Way harder? What do you have to support this?

Perhaps Greg it is harder because when we were growing up, you merely had to know the facts of education to excel, i.e. the reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Now, due to the influx of PC correctness, revisionist history, pseudo science, and political brainwashing, our children are not only responsible for the basics, but they also are held to whatever particular agenda their teachers are pushing. And god help them if dare to question it.

Yep, and we didn't have to suffer with the internet and spell check. We had it easy, with books, metal shop and sniffing handouts, fresh off of the mimeograph machine. But I guess wfb is correct, we never thought that we had it hard, much less harder than our parents.

IDK - my kids all attended colleges that were highly ranked and selective in admissions and they all said it was harder in high school - especially with their having to work parttime jobs, participate in sports and charity work AND study. They felt so well prepared for college and had a no adjustment period thanks to our great public schools. Perhaps it depends on the family AND the school system but ours is fantastic. BTW I'm not being "political" like "Patriot" - I'm just stating what most parents I have spoken to have said about "kids these days" and how much more expectations are put on them to succeed. I do agree with "Patriot" that not everyone should go to college.

@Patriot, please stop drinking the tea! Continuing, continual education is a requirement for each and everyone of us for advancement in this world. Check today's NY Times for Thomas Friedman's piece.
As to the advice for November: we need to "Stay the Course" with President Obama. Turn off the tube; read; reflect; and realize that morally and ethically this Nation will be at its worst if Romney and Ryan ever were given any more power than they already have. Re-elect Obama

@Nick-Seriously. This man and his admin is steering this Country to disaster!! I for one am in no way better off than I was 4 years ago. Obamas policies are crippling this Country!!! He has no plan to pay for his so called great ideas. Socialism will not and does not work

are you a ss teacher

@C.Sanders - I won't argue that we need more high-performing schools because you are right, but we also can't ignore the factors of each school. Poverty is a huge issue in Racine and, thus, plays a huge part in a child's success or lack thereof. How much of an issue does poverty play in WFB? I'd gander not much.

The Wisconsin Education funding mechanism is set up to give poorer districts more state shared revenue than richer districts. So while Racine may collect less in property tax revenues, it gets more in state aid.

The total cost to educate one student in Racine 2010-11 was $11,612. Whitefish Bay spent $11,291 for the same year (this was strictly classroom dollars, not transportation, facility or other costs).

It's not just HOW much is spent, but how well they spend it. With Governor Walker's reforms, there is no reason we shouldn't see an improvement in Racine's test scores. If not, the voters need to fire the Board of Education and put people in there that will get the job done!

@Heather Asiyanbi....The North Shore public schools are modeled more on a traditional private prep schools. In comparison, they are smaller student bodies and usually the majority of students range from middle class to upper class, many coming from families of academics and professionals. The further north you go along the shore, the less diverse the student body becomes. The majority of graduates go on to four year colleges and universities. Whitefish Bay, Shorewood, Nicolet and Homestead all fall either at the top or near the top in schools in the state. I agree with you that SES has a great deal to do with the students of the institutions mentioned.

Lyle - your assumption about Nicolet high school is very wrong. It is hardly a school with a small student body. It also draws from Glendale as well and there is a lot of poverty there. They also take in chapter 220 students. I went there and my kids go there. They are considered a college prep school but liking it to a private school is a mistake.

If we're to look at things honestly, all a public school can do is provide a student with the opportunity to succeed. If the student is not taking full advantage of the opportunity, for whatever reason, who's fault is it really?

Given that Racine and WFB are nearly equal in spending on a per student basis, the only way to truly find out is to switch the entire teaching staffs for a year and see what happens.

If WFB results go down with the RUSD teaching staff in place, then we'll know that the teachers bear a grunt of the responsibility.

But if WFB results remain consistent, then it just says that WFB students are more apt to take advantage of the opportunities provided to them than the students attending RUSD.

If the later ended up being the reality of the situation, who would be to blame for RUSD's performance? How would you honestly fix the performance gap found in RUSD as government can only provide the opportunity - it's up to the student to take full advantage of the provided opportunity.

Are the parents to blame? If so, what do you do about it? What can you do about it?

Poverty is merely an excuse, as people escape from poverty all the time. If some are capable of doing it, then the opportunity clearly exists for all to be able to do if only they desire to do so enough.

Attitude is key - and it would seem that government dependence only acts to worsen a person's / families attitude.

@Sunrocket....I know that Nicolet has a large student body as well as Homestead. Nicolet does have a number of lower income students from the Glendale area and like Shorewood and Whitefish Bay accept a number of 220 students, but Nicolet, like the other three schools, I mentioned, have a very rigorous program. The secondary school is only the finishing program and one needs to look at the feeder schools also. Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, Fox Point - Bayside, East Glendale, Green Tree, Mequon and Thiensville are the feeder communities, which feed into the high schools and most of the students are pretty well set.

@Anti-Alinsky - I won't argue with you about the importance of elections because we're on the same side there. But what needs to be considered is how many special ed students are in the entire student body. My neighbor is a 1st grade teacher with 32 kids in her class and an additional teacher made possible because of the SAGE program. But, out of those 32 kids, 8 to 10 of them are designated as special ed, and those kids have special needs that get mandated special attention. So while you can say RUSD and WFB cost about the same, there are many factors that also must be considered including poverty and special needs.

In defense of both the teachers and the taxpayers, teachers and money can only do so much. The families children come from are a huge factor in the success of children. Poor families with a "tiger mom" (or dad) can't be held back, which is one reason the ivy schools have been accused of trying to limit the number of Asians they enroll, because there are too many.

Invest in your own children's social and cognitive development with your own love and time and get your family the heck out of the inner city as fast as you possibly can.

Heather, great point about special ed, but I think that is more of a symptom rather than the problem. I refuse to believe that, as a whole, people that live in lower income areas are less intelligent than those in more affluent areas. I do believe that the culture in under-performing areas is largely to blame. We need to invoke a fundamental change in these areas so that they become assets to this country rather than a burden.

It used to drive us nuts when my son would write a paper and get a high grade on it. The teacher did not grade on misspellings, bad punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure.

Lyle, Have to admit that you hit a home run on your response to this issue.

Couldn't have said it better myself Lyle!

Lyle hit the target.

I agree with the Eagle Scout comment and I think it's very sad.

@David Tatarowicz....I still don't understand why we changed secondary school curriculum and eliminated vocational arts courses. I was tracking one student who wasn't motivated to go on to college after graduation. He joined the military and received training in diesel mechanics. After discharge he then attended on of the technical schools and got a job with a local manufacturer of generators. He is now making a middle class living. His only complaint was that he felt he wasted about three or four years when he could have gotten basic skills training in secondary school.

David - are you tracking every student through high school, honor roll, college and post college? Petty jealousy.

@Marie: assignments in the AP classes at GTOWN HS that my daughter has taken cannot be turned in late at all. She broke her leg last year, and we spent the evening late at the hospital until nearly midnight. We have raised her to always have the assignment or project done the day before it is due, just in case. She dragged herself in, half asleep, on crutches and handed over the flash drive with the project on it. It was good for her to see that like adults in the real world, when it is due, it is due. She said she was glad that we had raised her and her sister that way. I also laugh a little at the article. When they were in elementary and middle school, the cut off for an A-/B+ was 93, not 90/89. In addition, many of the GTOWN AP classes do not give out any A+ grades, only an A, regardless of how high the percent is. That seems to annoy her.She enjoys her studies and doesn't understand why she should not get the + if she gets 100 or a 99. So, to answer the question, YES, it is an accomplishment IF the school you are attending makes it tough to get the good grade. If there is a curve, then NO.

Make sure you get the bumper sticker.

I went to Nicolet in the 70's and it was not easy. With class sizes over 500, Madison only took the top 10% so there was indeed competition. I know people today think kids have it much harder but think about it - prior to the late 90's you actually had to go to a library and look things up in a book for reference, there was no internet, no social media to converse with classmates. You had to actually pick up a phone. Most of us also had jobs back then as well as sports and extracurricular activities. I am also reminded of my forefathers that in addition to school worked jobs with much longer hours than kids do now. I am not saying that the curriculum is the same as it was in the past but parents today just think their kids have it harder because they are coddled too much. It is the parents that are competitive. They all want to think that their little Johnny is so much more special than my Billy because he get's A's and plays volleyball and soccer too. I left the house at 7 a.m. in high school, went to school, did after school things, worked, came home, ate dinner, and did homework. All without my parents steering my way. They expected and assumed I got my homework done without standing over me the whole time. If I had not done it - my grades were reflected. I truly fear for the future with this current generation.

I like the idea of an exit exam, but it seems that a pass/fail system without grades or class rankings would make it difficult to identify students that would benefit from taking honors/AP level courses, and weed out those that aren't academically prepared to be taking those courses.

A young relative of mine (a reverse 220 student) didn't get a break on academic performance because of an outside activity in high school, but it did provide the opportunity to use that activity as a phy ed independent study, freeing that hour for another AP class.

While that worked well for the relative, I have to reflect that this is yet another symptom of the uneven playing field. Another MPS student without an extracurricular activity may not have had the same opportunity.

@CowDung...There wouldn't be such a thing as AP courses. Just like when I was in school, harder courses were only offered to higher achieving students and could only be recommended by instructors.

I respect your opinion BUT in a community like ours where the kids work hard it will not reflect a bell curve. Given that kids perform well on the ACT, SAT, SAT 11 and and the AP tests that is proof that many are, indeed, above average.

There is a lot of pressure on these kids - why burn them out by making sure there are enough C's to make YOU happy? Especially when the kids have shown they have mastered the material in class.

But they have time to text, IM, facebook....etc. Some studies show students average 6 hours per day on these items.

Oh Greg.....like YOU didn't have time to watch TV, talk on the phone and attend football and basketball games (a lot of kids don't attend all of these games like I did bc they are busy doing their own activites - including studying). I for one wasted a lot of time practicing fancy ways of signing my signature (including the dreaded o over the letter i) and trying to figure out the best ways to "bump into" cute guys in the hall between classes LOL>

wfb51, It sounds like you had a lot of time to hone you excuse making skills too. I guess I live in a world of reality and I only pointed out that the claims of "reflux and dark circles" are overreaction, by the gullible. I had many activities outside of school, but my parents never hopped on the overworked student pity bus. If your kids are that overworked, you had better find out why, but I bet it is because they are feeding you BS, with a pitch fork and you are eating every bit of it.

"Honestly, you don't have a clue what goes ion n someone else's house - what stupidity to comment."
Take your own advice. Read the thread again and see who went off track. As for the rest of your questions, my kids attend Marquette and Xavier, they worked hard and played hard, but they never played their parents for a fool. At any time my kids were over tired, we addressed the problem and found the source to be other than school work.

Please quote WTF you think you are talking about.