Education should lift all students

[Kacey]

It's about time someone not currently in a school realized this; as a teacher, I'm glad it's come - but horrified that it took so long.

Education should lift all students - by Susan B. Neuman

.....

Despite the heroic attempts of many dedicated educators, NCLB-inspired school reforms, like so many others before, have failed and will continue to fail to change the trajectory of our disadvantaged children.

.....


The failure is not a result of the president's espoused "soft bigotry of low expectations," but because many children grow up in circumstances that make them highly vulnerable.
.....The impetus for change built into NCLB was to effectively "shame" schools into improvement. We now see that the shame game is flawed.


Schools fail not because they lack resources, or quality teachers. School influences are overwhelmed because so many children are molded by highly vulnerable and dysfunctional environments. The rhetoric of leaving no child behind has trumped reality.
.....

Shaming schools has become the cure to everything but the common cold, distracting attention from the devastating effects of poverty. We need to move beyond touting school reform as the magical elixir. It is important, but we need to mobilize other institutions to help solve this problem.
.....

All this suggests that perhaps schools don't have exclusive rights to education.


If we are to take seriously the prospect of really leaving no child behind, we need to support education whether delivered in K-12 schools, in clinics, child-care centers, community-based organizations, libraries, church basements or storefronts. By using the science of what we know works, we can help millions of children growing up in highly vulnerable circumstances to achieve a more promising future.

 

[terryl965]

All I can say is I agree

 

[stickarts]

Thanks for posting this!

 

[Steve]

Okay. I agree that NCLB was an empty bill that does nothing constructive for kids or improving education. But, what really irritates me about this article is that it paints the school teachers specifically, and the rest of the education system by implication, as without fault.

The reality, in my opinion, is that we need to overhaul public education. We should pay teachers more money so that we can attract the best and brightest, and then hold them accountable to much higher standards. We need to fix our broken curriculum, and make some fundamental decisions about what our bottom line is going to be. What are the things EVERY child should know in order to be productive and have a chance at a happy life. We also need to fix many of the issues addressed in the article, but this article isn't about fixing the issues; it is about placing blame... and deflecting blame from the school teachers and school administrators.

 

[Makalakumu]

I think you are on the right track, Steve. As an educator, I see a system that isn't built to educate students. It's a system that is built to support itself. It's a system that's built to teach management and socialization. Which is exactly what the thinkers of the early 20th century, like John Dewey and Alexander Ingliss, wanted to create.

I think that real education reform is going to have to give people the choice to direct their own education rather then having the "experts" tell them what they need to know. We've become a society that is completely dependent on "talking heads" and therefore claims no responsibility when that advice doesn't work.

Now, I'm not advocating that we "let the idiots be idiots." I'm saying we need to have options. Students should be able to go to any school they want, if they meet the standards, on the government's dole. This, IMHO, should include Universities btw.

The bottom line is that I think there should be no such thing as public or private school. Any kind of education needs to be accessible to any child if they need that. And PARENTS need to be able to decide this, not some bureaucrat five thousand miles away in DC that's got some social agenda to push.

Get the government out of schooling. The only thing the politicians need to do is write the checks. Schools that perform will get the students. Schools that don't won't. It's that simple.

 

[Touch Of Death]

I think you are on the right track, Steve. As an educator, I see a system that isn't built to educate students. It's a system that is built to support itself. It's a system that's built to teach management and socialization. Which is exactly what the thinkers of the early 20th century, like John Dewey and Alexander Ingliss, wanted to create.

I think that real education reform is going to have to give people the choice to direct their own education rather then having the "experts" tell them what they need to know. We've become a society that is completely dependent on "talking heads" and therefore claims no responsibility when that advice doesn't work.

Now, I'm not advocating that we "let the idiots be idiots." I'm saying we need to have options. Students should be able to go to any school they want, if they meet the standards, on the government's dole. This, IMHO, should include Universities btw.

The bottom line is that I think there should be no such thing as public or private school. Any kind of education needs to be accessible to any child if they need that. And PARENTS need to be able to decide this, not some bureaucrat five thousand miles away in DC that's got some social agenda to push.

Get the government out of schooling. The only thing the politicians need to do is write the checks. Schools that perform will get the students. Schools that don't won't. It's that simple.

On the other hand minimum standards for the population is healthy. God forbid if some large group of people suddenly chooses not to read. How would you solve the major problems that would develop?
Sean

 

[TheOriginalName]

Now i'm not a teacher and i'm not in the USA - so i have no idea about this NCLB thing.

What i do though is tutor math - only to a select few people in my own time, not professionally and not for profit.

What i see in the Australian school system is a system that delievers information. The system almost spoon feeds these kids everything they need to know - which leaves no room for the students to discover and become excited about learning.

Now i know that one-on-one is a lot easier to do but the majority of the kids i tutor go from failing math to excelling and it's not because i force them to memories theories and such. I would like to believe it's because i show them basics and then allow them to pursue idea - be it with a bit of a push at times - but this journey of discovery gets them excited, which makes math exciting.

So as an outsider i would think a good start would be - better pay for teachers (they do a rough job on little pay) and smaller, more initimite class sizes. And perhaps more allowance in the curicullum to allow the teachers and more importantly the students to explore.

Just my ideas though.......

 

[Kacey]

Okay. I agree that NCLB was an empty bill that does nothing constructive for kids or improving education. But, what really irritates me about this article is that it paints the school teachers specifically, and the rest of the education system by implication, as without fault.

The reality, in my opinion, is that we need to overhaul public education. We should pay teachers more money so that we can attract the best and brightest, and then hold them accountable to much higher standards. We need to fix our broken curriculum, and make some fundamental decisions about what our bottom line is going to be. What are the things EVERY child should know in order to be productive and have a chance at a happy life. We also need to fix many of the issues addressed in the article, but this article isn't about fixing the issues; it is about placing blame... and deflecting blame from the school teachers and school administrators.

As a teacher, I certainly agree that teachers play a large role in whether or not students learn - on the other hand, the last statistics I saw stated that students spend 13% of their waking life, from 5-18, in school - and yet, teachers/school systems are considered the sole responsible person/institution for learning, and that's not appropriate either.

I don't see the article as placing blame away from the teachers/schools - I see it as pointing out that NCLB, as a law designed to improve education, is not doing the job it was intended to do, because it places sole responsibility on the teachers/schools and ignores all other influences on the children and the childrens' achievements... or lack there of.

 

[Makalakumu]

As a teacher, I certainly agree that teachers play a large role in whether or not students learn - on the other hand, the last statistics I saw stated that students spend 13% of their waking life, from 5-18, in school - and yet, teachers/school systems are considered the sole responsible person/institution for learning, and that's not appropriate either.

I don't see the article as placing blame away from the teachers/schools - I see it as pointing out that NCLB, as a law designed to improve education, is not doing the job it was intended to do, because it places sole responsibility on the teachers/schools and ignores all other influences on the children and the childrens' achievements... or lack there of.

NCLB fails because it assumes that the State can be the parent. Thus the admonisment to schools usually equates to "you're a bad parent."

Think about this as a special education teacher. My wife is also a SPED teacher and she is constantly griping about these goals that she writes for the parents and the teachers are doing everything they can to undermine them because they don't meet the accepted curriculum for every other child.

...which begs the question, should "education" lift all students...

I'm happy with changing education to learning.

The system we have now is a backbiting dysfunctional system, exactly like a dysfunctional family, except that it was designed like this on purpose. There are so many levels of bureaucracy involved in the education of teachers that no one knows how to relate to each other anymore.

Get rid of it all, its all BS...and I can say that with authority after going through a Masters program and learning the so-called Action Research method of research. No scientific controls, no social tests to determine whether something works or not, anything can be "right" depending on your pre-existing bias. All of this is coming down on us from up high. I've been inducted as a high priest to teach this my underlings.

No way. No how.

This is the research that your "experts" are using to tell you what is best for your child. No one ever bothers to ask where certain ideas come from and the "experts" are literally taught how to cherry pick the data they need in order to support whatever idea is pushed on them.

Alright, rant over...

 

[MA-Caver]

On another thread it's been said (probably by me) that the American educational system has been on a (intentionally designed) decline for many years. Now if this is starting to sound like some off the wall conspiracy theory then skip to the next post.
American school children and adults are at low marks compared to the rest of the world in the basics of education. We got some of the finest higher educational schools in the world yes (but not exclusively) but grade school and upper school quality has suffered.
Partially because of low pay rates of teachers/instructors which doesn't help motivate them to get up each morning 9 months out of the year to work with sometimes unruly, undisciplined, uncaring, unmotivated, uninvolved and sometimes dangerously volatile students.
Some schools have the same curriculum that the parents of the present students have studied. Text books are updated but the world changes so quickly that they are often behind by a decade. New updated books are expensive even in bulk and budget cuts to public school systems and limited budgets often force schools to use and re-use a text book which would eventually be far out of date. I remember during my high-school years of using a text book that actually had my teacher's name in it. What does THAT say? What did the teacher say about it when shown... "hey cool, that's a good book!"
The decline of the quality has been theorized as intentionally dumbing down American children because generally smart people, educated people tend to ask questions... A LOT of questions when they're adults... particularly when they reach voting ages. You get a lot of smart/educated adults asking a lot of smart/educated questions ... you'd better have smarter and more better educated answers.

"The educational system is based on grades..." I heard one speaker say, "...there should be no grades. What are they good for? Except to identify whether or not you can be controlled. It says that you didn't tell them to f.o. so often that they threw you out."
Why does this statement ring true with me? Granted I dropped out but only because I was asked to repeat the same grade three times because I moved from one school system to another and finally into another. There was no standard level across the board, so my old school's equivalent of a 9th grade education wasn't high enough for my new school and again for an entirely different school. I took the tests and SATs and all of that (be danged if I even remember what my scores were ) and eventually ended up taking a G.E.D. and was shown to have an English/Science level of first year undergraduate school.

The American school system definitely needs a kick in the pants and that right soon. Our children's lives depend upon it. Teaching no longer holds the popularity that it used to because of the rate of pay is so small compared to other jobs/careers out there. Only those who are truly motivated and idealistic (with respects to Kacey and other teachers on this forum) get into it because they actually really care about our children's future. Hell, if I had a degree I'd probably find a jr. high school to start teaching at.

Now I do understand that to BE a teacher one must have a college degree and one specified for teaching and a degree in whatever course (Math, Engrish, Science, whatever) they want to teach, and that's good. But how to keep that level of enthusiasm they hold when they go into their first year to last into their 10th and 15th and 20th year. I've had teachers as enthusiastic as Professor Binns.

Parents must also be heavily involved with their child's education and for god's sake they've got to get their noses out of the stigma of "you're not treating my child equally or giving my child enough attention and bla bla fricken blah!" Try dividing your attention by a factor of 20 or 30 for 7 hours a day and see what you can come up with.

 

[Steve]

As a teacher, I certainly agree that teachers play a large role in whether or not students learn - on the other hand, the last statistics I saw stated that students spend 13% of their waking life, from 5-18, in school - and yet, teachers/school systems are considered the sole responsible person/institution for learning, and that's not appropriate either.

I don't see the article as placing blame away from the teachers/schools - I see it as pointing out that NCLB, as a law designed to improve education, is not doing the job it was intended to do, because it places sole responsibility on the teachers/schools and ignores all other influences on the children and the childrens' achievements... or lack there of.

Okay, first of all, I agree with you that we need to figure out, as a society, where we really stand on the issue of surrogate parenting. Our society works great when the parents are involved. No doubt about it. When the parents are working with the teachers, the students benefit. The problem is when the parents AREN'T involved. Teachers/educators are ill equipped, ill trained and undermined at every level to help raise kids, but are often all the kids have. On the other hand, good parents can overcome incompetent teachers.

I also, as I said before, agree that the NCLB act was a bust, favoring the private schools over the public and establishing unrealistic requirements for schools without funding them.

Regarding the article, if you don't acknowledge the bias in the writing, I guess I can't make you.

BUT, I want to say this. While I'm all for acknowledging the problems with the NCLB act and education in general, the fact is that for many kids, the system works. I don't agree with those of you suggesting that there is a conspiracy to under-educate the kids, or that the government is trying to... I don't know what.

My kids are getting a terrific education. They're both being challenged far above their grade level and I can say that, in general, their spiritual, physical and intellectual development is being addressed. I can't complain. In my first post I used the word "overhaul" and in retrospect, I was irritated by the bias in the article and overstated my position as a result. Reform is, I think, a more appropriate word. We can do better, but I don't agree that the system is entirely broken.

 

[Marginal]

NCLB's a joke. Peak to Peak, a Colorado charter school recently got rated highly on their text scores. The whole secret of their innovative approach? Boot out under performing kids. Refuse to teach kids with learning disabilities etc.

 

[Kacey]

NCLB's a joke. Peak to Peak, a Colorado charter school recently got rated highly on their text scores. The whole secret of their innovative approach? Boot out under performing kids. Refuse to teach kids with learning disabilities etc.

And this is how many of the "high performing" schools meet NCLB standards, by getting rid of students who will pull down their scores.

Is there bias in the article? Of course there is. The entire world is biased in one way or another. This is simply biased in the opposite direction of the current trend.

I teach disadvantaged, learning disabled kids at a low income, "low achieving" school. The population of my school is over 30% ELL (English Language Learners); over 15% special education (the national average is around 10%); over 50% free/reduced lunch; highly transient (about 50% turnover in student population each year); their parents are employed at low-paying jobs because they themselves didn't do well in school, or don't speak English well (if at all) - and neither group can help their kids with their homework very well because they are either bad at educational tasks, or can't do them in English, or both - all of that feeds into why our student population enters middle school behind. Our students average 4 years' growth in the 3 years they attend our school - but they're still behind when they leave (if less behind than when they entered) and we are, therefore, still a "failing" school by NCLB standards.

Our current governor is aware of these types of problems, and is working to revamp the implementation of NCLB within Colorado - but his predecessor was known to have said (more or less) that it didn't matter what kind of home life the students had, how many times they'd moved, how far behind they were when they entered, how much (or little) support they had at home, whether they lived in an apartment, a house, or a car (about 2% of our population is homeless) - if we were good enough teachers nothing else mattered, and we'd be able to overcome it... and it we couldn't overcome it, the fault was ours and no one else's.

So yes, when I see a commentary (and note that it was an editorial commentary - not an article) that admits that NCLB is flawed, especially one by one of it's architects, and the problems of the world are not the fault of the teachers - even if it goes overboard to the other side and blames everyone else - then yes, I will be happy to see it. In education, as in many other things, opinions, attitudes, and methods are on a pendulum, and I see this article as an indication that the pendulum may finally be swinging back from "teachers are the bane of students' existence and can do no right unless the test scores say they did" to something a little more moderate, that admits that there are other influences on students besides the school that can affect student achievement - well, it's about damned time, I think. Don't you?

 

[Live True]

Get the government out of schooling. The only thing the politicians need to do is write the checks. Schools that perform will get the students. Schools that don't won't. It's that simple.

On the other hand minimum standards for the population is healthy. God forbid if some large group of people suddenly chooses not to read. How would you solve the major problems that would develop?
Sean

So as an outsider i would think a good start would be - better pay for teachers (they do a rough job on little pay) and smaller, more initimite class sizes. And perhaps more allowance in the curicullum to allow the teachers and more importantly the students to explore.

The decline of the quality has been theorized as intentionally dumbing down American children because generally smart people, educated people tend to ask questions... A LOT of questions when they're adults... particularly when they reach voting ages. [...]Parents must also be heavily involved with their child's education [...] Try dividing your attention by a factor of 20 or 30 for 7 hours a day and see what you can come up with.

There are some really great thoughts here, and Kacey I thank you for opening up this topic for discussion! I think there are few people who would disagree that NCLB has not achieved it's goals, teachers are severely underpaid, classes are too large, and that some schools are doing exceptionally well while others are failing miserably. I also think we can all agree that parents should be more involved in thier children's learning, as that is part of a parent's job.

Here's where it gets tough. What DO we teach our children? Even if we weren't a melting pot of cultures and beliefs, this is no easy question, but here's my two cents...hold onto your seats, as it's kinda revolutionary in some circles...We teach them to THINK! We don't teach them to memorize theories (although they have thier uses). We teach them to be able to look things up (and want to) when they have a question. We make learning an exciting adventure of discovery, and we teach them to ask questions and get at the underlying causes of a situation. We teach them to look at things with a critical eye and not just the surface.

Let's face it, learning should be a life long event, not something we do for 8-12 years and then put on a shelf to get dusty. If a child knows how to figure things out and THINK....there is very little that can stop then, once they discover where thier interest lead!

My biggest compliant with No Child Left Behind, is that it removed some of the creative ways teachers were using to teach children to think/explore, and did so in favour of test scores and measurements...Thus leading to teaching to the test and elminating the outliers in a population.

One last comment to maunakumu, who made some very good points in his post, I don't think it's as simple as letting schools duke it out and the best schools will draw the students. As Kacey points out so well, there are some parents who can't afford or simply wouldn't know how to research where the best schools are...even in thier own city. There are cases all over the country where school districts side by side perform in drastically different ways due to tax base (funding), parental involvement (again, this is basically a funding/social class issue), poverty/crime, etc. Yes, parents who have the time and/or money will be able to make sure thier children get the best education....but those that can't...are left with what is available....does that seem fair to you?

 

[cdunn]

Partially because of low pay rates of teachers/instructors which doesn't help motivate them to get up each morning 9 months out of the year to work with sometimes unruly, undisciplined, uncaring, unmotivated, uninvolved and sometimes dangerously volatile students.

(...)

The American school system definitely needs a kick in the pants and that right soon. Our children's lives depend upon it. Teaching no longer holds the popularity that it used to because of the rate of pay is so small compared to other jobs/careers out there. Only those who are truly motivated and idealistic (with respects to Kacey and other teachers on this forum) get into it because they actually really care about our children's future. Hell, if I had a degree I'd probably find a jr. high school to start teaching at.

Parents must also be heavily involved with their child's education and for god's sake they've got to get their noses out of the stigma of "you're not treating my child equally or giving my child enough attention and bla bla fricken blah!" Try dividing your attention by a factor of 20 or 30 for 7 hours a day and see what you can come up with.

Dollar bills have nothing to do with why I am not a teacher. I enjoy teaching - To people that actually want to learn the subject at hand. Knowing that, in any given class, I will have a majority of "unruly, undisciplined, uncaring, unmotivated, uninvolved and sometimes dangerously volatile students" alone will keep me from the career entirely. Knowing further, that zero to one of them will ever directly apply Sir Newton's equations to anything and not very many more will ever even attempt to learn the though process behind them makes me go look for something more productive to do, **** the dollars. If my work has no purpose, why do it?

The sad fact is, throwing money at the problems in education will not solve any of them, and the points of failure are manifold.

First: The portions of society most in need of comprehensive educational efforts are those fiscally least able to obtain it, and least prepared to even attempt to obtain it. Whether absentee due to need for a paycheck at best, or willfully negligent due to crack addiction at worst, the environment provided by poor parents is decidedly non-conducive to learning, between lack of support, lack of resources, and yes, occasionally lack of caring, if not out right learned hostility towards the educational system, for real or imagined failures. This is only magnified by the highly localized funding and control of the school system - The people who need the most help due to poverty at home are the ones in the same schools that can barely afford textbooks and heat in the winter, let alone systemic additional teaching efforts.

That, however, is sourced in the second major problem with education in America. There is no "American" school system. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individual school systems, which have no functional purpose, no goals to be obtained in the support of that purpose, and no metrics to identify in what manner those goals are being met or failed. Our schools do not teach people to perform skill jobs. They do not teach critical thinking, in any given pattern, to perform thinking jobs. Many barely even manage to teach literacy. They are filling the federal requirements of X minutes of english, Y minutes of math, and Z minutes of "science" per year, and the only result metric is the NCLB testing. Unsurprisingly, it is woefully inadequate to the task of measuring progress towards a goal which doesn't exist! Then, onto this mess, you tack on panic stories about how they're teaching some random thing better in Europe, or russia, or China, and it just murks up the mud even more. The school systems must become unified, in order to apply resources where they are needed.

A goal oriented system of education must be implemented. We must understand that that basic literacy, fundamental arithmetic, and basic logical thought are requirements for all citizens, and that this goal must be achieved by the end of elementary education. We then need to decide what we actually intend to teach students, and to what end we are preparing them: Reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic might have cut it when we weren't expecting our schools to do anything more than occupy farmer's kids in the winter months, (thus spring break - planting, and summer vacation - harvesting), but shouldn't our kids be emerging from mandatory education ready for whatever society decides is next, be it tertiary education or the skilled work force? There is no reward to the non-college bound student for excelling, nothing that high school has gotten him ready for. This is a shame.

Once we have a purpose, then you can start evaluating schools teachers with respect to the goals needed to achieve the purpose. You have a goal, you can create a metric. You can start matching resources to students on an as-needed basis. You can hold up proof that a bad teacher is bad, and get rid of them. Students will go to the schools that perform, if they have a choice... but you have to have be able to tell if a school is performing at all. You can't do that until you give a school a purpose.

 

[jkembry]

I teach disadvantaged, learning disabled kids at a low income, "low achieving" school. The population of my school is over 30% ELL (English Language Learners); over 15% special education (the national average is around 10%); over 50% free/reduced lunch; highly transient (about 50% turnover in student population each year); their parents are employed at low-paying jobs because they themselves didn't do well in school, or don't speak English well (if at all) - and neither group can help their kids with their homework very well because they are either bad at educational tasks, or can't do them in English, or both - all of that feeds into why our student population enters middle school behind. Our students average 4 years' growth in the 3 years they attend our school - but they're still behind when they leave (if less behind than when they entered) and we are, therefore, still a "failing" school by NCLB standards.

Kacey....I admire what you do in the situation that you are in. After spending a career in the Navy and watching the way people are around the world, I have often thought that the most unappreciated (and underpaid)for what that do for society, consist of teachers--for putting up with more than they should...including NCLB, lack of parenting, etc. while trying to bring on the next generation to be responsible, smart and good people; the man an woman in uniform, who are willing to put their life on the line to protect the ideals we believe in; other public servants (police, fire, EMTs) for keeping us safe from ourselves.

Sorry...probably got of the subject, but the juices in the gray matter got to churning.

 

[Makalakumu]

One last comment to maunakumu, who made some very good points in his post, I don't think it's as simple as letting schools duke it out and the best schools will draw the students. As Kacey points out so well, there are some parents who can't afford or simply wouldn't know how to research where the best schools are...even in thier own city. There are cases all over the country where school districts side by side perform in drastically different ways due to tax base (funding), parental involvement (again, this is basically a funding/social class issue), poverty/crime, etc. Yes, parents who have the time and/or money will be able to make sure thier children get the best education....but those that can't...are left with what is available....does that seem fair to you?

There needs to be help for some parents, some resource so they can find the best school for their children. I would support social programs that would do this as long as parents are left with the ability to discern the best option for their children.

The problem I have with this current line of thinking is that it's assumed that certain parents CANNOT make good decisions for their children. Shouldn't we give them the chance? Shouldn't we provide the incentive to do so? Shouldn't we be telling people that they are smart and capable and then expect that people rise to that standard?

I reject the whole notion that the mass of the population needs to be managed for their own good in regards to education.

I also reject the idea that there can be one school for everyone. People are just too different and everyone wants and needs different things in regards to learning. The human mind is a unique and beautiful thing. Let our standards reflect our willingness as a society to let an individual learn as much as they want.

Schools need to "duke it out" for students. It's the only way that I can see that we will be able to diversify the venture of education to reflect the variability in the human spirit.

 

[Kacey]

Recently, an acquaintance tried to convince me that the solution to the school budget problems was to eliminate buses, and to promote school choice for all. He had a job that allowed him to flex his hours such that he could transport his child to and from school, as well as to and from after school activities (the child was 7 or 8). When I pointed out that many of the families at my school didn't have cars, and had jobs that were not flexible as his is, at first, he didn't believe me; it was so far outside his experience that it was incomprehensible to him that school choice could be impossible for some families because they lacked the time, transportation, and/or money to transport their children to the school of their choice.

Likewise, it is incomprehensible to some people that there are parents who lack the skills to choose the proper school for their children. I know parents who were children when their children were born (some as young as 13 at the time of the birth); I know parents who rely on their children to translate for their teachers (and everyone else - Spanish is easy to find translators for - but Hmong? Czech? - those are less available). Yes, I would rather see community resources going to educate these parents so they can make the best choices for their children... but I don't see it happening any time soon in this society.

 

[Makalakumu]

Dollar bills have nothing to do with why I am not a teacher. I enjoy teaching - To people that actually want to learn the subject at hand. Knowing that, in any given class, I will have a majority of "unruly, undisciplined, uncaring, unmotivated, uninvolved and sometimes dangerously volatile students" alone will keep me from the career entirely. Knowing further, that zero to one of them will ever directly apply Sir Newton's equations to anything and not very many more will ever even attempt to learn the though process behind them makes me go look for something more productive to do, **** the dollars. If my work has no purpose, why do it?

I actually teach physics in the high school at this moment...although I will eventually be moving on to other things.

As a teacher, I can tell you that this is why "schools" we have now don't work for any students. There are always going to be classes where students are dealing with these issues.

A teacher can be the most engaging, personable, and interesting person and there will still be people in his class that will never ever ever have a use for what they are learning.

The sad fact is, throwing money at the problems in education will not solve any of them, and the points of failure are manifold.

Is forcing a student to learn something they don't want to learn a waste of time and money? What would you do to a student in a Martial Arts class that didn't want to be there?

First: The portions of society most in need of comprehensive educational efforts are those fiscally least able to obtain it, and least prepared to even attempt to obtain it. Whether absentee due to need for a paycheck at best, or willfully negligent due to crack addiction at worst, the environment provided by poor parents is decidedly non-conducive to learning, between lack of support, lack of resources, and yes, occasionally lack of caring, if not out right learned hostility towards the educational system, for real or imagined failures. This is only magnified by the highly localized funding and control of the school system - The people who need the most help due to poverty at home are the ones in the same schools that can barely afford textbooks and heat in the winter, let alone systemic additional teaching efforts.

Maybe the whole thought that we can manage a population into some standard of "success" needs to go. I've seen these schools. I've worked in them. These students want to learn, but they don't want to learn the material that is being taught in the school. What do you call a building filled with people who don't want to be there?

A prison.

Let people do what the want. Give them the opportunity to learn whatever they want and I think the apathy will go away instantly.

That, however, is sourced in the second major problem with education in America. There is no "American" school system. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individual school systems, which have no functional purpose, no goals to be obtained in the support of that purpose, and no metrics to identify in what manner those goals are being met or failed. Our schools do not teach people to perform skill jobs. They do not teach critical thinking, in any given pattern, to perform thinking jobs. Many barely even manage to teach literacy. They are filling the federal requirements of X minutes of english, Y minutes of math, and Z minutes of "science" per year, and the only result metric is the NCLB testing. Unsurprisingly, it is woefully inadequate to the task of measuring progress towards a goal which doesn't exist! Then, onto this mess, you tack on panic stories about how they're teaching some random thing better in Europe, or russia, or China, and it just murks up the mud even more. The school systems must become unified, in order to apply resources where they are needed.

I think we need to move away from the idea that a school prepares a student for a job or a career. People are not cogs in some machine, they are individuals with beautiful aspirations and motivations. What kind of society measures its health by encouraging economic growth and productivity through the destruction of the individual dream?

I want an education system that sets the mind free, that makes every bit of learning worthwhile, that gives its students the knowledge they need to develop their dreams to their fullest potential.

You don't get that with "job skills" and kids know that. That's why they hate it.

A goal oriented system of education must be implemented. We must understand that that basic literacy, fundamental arithmetic, and basic logical thought are requirements for all citizens, and that this goal must be achieved by the end of elementary education. We then need to decide what we actually intend to teach students, and to what end we are preparing them: Reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic might have cut it when we weren't expecting our schools to do anything more than occupy farmer's kids in the winter months, (thus spring break - planting, and summer vacation - harvesting), but shouldn't our kids be emerging from mandatory education ready for whatever society decides is next, be it tertiary education or the skilled work force? There is no reward to the non-college bound student for excelling, nothing that high school has gotten him ready for. This is a shame.

What goals will work for everybody? You and I want different things. We have different goals which we are capable of setting ourselves.

Once we have a purpose, then you can start evaluating schools teachers with respect to the goals needed to achieve the purpose. You have a goal, you can create a metric. You can start matching resources to students on an as-needed basis. You can hold up proof that a bad teacher is bad, and get rid of them. Students will go to the schools that perform, if they have a choice... but you have to have be able to tell if a school is performing at all. You can't do that until you give a school a purpose.

IMHO, the best proof of a bad teacher or bad teaching is a teacher with no students.

 

[Makalakumu]

Recently, an acquaintance tried to convince me that the solution to the school budget problems was to eliminate buses, and to promote school choice for all. He had a job that allowed him to flex his hours such that he could transport his child to and from school, as well as to and from after school activities (the child was 7 or 8). When I pointed out that many of the families at my school didn't have cars, and had jobs that were not flexible as his is, at first, he didn't believe me; it was so far outside his experience that it was incomprehensible to him that school choice could be impossible for some families because they lacked the time, transportation, and/or money to transport their children to the school of their choice.

Likewise, it is incomprehensible to some people that there are parents who lack the skills to choose the proper school for their children. I know parents who were children when their children were born (some as young as 13 at the time of the birth); I know parents who rely on their children to translate for their teachers (and everyone else - Spanish is easy to find translators for - but Hmong? Czech? - those are less available). Yes, I would rather see community resources going to educate these parents so they can make the best choices for their children... but I don't see it happening any time soon in this society.

Let's split some hairs. How many people do you really think CANNOT make decisions for their children? Why is it impossible for a social program to help this small population to learn to do so?

This sentiment is one step away from saying that "certain" people are incapable from learning anything.

I reject that and I reject any sentiment that leads down that road. Everyone is capable of learning...some people need more help or may need to learn different things. What is wrong with providing the ability to get help to do both?

What all of this comes down to is indoctrination. As teachers, we all learn to be part of this system, how to defend the system, how to propagate it.

Well, the system doesn't work. It wasn't designed to work in the sense that any sane person would think about learning. It was designed to train a populace to become cogs in the vast massified uptopian society dreamed up by the industrial leaders at the turn of the last century.

It may be incomprehensible for teachers to think of their students (or students parents) as capable of choosing what they want to learn. But it doesn't mean that its true. It's just dogma.