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Let's see. Massive amounts of money have been spent over the past thirty years. Student/teacher ratios have been slashed.
And it hasn't made a damned bit of difference. It's about time we completely and utterly change the approach of education, which is really an anachronism, an factory model designed to produce factory workers and middle-level managers in the information age.
The way we educate our children is just stupid beyond all human belief. I cannot believe that we continue to keep trying to patch the Rube Goldberg system we have in place today.
Let's see. Massive amounts of money have been spent over the past thirty years. Student/teacher ratios have been slashed.
And it hasn't made a damned bit of difference. It's about time we completely and utterly change the approach of education, which is really an anachronism, an factory model designed to produce factory workers and middle-level managers in the information age.
The way we educate our children is just stupid beyond all human belief. I cannot believe that we continue to keep trying to patch the Rube Goldberg system we have in place today.
Actually those numbers aren't too bad once you realize that Advanced is an A and Proficient is a B. If I had 25% of my students with A's or B's, I would be very happy. The numbers that are never put forward is the percentage of students who achieve Basic, which is a C. Do we really think that everyone is going to score an A or a B in everything?
I've actually chimed in pretty extensively on this in this forum. But I'll sketch the outline.
1) Decapitate the top-down structure of education. Fire nine-tenths of the bureaucracy and pass the savings along to teachers. The entire story of the world over the past thirty years has been the productivity revolution brought about by technology. Yet education has doubled down on the ossified top-down management structures of the early 20th century, making North Korea and the modern education establishment the last two outposts of Stalinism. Common Core with its Soviet-style mandates is not a cure for the disease, but rather a symptom of the disease itself. It's simply No Child Left Behind in a different form.
2) The key determinant to a child's academic success is his desire to learn. But the way the school curriculum is designed and the way the school day is organized actually squashes initiative and curiosity. It is rigid, rule-driven, dependent on busywork, and designed for the least common denominator – which also explains why the smartest kids are quite often the worst discipline problems. Can you blame them for rebelling against what is essentially an incredibly dumb process? So stop with the "all kids march along at the same pace" philosophy. All it means is that the smart and motivated slog along at the same pace as the stupid and the lazy. And don't offer up the hoary solution of Advanced Placement classes. All that does is reward the smart kid with more busywork.
3) In this great age of decentralization, make it possible for kids to progress at an accelerated rate based on mastery of material, not by how many days they're chained to their desks, crossing off items on a to-do list. My God, I can't imagine a better way to create a bunch of cynical, apathetic burnouts than the current system. Yet educators continue to do it this way because it's the way it's always been done.
If a kid masters a concept in Algebra on the first day it's taught, why make him fill out worksheets and homework assignments centered around that concept for the next two weeks? If a sixth-grader can read at a twelfth-grade level, why the heck are you making him read a book written at a fourth-grade level along with the rest of the class? I am amazed that educators do not ask this obvious question. "That's the way we've always done it" is a surefire recipe for mediocrity.
4) Actually encourage kids to progress through their education more quickly with the actual incentive of finishing school earlier. In other words, have a lot more 14-year-olds graduate from high school. Have more kids complete their course of study in February. Currently, aside from grades or the abstract notion of getting into a good school four, five, or ten years down the road, there is zero incentive for the average student to perform well.
5) Reinstate jobs training curriculum for those who are not interested in college. This deemphasis of the non-college track is probably the greatest disservice modern education has inflicted on this country, forcing students to jump through endless hoops to be minimally qualified for the workforce. Jeez, skilled labor jobs in this country are going begging by the boatload. Good paying jobs. Why? Because we don't have trained labor. Teach a sixteen year old how to work on a car or weld. You'll have their absolute attention.
6) Stop worshipping at the altar of pedagogical techniques that have been outdated for generations. It's the Digital Age for crying out loud. Yet computers in the classroom decidedly remain a kind of ancillary thing rather than an essential tool. Here's one example among many how embracing a different mode of teaching can work wonders: How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses | Business | WIRED
7) In item #1, I advocated a scorched-earth policy in the educational bureaucracy, passing the savings on to teachers. Well, here's an example of how skewed the expenditures have gotten. New York City spends $19,000 per student. Meanwhile, contrary to the national trend, average classroom size in New York has increased to 26.5 students. At best, a teacher in the New York public school system earns $74K and change. That means of the $503,500 that gets invested in the average classroom, only 14% AT BEST actually goes to the teacher. The rest get sucked into the bowels of the NYC educational bureaucracy. Sure, some of that has to be spent on buildings, maintenance, and the what not. But you simply cannot convince me that anywhere close to that amount of money is being spent in a productive way.
Instead, why not pay that same teacher $100,000 a year, give them a system that actually accommodates a more decentralized learning style based on the individual child's performance, provide incentives to the children to master the material, and make the teacher accountable for the progress of students beyond the narrow criteria of a standardized test? I mean is this just too obvious, or is the vast education system so blinded by its own archaic pedagogical theories that it can't see a better way?
Humans are going to get dumber and dumber. We no longer have to remember things because we are connected to the Internet via smart phone. It sort of started with phones remembering phone numbers for you. Back in my day, we had to remember all the phone numbers of friends and family. That was the beginning and now it has grown to not having to remember anything. We just access information. Our brains are getting smaller and smaller and for good reason. We don't use them. Kids are ahead of the curve, so this will continue to get worse and worse. Not sure about super poor countries. They might rise to the top? Hard to say at this point.
The new numbers aren't much different than the historical numbers (meaning 50 years ago when only about half of high school students dropped out prior to graduating).
I have a US Dept. of Education chart that shows graduation rates over 70% starting in 1964. The last time graduation rates were 50% was in the late 1940s.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
So basically we should just dismiss this test and not pay any mind to the scores ?
Same test given in 2009 shows that nothing has changed in 5 years.
We're still just as bad in 2014 as we were in 2009.
The test was given to 12th graders. It does not say it was based on age.
I dismiss these tests because the older the students, the more likely they are to realize their scores don't matter. I proctored a 4th grade class take the state mandated test. One boy would finish way ahead of the others. On the essays, he would write 1-2 sentences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
Actually, when we are allowed to hold students accountable for learning things will improve. The thing that has changed in education is that we no longer hold students accountable for learning. Right now the teacher is blamed if the student doesn't learn and learning has become synonymous with passing. It is ASSumed the student learned if the student passed when that may not be the case at all. We can't hold students accountable. It's our fault if they don't make the grade (I won't say learn because no one is really measuring learning). It's not due to absences, laziness, inability, lacking pre-requisite skills....it's due to poor teaching. Period.
How do you hold students accountable who don't want to learn and don't care? The emphasis on graduation rates is part of the problem. What difference does it make if our schools push kids through school and bend over backwards to ensure they graduate, even though they can't read or do simple arithmetic?
The problem is the idea that all students should be prepared to go to college. High school students used to be able to graduate with a general diploma. I think there were also options for secreterial and vocational diplomas. These were phased out at least 20 years ago. I think this was a mistake. HS students should have other options other than what used to be called a college prep diploma. Many students are forced to take chemistry, biology, algebra and geometry when they have no interest in college.
I have a US Dept. of Education chart that shows graduation rates over 70% starting in 1964. The last time graduation rates were 50% was in the late 1940s.
The reality is that high school graduation rates, right now, are in the mid-80% range (and that's a soft number because some states count completion in four years while others still count completion in five years).
My point, which sailed totally by you, was that the testing numbers haven't really changed much. Forty, fifty, sixty years ago students who couldn't read dropped out. Were encouraged to, in fact. Today there are systemic penalties levied for a high dropout rate.
You and I likely agree on the dissolution of vocational training, but if you want to know who the culprits are then look up and down your street at your neighbors.
Teachers are disciplined in today's schools if they mention Vo-Tech to a kid. All Hell rains down if the kid happens to be a minority.
Ask me how I know.
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