Obama Proposes Paying Teachers $20,000 More Per Year.

[OICU812]

Originally Posted by Yooperkat

Obama Proposes Elite Corps Of Teachers : NPR

How about that?

Does he every stop thinking up ways of expanding the federal government's ability to spend our money???

Are there no cities, no local school boards, are there no state governments overseeing the education department in their state?

[InformedConsent]

Originally Posted by BentBow

That is "no child left behind," hard at work.

Not exactly.

It actually has nothing to do with NCLB. There is NO requirement in NCLB whatsoever for schools to dumb any students down. The dumbing down has happened because of the 'equal educational outcomes' agenda the overwhelmingly liberal educators have had for at least the last 5 decades. In their social utopia mindset , it isn't "fair" that some kids excel academically and others don't, so they've held back the top and middle and focused exclusively on the bottom - to make things more "fair."

All documented here, including schools that have bucked that trend and how they did it:

"While students in the bottom quartile have shown slow but steady improvement since the 1960s, average test scores have nonetheless gone down, primarily because of the performance of those in the top quartile. This "highest cohort of achievers," Rudman writes, has shown "the greatest declines across a variety of subjects as well as across age-level groups." Analysts have also found "a substantial drop among those children in the middle range of achievement," he continues, "but less loss and some modest gains at the lower levels." In other words, our brightest youngsters, those most likely to be headed for selective colleges, have suffered the most dramatic setbacks"

The Other Crisis in American Education - 91.11

If you don't want to read the entire article, the most relevant sections are The Incubus of the Sixties and The Shock of College-Level Demands.

Info on schools that have bucked the trend and how they did it is in the subsection: How Good Schools Buck the Trend. (Hint: they group classes by ability (track, if you will) and they tailor the curriculum to the students' ability, high or low depending on the class.)

[swbtoo]

It would be great to see online learning (at home) for high schoolers, as a start, take off. Now that would be "fundamental change".

There will always be some students who don't have the supportive home environment for that, or who need personal instruction, but that accommodation can be made. Fewer teachers, more space in schools, more individual attention for those that need it -- might spell more success for those who now struggle or fail to get through.

Unions would never allow that, though.

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by southward bound

It would be great to see online learning (at home) for high schoolers, as a start, take off. Now that would be "fundamental change".

There will always be some students who don't have the supportive home environment for that, or who need personal instruction, but that accommodation can be made. Fewer teachers, more space in schools, more individual attention for those that need it -- might spell more success for those who now struggle or fail to get through.

Unions would never allow that, though.

I'm only in middle school (grades 6-8) but the 6th graders are definitely compute savvy, even the ones that don't have computers at home.

There's kids that would take to online learning very well. There's others that would not. Schools know who they are and could mandate physical attendance.

I took a few online classes in college. Worked out well. We did have to show up a few times a year for tests and/or other group type of work.

Some states are working on their "virtual schools". Florida has come quite a ways and has good content on their website.
Requires a whole new way of teaching though and I'm sure there will be backlash from many of them.