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But that's exactly what it is under our country's current public school system, and YOU advocate for it. Those who can afford it pay for private school or move to pricey exclusive neighborhoods. Those who don't have enough money to do either are trapped in abysmally performing public schools.
Of course you want to get rid of standardized testing, so that you and your oppressive ilk can hide how really bad our country's public schools are. By 8th grade, our country's public schools have educated only 1/3 of our country's students to grade-level proficiency:
So what is your solution....clearly you don't like mine.
Change the expectation, then the culture will follow. For example - dump the new/fuzzy/sorta math, and go back to standard algorithm arithmetic. Require every public school student be 70% proficient in long division to get past 4th grade. Put a similar requirement in place for the main branches of study: English, US History, Civics, Science, Phys Ed. Have a standardized advancement test for every grade, 1-12. You pass it, you move on. You fail, you're held back a year. Done.
At each grade, the requirements will obviously be different, but until kids and parents are made to feel responsibility beyond the existential "for your own good" thing, the culture doesn't change at the individual level.
Will some kids who have learning problems be held back? Yep, and they SHOULD BE. They need more time to "get it" and should spend an extra year doing so. We fail those kids by NOT holding them back until they get it. Bottom line though, the onus must first fall on the child, then the parents, then the teacher, and right now we have that perfectly backwards...and it shows in every possible measurement of our national education.
More money, how money gets doled out, taxes, blah blah. None of it means anything until kids bear responsibility for their own failings in school. This is the NUMBER ONE reason private schools achieve better. They can set specific expectations and the student either meets them or goes away.
So what is your solution....clearly you don't like mine.
School choice and vouchers. The money follows the student to whichever of the schools the student and his/her family chooses out of those that admit him/her.
Our post-secondary system has selective enrollment and it's the best in the world.
School choice and vouchers. The money follows the student to whichever of the schools the student and his/her family chooses out of those that admit him/her.
Our post-secondary system has selective enrollment and it's the best in the world.
Change the expectation, then the culture will follow. For example - dump the new/fuzzy/sorta math, and go back to standard algorithm arithmetic. Require every public school student be 70% proficient in long division to get past 4th grade. Put a similar requirement in place for the main branches of study: English, US History, Civics, Science, Phys Ed. Have a standardized advancement test for every grade, 1-12. You pass it, you move on. You fail, you're held back a year. Done.
At each grade, the requirements will obviously be different, but until kids and parents are made to feel responsibility beyond the existential "for your own good" thing, the culture doesn't change at the individual level.
Will some kids who have learning problems be held back? Yep, and they SHOULD BE. They need more time to "get it" and should spend an extra year doing so. We fail those kids by NOT holding them back until they get it. Bottom line though, the onus must first fall on the child, then the parents, then the teacher, and right now we have that perfectly backwards...and it shows in every possible measurement of our national education.
More money, how money gets doled out, taxes, blah blah. None of it means anything until kids bear responsibility for their own failings in school. This is the NUMBER ONE reason private schools achieve better. They can set specific expectations and the student either meets them or goes away.
I agree that students should be proficient in core studies, I don't think demeaning children is the best way to achieve those goals by holding children back.
I personally think children should stay with the same teachers for several grades at a time so that a teacher can have a more hands on with the development of a child's education throughout several years. This would curb the need for teachers to learn new things about each crop of students each year and give the students a stronger bond with their own education.
You could also put in those checkpoints, but instead of holding children back, it would be better to put them in groups that need more help to learn the core studies.
Granted all of this only matters so much, parental involvement needs to be a part of this process as well.
As for the money, that needs to be reformed. Teachers need to receive more pay than they currently are because it seems like too much money goes to administration and not enough goes to teachers to help with needed supplies and give them proper pay.
So your solution is to not fix anything, just let students shuffle around.
That WILL fix things. It will sort students so that motivated students' academic achievement isn't artificially dragged down by the disruptive and/or struggling students anymore.
Remember this passage from the college professor's article on how top and middle students' academic achievement has plummeted since we stopped ability/skill grouping students in public K-12?
Quote:
"The contrast was stark: schools that had "severely declining test scores" had "moved determinedly toward heterogeneous grouping" (that is, mixed students of differing ability levels in the same classes), while the "schools who have maintained good SAT scores" tended "to prefer homogeneous grouping."
That WILL fix things. It will sort students so that motivated students' academic achievement isn't artificially dragged down by the disruptive and/or struggling students anymore.
Remember this passage from the college professor's article on how top and middle students' academic achievement has plummeted since we stopped ability/skill grouping students in public K-12?
No that will not fix anything, our schools would still be struggling, and the schools with better records would deal with overpopulation. Shuffling the problem doesn't fix any problem.
The public schools will never be fixed.
Vouchers are seen as cop outs.
If you have kids your best bet is to tighten up that belt, be frugal and send them to private school.
This is now a global economy and they will be competing with college graduates from other countries that fare better than us.
The public schools will never be fixed.
Vouchers are seen as cop outs.
If you have kids your best bet is to tighten up that belt, be frugal and send them to private school.
This is now a global economy and they will be competing with college graduates from other countries that fare better than us.
Saying the public schools will never be fixed is the easy out. It is much easier to not fix a problem than it is to fix a problem. But it sounds like you have give up.
No that will not fix anything, our schools would still be struggling, and the schools with better records would deal with overpopulation. Shuffling the problem doesn't fix any problem.
Yes, it does fix things. When things are allowed to seek their own level, they separate accordingly, and there's enough room for all. Here's an example of the concept from a simple elementary school science demonstration:
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you want to get rid of standardized testing, so that you and your oppressive ilk can hide how really bad our country's public schools are. By 8th grade, our country's public schools have educated only 1/3 of our country's students to grade-level proficiency:
