn't very good at fencing. Bad footwork, not good form, and pretty slow on parries. But the one thing that let me win matches was aggression and beat attacks. The instructors and more skilled people could see it coming and dodge or otherwise counter it (especially after they figured out that was the one reliable tool in my box), but it was a fun technique to use for me. Cool to see these guys do pretty much the same thing, but just as a small part of a much bigger bag of tricks than I had.

From the comments in 2009 when this crash test was first released, they won't believe it. People said that it was "obvious" that they had removed bolts and the engine from the Bel Air and that a real crash wouldn't go that way.

Even faced with evidence that modern cars are stronger, they will still say things like:

Engineering improvements or not, the sheer weight and gauge of metals used in the 50's is far superior to the aluminum foil they make cars out of now.

Ha! It's great when you foil a robbery by not noticing it! Good job.

Yikes! We're still taxed as if we were worth $125k, and at only 1%. We don't live in city or even town limits, so our tax rates are low. Willow says we're worth over $500k now, so I hope they don't catch on and reevaluate us any time soon. I can't afford for our taxes to quadruple.

This video doesn't even begin to address the many advantages of wearing a tin foil hat to block out the harmful effects of mainstream media that it talks about. Not good enough Al Jazeera!

Shame my supermarket is closed. I would've bought 10 more rolls of tin foil for my hats.

@transmorpher
i would say we disagree but i cant even say that.
you didn't counter ANYTHING i said,you just accused me of being dishonest.

which has been pretty much your position this entire thread.i thought i was doing you a solid by laying down some history,which helps explain some facets of radical islam.

notice my wording:facets.

do you realize that i taught comparative religion and cultural religious history?
do you realize just how foolish you appear to me right now?

you want to counter my argument....by not countering my argument,and implying i am being dishonest.

ok sweetheart,
i think i see the problem here.
YOU are seeing the dynamic through a singular lens.

you want to ignore the historical implications and simply focus on islam itself?
ok,that's fine.
i find it stupid,short sighted and incredibly biased,but whatever..

yoooou have an agenda to get to don't ya?

ok.
then let us just strip the dynamic of ALL historical implications and focus solely on islam itself.
(which is why you mentioned Maajid Nawaz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Hitchens )
you clever clever boy...
i see what you did there../ruffles hair.
you are SO adorable when you are being myopic and lazy!

so what would you like to discuss?
how islam is in desperate need of a reformation?
or maybe how the original intent of islam from a spiritual perspective was hi-jacked by his cousins and turned into a political conquest machine,that subjugated ...

you know what?
why am i bothering?
you have revealed yourself to be a condescending,sanctimonious know-nothing.who read a couple of books and thinks he 'get's it".

no dude..you read sam harris.

look man,
i am not here defending islam,because as religions go,islam is kinda shit.
but to ignore how neoliberalism and american interventionism have amplified,and worsened and already crappy situation.

that's not even intellectually dishonest.
that is just plain lazy.

whats next?
you gonna do some 'thought experiments" and try to argue that at least america's "intentions" were nobel?

you WERE! weren't you!!

and this little revisionist nugget "Those countries have had problems long before any western intervention."

oooh really?
because,unlike YOU,i actually know the history of that region.
so if you want we can compare how some cities and countries were considered "progressive" and even "liberal",and even some (granted,only a few) that were considered "secular" *gasp*.

how about this,instead of me repeatedly taking you to the woodshed to give ya some of that "learnin",how about you just go look up the history of kabul,afghanistan.

that's it.just one city.

and then come back and tell me that neoliberalism,colonialism and good old fashioned empire building hasn't been a major force in the rise in fundamentalism and radicalization in the middle east.

it looks like you really ARE going to make go all the way back to the dark ages!

and dude..seriously..hitchens ROCKED,but sam harris?
no..juuust no.
i don't do apologists as a counter argument.

edit:i will say that i agree with this "There are actual muslims (such as Maajid Nawaz)that say islam has a problem(especially particular strands of it), and it needs reform. Embracing the muslims who want reform is the only way forward."

you mean that islam may need a reformation?
*gasps*/clasps hands to face.
didn't i fucking already SAY that?

ah well,foiled by my pedantic ways.

I took fencing in college, and had some preconceived ideas about men probably being better at it on average due to higher strength on average.

At least for foil fencing, that turned out to be quite wrong. With foils, strength is far less important than dexterity and footwork skill, which in my class the girls tended to be noticeably better at.

...However, aggressiveness / competitiveness / "killer instinct" was in many ways more important than either strength OR dexterity, and the males tended to exhibit those qualities far more than the females in my class. So even though the women were more technically proficient, the men tended to win matches at a much higher rate.

I found that interesting. Can't say that my experiences would speak to any sort of universal trend, but it was the clear trend in my beginner's level course.

Now this... well, this is twelve levels of wierd, if not more:

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/10/20/extraordinary-plot-wikileaks-founder-foiled-new-evidence-comes-light/

The allegations themselves were wierd enough, but this and the underlying "investigations" bear so much resemblence to shit you read in 1$ crime stories that I can't make heads or tails of it. Wierd as fuck.

As a (slightly retired) fencer I love this, but I'd say a couple of things about the description.

The 'whap on the back' needs to apply 500g of pressure for 15ms in order to count. The time rule came in a while back to discourage 'flicking' - that exact problem.

The idea of dropping someone 'before he strikes back' is central to the roots of foil (fleuret in the video) and sabre. Essentially, if your opponent is attacking you have to parry them as a priority. The foil was traditionally the practice weapon which prioritised blows to vital areas, and defence over attack. Unfortunately, this also makes them very hard to follow if you don't know what you're watching.

Great video though. Makes me want to pick up a weapon again. Feel free to imagine some tragedy that made me swear never to fence again.