Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The current system is failing because of the insane policy of the past three decades: high stakes standardized testing.
I suspect certain political organizations continue to favor that approach for two reasons:
1) It shifts billions of education dollars to the corporations that administer these tests.
2) The damage inflicted on public schools fits their agenda for privatization.
Closing schools in favor of libraries isn't the answer.
I agree that high stakes testing is bad, but that's not the cause of the problem. High stakes testing, common core, etc are all bad attempts at solutions that avoid having to dig down to the politically incorrect conclusion that is much of the problem.
In no particular order.
a. Lack of give a damn among parents and students.
b. Too many education dollars spent on overhead and misc staff rather than on teachers.
c. Too much emphasis on various psychologies and strategies rather than subject matter knowledge. You can't teach what you don't know.
d. Too much focus on an "everyone must go to college" path rather than providing diverse paths that provide the best outcomes for everyone.
f. Too much effort to use the school system to solve social issues.
I can't believe how many people are praising this as a good, "out of the box" idea.
OP is basically re-creating a school with more and smaller classes.
Some schools already have incorporated day care.
Who pays the extra teachers for the miniclasses and all the counselors?
You think schools don't already encourage other students to politely, respectfully tell misbehaving kids to stop?
What exactly is innovative here?
I also detect more than a handful of posters who obviously haven't set foot in a public school in decades.
Instead of having schools that impose a one-size-fits-all, rigid curriculum on everyone, what if we instead had "public superlibraries" which were basically libraries, plus miniclasses ( a miniclass is like a class that results in a certification at the end), plus mentors and counselors to help guide learners, plus daycare for young children? I would propose having a system like this, where children 0 to 8 would be eligible for free day care, young people 5-18 would be eligible for up to 7-8 hours of free miniclasses per weekday, and adults would be eligible for one free miniclass per day as a poverty-fighting measure? Obviously some fine-tuning would be needed but with the appropriate conditions, replacing schools with superlibraries could be made approximately revenue-neutral.
Thoughts?
What in the world?
Libraries, funded by tax payer dollars, should be daycare centers starting at age "0" and tax payer dollars should increase to fund this?
Where else are these "super-libraries" going to get their funding to build brand new "super libraries" or build rooms on to an existing library? And to take care of infants & toddlers? For "free". Nothing is free. Time to realize that.
So right there?
Fail.
Who is going to learn WHAT, from the age of 5-18 with "free mini-classes".
Mini-classes in what? How to brush your teeth or AP Bio?
Instead of having schools that impose a one-size-fits-all, rigid curriculum on everyone, what if we instead had "public superlibraries" which were basically libraries, plus miniclasses ( a miniclass is like a class that results in a certification at the end), plus mentors and counselors to help guide learners, plus daycare for young children? I would propose having a system like this, where children 0 to 8 would be eligible for free day care, young people 5-18 would be eligible for up to 7-8 hours of free miniclasses per weekday, and adults would be eligible for one free miniclass per day as a poverty-fighting measure? Obviously some fine-tuning would be needed but with the appropriate conditions, replacing schools with superlibraries could be made approximately revenue-neutral.
Thoughts?
I've actually instructed in nontraditional programs with 100% individualized ed and elements of this in place.
The main challenges include it really only working for those students who are highly self - motivated and self disciplined...all others sift out. It only works for the most disciplined learners...i.e. the ones that would excel anyway and need it least.
It also requires a smaller teacher /mentor/guide/tutor/facilitator or whatever term you use to learner ratio, which becomes very costly very quickly. The program I worked for was 1:1...that's very expensive.
I'm now a counselor, and the number of those that such programs would require to reach the students outlined in other posts would likewise be extremely costly resources.
3). Hire more subject matter experts and fewer education experts. Increase teacher pay but demand that teachers be among say the top 20 or 25% of college graduates. Now it's more or less the opposite.
As long as you recognize just how tremendously you'd need to up teacher pay to have a prayer of attracting the top quarter of graduates with subject matter expertise to forsake more lucrative options to go that route...and have a good revenue stream to make that happen.
Instead of having schools that impose a one-size-fits-all, rigid curriculum on everyone, what if we instead had "public superlibraries" which were basically libraries, plus miniclasses ( a miniclass is like a class that results in a certification at the end), plus mentors and counselors to help guide learners, plus daycare for young children? I would propose having a system like this, where children 0 to 8 would be eligible for free day care, young people 5-18 would be eligible for up to 7-8 hours of free miniclasses per weekday, and adults would be eligible for one free miniclass per day as a poverty-fighting measure? Obviously some fine-tuning would be needed but with the appropriate conditions, replacing schools with superlibraries could be made approximately revenue-neutral.
Thoughts?
That's how I educated myself, by dwelling in libraries, studying subjects in depth, that were never even discussed in the uninspiring mediocrity of classroom curricula. I excelled with our annual, comprehensive achievement tests, but didn't do so well with classroom grades, as I ignored most of what they taught there and put on their quizzes and end-of-term tests. There's no penalty for forgetting everything you learned in the classrooms, once you've taken the semester tests. But the comprehensive tests require that you hold what you've learned in long-term memory and that you know how to put the knowledge to work in solving complex problems.
I can't believe how many people are praising this as a good, "out of the box" idea.
OP is basically re-creating a school with more and smaller classes.
Some schools already have incorporated day care.
Who pays the extra teachers for the miniclasses and all the counselors?
You think schools don't already encourage other students to politely, respectfully tell misbehaving kids to stop?
What exactly is innovative here?
I also detect more than a handful of posters who obviously haven't set foot in a public school in decades.
Sadly, I can.
Unrealistically simplistic 'solutions' to complex perceived problems - especially when the 'problem' is a boogeyman like public schools - have always gotten lots of applause.
As long as you recognize just how tremendously you'd need to up teacher pay to have a prayer of attracting the top quarter of graduates with subject matter expertise to forsake more lucrative options to go that route...and have a good revenue stream to make that happen.
I'm sure the plan is to raise your taxes enough to cover the costs.
I agree that high stakes testing is bad, but that's not the cause of the problem. High stakes testing, common core, etc are all bad attempts at solutions that avoid having to dig down to the politically incorrect conclusion that is much of the problem.
In no particular order.
a. Lack of give a damn among parents and students.
b. Too many education dollars spent on overhead and misc staff rather than on teachers.
c. Too much emphasis on various psychologies and strategies rather than subject matter knowledge. You can't teach what you don't know.
d. Too much focus on an "everyone must go to college" path rather than providing diverse paths that provide the best outcomes for everyone.
f. Too much effort to use the school system to solve social issues.
^^^This. The problems we have now were once solutions to problems we had back then.
a. Lack of give a damn among parents and students. The main problem. The kids come to school with hardly any discipline or motivation from home. Most of the classroom time is wasted by the teacher trying to get them to sit down and learn. So it STARTS in the home. No use throwing money at it.
b. Too many education dollars spent on overhead and misc staff rather than on teachers. Just throw more money at it. My town spent a fortune on a silly superintendent who only wanted to promote her own career by introducing expensive gimmicks and useless new programs, all costing money. We just needed teachers so we could have small enough classes.
c. Too much emphasis on various psychologies and strategies rather than subject matter knowledge.
It's probably been said a million times: Leave the teachers alone. Let them teach. There are really no "new" strategies and tricks to teaching. A good teacher looks at each kid as an individual and tries to teach them in their own way. Teachers do not need more gimmicks and silly tricks to teach them how to teach. Just save your money and LET THEM TEACH.
"Yes" to the rest too. You're trying to fix the symptoms rather than addressing the causes. It all begins in the home. If they come from a decent home, they will learn IN SPITE of the teacher and IN SPITE of the type of school. It's because they value learning, they have the discipline to apply themselves, and they just plain want to learn.
For the kids who don't come from a decent home background, give the teachers more authority to remove them from the class or to punish them until they stop disrupting the class, get the parents involved and stop coddling them (parents AND kids), and hire more teachers so the disruptive, uninterested ones can have more one on one attention.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
