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1. Wayyyyy more federal and state funding
2. More flexibility for states and counties to set curriculum and teach to the needs of the students
3. Focus on labs/career preparation rather than standardized tests
Get rid of most sports. Let the community handle sports.
More and more I'm seeing too many resources being diverted to the sports programs - like the football team getting new uniforms while the computer lab is still using Windows ME.
Even in college, it's horrible. My highest fee in college was the "sports and athletics" fee. And you still get charged to go to a game.
On top of that, star players tend to get special breaks and bonuses that the other students don't receive, and they tend to get less severe or even no punishments for breaking rules - especially if the punishment would interfere with a game or practice.
One last, but extremely important, part of my anti-athletics stance in the public school is this:
Image matters. The most important thing to a kid, especially teens, is being popular and being accepted by peers. The problem I see is that athletics receives so much attention that most kids think they have to be athletes to receive any fame and recognition - to be almost universally accepted and liked.
Smart kids, those who do well academically, are almost unilaterally depicted in the media - movies, television, even books - as being physically weak, socially awkward, bad dressers, a victim of bullies, the kid who sits alone at lunch, the kid who is only "liked" when a popular kid needs help with homework.
What kid wants to emulate someone like that?
Society as a whole needs to start adoring intelligence and academic prowess at least as much as they adore athletes. Those nations who kick the crap out of American kids academically come from nations where intelligence and academics are valued and prized far more than how fast someone can run or how far they can throw a ball.
Unless we start showing kids that there is no shame in being smart, no shame in doing well in school, and to give the brainiacs among us the same kind of idolization we give to football players, things will continue to deteriorate.
Id up the maximum class size to University style. It sounds like a bad idea at first because were taught that smaller class sizes improve results, even though one could argue our current "results" are awful. Doing this would allow tuition to be cheaper per student and for teachers to be paid more. Tuition being cheaper means more families could afford private schooling. More families affording private schooling means less strain on the public schooling system.
Id up the maximum class size to University style. It sounds like a bad idea at first because were taught that smaller class sizes improve results, even though one could argue our current "results" are awful. Doing this would allow tuition to be cheaper per student and for teachers to be paid more. Tuition being cheaper means more families could afford private schooling. More families affording private schooling means less strain on the public schooling system.
Let me make sure I understand what you are proposing..... Kindergarten, 8th grade, and everything in between 100+ kids per class? Sure lets do this, I'm signing you up to teach either 1st grade or 5th or 8th. Do it 3 days, then we can discuss why this might be the single worst suggestion I have ever read. Ever. Only thing better would be if we forgo hiring teachers to lead these massive classes and allowed the kids to lead the classes ala "Lord of the Flies" style.
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Very good suggestions. I would add enforce the learning environment in the classroom. Fail children that can't keep up and enforce discipline in school - this would be my #1 beef with my kids schools.
Let me make sure I understand what you are proposing..... Kindergarten, 8th grade, and everything in between 100+ kids per class? Sure lets do this, I'm signing you up to teach either 1st grade or 5th or 8th. Do it 3 days, then we can discuss why this might be the single worst suggestion I have ever read. Ever. Only thing better would be if we forgo hiring teachers to lead these massive classes and allowed the kids to lead the classes ala "Lord of the Flies" style.
You could scale it. Kindergarden isnt that expensive at most schools anyways so the cost element isnt enough to need to increase to 100 kids per teacher, the 15 or so is fine. However "Middle school and up" Private schools in my area cost more than University educations....By 7th grade a student should be able to sit in an auditorium and listen to a lecture.
Id up the maximum class size to University style. It sounds like a bad idea at first because were taught that smaller class sizes improve results, even though one could argue our current "results" are awful. Doing this would allow tuition to be cheaper per student and for teachers to be paid more. Tuition being cheaper means more families could afford private schooling. More families affording private schooling means less strain on the public schooling system.
I have to agree with Oldhag on this one, I believe this has to be up there with the top ten worst ideas on this forum. The objective for educating our children is not to make them sit still for hours on end to save some money. Our goal is to teach students to love to learn and give them information they can use in their future. That's not going to be done by sitting on their butts all day. All of my kids chose small private colleges because they never wanted to be in that situation. We moved to where we are for the great schools. They didn't go to private schools because there was no need to do that. If your public schools are good, the private schools are not as important.
You could scale it. Kindergarden isnt that expensive at most schools anyways so the cost element isnt enough to need to increase to 100 kids per teacher, the 15 or so is fine. However "Middle school and up" Private schools in my area cost more than University educations....By 7th grade a student should be able to sit in an auditorium and listen to a lecture.
Only if they were used to sitting and listening in grades 1 through 6.
You need to get out in the real world. Unless you are talking about superachievers whose parents constantly drill them to succeed and monitor their progress, these 12-13 year olds will at best just sit there quietly thinking about their Xbox game. And many will be disruptive ( often quietly disruptive - whispering, poking other kids, giggling, making faces etc) They still need to be individually engaged and monitored. Which is still very hard when you have 30 kids per teacher.
You could scale it. Kindergarden isnt that expensive at most schools anyways so the cost element isnt enough to need to increase to 100 kids per teacher, the 15 or so is fine. However "Middle school and up" Private schools in my area cost more than University educations....By 7th grade a student should be able to sit in an auditorium and listen to a lecture.
Clearly you don't understand school financing. The biggest ticket item is personnel. Currently the the biggest bang for the buck in most school systems is middle school - no mandated small classes like elementary, no mandated or specialized classes that might result in tiny classes like high school. In most school systems the only classes more expensive per student than kindergarten is special ed, because of class size and/or teacher's aides mandates.
Just FYI, once a class exceeds a certain threshold by age, concern about whether they are learning gets quickly replaced by concern for the physical safety of students. The younger the child, the sooner that threshold is reached.
Perhaps you should recommend to those expensive private schools that they teach university style, as a private school they are not bound by state mandated class size caps. I am sure parents will line up to enroll their 8th grader in a school with 100+ students per class.
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