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I support raising teacher's salaries a lot, but there's a catch. No more tenure and no unions. These institutions work very well in theory, but in reality all they do is proliferate bad teachers and make them impossible to fire.
Lots of professors, for example, once granted tenure begin to coast. With tenure, all you have to do is show up, put in minimal effort, leave and collect the paycheck. Lazy and bad teachers only hurt the students and make them hate education.
That poster was referring to disruptive kids and emphasized that disability didn't matter.
I understand that. I still disagree with him. My son has his disruptive times. He shouldn't be in a completely separate classroom from his peers 100% of the time because of it.
I understand that. I still disagree with him. My son has his disruptive times. He shouldn't be in a completely separate classroom from his peers 100% of the time because of it.
Here is an ugly truth, when your child disrupts class he destroys the learning environment because the kids are focused on him not what they are supposed to be learning and it takes the teacher's focus off of teaching the 29 other kids to solely dealing with him. A 5 minute disruption leads to at least 10 minutes less of education, because it takes at least 5 minutes to get everyone back on task. Every 5 times that happens, say in a middle school, that is equivalent to losing a day's education. This means 29 other kids are losing out for your one child. Why is your one child's education more important than 29 kids' education? Like I said, it's an ugly truth. If he can be in class without disrupting it, great. If not, it's a problem and negatively impacts everyone else. At some point we decided to sacrifice the good of many for the good of the few and there are repercussions for that choice. I think it has gone too far and we need to weigh the benefits to the cost.
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I support raising teacher's salaries a lot, but there's a catch. No more tenure and no unions. These institutions work very well in theory, but in reality all they do is proliferate bad teachers and make them impossible to fire.
Lots of professors, for example, once granted tenure begin to coast. With tenure, all you have to do is show up, put in minimal effort, leave and collect the paycheck. Lazy and bad teachers only hurt the students and make them hate education.
How will you insure that districts don't just cut loose higher paid teachers every time the budget is tight? There is ZERO incentive to keep higher paid teachers in a district. They don't get one penny more for a good high paid teacher than they get for a new teacher who doesn't know the ropes yet. My district just offered a buy out to higher paid teachers and they will be replacing them with new teachers so they have more money in the budget. EVERY teacher going is an excellent teacher but they're going to save $40K/teacher by doing this. This decision is not being made in the interest of better educating our kids as the teachers who are leaving are wonderful teachers and the kids love them. They are expensive teachers so they have to go.
There is zero sense in raising teacher's pay if you're not going to give them some kind of protection that they won't be cut every time there's a hiccup in the budget. Teaching is not competitive like say engineering. Schools don't get more money for good teachers than they do for bad. They get the same amount no matter what the quality of their teachers are. We're not selling a product that we can get more for if it's higher quality and there is ZERO mobility in this profession. Districts don't go looking for the best teachers and pay they a deserved salary they go looking for the cheapest teachers and try to stifle their wages as long as they can to save money.
From a budget perspective the best teacher to have in the classroom is the one that is the cheapest who can handle the most kids in their classroom. Knowing their subject and being able to teach it don't even enter the equation. THIS is where the unions come in. I was never a union person until I became a teacher and realized what I have written here. It's the union that helps retain good teachers even though they are higher paid. If the schools had it their way they'd be replaced long before we reached the highest pay level. This is what charter schools do. The one I worked in turned over 1/3 of their teachers every year and that was fine with them. They rarely had to give anyone a raise. It's a major cost save to have an inexperienced staff because starting wages are low. This does nothing to improve education.
I've come to the conclusion that unions are necessary in teaching. They push to keep good teachers and to keep class sizes small enough that we can teach well. They push to get us the pay we deserve. I wish it wasn't so. I wish good teachers were valued by schools and that teaching was competitive like engineering where people who are better at their job can command a higher salary AND have greater job security. I wish being better at this job made me more valuable to my employer and worth paying more but I know that isn't true. They see every raise I get (I've only had one in 6 years of teaching AND one pay cut that more than took it away) as money out of their pocket. They don't care what I'm worth or that I'm paid what I'm worth. They want to pay me the least they can and if I get too expensive, they want to get rid of me and hire someone cheaper.
Here is an ugly truth, when your child disrupts class he destroys the learning environment because the kids are focused on him not what they are supposed to be learning and it takes the teacher's focus off of teaching the 29 other kids to solely dealing with him. A 5 minute disruption leads to at least 10 minutes less of education, because it takes at least 5 minutes to get everyone back on task. Every 5 times that happens, say in a middle school, that is equivalent to losing a day's education. This means 29 other kids are losing out for your one child. Why is your one child's education more important than 29 kids' education? Like I said, it's an ugly truth. If he can be in class without disrupting it, great. If not, it's a problem and negatively impacts everyone else. At some point we decided to sacrifice the good of many for the good of the few and there are repercussions for that choice. I think it has gone too far and we need to weigh the benefits to the cost.
In larger areas there should be separate schools for the children going on to college and for the ones that aren't. Our competitor countries don't mix all kids together. I also doubt they have special ed in the same building.
I think we should forget about "our competitors". There is plenty of evidence that some countries fudge these tests, e.g. in China supposedly not all students are tested (or not all their test results are counted), just the students in the large cities, etc. We should just get our own house in order. As stated, some countries don't even do special ed, and you can bet your boots they don't count those kids in their stats.
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Originally Posted by Clemencia53
Increase teacher pay
if math is so important, have "real" math teachers at the lower grades.
give teachers a year off every five years with pay to avoid burnout.
My district has math specialists that work with the teachers at all grade levels. I'd guess that's the case with many larger districts. It'd be a good idea for all districts. In that vein, more co-operation between small districts to share such resources.
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Originally Posted by armory
My changes?
2) Bring back vo-tech. Auto shop and other skilled professions can be taught there.
3) Bring back recess/PE. Kids need to go out to recharge, especially the wee ones. Bring back PE into the HS so those kids get some form of exercise during the day.
4) Let parents make the choice of what their kids eat in school, especially if sending the kid to school with a packed lunch. Food from home should be off limits to school administration.
5) Bring back art into the schools, especially music.
6) Quit pushing college onto all students as not all are college bound and those who do graduate are finding it hard to get the high dollar employment they have been taught to expect. Immigration has ruined the job market in the USA; my brother owns a construction company and all of the sub contractors he uses are but families of immigrants. When he and I were young we did the jobs immigrants do today. Today's American kids are too used to taking it easy and couldn't fathom a week as a laborer on a construction site, let alone being a journeyman in the trades. They may have to work an occasional Saturday.
Many districts still have vo-tech, at least here in CO. We also have a lot of vo-tech programs at the CCs and co-operative agreements with the school districts and the CCs.
I think there's been less elimination of recess/PE than you read in the media. I know my district is doing both. (Recess just in the elementary and middle schools)
I don't think the school lunch program is a major issue. It's not worth wasting time on, IMO.
Most districts still have arts programs; again, it's a media hype that they've all been eliminated.
Again that's a media construct. I do think all should graduate "career or college ready"; this includes ready to take certificate programs at the CCs.
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Originally Posted by villageidiot1
I think major changes are needed, but it is difficult to determine exactly what changes should take place. Our education process has changed little over the past 100 years. The about the classes a student takes in HS: math, science, history, English, foreign languages, physical education and maybe a shop, music, or art class. It is the same as 100 years ago except students typically have a computer applications class.
In many ways education has regressed. Students usually don't read textbooks today. They are given study guides and quided reading worksheets, instead. They spend class time working with partners to fill out the worksheets. When they are not working on worksheets, they typically are involved in some kind of group project, which is mostly socializing and wasted class time. The other class activity is some type of creative activity so that the teacher can hang them around the classroom. I'm talking about high school here not elementary school.
So what would I change? Here are a few.
1. Students have different abilities to learn. Schools need to challenge all students but not overwhelm them. Many of the brightest students are not being challenged enough while many students are overwhelmed with math and science that is beyond their ability.
2. Discipine has gone downhill in most schools. Students don't learn in an out of control classroom.
3. Don't measure schools on graduation rates. That just forces schools to push kids through the system.
4. Computer literacy is not some holy grail. Just because school board members, administrator and parents can't use a computer, doesn't mean that more computer technology will translate to more effective learning.
I really think you are overblowing sports in schools. Much of what you are describing does not take place.
Agreed.
I don't like the word fail. Some students are going to take longer to learn a subject and need more instruction. We need to figure out a way to do this.
I don't think increasing teacher pay will do much to improve the level of education in this country.
So what you're suggesting is it doesn't matter if a student can read, write, add and subtract, as long as they got pushed through the system to graduate, that's all that is important. A high school exit exam should be something that a student is striving to pass. It should show some level of understanding of a subject. It should act as motivation for a student to learn the subject but not be an impossible task.
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Originally Posted by Magritte25
In middle and high schools, build gyms that include exercise machines and hold different classes like yoga or spinning and allow the kids to choose what they want to do for their gym credits
I think that's it for now.
My district has Weight-training 1 and 2; Aerobic Walking (I often see the walkers on my way to work); Fit for Life (Fit for Life combines the topics of Health Education courses (nutrition, stress management, substance abuse prevention, disease prevention, first aid, and so on) with an active fitness component (typically including aerobic activity and fitness circuits) with the intention of conveying the importance of life-long wellness habits. [copied from course description]); Golf, Racquet Sports; Team Sports (a regular PE course, not credit for doing sports although they do that too); Cycling; Basketball 1 and 2 (again, not credit for being on the basketball team); Adaptive PE for kids with special need. http://schools.bvsd.org/p12/MonarchH...ON%202-15).pdf
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I guess what I'm saying with some of this is that many posters should look into what their districts are already offering!
My district has Weight-training 1 and 2; Aerobic Walking (I often see the walkers on my way to work); Fit for Life (Fit for Life combines the topics of Health Education courses (nutrition, stress management, substance abuse prevention, disease prevention, first aid, and so on) with an active fitness component (typically including aerobic activity and fitness circuits) with the intention of conveying the importance of life-long wellness habits. [copied from course description]); Golf, Racquet Sports; Team Sports (a regular PE course, not credit for doing sports although they do that too); Cycling; Basketball 1 and 2 (again, not credit for being on the basketball team); Adaptive PE for kids with special need. http://schools.bvsd.org/p12/MonarchH...ON%202-15).pdf
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I guess what I'm saying with some of this is that many posters should look into what their districts are already offering!
I know what our district offers. NOTHING like what yours does. I think you should realize people from all over the world are posting so answers will vary wildly.
In higher education I would reduce federal loans available to students. College tuition is no small matter anymore and the incentive to increase tuition to meet shortfalls is largely due to the fact that the federal government backs non-dischargeable loans in large amounts.
Go back to basics, reading, writing and arithmetic and then when they master that, you can add the other subjects. I cannot believe the number of high school graduates that can't count change out or comprehend simple questions.
I would change the education system by applying engineering principles. In engineering if it's important enough to have a specification it's important enough to test. I would start by writing exit exams for every year and subject taught and requiring students to pass them to pass the grade/class. As things are, there are standards but they're not really tested in any way that matters. IF they are tested it's the teacher testing them in their class. So the only ones tested are the ones that teacher taught. That could be 90% of them (no one gets them all) or 10% and it will vary from one school to another or one teacher to another. If you want me to teach it then test it. The proof I taught it and taught it well is my student's performance BUT you MUST make the test mean something to them. Our current tests mean nothing to them. I've seen kids come in, bubble one answer and then proceed to take a nap. If the kids don't care about the test you're not going to get good results. Even making passing the test a requirement for passing won't make them all care but it will make more of them care.
This is my start. One everyone is taking the same tests which actually test what is supposed to be taught teachers will strive to teach what should be taught and you will have a means to compare one school to another and one teacher to another. Find the teachers whose kids do well and start training other teachers to do what they do. Do what engineers do. Find your weak spot and fix it. Once fixed go on to the next weak spot. Improving education will take time. There is no quick fix.
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A high school exit exam should be something that a student is striving to pass. It should show some level of understanding of a subject. It should act as motivation for a student to learn the subject but not be an impossible task.
