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Old 06-26-2022, 11:08 AM
 
Location: Sun City West, Arizona
50,191 posts, read 23,824,373 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57 View Post
Agree with all of this except for c. Students with disabilities need socialization with "normal" peers.

I used to be against pay for performance but now I'm not. There would, however, need to be a decent base pay. They key problem here is that teaching difficult students is harder work than teaching well prepared students, so there's a moral hazard of teachers who work less getting paid more.

e is more of a societal issue. My experience is that the schools tell students there are lots of trade options but that talk falls on deaf ears.
Not sure how it is now, but when I was still principal, the annual state exams did measure progress for sped kids. Just different standards. And I'll give you an example of how we used that. One year the area superintendent pointed out to me that our sped kids were in "a dip". And I said, "Well, they are special ed". And she pulled out the data for sped kids that would go to my school next and how their test scores were steadily improving. Then she showed me "our dip". Then she showed me sped scores for our kids once they got to high school where again they improved. I went back to my school and discussed our sped test scores with the sped teachers and they replied, "Well, they are special ed". Then I showed them the same data I had been shown of our students before and after our school...and things changed.
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Old 06-28-2022, 04:33 PM
 
1,173 posts, read 1,073,216 times
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Originally Posted by tnff View Post
Ok. Let's discuss. I'll lay my chips on the table so speak.

a. Pay: Match pay bands to roughly what someone with that degree would make in industry. Will make teaching more competitive for talent, but will require letting go of the everyone is paid the same pay scale mindset.

b. Pay for performance. We need to develop some sort of performance measures and then pay for meeting the. Teacher and unions can get on board and help develop these measures and pay system or politicians are going to do it to them. I know that's not what teachers want to hear, but it's better to recognize what's coming and get ahead of the game than get run over by it.

c. Taking those with true disabilities and other social issues that impact their learning out of the mainstream discussion, we need ability grouping; at least 3 levels.

d. Math, language arts, spelling, reading, etc: Fundamentals first. Esp in subjects like math and science, the fundamentals don't change.

e. Bring back vocational, home-ec, and similar options in schools. If nothing else, these are fundamental life skills. But more importantly, kids need to know that skilled trades are respected alternatives to college. Not everyone needs or should go to college.

f. Require degrees in subject from institutes accredited to award said degrees for STEM subjects as well as the key subjects.

g. Related to f is break down barriers to entry for 2nd career workers. Make it easier for people to transition into the field later in life.

What would you do?
None of the above.

The problem with American education is culture, or lack thereof, and history.

The US will never perform at the level of other countries such as Finland, Japan or South Africa because the issue has nothing to do with money per child, teacher compensation, vocational training or the race of the students. Immigrant African/Black students admitted to colleges in America outperform their mostly white American peers academically and as a group are some of the highest achieving college student groups per state department data. Not unlike their Asian peers. So no, it isnt a race thing either.

There is no uniform understanding or culture around education its importance or what it even means to be ‘educated’ here. It’s not unlike a large corporation with several divisions that have disparate goals, products and missions. Results will vary.

One can shuffle the cards all they want but outcomes will remain the same. Attempts to fix these issues are doomed to fail, again due to lack of a common understanding. Excepting a seismic cultural shift in understanding(which will not happen).

Countries with similar cultural issues(e.g the U.K, Brazil, France to some extent) have the same problems on a smaller scale.
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Old 06-28-2022, 07:28 PM
 
19,494 posts, read 17,729,533 times
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Originally Posted by BLDSoon View Post
None of the above.

The problem with American education is culture, or lack thereof, and history.

The US will never perform at the level of other countries such as Finland, Japan or South Africa because the issue has nothing to do with money per child, teacher compensation, vocational training or the race of the students. Immigrant African/Black students admitted to colleges in America outperform their mostly white American peers academically and as a group are some of the highest achieving college student groups per state department data. Not unlike their Asian peers. So no, it isnt a race thing either.

There is no uniform understanding or culture around education its importance or what it even means to be ‘educated’ here. It’s not unlike a large corporation with several divisions that have disparate goals, products and missions. Results will vary.

One can shuffle the cards all they want but outcomes will remain the same. Attempts to fix these issues are doomed to fail, again due to lack of a common understanding. Excepting a seismic cultural shift in understanding(which will not happen).

Countries with similar cultural issues(e.g the U.K, Brazil, France to some extent) have the same problems on a smaller scale.
I agree to varying degrees with much of that. However, per the discussion, "immigrant African/Black students admitted to college in America" is a cadre subject to exceptional selection bias.

The top several percent of just about any cadre will outperform broader cadres - IOW the top 2, 3, 4% of X will nearly always outperform the top 30% of Y. Not recognizing this factor leads to all sorts of weak and even faulty conclusions.

A classic example is humanities majors who accepted into medical school performing better than biology majors. The mistaken takeaway is that per the presented facts the humanities better prepare students for medical school. The reality is few humanities students win medical school slots. Lots of biology grads do etc. etc.
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Old 06-29-2022, 12:35 AM
 
1,173 posts, read 1,073,216 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
I agree to varying degrees with much of that. However, per the discussion, "immigrant African/Black students admitted to college in America" is a cadre subject to exceptional selection bias.

The top several percent of just about any cadre will outperform broader cadres - IOW the top 2, 3, 4% of X will nearly always outperform the top 30% of Y. Not recognizing this factor leads to all sorts of weak and even faulty conclusions.

A classic example is humanities majors who accepted into medical school performing better than biology majors. The mistaken takeaway is that per the presented facts the humanities better prepare students for medical school. The reality is few humanities students win medical school slots. Lots of biology grads do etc. etc.
I agree that any "immigrant (ENTER-ORIGIN-COUNTRY-HERE) students admitted to colleges in America" is indeed a select group. The attainment of students of African origin in this group is as high as that group's as a whole, higher than of US native students as a whole, and much higher than of native African-American students as a whole. To dive deep into the statistics, methodologies, etc... this information is available from the Census Bureau, The NCES, Pew Research, or if one is so inclined, a well-worded FOIA request from the State Department. There is also a growing body of academic research on this topic. I came upon these frankly, surprising-to-me, statistics while assisting a college student with a paper on a related topic.

Much is made of the eugenics-based argument that black students are simply incapable of educational achievement due to genetic traits and lower intelligence scores that therefore make them incapable of learning on the same level as their peers. If that is truly the case, it should be true for the children of that origin worldwide. It's been shown not to be the case. And, interestingly, while a number of those African students are well to do, the larger contingent is not, and for them, educational attainment does not correlate with SES.

Like America, US education is a tale of many cities, each with unique history, goals, and challenges. While there are common threads, there are many challenges unique to certain regions, certain schools, certain races, certain SES profiles, etc.

I'm one of those that think the US education system, in general, works as it was designed to. There are many issues with that design, but it still manages to successfully educate large swaths of the population. Whether that education is sufficient, what that education should entail, and whether the pursuit of that education should be universal are cultural questions...and the US does not have an overarching, universal culture and never will.

Last edited by BLDSoon; 06-29-2022 at 12:59 AM..
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