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I agree - what works in one area won't work in another. However, starving urban schools of resources isn't the solution, either. With their rundown, neglected facilities, poor equipment, and underpaid teachers, the schools become a breeding ground for crime and hopelessness.
Its not just about money. Over 20 years ago a judge in Missouri decided that the urban schools of Kansas City were getting short changed. He ordered a controversial tax on the entire state. Over a billion dollars was transferred to Kansas City urban schools. Many of the buildings were either rebuilt or built from the ground up. They have all the bells and whistles including an Olympic sized swimming pool. They also have the lowest scores in the state and no accreditation. Their drop out rate has remained about the same, crime is a problem and the school board has been an unmitigated disaster with each member trying to build their own little empire.
So most urban Kansas City schools are NOT falling apart, they have the facilities and equipment. Yet they are still failing with underperforming teachers, students, and a school board is disarray. Everything is about politics and money. We had a superintendent who claimed disability but was video taped in Florida chopping wood without his ever present cane. They have gone out of their way to hire "Afro-centric" educators from Detroit who brought along their cronies for six figure salaries. Some relief is starting to happen as the edges of the system are being broken up and added to some other communities.
As for CC, I am naturely hestitate about anything that comes out of the federal government because they rarely do anything right. Any successes are usually accomplished on the ground by local people. Same thing can be said for CC, it is a guideline and not a real curriculum. It is up to local people to fill in the blank spots. One noted problem is the lack of participation in the planning phase of K-3 grade teachers. The first few years of school indicate how well a child is going to do through senior year of high school and beyond. Fundementals! Somehow that got left out. A second problem is the lack of transparency from the CC advocates. They will post on their website many of the praises being sung but neglect to publish the criticisms from parents and teachers.
We used to do education right in this country. Why not a review of what we used to do and replicate it for the 21st century?
Our education system is a very vivid example of centuries of “tradition” standing in the way of improvement. What we get for the investment is seriously underwhelming, and small changes are unlikely to fix things. It needs to be rather completely revamped.
The three month summer break is a prime example. Every piece of educational hard data shows it is highly detrimental to learning, with 25% or more loss rate over the summers. We could get better learning in the same number of school contact days, make more efficient use of classroom space, and reduce costs by smoothing out the school calendar as Whirlaway points out. Business cases show it, educators show it—so why don’t we? “Tradition”. And the unions.
I also agree that almost every teacher goes into the business with a sincere desire to do go for the students. Sadly, that doesn’t mean they are the people well suited to actually be teachers. I grew up wanting to play professional baseball, and I would have been a great one if it weren’t for little things like athleticism, talent, and skill. We need to invest in applying some of the sound educational research to better hire and better train teachers. We need to differentiate what makes a great 1st grade teacher from a great 6th grade teacher and not think they are interchangeable. We need to stop decreeing that a history teacher with more seniority can be turned into a math teacher by going to a 4 week seminar. And heaven forbid, we need to let the free market work and drive up the salaries of good STEM teachers at the expense of salaries for good art teachers and administrators. The biggest obstacles on this one are the fact that many (most?) your administrators are NOT from STEM areas and are loath to agree that some fields are more valuable/scarce/important than others. And unions.
We also need to have a serious national discussion about what should be the core material taught. Sadly we seem incapable about having a serious national discussion about anything. If we can’t de-politicize education we will never fix the problem. I don’t know if that is possible in the current environment. I would argue to increase STEM exposure, literacy, understanding of our government, and foreign language from day one. Totally revamp history into an actually USEFUL and INTERESTING field instead of memorizing 5, 629 dates. Provide opportunities for many other things (art, music, geography, etc.,) as “broadening” topics outside the core—and largely done by using on-line methods and largely on the student’s time. But other reasonably constructs probably exist.
Make it an integrated K-12 portfolio that is logically structured based upon what pieces of knowledge are best learned when/in what order; much of what we do now makes little sense or is decidedly backwards. Again, why not? Tradition and unions.
I believe unions do have their place in our society, but not everywhere. The teachers unions seem to be some of the most useless and counterproductive ones out there. Couple that with many local school boards that are far more interested in advancing a political agenda (be it gay marriage or creationism or any of a dozen others) and it is little surprise that our education system has gone in the wrong direction for a long while.
All the above are fixable—though far, far from easy. The one issue I do not know if it is fixable is the family structure WTF mentioned. Single parent families (especially those with no active extended family) where there is far less time for involvement in the kids’ education will always put those students at a significant disadvantage. Yes, some single parent children do great—they are NOT the norm and we need to understand that and quit pretending they are.
Its not just about money. Over 20 years ago a judge in Missouri decided that the urban schools of Kansas City were getting short changed. He ordered a controversial tax on the entire state. Over a billion dollars was transferred to Kansas City urban schools. Many of the buildings were either rebuilt or built from the ground up. They have all the bells and whistles including an Olympic sized swimming pool. They also have the lowest scores in the state and no accreditation. Their drop out rate has remained about the same, crime is a problem and the school board has been an unmitigated disaster with each member trying to build their own little empire.
So most urban Kansas City schools are NOT falling apart, they have the facilities and equipment. Yet they are still failing with underperforming teachers, students, and a school board is disarray. Everything is about politics and money. We had a superintendent who claimed disability but was video taped in Florida chopping wood without his ever present cane. They have gone out of their way to hire "Afro-centric" educators from Detroit who brought along their cronies for six figure salaries. Some relief is starting to happen as the edges of the system are being broken up and added to some other communities.
....
I believe there was a "60 Minutes" story about this about 15 years ago.
Again, I think some of you don't have or ever had school age children. HISD is in shambles in my opinion with other districts being much, much better.
I have an idea. Let's return the control and funding of education back to the local school districts, like it was when children were actually learning something, and see what happens.
Until we can learn to accept the fact that not all children are suited for college, that learning a craft, skill, or trade is not demeaning, and that all children have the exact same abilities, we will never have a great system of education.
Marin Luther King had the right idea. This from a speech he gave at a junior high.
About MLK | His wordsWhat Is Your Life's Blueprint? Six months before he was assassinated, King spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.
I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life's blueprint?
Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.
Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.
I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you fell that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
Secondly, in your life's blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.
And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to you--doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they open.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."
This hasn't always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don't drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you're forced to live in — stay in school.
And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.
Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.
There was a pony tailed asshole on the KCMO school board for the longest time named Dwayne. He was always against merit pay for teachers. He always said that same thing, you can't compare a first grade teacher with a special needs sixth grade teacher. I spoke to him one time and mentioned that the US Navy was able to compare sailors against other sailors and then compare electrician mates against other electrician mates in order to figure out who should be promoted. Why is it so hard to compare teachers in general and then by their jobs specifically for merit pay? The shit with no imagination said that I didn't understand the problem. I understand the problem and that is why he is no longer on the school board finally.
I have seen too many times when they turned a math teacher into a literature teacher with just the change of title. It seems that today a teacher is expected to be a teacher...of anything. As long as they have the textbook. Specialities are something they don't want. When I was stationed in New London a vacancy opened in the local high school for a history teacher. A man stepped forward. A man with a doctorate, a man who had taught college for years, a man who had been published many times, a man who was a history professor and he offered to do it for free. The school turned him down for a 22 year old recent graduate with a teaching certificate.
I have an idea. Let's return the control and funding of education back to the local school districts, like it was when children were actually learning something, and see what happens.
I have an idea, why don't we go back to the Pony Express. Awww the good ole days approach....
What a fool.
Look, folks have unwanted children because we cut funding for abortion , then those same folks bitch about the school system. We are putting ill equipped students into the system and then we bitch about the system. Be like putting a stick in a meat grinder and then bitching about the quality of beef.
This system of yesteryear that some of you long for did not even teach you that if you force hospital ER's to treat any and everyone (Reagancare) ....that is not socializedmedicine but if you try and force people to buy private health insurance (Obamacare) that is socialized medicine!
You see what utter and complete idiots the days of yesteryear produced? Fools like you COG.
...Look, folks have unwanted children because we cut funding for abortion ..
Baloney, we cut funding for abortions (I accept your unproven assumption) AND the number of abortions in America has been declining............
The annual number of legal induced abortions in the United States doubled between 1973 and 1979, and peaked in 1990. There was a slow but steady decline through the 1990's. Overall, the number of annual abortions decreased by 6% between 2000 and 2009, with temporary spikes in 2002 and 2006 (CDC).
Quote:
Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy I have an idea. Let's return the control and funding of education back to the local school districts, like it was when children were actually learning something, and see what happens.
I have an idea, why don't we go back to the Pony Express. Awww the good ole days approach....
Local control of school boards will solve NOTHING. (Neither will centralization by the way). You can have myopic, self-absorbed people running education into the ground either way. Fixing things in the educational system is much more complex that that.
Local control brought you "separate but equal", brought you policies that teach history and government with 30 year old text books (always nice when in 2013 you can read about "the arms race with the USSR" as a current event), and local rules that insist creationism needs to be taught as a main line scientific theory.
There is a "locally controlled" school board in the news here (for the past couple years+) that is trying to decree no student can be left behind for any reason (except to improve their chances of getting a football scholarship of course), and insisting that a diploma from their HS school should be counted the same for Univ admission as a diploma from a school where the students can actually READ at above the 5th grade level. It's a small school district run by RW Thumpers, and they are arguing that their kids/students are being discriminated against because of their religious beliefs (the school and area are overwhelmingly strict Baptist I believe). The Univ keeps pointing to 5th grade reading levels and sub HS math skills. I'm not at all saying all local boards are inept, nor that all religious groups are stupid--I'm just pointing out that education idiots can exist locally, and they are not all LWWs.
No, local control is a recipe for perpetuating large pockets of kids with diplomas who have learned essentially nothing. It will also produce some exceptional schools. And perpetuate the increasing divide.
I'd rather have myopic self-absorbed locals running my school district; than myopic self absorbed bureaucrats 2,000 miles away in hidden cubicles of Washington.
Perhaps it isn't about localization. But most schools have three layers of people who are getting paid to do many of the same things. The federal and state departments of education combined with local school districts are a waste of money. Find a way to combine the tiers so they can be more effective for each individual student. Save money from the redundancy and put it into more diverse programs.
