I think a greater emphasis on finding and teaching kids with learning disabilities like dyslexia and such would have a greater effect on test scores and grades, than simply throwing money at the problem. I learned this personaly.
I was diagnosed with CP when I was 12. Before that they just thought I was a slow learner. I didn't get a reall solution to my CP until I was 18 (Have a secretary write for me). As a result my grades are a weird mixs of 6s and 2s(A grades and D grades in the US). And note this was in Norway,where they spend a lot of time searching for learning disabilites. I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I had been born in the US.
Kids are diagnosed with all kinds of stuff all the time here, probably no different.
I don't understand why there aren't more chain private schools. There are obviously parents willing to pay and teachers willing to teach. Seems like it wouldn't be difficult to produce standardized schools that could be replicated in various areas.
I was much the way of Shinyo, but I stuck it out and graduated. I always did alright grade-wise, but it was entirely because of my high test scores. I didn't do hardly any homework. Most of my teachers knew this and were okay with it, because when test time came, I studied and got an A.
NCLB also removes pretty much any incentive to challenge or in any way facilitate gifted/talented kids. Because schools don't really receive much in the way of "bonus" points for students that far exceed the standard...it's pretty much pass/fail. So from a sheer numbers standpoint (given limited resources), which makes more sense: try and bring the kids who are lagging behind up to the minimum standard, or help little Jimmy become the next Einstein?
That makes sense, and based on this and some other reading, I'm guessing that the "massive improvement" of American schoolchildren talked about by my senator in the OP is just the improvement in the % of students passing these tests since NCLB was first instituted. That's really sad, considering that states have been lowering their standards for these tests ever since they instituted them, and the lowering of standards is probably the factor most responsible for the perceived increase.
Marty81 on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited October 2007
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but one of the things that also hurts schools is that they cannot win any kind of fight against parents. My mother was coordinator (head honcho) of Special Education in a county in KY, and whenever parents would bring suit about something, the school basically planned not how to win, but how not to lose too badly. Schools can't do much if they have to appease every fuckhead mommy or daddy who wants Jimmy to be in a special program he's has not reason to be in.
I'm not really certain how NCLB works, but is the test the same nationwide? I went to a DoDDS high school in Germany, where we took a standardized test every year, but as I recall, we were never furnished descriptions or preparatory materials to work with. The test was mostly an afterthought that no one really took seriously. In fact, a Junior friend of mine wrote all his written responses in German.
I'm not really certain how NCLB works, but is the test the same nationwide? I went to a DoDDS high school in Germany, where we took a standardized test every year, but as I recall, we were never furnished descriptions or preparatory materials to work with. The test was mostly an afterthought that no one really took seriously. In fact, a Junior friend of mine wrote all his written responses in German.
No, they're handled at the state level. The difference between these and the tests at your school in Germany is that these tests are taken very seriously.
Marty81 on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
I'm not really certain how NCLB works, but is the test the same nationwide? I went to a DoDDS high school in Germany, where we took a standardized test every year, but as I recall, we were never furnished descriptions or preparatory materials to work with. The test was mostly an afterthought that no one really took seriously. In fact, a Junior friend of mine wrote all his written responses in German.
No, they're handled at the state level. The difference between these and the tests at your school in Germany is that these tests are taken very seriously.
Ah. Well, I guess not worrying much about standardized testing stuff is a benefit of your school being financed through the Department of Defense.
I'm not sure that holding teacher's accountable based on student performance is unreasonable, but the notion of performance must be acknowledged as hugely subjective. A test score is a pitifully inaccurate measure of progress and learning, and a teacher with students that refuse to succeed should also not be punished for the quality of their students. I liked the notion of adding portfolios to the process.
I was, until recently, training to be a teacher. During my time spent observing in a local middle school I saw an absolute lack of teaching and an overabundance of testing. I would fall asleep sitting there watching kids take the same test period after period day after day. What were they learning exactly? None of the teachers could tell me. They described it as "brutal" and "sucking any possible fun out of education."
All my classes were spent with students, teachers, random passersby complaining about NCLB. As far as I can tell there isn't a single teacher in this country that is supportive of this act.
The American public school system is, well and truly, Fucked. Remember that this is the anti-intellectualism country, so the negative attitude towards teachers is sort of par for course.
I can honestly say that I learned nothing in High School. If it hadn't been for Drama classes and school plays I very likely would have dropped out and gotten my GED. Drama chicks were too cute though.
Fun Fact: I was in the approved crowd at my high school for when President Bush signed NCLB there.
My AP history teacher was, that very day, telling us how fucking awful the legislation was. Thank God I was a senior that year. Standardized testing is the death of education.
I mean, NCLB assumes that all students learn in somewhat the same capacity, and that the teachers are the ones at fault. From my experiences in urban public schooling and private Catholic education, I can 100% say that students are, for the most part, total fuckwits. The smart guys are, usually, not challenged enough to be interested, the average students don't care, and the bad students don't come. In private schooling I was mostly bored out of my mind, thanks to a parent who'd taught me to read at a very young age (I was into Star Trek and Star Wars novels when I was in the third grade), and another parent who taught me a lot about history. It wasn't until I entered public education, specifically high school, where I met teachers who challenged me and sat down with me. One of my favorite teachers was my Algebra teacher in high school because he'd sit down with me for hours after school was over and help me understand why I was doing problems wrong. I credit him for helping me develop my sense of logic. In fact, a good 80% of my teachers in high school were fuckawesome. I've recently learned that most have gone on to teach at the university level because NCLB totally destroyed their particual education style.
I don't think we, as a society, can comprehend the amount of damage that's been done by NCLB. Yes, our education system is an enormous problem but so is every country's educational system. It's one of those damnable societal problems where we all know there's a problem but there's also no real fix for it. A bad teacher will teach poorly no matter how good the student and a poor student will always learn poorly no matter how good the teacher. Punishing the teacher because the student won't learn, or the sudent because the teacher won't teach, is possibly the worst way to go about it in my opinion.
I think a greater emphasis on finding and teaching kids with learning disabilities like dyslexia and such would have a greater effect on test scores and grades, than simply throwing money at the problem. I learned this personaly.
I was diagnosed with CP when I was 12. Before that they just thought I was a slow learner. I didn't get a reall solution to my CP until I was 18 (Have a secretary write for me). As a result my grades are a weird mixs of 6s and 2s(A grades and D grades in the US). And note this was in Norway,where they spend a lot of time searching for learning disabilites. I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I had been born in the US.
Kids are diagnosed with all kinds of stuff all the time here, probably no different.
As somebody else said, we spend plenty of time and effort trying to find and diagnose learning disabilities here. Pretty much any kid in my wife's class who isn't performing at grade level can expect to spend plenty of time with the school psych trying to figure out if there's some deeper reason why. And I think on average about 15% of her class is diagnosed with some form of learning disability or another.
And I'm not suggesting we just say "fuck 'em" and let them fail. Just that every child should have a right to an education, including accommodations and and instruction appropriate to their level of intelligence. As it is many gifted students are simply warehoused, forced to do the same work as the mentally retarded kids who are mainstreamed into their classrooms day after day, and really get almost nothing whatsoever out of school. An autistic child can expect to receive a full-time aide (in addition to their teacher), special individual/small group instruction in their problem areas (even if it's all of them, for hours each day), and a host of other accommodations to ensure that they get as much as is possible from school. Gifted students often receive, if they're lucky, an hour or two a week of small-group instruction and some extra homework.*
The attitude many schools take is that they can simply "take care of themselves," and that as long as they're passing the tests who cares?
No Child Left Behind might sound like a great idea, but does No Child Gets Ahead really sound appealing?
* - Note that I'm talking about the elementary school level here...because too often (but no, not always) by the time gifted students hit middle/high school they're completely burned out from this and don't really care anymore. Which is why, IIRC, the dropout rate for gifted kids is actually higher than average.
I think a greater emphasis on finding and teaching kids with learning disabilities like dyslexia and such would have a greater effect on test scores and grades, than simply throwing money at the problem. I learned this personaly.
I was diagnosed with CP when I was 12. Before that they just thought I was a slow learner. I didn't get a reall solution to my CP until I was 18 (Have a secretary write for me). As a result my grades are a weird mixs of 6s and 2s(A grades and D grades in the US). And note this was in Norway,where they spend a lot of time searching for learning disabilites. I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I had been born in the US.
Kids are diagnosed with all kinds of stuff all the time here, probably no different.
As somebody else said, we spend plenty of time and effort trying to find and diagnose learning disabilities here. Pretty much any kid in my wife's class who isn't performing at grade level can expect to spend plenty of time with the school psych trying to figure out if there's some deeper reason why. And I think on average about 15% of her class is diagnosed with some form of learning disability or another.
And I'm not suggesting we just say "fuck 'em" and let them fail. Just that every child should have a right to an education, including accommodations and and instruction appropriate to their level of intelligence. As it is many gifted students are simply warehoused, forced to do the same work as the mentally retarded kids who are mainstreamed into their classrooms day after day, and really get almost nothing whatsoever out of school. An autistic child can expect to receive a full-time aide (in addition to their teacher), special individual/small group instruction in their problem areas (even if it's all of them, for hours each day), and a host of other accommodations to ensure that they get as much as is possible from school. Gifted students often receive, if they're lucky, an hour or two a week of small-group instruction and some extra homework.*
The attitude many schools take is that they can simply "take care of themselves," and that as long as they're passing the tests who cares?
No Child Left Behind might sound like a great idea, but does No Child Gets Ahead really sound appealing?
* - Note that I'm talking about the elementary school level here...because too often (but no, not always) by the time gifted students hit middle/high school they're completely burned out from this and don't really care anymore. Which is why, IIRC, the dropout rate for gifted kids is actually higher than average.
I loved the gifted program at my elementary school. Two or three days a week, I forget exactly, we'd go to the TAG classroom, and do things like logic puzzles, learn about fractals and tessellations, and other fun stuff. Once a month, we'd go to the art museum for a tour of a section, or a special exhibit. It was sweet.
Then, in middle school, the gifted program pretty much consisted of, "Great, you don't have to take Reading. You have room for another elective." Fortunately for one of my years there, they had a teacher who was really cool and started a Math contest team and used her free period to teach a class for it. It improved my math abilities, particularly arithmetic and mental math hugely. Then she moved.
First, standardized testing can work, if it's done right. I'll point to the New York system as proof that the system works.
Second, the biggest problems with NCLB are that:
It was built on a lie. One of the major points used to support NCLB was Rod Paige's "Houston miracle", where he supposedly instituted the NCLB reforms into the Houston school district and saw massive improvement - it was this "miracle" that got Paige the SecEd job and NCLB passed. Of course, today, we now know that the "Houston miracle" was nothing more than a scam.
There's a (not-so) hidden agenda at work. As anyone watching education over the last two decades knows, there's been a heavy push to privatize schooling, for a variety of reasons political, religious, and financial. However, public schooling is still very popular, so attacking it directly has failed. So, NCLB institutes a "starve the beast" policy - by draining funding from weak schools, it undermines the system and pushes people to private alternatives - all without having to challenge a very popular program directly.
I'm sorry, but I don't see how anyone can come to any other conclusion that NCLB was a wolf in sheep's clothing at best.
Evidence shows that teaching to the test increases test scores. Until the test changes of course, then they sink back again to reflect the true reality.
It wouldn't be hard to fix the law - have each state establish federally overseen standards based on portfolios of a student's work.
My understanding of arguments against individual portfolio assessment is that they prove to be significantly more expensive than the current education budgets can afford.
Besides, how are you going to compare the students to each other?
Skills assessment.
And yes, it is more expensive.
Not as expensive as raising a generation of Americans with a sub-par test taught education while we are transitioning to a knowledge based economy of course, but expensive.
As a pre-service teacher, it is amazingly frustrating to do all these readings in my teacher-ed textbooks and journals about how we need to have multiple forms of assessments (that is, not just Big McLarge Huge exams) to really be able to investigate how well students are acquiring knowledge ... while having the government say, "Hey, we need to figure out if you're cool enough to be allowed to have money for your students or not, so give them this Big McLarge Huge exam, mmmkay?" >_<
As a pre-service teacher, it is amazingly frustrating to do all these readings in my teacher-ed textbooks and journals about how we need to have multiple forms of assessments (that is, not just Big McLarge Huge exams) to really be able to investigate how well students are acquiring knowledge ... while having the government say, "Hey, we need to figure out if you're cool enough to be allowed to have money for your students or not, so give them this Big McLarge Huge exam, mmmkay?" >_<
Well, this is why I like the NY system, Grace - while the tests are standardized statewide, they are also very narrowly targeted.
AH: What do you mean by narrowly targeted? What I was referring to is that I would rather assess students not just on how they can take a test but on a variety of assessments: completing a research project and presentation, designing and carrying out a scientific experiment, etc. Combining this with the portfolio idea is then extra great, because it allows teachers to assess students' progress. I mean really, how fair is it to punish teachers for students' poor performance (for their grade level) when they weren't learning the skills they needed in previous years? This is especially important for English language learners, who often make huge leaps and bounds in language proficiency but who lack the technical vocabularies and contexts expected of students in their grade to be able to succeed on a state test.
AH: What do you mean by narrowly targeted? What I was referring to is that I would rather assess students not just on how they can take a test but on a variety of assessments: completing a research project and presentation, designing and carrying out a scientific experiment, etc. Combining this with the portfolio idea is then extra great, because it allows teachers to assess students' progress. I mean really, how fair is it to punish teachers for students' poor performance (for their grade level) when they weren't learning the skills they needed in previous years? This is especially important for English language learners, who often make huge leaps and bounds in language proficiency but who lack the technical vocabularies and contexts expected of students in their grade to be able to succeed on a state test.
Basically, NY replaces locally made final examinations with statewide ones, called the Regents examination. In order to graduate, you have to pass a set number of Regents exams in each field of study. The only omnibus exams I know of are the English and Foreign Language examinations, which are done after several years of schooling. Also, they're not easy at all - while there's a multiple choice section, the lion's share of the examination comes from the long answer sections, which test high-level skills (for the social sciences and English, you have to write two essays, for the hard sciences, you have to do analysis of experimental data provided, for math you do multipartite problems, and the foreign language exams are brutal multipart exams.) And there's a three hour time limit, and you have to be there for two. To be honest, the system is much more similar to college examinations...
I think a greater emphasis on finding and teaching kids with learning disabilities like dyslexia and such would have a greater effect on test scores and grades, than simply throwing money at the problem. I learned this personaly.
I was diagnosed with CP when I was 12. Before that they just thought I was a slow learner. I didn't get a reall solution to my CP until I was 18 (Have a secretary write for me). As a result my grades are a weird mixs of 6s and 2s(A grades and D grades in the US). And note this was in Norway,where they spend a lot of time searching for learning disabilites. I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I had been born in the US.
Kids are diagnosed with all kinds of stuff all the time here, probably no different.
Actually CP is severly under diagnosed, many times they just slap a ADHD diagnosis and call it a day. I have read my share of horror stories about people with CP. The US is among the worst offenders in the west according to what I'v been told.
and a diagnose of ADHD would have been worse than no diagnosis for me.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
The teachers in the public school system are horribly underpaid.
The fact is, teachers - along with doctors - are a nation's most important asset. Human capital investment, i.e. education, is the only investment that always has positive returns. It also happens to be the only way for the USA to even hope to compete with fast-growing economies like China and India.
The way teachers are regarded and treated in this country is very disappointing.[/QUOTE]
Um, we do more than compete with China and India. Absolute convergence is a lie, blah blah blah. That and human capital is just like any capital.
Everything else, spot on. God this thread makes me happy my parents sunk themselves into brutal debt to put me through private school. As much as I love me my economics, I have to say that it seems a method of incentives isn't working out so well.
Unfortunately the whole system in the US needs to be scrapped. We need to start over with a clean slate as far as the educational system goes. NCLB, the teacher's union, unbalanced funding across a state, school funding going into organized sports instead of education. All of it leads us to the position we're in now.
I don't think anything that happens will actually fix the education system. Everyone wants to just slightly modify it, and that's not going to work. Lazy teachers will do anything to keep their jobs. If we impose stricter curriculums state wide (or nation wide) the teachers will just do the bare minimum. And the teachers union will fight for those teachers instead of fighting for the students.
And it's funny. It seems like the longer the education system is left in the state it's in, the worse it gets. As kids grow up with a lackluster education, we'll create more and more teachers who don't give a fuck. Because as the system gets worse the product of that system gets worse. And since the education system is built on it's own product that's exactly what we're seeing.
My solution (and this is me talking, so it's not very well thought out) would be to scrap everything. Funding would start being on a per child basis. The teacher's union would be disbanded with the idea that down the road it could be reinstated. Teachers who want to continue teaching would have to take the courses that military instructors in training have to go through.
Then, a new very strict curriculum would be made, and teachers would be forced to stick to it. A day by day curriculum that has to be followed. It would span a 9 month period, with the assumption that 3 months would be off for summer. Teachers would be free to decide how they disperse the information to the classes, but what's on the curriculum would be taught to the class on the day it's suppose to be taught.
Every month or so children would take tests that covers what the teacher is suppose to be covering. This would be used to not only measure how the students are doing, but also how the teacher is doing. Every subject would be covered on this test, and it would be able to pinpoint what subjects students are having trouble with, and what part of that subject. This would be used for summer school purposes. If a few students fall through the cracks, then during the summer they would take a week long crunch course in order to make sure they know what they need to know.
For example, little Billy doesn't pass the algebra portion of the test in January. Instead of having to take a summer school class that covers all algebra taught that year, he'd take a week long course specific to that month and subject. If he fails numerous months worth of courses, he'd take numerous weeks worth of courses over the summer.
Ok, yeah, this is getting a little silly. I'm taking about the specifics when it's the overall that needs to be fixed. But this is something I'd think would work better than what we're currently doing.
What do you do when you implement the brand new system and the graduating classes for the next four years fail miserably to meet the standards set because they went through elementary and middle school systems that left them completely unprepared for a real system for learning?
Seeing as how NCLB is leaving a lot of kids behind but passing with flying colors by its own standards, I'd say any change would suffer the repercussive slings of revealing NCLB's long term short comings.
The new system could be phased in over 12 years. Every year a new set of teachers goes through the training and the tests and curriculum start for that year.
This way everything wouldn't have to happen at once, but once that first class that was taught this way graduated there would be an immediate increase in the quality of the US's educational system. I don't see any way the system is just going to improve without it being unfair to current students. Unfortunately the current system has already failed them.
Oh, something I forgot to mention... This system would benefit both slower students and faster students. If a student decided they wanted to take a test early, they could. If they pass it, they can free study for the next test, or work on projects they feel beneficial to their eventual career path.
At a certain grade (middle school I'd guess) students would start being tested at the begining of a symester for a class. The data gained from this would be used to weight what portions of the subject need more time to be taught. The cirriculum would still be strict as far as what is taught when, but it would be a great help for the teacher to know what they really need to focus on.
Death of Rats, I think your heart is in the right place, but you're misguided for a few reasons. One is the assumption that the majority of teachers are lazy. They're not. They're frustrated. Another is the assumption that teachers would teach better in the system you described. They wouldn't, because it still has standardized testing at its heart. Whenever standardized tests are heavily emphasized, teachers will be judged by their students' performance on them in some way (possibly by individual school salary and/or firing decisions), regardless of whether that's written into the system. The "answer" that most teachers give is to teach to the test. You only have so much time and if your ass is on the line, that's what you do.
Also, who would make this strict new curriculum and who would grade the tests? I'm not sure I want a governing body deciding exactly what specifics our children should (and, by extension, should NOT) be learning.
I sort of feel like the best thing to do is scrap the standardized testing system and move to a system where teachers are given only rough syllabuses, where they're free to teach whatever else they see fit as long as what's on the syllabus gets taught. I'm talking only basic stuff here, and at the end of a course the students are expected to have mastered what's on the syllabus. Teachers at the next level up would know if this is the case, so there's accountability there (except, possibly, for teachers at the top levels, but those are typically the most senior and wield the most power anyway), and it would revitalize the teaching environment. I understand that you'd end up with a larger variance in teacher quality in this system, but my feeling is that the *average* teacher would be far better in this system than in the NCLB system, and that the number of people who get shafted with bad teachers year after year would be extremely small (certainly no larger than the number of students whose needs NCLB isn't meeting). I mean, you're only going to get a good education from a teacher that's passionate about what they're teaching, and let's face it - nobody's passionate about passing standardized tests.
edit: A side benefit to this is that the new system would attract better and more qualified teachers than the current one...specifically, it'd attract ones that are excited about sharing their knowledge with others. Fuck knows what kind the current one is attracting, but the resulting classroom instruction isn't good.
And it's funny. It seems like the longer the education system is left in the state it's in, the worse it gets. As kids grow up with a lackluster education, we'll create more and more teachers who don't give a fuck. Because as the system gets worse the product of that system gets worse. And since the education system is built on it's own product that's exactly what we're seeing.
Kids with lackluster education growing up to be lackluster teachers isn't the biggest problem though, but rather those same kids growing up to be parents who feel that education is useless or that they themselves were screwed over by the system and then pass on those feelings to their kids.
Isn't that pretty much the system we had in place before NCLB came into effect? NCLB is a horrible system, but it was put in place for a reason.
The testing part of my solution isn't really necessary, but the disbanding of the Teacher's Union, required training, and set curriculum is vital. Teachers can be free to teach how they want even if the curriculum is set. They are also free to teach whatever additional stuff they want, just as long as the information in the curriculum is passed on.
I've had some discussions with my father about this. He used to be an instructor in the Air Force. This is the type of system they used. He said that it didn't restrict instructors as much as you'd think. Infact, it gave them a jumping off point.
I do think a majority of teachers are frustrated. I think most teachers go into teaching with their heart in the right place. But the whole system beats them down to the point where they're part of what makes the system so messed up in the first place. This thing feeds itself, and without major change it's not going to get better.
And it's funny. It seems like the longer the education system is left in the state it's in, the worse it gets. As kids grow up with a lackluster education, we'll create more and more teachers who don't give a fuck. Because as the system gets worse the product of that system gets worse. And since the education system is built on it's own product that's exactly what we're seeing.
Kids with lackluster education growing up to be lackluster teachers isn't the biggest problem though, but rather those same kids growing up to be parents who feel that education is useless or that they themselves were screwed over by the system and then pass on those feelings to their kids.
I agree with you on this. Basically I feel that most of our societies problems stem from the lackluster educational system. Part of that is on the teachers. Part of that is on the parents. Most of that is on the general populous who's let the educational system deteriorate the way it has.
The problem is going with no standardized testing, you completely lose the ability to evaluate students from different schools. When it comes to University admissions, that's a problem. You can get alot of people slipping through because their teachers were easy and taught them nothing.
I think the main problem with standardized testing is that it's not part of a standardized curriculum. The other problem with them is that they're infrequent. If we're going to go the standardized testing route they need to be part of a curriculum. They need to be specific to what's taught at that time frame. And they need to be frequent. If the teachers are going to teach towards the tests then the tests need to change to be what the teachers should be teaching.
The thing is, most states do have pretty rigorous teacher certification/licensing programs - the ones that don't are the ones that are pretty much slavering desperately for teachers anyway (Nevada comes to mind).
And while you might think that your every-day-of-curriculum-planned-out-across-the-nation is a good way to make sure all students are getting the same information, this isn't the case. The problem is that students have different backgrounds, different abilities to process information, etc. Students in a particular district (one in the Midwest, let's say) might need a lot of pre-teaching in order to get anything valuable out of reading Moby Dick, while students who grew up on the East Coast are going to be more familiar with the stuff being presented. Or even to make it more basic, students in a district where Mom and Dad make more money on average and have more leisure time to read to Junior are not going to need as much pre-teaching help with any big reading assignment because they already have the tools to find semantic clues in the text, create meaning, and other such et ceteras. Saying something like, "well, we'll just go at the pace of the slowest students, and the more advanced students can work ahead on their own projects"? Well, okay, it's going to work well for a couple really intrinsically-motivated high achieving students, but most kids are going to say "fuck it." Bright kids need guidance too (see: disproportionate dropout/suicide right for students tagged as gifted and/or talented).
At a certain grade (middle school I'd guess) students would start being tested at the begining of a symester for a class. The data gained from this would be used to weight what portions of the subject need more time to be taught. The cirriculum would still be strict as far as what is taught when, but it would be a great help for the teacher to know what they really need to focus on.
Teachers do this a lot these days - not necessarily at the beginning of a semester, but when they're going into a new unit, for example. Ongoing assessments are HEAVILY emphasized in teacher training these days because, seriously, how else are you going to figure out what the kids know or don't know before you give them a huge exam? If they know it really well already you can just reinforce it lightly or even skip right over it to spend time on the stuff that makes them make this face: O_o
Well, then how about a system where instead of the curriculum being set day by day, it's set month by month. Teachers would then be free to do focus on what students are having trouble with that month, but the guideline would still be there, along with the monthly test.
What I'm trying to figure out is a way to have accountability for teachers while still having freedom. You need to find a balance between the two. Our current system has too much freedom and not enough accountability. Mine as I laid out might be the exact opposite.
From talking to friends and family members, there are two major problems in public schools today:
1. Being a teacher doesn't attract the greatest talent. Part of this is low salaries, part of it is just the nature of the job. This doesn't mean that current teachers are bad, more that a lot of great, potential teachers are turned off by the job and do something else instead.
2. Kids coming from bad home situations will never do well in school. No matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't convince hungry, beaten kids with miserable home lives to care about school. They have other problems to deal with. Throwing more money at problem schools won't make a lick of difference; there's social problems that need to be solved first.
According to some of the teachers at my previous high school, one of the biggest problems in the educational system are the parents. Namely, the parents not communicating with the school or the teachers, in regards to their kids education.
Most parents don't know anything about whats happening to their kid in school, whether their keeping up or falling behind, their test scores, etc, except for what the kid is telling them. This lasts right up until the report card, when its too late to do anything about the previous quarter. A lot of the time, even if the report card is bad, parents still don't do anything to be a bigger part of the kids education.
I don't mind the theory of NCLB nearly as much as the practical application.
Angel is completely right that standardized testing can be done right. In BC, anyone going to post secondary education must pass at least four subjects with standardized final exams. It was an excellent system that helped to level the playing field for those entering university, mainly because the exams were well done.
The key to standardized testing is the tests themselves. A pass/fail test is horrible. Creating an exam that truly tests a student's competency in a particular subject, especially things such as literature and history is very difficult, but essential to ensure that the students are learning what is expected of them. If the test is well written, teaching mainly to the test with a little extra coverage in a few areas is a good thing.
A teacher I knew was apparently a very good instructor. His biggest complaint was that he couldn't teach his subject matter because the teachers in the grades below him didn't teach what they were supposed to. Topics deemed too difficult were skipped and kids passed without even being introduced to concepts they were supposed to master before moving on. This is one situation where standardized testing would force teachers to actually teach the required material.
On the other hand, a poorly made test allows teachers to drill without really teaching the material. The kids can answer the questions, but not understand what they're doing. The good teachers can continue as is, but students with poor teachers get screwed, often with reasonable results as far as the standardized tests are concerned.
The issue of pass/fail exams is another problem. "Yes Mr. Smith, 92% of your students passed, but only 5% achieved a B or better." Mr. Smith is probably a decent remedial teacher, but has no business in front of a regular class. In the NCLB context, Mr. Smith is a great teacher.
I do like the idea of NCLB putting heat on individual teachers. Not so much the way it does it, but at least the effort was there. We've all had teachers who should not hold the job, but can't be fired unless they touch a student inappropriately. NCLB doesn't do this the way I would, but the idea of holding individual teachers responsible for their teaching abilities shouldn't seem strange.
I think that the internet has been for years on the path to creating what is essentially an electronic Necronomicon: A collection of blasphemous unrealities so perverse that to even glimpse at its contents, if but for a moment, is to irrevocably forfeit a portion of your sanity.
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From talking to friends and family members, there are two major problems in public schools today:
1. Being a teacher doesn't attract the greatest talent. Part of this is low salaries, part of it is just the nature of the job. This doesn't mean that current teachers are bad, more that a lot of great, potential teachers are turned off by the job and do something else instead.
2. Kids coming from bad home situations will never do well in school. No matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't convince hungry, beaten kids with miserable home lives to care about school. They have other problems to deal with. Throwing more money at problem schools won't make a lick of difference; there's social problems that need to be solved first.
2. Wrong. I came from a rough ass childhood and school was my safe haven. I really connected with quite a few teachers there and I really learned to love learning, and alot of that had to do with the teachers getting to know me, realize I was gifted, and give me lee-way in what I chose to do so long as I got the regular curriculum finished. For example, I spend most of 4th grade researching in the school library and writing papers about various types of wild animals because I thought that was cool.
The solution is to give these kids an alternative to their home lifestyle. Socialize them in a more normal way with positive role models. It works. This only child from a single mother in a reciprocally abusive relationship with my father (both having drugs problems) proves it with his Magna Cum Laude, I would say.
Treating school like the military is retarded for that reason. You're just going to turn people off immediately, especially the people that already get the shit (so stop slamming it down their throats).
Teachers are a second chance for hard luck kids to get some positive adults in their life. They need people who will help them learn, grow, and care about them. The information, in itself, is pretty unimportant compared to teaching children how to think, learn, and CARE.
Because if you don't care, you don't learn dick. Learning is a voluntary process. The first thing you need to do is teach the kids that they should care and that learning is important in and of itself. The PROBLEM is that with all this standardized bullshit, it's just another barrier wherein teachers can't really connect with students.
And THAT is the failing of our school system. It de-emphasizes the MOST important asepct- connection.
From talking to friends and family members, there are two major problems in public schools today:
1. Being a teacher doesn't attract the greatest talent. Part of this is low salaries, part of it is just the nature of the job. This doesn't mean that current teachers are bad, more that a lot of great, potential teachers are turned off by the job and do something else instead.
2. Kids coming from bad home situations will never do well in school. No matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't convince hungry, beaten kids with miserable home lives to care about school. They have other problems to deal with. Throwing more money at problem schools won't make a lick of difference; there's social problems that need to be solved first.
2. Wrong. I came from a rough ass childhood and school was my safe haven. I really connected with quite a few teachers there and I really learned to love learning, and alot of that had to do with the teachers getting to know me, realize I was gifted, and give me lee-way in what I chose to do so long as I got the regular curriculum finished. For example, I spend most of 4th grade researching in the school library and writing papers about various types of wild animals because I thought that was cool.
The solution is to give these kids an alternative to their home lifestyle. Socialize them in a more normal way with positive role models. It works. This only child from a single mother in a reciprocally abusive relationship with my father (both having drugs problems) proves it with his Magna Cum Laude, I would say.
Treating school like the military is retarded for that reason. You're just going to turn people off immediately, especially the people that already get the shit (so stop slamming it down their throats).
Teachers are a second chance for hard luck kids to get some positive adults in their life. They need people who will help them learn, grow, and care about them. The information, in itself, is pretty unimportant compared to teaching children how to think, learn, and CARE.
Because if you don't care, you don't learn dick. Learning is a voluntary process. The first thing you need to do is teach the kids that they should care and that learning is important in and of itself. The PROBLEM is that with all this standardized bullshit, it's just another barrier wherein teachers can't really connect with students.
And THAT is the failing of our school system. It de-emphasizes the MOST important asepct- connection.
Since you are "gifted," you might be an anomaly in this respect? Average kids in the same situation might not be able to make the same leap. The connection has to go both ways. Maybe smaller classroom sizes would help the situation you're describing, but that gets back into point 1: lack of qualified people who want the job.
Since you are "gifted," you might be an anomaly in this respect? Average kids in the same situation might not be able to make the same leap. The connection has to go both ways. Maybe smaller classroom sizes would help the situation you're describing, but that gets back into point 1: lack of qualified people who want the job.
I don't think my being a smart kid had nearly as much to do with it as having compassionate teachers who were interested in me as a person.
I also don't see how making the job more stringent and less flexible is going to attract teachers to the job. In fact, I see the opposite. Personally I'd rather see teachers able to spank kids again rather than have this "invisible bubble" wherein you aren't even supposed to hug kids anymore. We've gone way too far away from what's important I think.
I mean, to break it down any retard can learn just about everything you need to know to pass a college entrance exam in one, maybe two years if they try. Basic algebra and logic aren't hard, nor is knowing how to read. So, in my estimation we're filling students with test crap instead of fire in the belly, and that's backwards.
{edit} I'll take it one further in fact. In elementary school I was in inner-city education along with everyone else from that demographic. In middle school I was finally convinced to try out the AP program. BIG MISTAKE. Smaller classrooms, more money, but the teachers didn't care and they "taught the tests" and gave assloads of homework for no real reason. I was so burned out that I did terrible at school until I went to a rural high school where I could "start over" so to speak. By this time I was grown up enough that it didn't really matter what the teacher's attitudes were, but I honestly don't think I would have graduated top 10% of my high school if I didn't have my elementary school experience to fall back on.
From talking to friends and family members, there are two major problems in public schools today:
1. Being a teacher doesn't attract the greatest talent. Part of this is low salaries, part of it is just the nature of the job. This doesn't mean that current teachers are bad, more that a lot of great, potential teachers are turned off by the job and do something else instead.
2. Kids coming from bad home situations will never do well in school. No matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't convince hungry, beaten kids with miserable home lives to care about school. They have other problems to deal with. Throwing more money at problem schools won't make a lick of difference; there's social problems that need to be solved first.
2. Wrong. I came from a rough ass childhood and school was my safe haven. I really connected with quite a few teachers there and I really learned to love learning, and alot of that had to do with the teachers getting to know me, realize I was gifted, and give me lee-way in what I chose to do so long as I got the regular curriculum finished. For example, I spend most of 4th grade researching in the school library and writing papers about various types of wild animals because I thought that was cool.
The solution is to give these kids an alternative to their home lifestyle. Socialize them in a more normal way with positive role models. It works. This only child from a single mother in a reciprocally abusive relationship with my father (both having drugs problems) proves it with his Magna Cum Laude, I would say.
Treating school like the military is retarded for that reason. You're just going to turn people off immediately, especially the people that already get the shit (so stop slamming it down their throats).
Teachers are a second chance for hard luck kids to get some positive adults in their life. They need people who will help them learn, grow, and care about them. The information, in itself, is pretty unimportant compared to teaching children how to think, learn, and CARE.
Because if you don't care, you don't learn dick. Learning is a voluntary process. The first thing you need to do is teach the kids that they should care and that learning is important in and of itself. The PROBLEM is that with all this standardized bullshit, it's just another barrier wherein teachers can't really connect with students.
And THAT is the failing of our school system. It de-emphasizes the MOST important asepct- connection.
And THIS is the worst thing that comes out of education. Take an intelligent person like you, and put him/her (though her is a lesser degree), through a shitty school, and, at VERY VERY best, you get someone like you, who strives through their difficulties and becomes a helpful member of society.
Usually, you get someone who loses their motivation, and in the worst case, you get someone who still has his/her ambitions, but no longer has the ability to use their abilities in a helpful way, and they become our drug dealers, our crime lords, etc etc.
And THIS is the worst thing that comes out of education. Take an intelligent person like you, and put him/her (though her is a lesser degree), through a shitty school, and, at VERY VERY best, you get someone like you, who strives through their difficulties and becomes a helpful member of society.
Usually, you get someone who loses their motivation, and in the worst case, you get someone who still has his/her ambitions, but no longer has the ability to use their abilities in a helpful way, and they become our drug dealers, our crime lords, etc etc.
so, we need to have schools which don't suck, staffed by involved caring and qualified teachers?
That way, the former happens, and the latter doesn't?
I've heard compelling arguments both ways on the idea of more federalized schooling. But once the funding comes from Washington, you know they're going to want to fiddle with the curriculum. You might want to think this would be a good thing, but I've got one thing to say to that: abstinence only sex-education. Alabama has as many votes as California in the Senate. As it is we can try to take up the most fucktarded crap that states try to force in their schools on Constitutional grounds (like the first amendment) while allowing schools in places that aren't backwaters to teach like it's actually the 21st century.
I don't think federal funding would help this situation.
I do think funding at the state level, rather than the local, is a good idea though. But again, this is the kind of thing that in theory it's up to the states to decide.
Yes, I know this is kind of back there, but I felt the need to reply to this.
Abstinence only sex-education isn't something that could happen, it is happening right now.
Over the last decade, abstinence-only sex education became more common in the U.S., largely as a result of federal government funding initiatives. Through direct funding and matching grant incentives, the U.S. government steered more than a billion dollars to abstinence-only education programs between 1996 and 2006.
I, personally, had abstinence-only education, if that. Around 6th grade, we watched an animated video showing a boy turning into a man with chest hair and a larger penis and were given a) a book with definitions of words like 'testes,' 'testosterone,' and 'sperm,' and b) a stick of deodorant. In 9th grade (or sometime in high school, if you missed it), you had to take Health, which had one section on the male and female reproductive systems, with no explanation of how sex works or any talk at all of contraceptive use. That is the extent of my sexual education.
So it's not that federal funding could lead to abstinence-only sex ed, but that it already is, and that needs to changed, regardless of how we try to fix the fucked up public schooling system.
I've heard compelling arguments both ways on the idea of more federalized schooling. But once the funding comes from Washington, you know they're going to want to fiddle with the curriculum. You might want to think this would be a good thing, but I've got one thing to say to that: abstinence only sex-education. Alabama has as many votes as California in the Senate. As it is we can try to take up the most fucktarded crap that states try to force in their schools on Constitutional grounds (like the first amendment) while allowing schools in places that aren't backwaters to teach like it's actually the 21st century.
I don't think federal funding would help this situation.
I do think funding at the state level, rather than the local, is a good idea though. But again, this is the kind of thing that in theory it's up to the states to decide.
Yes, I know this is kind of back there, but I felt the need to reply to this.
Abstinence only sex-education isn't something that could happen, it is happening right now.
I'm well aware of this. I was using this as an example of what has actually happened when the federal government decides to fuck with the curriculum. Now imagine if they were actually in charge of all school funding, and as such pretty much in charge of all curriculum. Abstinence-only sex-education is bad enough, but I think most semi-intelligent people recognize this as an abuse of federal power, a circumvention of the power of states to set their own curriculum, and many might consider it a first amendment issue.
But imagine for a second if this kind of thing was the norm across all subjects (history, science, etc.) and it was, more or less, "the way it should be."
NCLB is a horrible system, but it was put in place for a reason.
Yes. It's a back door attack on the educational system, because amazingly, public schooling is really, really popular. So instead of attacking a very popular program head-on, where you're going to end up looking like a size 14 heel, you cut the legs out from underneath it by giving it impossible goals. Then when those goals aren't met (because, quite frankly, they were impossible TO meet), you can get all pious and say that you gave them a chance and they blew it, and maybe a new system can be employed - a system built on the private sector. It's even better when you can use a scam to base your unreasonable metrics on so you can point to it when people start criticizing your goals.
(Oh, and if this sounds oddly familiar, it's because they used the exact same fucking playbook against SCHIP.)
And about disbanding the teachers unions, fuck that noise. I'm tired of hearing how the teachers unions are scapegoated into the Big Bad Interest Group that's fucking up American education. I'm not buying it, and every time I hear someone say they should be disbanded, the same fucking motive is at the bottom of it - "I want to force teachers to do as I want, and I can't do that because they stick up for one another." I'm sick of it.
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Kids are diagnosed with all kinds of stuff all the time here, probably no different.
I was much the way of Shinyo, but I stuck it out and graduated. I always did alright grade-wise, but it was entirely because of my high test scores. I didn't do hardly any homework. Most of my teachers knew this and were okay with it, because when test time came, I studied and got an A.
Of course, that uberfucked me when college came.
That makes sense, and based on this and some other reading, I'm guessing that the "massive improvement" of American schoolchildren talked about by my senator in the OP is just the improvement in the % of students passing these tests since NCLB was first instituted. That's really sad, considering that states have been lowering their standards for these tests ever since they instituted them, and the lowering of standards is probably the factor most responsible for the perceived increase.
I'm not really certain how NCLB works, but is the test the same nationwide? I went to a DoDDS high school in Germany, where we took a standardized test every year, but as I recall, we were never furnished descriptions or preparatory materials to work with. The test was mostly an afterthought that no one really took seriously. In fact, a Junior friend of mine wrote all his written responses in German.
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No, they're handled at the state level. The difference between these and the tests at your school in Germany is that these tests are taken very seriously.
Ah. Well, I guess not worrying much about standardized testing stuff is a benefit of your school being financed through the Department of Defense.
I'm not sure that holding teacher's accountable based on student performance is unreasonable, but the notion of performance must be acknowledged as hugely subjective. A test score is a pitifully inaccurate measure of progress and learning, and a teacher with students that refuse to succeed should also not be punished for the quality of their students. I liked the notion of adding portfolios to the process.
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All my classes were spent with students, teachers, random passersby complaining about NCLB. As far as I can tell there isn't a single teacher in this country that is supportive of this act.
The American public school system is, well and truly, Fucked. Remember that this is the anti-intellectualism country, so the negative attitude towards teachers is sort of par for course.
I can honestly say that I learned nothing in High School. If it hadn't been for Drama classes and school plays I very likely would have dropped out and gotten my GED. Drama chicks were too cute though.
My AP history teacher was, that very day, telling us how fucking awful the legislation was. Thank God I was a senior that year. Standardized testing is the death of education.
I mean, NCLB assumes that all students learn in somewhat the same capacity, and that the teachers are the ones at fault. From my experiences in urban public schooling and private Catholic education, I can 100% say that students are, for the most part, total fuckwits. The smart guys are, usually, not challenged enough to be interested, the average students don't care, and the bad students don't come. In private schooling I was mostly bored out of my mind, thanks to a parent who'd taught me to read at a very young age (I was into Star Trek and Star Wars novels when I was in the third grade), and another parent who taught me a lot about history. It wasn't until I entered public education, specifically high school, where I met teachers who challenged me and sat down with me. One of my favorite teachers was my Algebra teacher in high school because he'd sit down with me for hours after school was over and help me understand why I was doing problems wrong. I credit him for helping me develop my sense of logic. In fact, a good 80% of my teachers in high school were fuckawesome. I've recently learned that most have gone on to teach at the university level because NCLB totally destroyed their particual education style.
I don't think we, as a society, can comprehend the amount of damage that's been done by NCLB. Yes, our education system is an enormous problem but so is every country's educational system. It's one of those damnable societal problems where we all know there's a problem but there's also no real fix for it. A bad teacher will teach poorly no matter how good the student and a poor student will always learn poorly no matter how good the teacher. Punishing the teacher because the student won't learn, or the sudent because the teacher won't teach, is possibly the worst way to go about it in my opinion.
As somebody else said, we spend plenty of time and effort trying to find and diagnose learning disabilities here. Pretty much any kid in my wife's class who isn't performing at grade level can expect to spend plenty of time with the school psych trying to figure out if there's some deeper reason why. And I think on average about 15% of her class is diagnosed with some form of learning disability or another.
And I'm not suggesting we just say "fuck 'em" and let them fail. Just that every child should have a right to an education, including accommodations and and instruction appropriate to their level of intelligence. As it is many gifted students are simply warehoused, forced to do the same work as the mentally retarded kids who are mainstreamed into their classrooms day after day, and really get almost nothing whatsoever out of school. An autistic child can expect to receive a full-time aide (in addition to their teacher), special individual/small group instruction in their problem areas (even if it's all of them, for hours each day), and a host of other accommodations to ensure that they get as much as is possible from school. Gifted students often receive, if they're lucky, an hour or two a week of small-group instruction and some extra homework.*
The attitude many schools take is that they can simply "take care of themselves," and that as long as they're passing the tests who cares?
No Child Left Behind might sound like a great idea, but does No Child Gets Ahead really sound appealing?
* - Note that I'm talking about the elementary school level here...because too often (but no, not always) by the time gifted students hit middle/high school they're completely burned out from this and don't really care anymore. Which is why, IIRC, the dropout rate for gifted kids is actually higher than average.
I loved the gifted program at my elementary school. Two or three days a week, I forget exactly, we'd go to the TAG classroom, and do things like logic puzzles, learn about fractals and tessellations, and other fun stuff. Once a month, we'd go to the art museum for a tour of a section, or a special exhibit. It was sweet.
Then, in middle school, the gifted program pretty much consisted of, "Great, you don't have to take Reading. You have room for another elective." Fortunately for one of my years there, they had a teacher who was really cool and started a Math contest team and used her free period to teach a class for it. It improved my math abilities, particularly arithmetic and mental math hugely. Then she moved.
Second, the biggest problems with NCLB are that:
I'm sorry, but I don't see how anyone can come to any other conclusion that NCLB was a wolf in sheep's clothing at best.
you're such a downer
As a pre-service teacher, it is amazingly frustrating to do all these readings in my teacher-ed textbooks and journals about how we need to have multiple forms of assessments (that is, not just Big McLarge Huge exams) to really be able to investigate how well students are acquiring knowledge ... while having the government say, "Hey, we need to figure out if you're cool enough to be allowed to have money for your students or not, so give them this Big McLarge Huge exam, mmmkay?" >_<
Well, this is why I like the NY system, Grace - while the tests are standardized statewide, they are also very narrowly targeted.
Basically, NY replaces locally made final examinations with statewide ones, called the Regents examination. In order to graduate, you have to pass a set number of Regents exams in each field of study. The only omnibus exams I know of are the English and Foreign Language examinations, which are done after several years of schooling. Also, they're not easy at all - while there's a multiple choice section, the lion's share of the examination comes from the long answer sections, which test high-level skills (for the social sciences and English, you have to write two essays, for the hard sciences, you have to do analysis of experimental data provided, for math you do multipartite problems, and the foreign language exams are brutal multipart exams.) And there's a three hour time limit, and you have to be there for two. To be honest, the system is much more similar to college examinations...
Actually CP is severly under diagnosed, many times they just slap a ADHD diagnosis and call it a day. I have read my share of horror stories about people with CP. The US is among the worst offenders in the west according to what I'v been told.
and a diagnose of ADHD would have been worse than no diagnosis for me.
The fact is, teachers - along with doctors - are a nation's most important asset. Human capital investment, i.e. education, is the only investment that always has positive returns. It also happens to be the only way for the USA to even hope to compete with fast-growing economies like China and India.
The way teachers are regarded and treated in this country is very disappointing.[/QUOTE]
Um, we do more than compete with China and India. Absolute convergence is a lie, blah blah blah. That and human capital is just like any capital.
Everything else, spot on. God this thread makes me happy my parents sunk themselves into brutal debt to put me through private school. As much as I love me my economics, I have to say that it seems a method of incentives isn't working out so well.
I don't think anything that happens will actually fix the education system. Everyone wants to just slightly modify it, and that's not going to work. Lazy teachers will do anything to keep their jobs. If we impose stricter curriculums state wide (or nation wide) the teachers will just do the bare minimum. And the teachers union will fight for those teachers instead of fighting for the students.
And it's funny. It seems like the longer the education system is left in the state it's in, the worse it gets. As kids grow up with a lackluster education, we'll create more and more teachers who don't give a fuck. Because as the system gets worse the product of that system gets worse. And since the education system is built on it's own product that's exactly what we're seeing.
My solution (and this is me talking, so it's not very well thought out) would be to scrap everything. Funding would start being on a per child basis. The teacher's union would be disbanded with the idea that down the road it could be reinstated. Teachers who want to continue teaching would have to take the courses that military instructors in training have to go through.
Then, a new very strict curriculum would be made, and teachers would be forced to stick to it. A day by day curriculum that has to be followed. It would span a 9 month period, with the assumption that 3 months would be off for summer. Teachers would be free to decide how they disperse the information to the classes, but what's on the curriculum would be taught to the class on the day it's suppose to be taught.
Every month or so children would take tests that covers what the teacher is suppose to be covering. This would be used to not only measure how the students are doing, but also how the teacher is doing. Every subject would be covered on this test, and it would be able to pinpoint what subjects students are having trouble with, and what part of that subject. This would be used for summer school purposes. If a few students fall through the cracks, then during the summer they would take a week long crunch course in order to make sure they know what they need to know.
For example, little Billy doesn't pass the algebra portion of the test in January. Instead of having to take a summer school class that covers all algebra taught that year, he'd take a week long course specific to that month and subject. If he fails numerous months worth of courses, he'd take numerous weeks worth of courses over the summer.
Ok, yeah, this is getting a little silly. I'm taking about the specifics when it's the overall that needs to be fixed. But this is something I'd think would work better than what we're currently doing.
Seeing as how NCLB is leaving a lot of kids behind but passing with flying colors by its own standards, I'd say any change would suffer the repercussive slings of revealing NCLB's long term short comings.
This way everything wouldn't have to happen at once, but once that first class that was taught this way graduated there would be an immediate increase in the quality of the US's educational system. I don't see any way the system is just going to improve without it being unfair to current students. Unfortunately the current system has already failed them.
Oh, something I forgot to mention... This system would benefit both slower students and faster students. If a student decided they wanted to take a test early, they could. If they pass it, they can free study for the next test, or work on projects they feel beneficial to their eventual career path.
At a certain grade (middle school I'd guess) students would start being tested at the begining of a symester for a class. The data gained from this would be used to weight what portions of the subject need more time to be taught. The cirriculum would still be strict as far as what is taught when, but it would be a great help for the teacher to know what they really need to focus on.
Also, who would make this strict new curriculum and who would grade the tests? I'm not sure I want a governing body deciding exactly what specifics our children should (and, by extension, should NOT) be learning.
I sort of feel like the best thing to do is scrap the standardized testing system and move to a system where teachers are given only rough syllabuses, where they're free to teach whatever else they see fit as long as what's on the syllabus gets taught. I'm talking only basic stuff here, and at the end of a course the students are expected to have mastered what's on the syllabus. Teachers at the next level up would know if this is the case, so there's accountability there (except, possibly, for teachers at the top levels, but those are typically the most senior and wield the most power anyway), and it would revitalize the teaching environment. I understand that you'd end up with a larger variance in teacher quality in this system, but my feeling is that the *average* teacher would be far better in this system than in the NCLB system, and that the number of people who get shafted with bad teachers year after year would be extremely small (certainly no larger than the number of students whose needs NCLB isn't meeting). I mean, you're only going to get a good education from a teacher that's passionate about what they're teaching, and let's face it - nobody's passionate about passing standardized tests.
edit: A side benefit to this is that the new system would attract better and more qualified teachers than the current one...specifically, it'd attract ones that are excited about sharing their knowledge with others. Fuck knows what kind the current one is attracting, but the resulting classroom instruction isn't good.
Kids with lackluster education growing up to be lackluster teachers isn't the biggest problem though, but rather those same kids growing up to be parents who feel that education is useless or that they themselves were screwed over by the system and then pass on those feelings to their kids.
The testing part of my solution isn't really necessary, but the disbanding of the Teacher's Union, required training, and set curriculum is vital. Teachers can be free to teach how they want even if the curriculum is set. They are also free to teach whatever additional stuff they want, just as long as the information in the curriculum is passed on.
I've had some discussions with my father about this. He used to be an instructor in the Air Force. This is the type of system they used. He said that it didn't restrict instructors as much as you'd think. Infact, it gave them a jumping off point.
I do think a majority of teachers are frustrated. I think most teachers go into teaching with their heart in the right place. But the whole system beats them down to the point where they're part of what makes the system so messed up in the first place. This thing feeds itself, and without major change it's not going to get better.
I agree with you on this. Basically I feel that most of our societies problems stem from the lackluster educational system. Part of that is on the teachers. Part of that is on the parents. Most of that is on the general populous who's let the educational system deteriorate the way it has.
And while you might think that your every-day-of-curriculum-planned-out-across-the-nation is a good way to make sure all students are getting the same information, this isn't the case. The problem is that students have different backgrounds, different abilities to process information, etc. Students in a particular district (one in the Midwest, let's say) might need a lot of pre-teaching in order to get anything valuable out of reading Moby Dick, while students who grew up on the East Coast are going to be more familiar with the stuff being presented. Or even to make it more basic, students in a district where Mom and Dad make more money on average and have more leisure time to read to Junior are not going to need as much pre-teaching help with any big reading assignment because they already have the tools to find semantic clues in the text, create meaning, and other such et ceteras. Saying something like, "well, we'll just go at the pace of the slowest students, and the more advanced students can work ahead on their own projects"? Well, okay, it's going to work well for a couple really intrinsically-motivated high achieving students, but most kids are going to say "fuck it." Bright kids need guidance too (see: disproportionate dropout/suicide right for students tagged as gifted and/or talented).
Teachers do this a lot these days - not necessarily at the beginning of a semester, but when they're going into a new unit, for example. Ongoing assessments are HEAVILY emphasized in teacher training these days because, seriously, how else are you going to figure out what the kids know or don't know before you give them a huge exam? If they know it really well already you can just reinforce it lightly or even skip right over it to spend time on the stuff that makes them make this face: O_o
What I'm trying to figure out is a way to have accountability for teachers while still having freedom. You need to find a balance between the two. Our current system has too much freedom and not enough accountability. Mine as I laid out might be the exact opposite.
1. Being a teacher doesn't attract the greatest talent. Part of this is low salaries, part of it is just the nature of the job. This doesn't mean that current teachers are bad, more that a lot of great, potential teachers are turned off by the job and do something else instead.
2. Kids coming from bad home situations will never do well in school. No matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't convince hungry, beaten kids with miserable home lives to care about school. They have other problems to deal with. Throwing more money at problem schools won't make a lick of difference; there's social problems that need to be solved first.
Most parents don't know anything about whats happening to their kid in school, whether their keeping up or falling behind, their test scores, etc, except for what the kid is telling them. This lasts right up until the report card, when its too late to do anything about the previous quarter. A lot of the time, even if the report card is bad, parents still don't do anything to be a bigger part of the kids education.
Angel is completely right that standardized testing can be done right. In BC, anyone going to post secondary education must pass at least four subjects with standardized final exams. It was an excellent system that helped to level the playing field for those entering university, mainly because the exams were well done.
The key to standardized testing is the tests themselves. A pass/fail test is horrible. Creating an exam that truly tests a student's competency in a particular subject, especially things such as literature and history is very difficult, but essential to ensure that the students are learning what is expected of them. If the test is well written, teaching mainly to the test with a little extra coverage in a few areas is a good thing.
A teacher I knew was apparently a very good instructor. His biggest complaint was that he couldn't teach his subject matter because the teachers in the grades below him didn't teach what they were supposed to. Topics deemed too difficult were skipped and kids passed without even being introduced to concepts they were supposed to master before moving on. This is one situation where standardized testing would force teachers to actually teach the required material.
On the other hand, a poorly made test allows teachers to drill without really teaching the material. The kids can answer the questions, but not understand what they're doing. The good teachers can continue as is, but students with poor teachers get screwed, often with reasonable results as far as the standardized tests are concerned.
The issue of pass/fail exams is another problem. "Yes Mr. Smith, 92% of your students passed, but only 5% achieved a B or better." Mr. Smith is probably a decent remedial teacher, but has no business in front of a regular class. In the NCLB context, Mr. Smith is a great teacher.
I do like the idea of NCLB putting heat on individual teachers. Not so much the way it does it, but at least the effort was there. We've all had teachers who should not hold the job, but can't be fired unless they touch a student inappropriately. NCLB doesn't do this the way I would, but the idea of holding individual teachers responsible for their teaching abilities shouldn't seem strange.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
2. Wrong. I came from a rough ass childhood and school was my safe haven. I really connected with quite a few teachers there and I really learned to love learning, and alot of that had to do with the teachers getting to know me, realize I was gifted, and give me lee-way in what I chose to do so long as I got the regular curriculum finished. For example, I spend most of 4th grade researching in the school library and writing papers about various types of wild animals because I thought that was cool.
The solution is to give these kids an alternative to their home lifestyle. Socialize them in a more normal way with positive role models. It works. This only child from a single mother in a reciprocally abusive relationship with my father (both having drugs problems) proves it with his Magna Cum Laude, I would say.
Treating school like the military is retarded for that reason. You're just going to turn people off immediately, especially the people that already get the shit (so stop slamming it down their throats).
Teachers are a second chance for hard luck kids to get some positive adults in their life. They need people who will help them learn, grow, and care about them. The information, in itself, is pretty unimportant compared to teaching children how to think, learn, and CARE.
Because if you don't care, you don't learn dick. Learning is a voluntary process. The first thing you need to do is teach the kids that they should care and that learning is important in and of itself. The PROBLEM is that with all this standardized bullshit, it's just another barrier wherein teachers can't really connect with students.
And THAT is the failing of our school system. It de-emphasizes the MOST important asepct- connection.
Since you are "gifted," you might be an anomaly in this respect? Average kids in the same situation might not be able to make the same leap. The connection has to go both ways. Maybe smaller classroom sizes would help the situation you're describing, but that gets back into point 1: lack of qualified people who want the job.
I don't think my being a smart kid had nearly as much to do with it as having compassionate teachers who were interested in me as a person.
I also don't see how making the job more stringent and less flexible is going to attract teachers to the job. In fact, I see the opposite. Personally I'd rather see teachers able to spank kids again rather than have this "invisible bubble" wherein you aren't even supposed to hug kids anymore. We've gone way too far away from what's important I think.
I mean, to break it down any retard can learn just about everything you need to know to pass a college entrance exam in one, maybe two years if they try. Basic algebra and logic aren't hard, nor is knowing how to read. So, in my estimation we're filling students with test crap instead of fire in the belly, and that's backwards.
{edit} I'll take it one further in fact. In elementary school I was in inner-city education along with everyone else from that demographic. In middle school I was finally convinced to try out the AP program. BIG MISTAKE. Smaller classrooms, more money, but the teachers didn't care and they "taught the tests" and gave assloads of homework for no real reason. I was so burned out that I did terrible at school until I went to a rural high school where I could "start over" so to speak. By this time I was grown up enough that it didn't really matter what the teacher's attitudes were, but I honestly don't think I would have graduated top 10% of my high school if I didn't have my elementary school experience to fall back on.
Usually, you get someone who loses their motivation, and in the worst case, you get someone who still has his/her ambitions, but no longer has the ability to use their abilities in a helpful way, and they become our drug dealers, our crime lords, etc etc.
That way, the former happens, and the latter doesn't?
Yes, I know this is kind of back there, but I felt the need to reply to this.
Abstinence only sex-education isn't something that could happen, it is happening right now.
I, personally, had abstinence-only education, if that. Around 6th grade, we watched an animated video showing a boy turning into a man with chest hair and a larger penis and were given a) a book with definitions of words like 'testes,' 'testosterone,' and 'sperm,' and b) a stick of deodorant. In 9th grade (or sometime in high school, if you missed it), you had to take Health, which had one section on the male and female reproductive systems, with no explanation of how sex works or any talk at all of contraceptive use. That is the extent of my sexual education.
So it's not that federal funding could lead to abstinence-only sex ed, but that it already is, and that needs to changed, regardless of how we try to fix the fucked up public schooling system.
I'm well aware of this. I was using this as an example of what has actually happened when the federal government decides to fuck with the curriculum. Now imagine if they were actually in charge of all school funding, and as such pretty much in charge of all curriculum. Abstinence-only sex-education is bad enough, but I think most semi-intelligent people recognize this as an abuse of federal power, a circumvention of the power of states to set their own curriculum, and many might consider it a first amendment issue.
But imagine for a second if this kind of thing was the norm across all subjects (history, science, etc.) and it was, more or less, "the way it should be."
(Oh, and if this sounds oddly familiar, it's because they used the exact same fucking playbook against SCHIP.)
And about disbanding the teachers unions, fuck that noise. I'm tired of hearing how the teachers unions are scapegoated into the Big Bad Interest Group that's fucking up American education. I'm not buying it, and every time I hear someone say they should be disbanded, the same fucking motive is at the bottom of it - "I want to force teachers to do as I want, and I can't do that because they stick up for one another." I'm sick of it.