How would you improve our educational system?

[ScienceRocks]

How would you improve our educational system?

Me...

Reading, Writing, Math, science, Economics, history,

I'd cut art, music and social studies from the core. You'd get a chance to take them on the side but you'd have to finish the sections above. Maybe we could integrate online classes into our educational system to allow you to take them at all times like some colleges are.

These would be the most important classes and each student will have to pass each year or be held back within that class to take it again.

The last two years you'd get the option of taking a internship within the career choice of your choosing. This would give you real life skills into the job that you want.

Once you get out of pubic school you'd get the choice to go to normal college class, online class or special schools for electrical work, plumbing, construction, etc.

This system would allow people to have more choices with a strong back ground education.

 

[syrenn]

get rid of the unions.

 

[Steven_R]

1) Eliminate the teacher's union. Tie pay to performance, make it easy to get rid of underperforming and deadweight teachers, and recruit from the community.

2) Let problem students go. If a kid doesn't want to be there, don't force him. It just takes money and time and resources away from kids who do want to learn. If they want to come back, fine. If they want to just get a job, fine. If they want to go to prison, fine. But don't require any child after 8th grade to attend school if he/she doesn't want to.

3) Get the community involved in the process. Set up internships with local businesses. Hire teachers from the community who do the subject for a living (e.g. get a local businessman to teach business).

4) Vocational programs with the help of local businesses. Tie it in with internships. Let a kid learning welding actually work for a welder for credit. Stop pushing college on everyone, especially kids who simply aren't academically minded. Get businesses to recruit for entry level from the interns they work with.

5) Smaller, ability level-based classes. One size fits all classes only work for the average kid. Slower kids get left behind and faster kids get bored.

6) More classes, but shorter classes. Require classes not just in the traditional materials, but in living skills that so many kids just aren't getting at home. Home finance, car maintenance, cooking, and so on. If it is the job of school to prepare kids for the world, then prepare them for more than just reading textbooks.

7) More math, more science, more technology.

 

[Interpol]

I tie nutrition to education.

There's no point in making any improvements if 1 out of 4 kids is going to school hungry. They can't concentrate on anything else but their hunger if they're not eating right.

I think younger children and primary school children should have good food made available to them.

If we can double our military budget (much of it being the greatest source of military contractor welfare in the last decade) than we can find the money to make sure that fruits and veggies are made available to children.

We have a serious hunger problem in America, and it just isn't being addressed all that much, which sucks, because it's the reason why we've got lower productivity happening in our kids at school.

If you're pro-life, than that idea must carry beyond the birth of a child and into childhood.

We give huge amounts of money to big agribusiness, to military contractors, and it costs us a ton of money to afford to give those wicked tax breaks to folks like Steve Forbes, whose work is managing his wealth, for which he pays a smaller percentage of tax than I or you do. Makes no sense.

We can cut here and cut there and erase some favorable but unnecessary tax breaks to guys like that and invest it in our kids.

The teachers union is not the real problem. A good deal of their pay contributes to their own retirement savings. And it's a bad idea to tie performance with pay, since lousy teachers will just process people along and never keep anyone back because they know that would hurt them.

Music programs and the arts are not the problem. We need creative people. They enlighten, illuminate, and help make our lives and our world a better place. Children who work their abstract thinking in the arts are proven to be productive workers with high aptitudes.

I would like to see a greater concentration on science and technology, but then we're talking about a whole swatch of really stupid America where they don't even believe in science and technology, so it's nice lip service to talk about it, but why spend money on it if Texans and other morons insist on teaching kids Creationism?

I also think we should have more year-round schooling options that encourages kids to get ahead.

We should also think about the kinds of schools we want to build. They don't have to look and feel like prisons. I think if we want dynamic kids, we ought to build them dynamic schools that challenge our previous notions of what a school can look like and how it's spacial aspect can work for kids better, like schools that are more open-concept, giving students a feel for society within their world.

I'm in favor of better scheduling options. Why does school have to be 9ish to 3ish? All the studies show that as older kids become adolescents, they're simply wired to be really sluggish in the morning.

If a teenager is stronger from 11-5 or 1-7, than let's make the appropriate changes for students with those needs.

Public investment is fine, but we need to involve the private sector, since they have the most to lose if kids come out of college lacking. They need to invest in students at the high school level so that they can get the kinds of workers they need, and we need to design their relationship with education so that it lowers student debt so that when kids are done college, it's straight into making money they can actually use in real life for goods and services instead of paying off debts for 10 or more years.

That's all.

 

[editec]

How would you improve our educational system?

Step one- FEDERALIZE educational funding nationwide (no more local or state funding).

Step two - Encourage magnet and private schools by making them eligible for federal funding (student vouchers make GREAT sense in a fully federalized system)

Step three - Fully fund universally -- kindergarten through college or trade school for every student

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Eliminate all federal, state and local funding, turn the entire system private in order to enhance competition.

Allow all schooling to compete, so that students who are more hands on vs. book orientated, to have options for schooling that fits their needs.

Competition = better quality and cheaper prices.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

1. Eliminate the Federal Dept of Education

2. Eliminate any and all teachers unions

3. Let the states and communities figure it out after that

 

[martybegan]

We have to get away from the mindset that every child is a genius, and every child has to go to college or they are seen as a failure. Trade schools need to be-reopened, apprenticeships need to be started up again.

After 10th grade or so only academic students should have to remain in school.

 

[regent]

How would you improve our educational system?

Me...

Reading, Writing, Math, science, Economics, history,

I'd cut art, music and social studies from the core. You'd get a chance to take them on the side but you'd have to finish the sections above. Maybe we could integrate online classes into our educational system to allow you to take them at all times like some colleges are.

These would be the most important classes and each student will have to pass each year or be held back within that class to take it again.

The last two years you'd get the option of taking a internship within the career choice of your choosing. This would give you real life skills into the job that you want.

Once you get out of pubic school you'd get the choice to go to normal college class, online class or special schools for electrical work, plumbing, construction, etc.

This system would allow people to have more choices with a strong back ground education.

Economics and history are social studies. Should the primary goal of schools be to educate students for a job, for citizenship, for higher education, to please the taxpayer or other? Should those students that disrupt classes be given the same opportunities as the students that go along with the purpose of schools?