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The failure of schools is demonstrated in the numbers of incoming freshmen who need remedial no-credit classes in college because of grade inflation in high school to improve graduation rates. They should send them back to their high schools to be re-taught. When it starts to cost the schools/taxpayers more money to re-educate them, maybe they won't hand out A's like candy.
And note: Singapore is an international leader in test-taking. Yet even their own education minister admitted that while their students aced international tests, they struggle produce mathematicians, scientists, entrepreneurs and academics.
OTOH, in 2015, the data TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Assessment) test in 2015 show Americans scored their highest marks in the 20-year history of U.S. tests.
The failure of schools is demonstrated in the numbers of incoming freshmen who need remedial no-credit classes in college because of grade inflation in high school to improve graduation rates. They should send them back to their high schools to be re-taught. When it starts to cost the schools/taxpayers more money to re-educate them, maybe they won't hand out A's like candy.
This problem would be solved if colleges and universities didn't admit students who have such deficiencies. They used to be routed toward community colleges where they could get their skills up to snuff at a reasonable cost. You wouldn't think that perhaps four-year institutions wanted to get more of the tuition dollars and started admitting people who need a few semesters at full price to get caught up, would you?
The failure of schools is demonstrated in the numbers of incoming freshmen who need remedial no-credit classes in college because of grade inflation in high school to improve graduation rates. They should send them back to their high schools to be re-taught. When it starts to cost the schools/taxpayers more money to re-educate them, maybe they won't hand out A's like candy.
The problem is we are pushing children into college who aren't suited for college
I have to have a teacher in every classroom. I work hard to find the best I can.
So you hire basically anyone, regardless of their background or qualifications, because you can’t find anybody else to fit the position, and you need a teacher in every class.
I am so glad they don’t hire doctors, or any other profession where lives are on the line, in this way.
“We have a surplus of patients but not enough doctors, so we’re going to hire every Tom, Chris, and Larry without a medical license because we need a ‘doctor’ in every examining room.”
Quote:
What do you think the alternative is? Send the kids home? That's illegal.
You explain to upper management, whatever that is, that you cannot find any qualified teachers who can adequately teach classes. What you don’t do is hire every Joe Shmoe off the street that applies just because you can’t find adequate teachers otherwise. The fact that you have too many students and not enough qualified teachers is upper management’s fault, not yours as a principal.
So you hire basically anyone, regardless of their background or qualifications, because you can’t find anybody else to fit the position, and you need a teacher in every class.
I am so glad they don’t hire doctors, or any other profession where lives are on the line, in this way.
“We have a surplus of patients but not enough doctors, so we’re going to hire every Tom, Chris, and Larry without a medical license because we need a â€doctor’ in every examining room.”
You explain to upper management, whatever that is, that you cannot find any qualified teachers who can adequately teach classes. What you don’t do is hire every Joe Shmoe off the street that applies just because you can’t find adequate teachers otherwise. The fact that you have too many students and not enough qualified teachers is upper management’s fault, not yours as a principal.
That is not what he said. In most states, if not all state, you must hire a certified teacher in that subject before you can hire someone under an emergency certificate. A teaching certificate means they graduated from accredited college and passed the necessary certification tests for that state. An accredited program would include successful student teaching.
Do you think this is any different from a hospital hiring a doctor? The find the best qualified candidate who is board certified in a particular field, which would include a residency in a field like emergency medicine, internal medicine, general surgery, etc.
In either case, you are sometimes forced to hire someone who doesn't overly impress you.
And the test scores do nothing but confirm the obvious: not all kids have the same ability to absorb learning in a one-size-fits-all approach.[...]
Catering to the low performers has brought American education to where it stands today. I doubt that many would argue that it's an improvement over what it was a generation ago, before this testing mania took hold.
This is what my husband refers to as "the race to the middle." As a teacher, I am charged with "differentiating instruction" so that I can meet the needs of all of my students, no matter how disparate their needs and abilities might be. (The argument that grouping students by age is arbitrary and not necessarily the best way of doing things is a topic for another day). Although I try my best to differentiate, when I am overwhelmed by everything I have to do, I don't worry about my advanced students or my students on grade level; I worry about my students who are struggling. They get my full attention, and it is often at the expense of the average and high achievers.
This is what my husband refers to as "the race to the middle." As a teacher, I am charged with "differentiating instruction" so that I can meet the needs of all of my students, no matter how disparate their needs and abilities might be. (The argument that grouping students by age is arbitrary and not necessarily the best way of doing things is a topic for another day). Although I try my best to differentiate, when I am overwhelmed by everything I have to do, I don't worry about my advanced students or my students on grade level; I worry about my students who are struggling. They get my full attention, and it is often at the expense of the average and high achievers.
You describe the dilemma perfectly. We spend most of our time and resources on the kids at the bottom and you cannot possibly differentiate instruction for 30 different kids day-after-day. And, frankly, we are going to sink as a country if we continue to insufficiently develop the brightest students by trapping them in classrooms where teachers are consumed with helping the kids with the biggest behavior problems and the kids who are going to struggle to learn regardless how magical your lesson plans are. I just sat through a department chair meeting two days ago where the principal spoke of getting every single student to succeed. Fortunately, a teacher immediately asked if that was realistic. Of course, it's not and we never address the reality: we have finite amounts of time and resources and it is not just foolish, but wrong to continue to devote massively disproportionate amounts of both on kids at the bottom.
Actual differentiation would mirror what many of us lived through as students when we were young: groupings of students in classes by ability and intelligence. This, by the way, would also open the door to moving away from segregating kids by age. If you have a 2nd grader who reads at the 6th grade level, you have that child in a class with proficient 6th grade students. The you don't have teachers trying to write 3 or more different lesson plans for one classroom.
You describe the dilemma perfectly. We spend most of our time and resources on the kids at the bottom and you cannot possibly differentiate instruction for 30 different kids day-after-day. And, frankly, we are going to sink as a country if we continue to insufficiently develop the brightest students by trapping them in classrooms where teachers are consumed with helping the kids with the biggest behavior problems and the kids who are going to struggle to learn regardless how magical your lesson plans are. I just sat through a department chair meeting two days ago where the principal spoke of getting every single student to succeed. Fortunately, a teacher immediately asked if that was realistic. Of course, it's not and we never address the reality: we have finite amounts of time and resources and it is not just foolish, but wrong to continue to devote massively disproportionate amounts of both on kids at the bottom.
Actual differentiation would mirror what many of us lived through as students when we were young: groupings of students in classes by ability and intelligence. This, by the way, would also open the door to moving away from segregating kids by age. If you have a 2nd grader who reads at the 6th grade level, you have that child in a class with proficient 6th grade students. The you don't have teachers trying to write 3 or more different lesson plans for one classroom.
Our students won't even come to school. We have the central office personnel wanting to know what interventions we have put in place for students who have missed over half the school year. The district defaults failing grades to a 50, so that students just have to earn a 70 for second semester if they failed the first semester. They put forth no effort, but want a passing grade.
I had one such student come in yesterday wanting to know what he can do to pass so that he can graduate. He wasn't prepared to do any work, so he left SOL. I had no sympathy. As I told him, if it was really important to him to graduate, he would have tried harder. C'est la vie.
Too late now, it has been a 50-year race to the bottom. It will take just as long to get back to basics.
A slight offset is the parental control of Asian, Indian subcontinent children’s education here in the USA.They get it.
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