Republicans and their imaginary state of education. If they would go, they would know. Unfortunately, while the rest of the country is raising a generation of achievers, Republicans are raising a generation of ignorant racists destined to live in trailers and get food stamps from the government their parents taught them to despise.
I'm not a Republican, and I can tell you first hand that the education system needs to be severely altered (at least in my district). It keeps becoming more of a "one size fits all" in terms of the curriculum and even progress monitoring. The problem is that not every classroom has the same type of learners, let alone every school, let alone every state, let alone the entire nation. The "one size fits all" is a severe problem. I have had severely students go to vocational schools where they will be successful, whereas they would not have been as successful at a traditional high school.
For example we recently had our 1st semester exams. I currently teach four classes of the exact same subject. I work at a school with a very high minority population (there's roughly 26% white students)...most of the students are Mexian/Mexian-Americans. Teaching English this leads to a lot of challenges as many of my students aren't very strong in English. Not as strong as say compared to other schools in my district.
My results of the 4 classes and their scores are: 1 class above district average (by quite a bit), 1 class above district average (by less of a margin), 1 class 0.1% above district average....and my last class was below the district average by a decent amount (not terribly mind you). I teach the exact same material in all 4 classes...in fact the class that scored way below the average is later in the day-so I've already taught the lessons a couple time by then. I spent some time thinking about why they were so low...classroom behavior's not a problem. So I pulled up all of their previous testing grades and monitoring. That students in that class tend to have lower reading levels, and score less on all tests (this indicated to me that it's not entirely my fault why they did poorly). To be honest with you many of the students in class would be better situated at a vocational school, or in a classroom with fewer students, or with a more individualized way of progress monitoring and/or lessons (provided the objectives were the same).
I assure you that it is VERY frustrating when politicians who have never stepped inside of a high school classroom since they were 18 years old 40+ years think that they know what my students need more than I do...even though I've been with them for roughly 6 months now. I'm not against the system-I think overall it works. I do think that teachers should have a little bit more freedom in terms of lessons (NOT the objectives)...at least in my subject and district.
While I think that high schools SHOULD have college/university as the ultimate goal, I realize that that path is not right for every student. I also realize that that's "ok"...there's nothing wrong with students getting different skills elsewhere that will make them successful.
- you didn't watch the video did you?
