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This is a theory that a friend of mine, a CA public high school teacher has on improving public schools. Want to see what everyone thinks.
1. Eliminate all private, parochial, magnet and charter schools. Everyone
must attend their neighborhood public school. Don't like your
neighborhood public school? Move to a different neighborhood. Better
yet, invest your time and resources in improving your neighborhood
school.
2. Equalize funding (by making it less dependent on property taxes) so
that the same amount of $$$ is spent per child, regardless of whether
the neighborhood is lower, middle or upper class.
3. Bring back tracking. Not the tracking of old that was rigid and based
strictly on standardized testing. Base groupings on a portfolio of
students' work over time. Make the groups fluid so that as students
improve, they can move into the higher level tracks.
4. The one alternative to the neighborhood school is an alternative school
for the riff raff that are disrespectful and disruptive to everyone
else's learning. (i.e. defiant behavior, cursing at teachers,
threatening/violent behavior to staff or students, etc.)
Perhaps the alternative school could be like a military boot camp or
held at juvenile hall. Stop bending over backwards for the few kids
that don't care to learn and put the energy/resources on kids who
want to learn.
5. Stop the indiscriminate inclusion and mainstreaming. How is a general
education teacher supposed to adequately teach a student whose
performance or ability is a few to several grades below grade level,
especially considering that many gen ed teachers have next to no
training on implementing various accomodations and
modifications? What about when the student is virtually non-
verbal; with their verbal language being echolalic? What about
students whose primary disability is ED/BD (emotional/behavioral
disturbance). Again, why do the majority of students have to suffer
in order to accomodate children who act out and are continually
disruptive?
The magnet schools from #1 and tracking from #3 conflict. Public magnets like mine are the proof in the pudding of proving tracking works, and works well.
We take the best and the brightest and put them in specialized theme based science schools. We also have a school for specific emotional/behavior problems like ODD, ED, etc that allow students a less traditional approach to education. We also have vocational programs, and a school for kids gifted in the non-tradional academic areas.
If I had my way, ALL schools in a county would become one system with all sorts of tracks and theme based schools. STEM schools for all levels, same for any interest based theme, like communications, arts, etc. Also vocational training without a stigma, and traditional schools but with a student body that is much more academically matched than you find in a traditional school. This allows very specific levels of rigor for each class.
Eliminating alternative forms of education? Hell no to that. We can't improve our schools if everyone else refuses to cooperate. Don't give me b***** such as "So, what can you do about it?" Places with good schools are expensive (being in the Bay Area) and so as private school. I know a parent whose child used to be shy and depressed at a local middle school but now flourishes at a charter high school. Seriously, as much respect as I have for most liberals, there are some among them that I question their intentions to improve everyone's lives or make everyone equally miserable, without cost to them of course.
Try to make education as local as possible. Limit the federal mandates, limit the one size fits all county school systems.
In top performing states like Massachusetts, county government is non existent and I would bet in states with little county government, the schools performance is higher. In Massachusetts, school funding is local and everyone participates in it during open town meeting (another great piece of New England democracy). When put up against the rest of the world, Massachusetts students ranked second to Hong Kong.
Try to make education as local as possible. Limit the federal mandates, limit the one size fits all county school systems.
In top performing states like Massachusetts, county government is non existent and I would bet in states with little county government, the schools performance is higher. In Massachusetts, school funding is local and everyone participates in it during open town meeting (another great piece of New England democracy). When put up against the rest of the world, Massachusetts students ranked second to Hong Kong.
Actually, MN ranked higher than MA in those rankings--2nd in science compared to MA's 6th and 6th in math compared to MA's 5th.
This is a theory that a friend of mine, a CA public high school teacher has on improving public schools. Want to see what everyone thinks.
1. Eliminate all private, parochial, magnet and charter schools. Everyone
must attend their neighborhood public school. Don't like your
neighborhood public school? Move to a different neighborhood. Better
yet, invest your time and resources in improving your neighborhood
school.
2. Equalize funding (by making it less dependent on property taxes) so
that the same amount of $$$ is spent per child, regardless of whether
the neighborhood is lower, middle or upper class.
3. Bring back tracking. Not the tracking of old that was rigid and based
strictly on standardized testing. Base groupings on a portfolio of
students' work over time. Make the groups fluid so that as students
improve, they can move into the higher level tracks.
4. The one alternative to the neighborhood school is an alternative school
for the riff raff that are disrespectful and disruptive to everyone
else's learning. (i.e. defiant behavior, cursing at teachers,
threatening/violent behavior to staff or students, etc.)
Perhaps the alternative school could be like a military boot camp or
held at juvenile hall. Stop bending over backwards for the few kids
that don't care to learn and put the energy/resources on kids who
want to learn.
5. Stop the indiscriminate inclusion and mainstreaming. How is a general
education teacher supposed to adequately teach a student whose
performance or ability is a few to several grades below grade level,
especially considering that many gen ed teachers have next to no
training on implementing various accomodations and
modifications? What about when the student is virtually non-
verbal; with their verbal language being echolalic? What about
students whose primary disability is ED/BD (emotional/behavioral
disturbance). Again, why do the majority of students have to suffer
in order to accomodate children who act out and are continually
disruptive?
1. Disagree. If I want to pay to opt out of a failing PS in favor of a better education for my kids, I should have that choice.
2. Disagree. Where I live that would result in less funding for the poorer area schools which currently get more than twice the per pupil money than the wealthier ones. Not at all equitable, but necessary.
And the top system in my state, is a county based system, where the rest of the schools are township based.
I love those "polls" where they down grade schools that don't spend an arm and a leg on per pupil spending so they "look" like they aren't doing well but states that lead the nation and the world in ACT/SAT scores as well as success in math and science get ranked behind the Washington DC school--um, very accurate. How about you measure the students, how well they do on college entrance tests--which, after all is the goal of education....as well as overall achievements on national and international tests, etc.
Maryland "routes" the nation because of 2 counties. They have the "top" AP scores because of those 2 counties, the rest of the state ranks in the 37th spot or so. When you average the ACT/SAT scores for all states, MD comes in 38th....but if you want to base your "good" schools on how much money your district throws at your special ed department, fine with me. No one that knows anything about quality education would put MD ahead of MN, MA, IA....
On Idea 4, every state has a constitutional right to education.
In many states, this means that you can no longer use alternative schools; and I suspect that if bootcamp type schools became more widespread you would see more lawsuits challenging their existence using the right to education.
This is a theory that a friend of mine, a CA public high school teacher has on improving public schools. Want to see what everyone thinks.
1. Eliminate all private, parochial, magnet and charter schools. Everyone
must attend their neighborhood public school. Don't like your
neighborhood public school? Move to a different neighborhood. Better
yet, invest your time and resources in improving your neighborhood
school.
This is idiotic. Private schools constitute the best hope for kids enjoying advanced instruction. All this would do is eliminate competition and ensure mediocrity.
2. Equalize funding (by making it less dependent on property taxes) so
that the same amount of $$$ is spent per child, regardless of whether
the neighborhood is lower, middle or upper class.
Another idiotic suggestion. So my community, one that commits to the education of its children by voluntarily shouldering higher property taxes, has to be dragged down to the level of everyone else? The other thing to realize is that study after study shows that funding has no correlation to performance. After all, inner-city schools are among the country's best funded, yet routinely have its most dismal performance. So obsession with funding avoids the true problem, namely how education is organized.
3. Bring back tracking. Not the tracking of old that was rigid and based
strictly on standardized testing. Base groupings on a portfolio of
students' work over time. Make the groups fluid so that as students
improve, they can move into the higher level tracks.
Don't really have a comment on this one.
4. The one alternative to the neighborhood school is an alternative school
for the riff raff that are disrespectful and disruptive to everyone
else's learning. (i.e. defiant behavior, cursing at teachers,
threatening/violent behavior to staff or students, etc.)
Perhaps the alternative school could be like a military boot camp or
held at juvenile hall. Stop bending over backwards for the few kids
that don't care to learn and put the energy/resources on kids who
want to learn.
Actually, this is a decent idea.
5. Stop the indiscriminate inclusion and mainstreaming. How is a general
education teacher supposed to adequately teach a student whose
performance or ability is a few to several grades below grade level,
especially considering that many gen ed teachers have next to no
training on implementing various accomodations and
modifications? What about when the student is virtually non-
verbal; with their verbal language being echolalic? What about
students whose primary disability is ED/BD (emotional/behavioral
disturbance). Again, why do the majority of students have to suffer
in order to accomodate children who act out and are continually
disruptive?
This is a good idea too. Our school system is one of the top fifty in the country according to some rating systems. But we also have a very good program for special ed. In one sense, this is a terrific thing. On the other, it means that we have become the destination for every parent of special ed kids who can scrape together the money to buy a house in our district. The results are that more and more of our resources are being spent for special ed, way out of proportion to their numbers.
But the problem is foundational. There are two outposts of Stalinism left in the world, North Korea and your board of education. For even the word 'system' tells you a great deal about its approach -- mindless, robotic orthodoxy. What really needs to happen is to burn the entire thing down to the waterline, remove all the layers of bureaucrats and regulations and focus on teaching children as much as possible, getting them out into the world as quickly as possible. To wit:
1) Walk into every single board of education and fire 50% of the employees. Since 1985, funding per student has doubled, even after factoring in inflation. So the problem isn't funding, but rather misallocation of funding. Most of that increased funding didn't make it to the classroom, but into the vast parasitic apparatus of school administration. This is completely counter to the trend in most organizations where leaps in data systems have allowed much leaner management structures.
2) With those savings, hand the money to the teachers. Make teaching a way to earn a good living. As of 2010, Detroit spent roughly $12,200 per student. With that same money, you would be better off paying a teacher $60,000 a year, giving him $10,000 for supplies and books, and having him or her tutor five students. Yet the average classroom size in Detroit is somewhere above 30 students. Where is the other 5/6ths of the funding going? I realize this is a gross oversimplification, but it is still a useful exercise, one that highlights how badly the money is appropriated.
3) But with that increase in teacher pay, make them accountable. Even in our excellent school system, there are some teachers who are just going through the motion, waiting to hit 30 years so they can retire with a pension. How does this even begin to resemble real life for the rest of the working world? Instead, have a real mechanism that's designed to appraise teachers on results, one that is not solely based on standardized testing.
4) Separate the kids into college- and non-college tracks around the eighth grade. I was a humanities major, but why in God's name is a kid who has no interest in college having to study Hamlet or the Transcendentalists? Instead, give those kids the opportunity to learn things that will make them valuable in a manufacturing plant or on a construction site. Welding. Tool and die making. Electrical work. I bet they'll be a helluva a lot more motivated, and won't be likely to disrupt those kids who want to head to college.
5) De-emphasize sports. Hey, I'm not saying cut it out. But a culture becomes that which it elevates. If the high school football team or the dance squad is the main source of status at a high school, that is what kids will pursue. Even better, allow extracurricular activities in a school based on the overall performance of its students. If the student body turns in an abysmal performance when it comes to academic achievement, cut out the football team. I guarantee you that lots of kids will get religion in a hurry, so to speak.
6) Continually talk to the parents about their role in education. I'm amazed how many parents think they are the clients of the education system, rather than its participants.
7) Bear with me, for this is a radical suggestion: Actually create an approach that rewards kids who learn at an accelerated pace. Right now, the entire method of teaching kids is based on the incredibly stupid notion that the smart and the stupid, the motivated and the lazy, must march together in lockstep and learn at the same rate. It simply doesn't matter to a school administrator right now how fast a child learns, for a great deal of state funding is based on attendance as opposed to achievement. This is boneheaded.
Here we are in the great age of information. Type four or five words into a search engine and you will have access to an incredible amount of knowledge through the Internet. In the information age, the trend of decentralization continues to accelerate. In my profession, the centralized office is almost obsolete. I work with people all over the country as if they were in the same room.
Yet, in the post-industrial age, why do we continue to educate kids along the lines of an 18th-century textile mill? How come the factory model continues apace despite the fact that computing is so advanced? As one example, you can buy software that helps you learn a foreign language. Rosetta Stone is self-paced, assesses your pronunciation, and moves you down the track as you accomplish benchmarks. Yet back in the schools, kids still toil away in language lab reciting words by rote in stupefying boredom. Or why must one kid have to work fifty quadratic equations when she understands it completely after the tenth problem? As another example, why is a sixth-grader who reads at at 10th- or 11th-grade level having to read the same book as everyone else? And don't cite AP courses as an alternative, for all it means if more work. My high school junior read every word that Hemingway and Vonnegut wrote in the eighth grade, but refuses to take AP English. Why? Because all it means is a heavier workload.
What if, instead of the assembly line, we give kids the incentive to work harder? Instead of sitting in a classroom waiting for the unmotivated dummy at the back to understand a complex sentence, what if kids moved through the process at a rate corresponding to their mastery of the subject matter? What if we dangled an incentive before them that allows them to finish their school year a few months earlier upon completion of their work, as opposed to stewing in a desk and marking off the days like a prisoner in a cell? What if we allowed them, upon satisfactory completion of the entirety of the curriculum, to graduate at age 14? I guarantee that a very large number of kids would bust it. Why? Because there's finally an incentive to do so.
8) Quit making the public schools the prescription for society's ills. Every time a problem gains momentum in the press such as bullying or teenage pregnancy or lack of worker skills, some hack politician stands up and demands that the schools do something about it. Don't they have enough to cope with already?
cpg, you have some interesting thoughts, but let's be clear about a few things that I think you missed:
1) The rise in public education spending does have a lot to do with growing administrative bloat, but it also has to do with increasingly more complex and extensive unfunded government mandates. Most of these mandates have to do with special education.
2) The "failure" of urban public schools vis-a-vis the "success" of suburban schools is primarily a demographic issue and not usually an issue of school-side decisions such as spending, organization, curriculum, pedagogy, etc.
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