A Proposal for Education Reform

A universal voucher system would either force private schools to take everyone, or still leave a significant portion of the population without an option for school.

Horse Hockey. You have absolutely zero evidence to suggest that a free market would not respond to the educational demands of poor families. ESPECIALLY if those families have a government provided vouchers in hand. You think businesses in the education market would just ignore that demand? That's insane.

Would they have a state-of-the-art facility with a lacrosse field? Perhaps not, but then perhaps it's time some schools offer to not only teach the basics, but to ensure students learn them. You can do that in a one room school house.
 
I’m a child of teachers. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles have all been teachers at one point or another.
I’ve spent my entire life hearing about the problems in our school systems - mostly from the perspective of AFT-member public school teachers. Combined with my own personal politic views and experiences, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the problems of our educational system.

The complexity of the problems, and the immediate barriers to reform - the opposing forces and lobbies, each with their own plans and explicit arguments against the opposition make the task of reform nearly impossible.

So I put some time into trying to think of a way to reform the education system that would both change the status quo, and still be politically feasible. (I'll be honest, this idea partially came from an episode of The West Wing, but I think it could work).

A "GI Bill" for teachers: Offer student loan forgiveness to new teachers who agree to teach in high-need areas for a certain number of years.

As I see it, that will both bring in new, young, and innovative teachers into the schools that need them the most, as well as injecting new blood into the Teacher's Unions, perhaps making them less resistant to change in the school system.

There are few ways to attack the problems with our school system that don't step on the toes of the Teacher's Union. This is one that I think could work.

Thoughts?

I believe that EDUCATION is about to migrate from it's current AGRICULTURAL AGE model to a new DIGITAL AGE model.

I think this is inevitable, really.

If anything we might need less teachers than ever.


I'd love to find the money to create the kind of individual educational system that today's technology is capable of giving us.

And yes, I would be an excellent person to design such an educational model.

But everything that I could do would be merely setting up this society to really change that model.

Because the AI programming that exists today is going to seem very primative compared to what tomorrows AI programs are going to be capable of.

I can see a not-too-distant future educational system where every child has the AI equivalent of an AI ARISTOTLE who works directly with each child during his entire educational life.

That is something that our grandchildren will have assuming our entire society doesn't collapse first.

The question is what do we DO with all these highly educated kids given that the same AI tecnologiy is going to be able to to what they do BETTER than they will every be able to do it.

Yeah, this is a problem that few people seem to think is on the horizon.

I think it is more than just a little bit ALREADY here!
 
It works right for those who can afford that path.

If liberals would quit fighting vouchers, anyone could afford it.

Look, with enough resolve, local school systems could adopt a lot of things that would improve schools. Close campuses use uniforms, enforce rules, policies and standards, use discipline and make it stick, actually teach subjects that are designed to prepare kids for college or career, etc. All of the touchy feely crap that has come down in the past 30 years obviously isn't working and the idea of throwing larger and larger amounts of money isn't working either.

A universal voucher system would be unsustainable.

Private schools have an advantage over public schools - they can chose who they let in. A universal voucher system would either force private schools to take everyone, or still leave a significant portion of the population without an option for school.

Aside from that, I agree with some of your suggestions.
That is bull. A universal voucher system is one of the things that we desperately need. If there is a case that makes a single student far too expensive then the likely hood is that school is not what they need. Instead, those students should be sent to a place that is more specific to their needs. Public schools systems would still exist to as they should. The main difference is that the parents can take an active role in where their kids go to school thereby holding the school accountable for their actions.


Brining back choice and competition is exactly what we need and not just competition between public and private but also between public schools themselves. That same voucher should be able to move the funds that your child would have used in one public school to be ported over to any other public school that you can get your child to. This allows people that are trapped in substandard districts to get out of them as well as those funds moving with them.


More important than all of this though, might actually be in changing the way we teach. I believe that part of the problem is that we are far to focused on teaching the what, basic sets of facts/methods, rather than the why and how. I remember a moment in my 9th grade math course when the teacher was teaching one of those word problems with trains headed for each other. He had us placing the numbers in a grid and doing the required operations to come to the correct answer. Many years later, here I am and I have never found a use for that table. The vast majority of math was taught in this manner. Plug the numbers in and find the solution. What we need is to learn why those solutions work and how to actually apply them in real life. When I took trigonometry, I had never thought that I could actually apply those concepts in a real life situation but one of my first jobs was in construction.

Want to know how you know you have framed a wall properly square? 3, 4, 5 right triangle...

There are real applications for the things that we learn and schools need to start teaching students to THINK rather than memorize. The same goes for science and history. I can't tell the number of dates and names that I was required to memorize in history. What was far less often was teachers actually asking why these things happened instead of when.

I have had a few teachers that understood this. I have had more that did not.
 
I’m a child of teachers. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles have all been teachers at one point or another.
I’ve spent my entire life hearing about the problems in our school systems - mostly from the perspective of AFT-member public school teachers. Combined with my own personal politic views and experiences, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the problems of our educational system.

The complexity of the problems, and the immediate barriers to reform - the opposing forces and lobbies, each with their own plans and explicit arguments against the opposition make the task of reform nearly impossible.

So I put some time into trying to think of a way to reform the education system that would both change the status quo, and still be politically feasible. (I'll be honest, this idea partially came from an episode of The West Wing, but I think it could work).

A "GI Bill" for teachers: Offer student loan forgiveness to new teachers who agree to teach in high-need areas for a certain number of years.

As I see it, that will both bring in new, young, and innovative teachers into the schools that need them the most, as well as injecting new blood into the Teacher's Unions, perhaps making them less resistant to change in the school system.

There are few ways to attack the problems with our school system that don't step on the toes of the Teacher's Union. This is one that I think could work.

Thoughts?

Easiest way? Get rid of the "teacher's unions" pay on merit only. no more rubber rooms.
 
50% divorce rate, 50% of children being born today to women under 30 are born to unmarried mothers who will probably be single parents with in a few years.

A little secret; until parents start sending children to school that are ready, willing and able to learn, at all income levels, I don't care how much money or union busting is done, teaching unmotivated kids is a losing proposition.

There is a real good reason why kids from higher income nerighborhoods do better in school than poorer neighborhood kids. Most kids in high income areas live with their parents. Maybe not both blood parents, but still two parents.

You can't teach someone that is either not willing to learn or not able to learn.

Now what might a parent do to assure that their kids are teachable?

Feed em correctly with family involvement, turn off the damn TV and computer, make em get enough sleep and read to them from the earliest age. Make sure that they understand how important their education is. And tell them; you get in trouble in school, your trouble just started. Cause when you get home...........

Respect the teachers and quit making them do a parents job when they are supposed to be teaching.

Studies have shown that kids that sit down with their parents for dinner, just 4 nights a week do significiently better in school.

It is the demise of the family that is causing most of the problems in the schools. Not the union, not the guvmint etc etc. All in my public school humble opinion.
 
It is the demise of the family that is causing most of the problems in the schools. Not the union, not the guvmint etc etc. All in my public school humble opinion.
Truth and, as another poster pointed out, there is nothing you can do within the school system to 'fix' the parents. That's one of the reasons that I think school choice is so important. If you are stuck in an area that is predominately made up of people that simply do not care, you can move your child to another school where the parents do care.
 
I exercised my "school choice" for my middle child. I lost confidence in the way public schools handled disruptive students. So I put my kids in a Catholic school. Because they would just expel any kid that didn't get with their program. And they taught the "old fashioned way". You know, subject mastery.

I don't know how to "fix" this problem without fixing the family dynamics. And there is no way that anyone will come out and say that it is a students home life that is the issue. Parents would not put up with that.

There is a real good reason that America's high school students are no longer considered top performers in the world. Not even in the top 10. High school graduation rates are falling. Technical skills like auto repair, carpentry, machine shop, those skilled trades are no longer taught in HS.

JUst what is it that the parents and the education system want to accomplish?
 
It works right for those who can afford that path.

If liberals would quit fighting vouchers, anyone could afford it.

Look, with enough resolve, local school systems could adopt a lot of things that would improve schools. Close campuses use uniforms, enforce rules, policies and standards, use discipline and make it stick, actually teach subjects that are designed to prepare kids for college or career, etc. All of the touchy feely crap that has come down in the past 30 years obviously isn't working and the idea of throwing larger and larger amounts of money isn't working either.

A universal voucher system would be unsustainable.

Private schools have an advantage over public schools - they can chose who they let in. A universal voucher system would either force private schools to take everyone, or still leave a significant portion of the population without an option for school.

Aside from that, I agree with some of your suggestions.

Really? Then how do you explain daycare which isn't compulsory? People spend their own money to put their kids in daycare while they are at work. There are elite daycares and their are state subsidized daycares. It's a huge industry. Imagine if taxes were collected just as they are now, but people got a voucher per child to send them to the school of their choice. For those who want to add some cash to the voucher, they can send their kid to the school of their choice. For those who can't, they use the voucher to send their kid to the best school their voucher can afford them. Just like daycare, minimum standards must be met. Bad schools like bad daycares will go out of business and good schools will thrive.
 
I exercised my "school choice" for my middle child. I lost confidence in the way public schools handled disruptive students. So I put my kids in a Catholic school. Because they would just expel any kid that didn't get with their program. And they taught the "old fashioned way". You know, subject mastery.

I don't know how to "fix" this problem without fixing the family dynamics. And there is no way that anyone will come out and say that it is a students home life that is the issue. Parents would not put up with that.

There is a real good reason that America's high school students are no longer considered top performers in the world. Not even in the top 10. High school graduation rates are falling. Technical skills like auto repair, carpentry, machine shop, those skilled trades are no longer taught in HS.


JUst what is it that the parents and the education system want to accomplish?
Of course not...The schools are too busy teaching multiculturalism, political correctness, conflict resolution, feminist studies, fake "self-esteem" and how to nag your parents about recycling.
 
The greatest problem with our educational system today is it continues to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. Fixing what is wrong has become impossible because the entire discipline of public education has been politicized.

The first mistake is the innate curiosity of children is stifled the first time Janey or Joey is told to, "sit quietly, stop fidgeting, don't touch". That usually occurs the first day of their formal eduction, reinforcing the child's experience in most homes.

When the child's curiosity creates angst in an adult (teacher parent) the child is told to behave, making curiosity and exploring their environment a bad thing and something which makes doing so a violation to be punished.

Next, we teach facts to be memorized and repeated for tests. Critical thinking and problems solving skills are rarely developed by teachers, but, if left alone to explore, touch, smell, taste and manipulate an ever expanding environment on their own such skills develop naturally.

Reading, writing, and computation come first; technology may allow each child to advance at their own pace and most children whose curiosity has not been extinguished by the "don't touch!" crowd will continue to love learning.
 
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Interesting thread. Excellent comments.

We can't fix the negligent parents, but we can certainly find better ways to improve participation. In many failing schools, the parents have been written off entirely. They are seen as the problem; not the solution. That is unfair to many who want to help, but simply don't know how.

Zeke asked a very important question. "Just what is it that the parents and the education system want to accomplish?" The answer today is "Anything and everything". That is ludicrous. And until we can agree on practical, doable goals, I fear the situation will only worsen. Talk to any teacher about "raising the bar". It seems every time the standards are "raised", we actually have to lower the bar.

But also bear in mind that we should not be throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are many, many outstanding schools in this country. Trying to fix schools that are not broken could be a disaster. Be careful what you wish for.
 
Too funny not to share. Perhaps teachers need to add more pudding to their lesson plans. :lol:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn8faeuQjE0&sns=fb]Differentiated Instruction - YouTube[/ame]
 
I have a love/hate relationship with the teaching "profession". What I love, of course, is the inherent honor it once had.

What I hate is the racket it has become. Mastery of subject matter is not even a second thought, rather mastery of a few principles of education that could be taught in maybe 24 credit hours (likely much less) that are revived, renamed, redefined, and overly redundant of each other to justify the necessity of a "major" in education.

Actual teaching of subject matter also has become a low priority with medicating, controlling diets, concern about self-esteem all over subject matter content. Those are topics for the parents.

When teachers get back to teaching and stop taking it upon themselves to parent, we may once again have a decent public education system.

On the flipside, parents need to let teachers teach.

Stop the overlap. Demarcate, don't conflate, the parent role and the teacher role.




Just for starters.

I agree with this post 100%.

I think the way to change the "racket" that teaching has become is to flood the system with new, innovative teachers. People who don't worship the status quo.
I think that's a great idea.

But, there is still that necessity of the 'major' in education. Just from personal experience, I used to be a college prof of chemistry. One student, whose final grade was a D-, and that was by a single point that she missed the F, was a education major. Her concentration was secondary ed science education.

She scared the crap out of me. She graduated, is likely teaching science in some high school, and she could barely tell the difference between an atom and a molecule. I am not kidding.

THAT is not a good thing.

If her major were any of the sciences, she either would not have graduated, actually applied herself and learned the subject matter, or changed her career goals.

But, because she had that Ed. degree, she is teaching a subject she has absolutely no business teaching.

Sport?


A secondary ED major that doesn't get a 3.0 or better in her chosen area of education doesn't GET a BA in secondary Ed with a concentration in a subject,.


Nice story but it's total BS...and I do not mean it's a bachelors of science.
 
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So I put some time into trying to think of a way to reform the education system that would both change the status quo, and still be politically feasible.
Why isn't a Goal/Target Priority 1!!!

In the real-world (of Engineering), you need to identify a preferred end-result. You can't very-well come-up with "fixes", if you don't know what-it-is you're trying to accomplish.

A good example is Tennessee, where their Goal/Target is (pretty obviously) an attempt to educate future window-washers.​

April 11, 2012

"On Tuesday, Tennessee adopted a law “to prevent school administrators from reining in teachers who expound on alternative hypotheses” to the scientific theories of evolution and climate change.

The National Center for Science Education has said of the primary alternative to evolution — creationism — that “students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level

 

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