<p>Ay ay ay. Taj Mahal schools… that’s what I have to say. Why the hell do we need schools that look like castles yet have books from the 50s? We have them all over our district (though, the poor areas have crowded shacks… ****es me off).</p>
<p>I wish we did have choice in where we go to school, though. Vocational school here, college prep school there, performing arts there, a mix-and-match there, special-needs there, gifted… Why can’t we have a variety of schools instead of a “one curriculum for all” system? People need to realize that not everyone is made for the college prep system and that they would perform much better in an environment for them.</p>
<p>I wonder if perhaps part of the reason the US has less vocational track high schools is the history of racial segregation. Most white parents in the past and arguably some today would not want to send their child to a school with a significant black population-which makes establishing schools choices difficult.</p>
<p>We have controlled school choice. It used to control for ethnicity until a few years ago. Now it controls for SES and gender. Our vocational program was nearly killed by a principal who tried to put students of all level of abilities in the same heterogeneous classes. The principal resigned after three years and is now… heading a charter school in our district!</p>
I think anxiousmom raises a very important point here. I also think we need to include another basic difference between the US and Western Europe - half of all pregnancies in this country are accidental. That’s what drives our high abortion rate, but it also drives our high rate of children born into less than adequate circumstances. European countries have very low rates of unintended pregnancy. They still have low socioeconomic groups, but more of their children than ours are born into situations where someone at least thinks they will be able to parent effectively. Too many American families are unprepared to do that, and were in fact unprepared to do that when the child was conceived. The child arrives at school poorly prepared, and then suffers from the lack of home support for their entire academic career. We talk about elevating the status of teachers and eliminating “bad” teachers, but the same issue applies to parents.</p>
<p>I would say that we agree more than we disagree. I wouldn’t argue for a dramatic rise in spending for anything other than the items I proposed, with teacher pay being at the top of the list. As for the argument that we have thrown money at the problem without real results, keep in mind that I’m proposing drastic changes aimed at altering the way we think of teaching and education, putting our money where our mouth is not just by spending more, but by conveying our commitment to education according to the measures of value–salary, status, expertise–determined by our market culture (see my other posts). I’m going for a paradigm shift here, a change in ethos. </p>
<p>I believe that reforming schools according to market principles (choice, merit pay, etc.) could certainly work, but that means a tough choice, especially for conservatives, since I’m convinced that following through on these principles would likely require increased spending. This is the conundrum we face when applying market principles to public institutions, especially when our goal is to see dramatic improvement in those institutions. The bottom line is that there can be no sacred cows when it comes to school reform, and half-hearted measures that placate our prejudices (whether conservative or liberal) are likely to fail, as they have in the past.</p>
<p>I agree except about the increase in spending you believe is required. 2 things on this:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The 20/20 program said that the Belgians spent less per student than here in the US. Here in the US there is no real correlation between spending and education.</p></li>
<li><p>I do not have a citation but I believe that the primary growth in spending in schools over the last 30 years has been in administration.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>So, basically our disagreement is about how to implement the change. I say, cut administration and apply it to the teachers in the form of merit pay and additional teachers. The reason I focus on the administration is that most private schools “get by” with less administration than the public schools.</p>
<p>Basically, my view is that administrators do not drive better teaching, better teachers do.</p>
<p>I happen to be in support of a free-choice system where teachers that suck don’t teach… BUT, I was discussing this article with my mom and she brought up a really interesting point. My family is from the USSR and she said that there was no free choice in Russia, the schools were underfunded as heck due to corruption in govt, there were many students, BUT the level of learning/education was much much much higher in Russia than in the US. This clearly illustrates that the culture of America is quiete different than the rest of the world. Money and choice won’t do anything until learning/education are worshipped.</p>
<p>“Money and choice won’t do anything until learning/education are worshipped.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t have said it better myself. The fact of the matter is that relatively few people who leave teaching do so because of the salary. Could salaries be better? Absolutely, but most of us can live a reasonably comfortable life on the salaries we earn as teachers.</p>
<p>Most often in our school system when we see teachers leave the profession or the area it is due to quality of life issues. Both personal and professional quality of life are at issue. Certainly some of the personal quality of life issues are related to the extremely high cost of living in the Metro D.C. area. Professionally what they experience is a constant barrage of criticism from the public that clearly communicates a lack of respect. Unless like me you happen to be fortunate enough to teach the cream of the crop you encounter many students who are resistant to learning and parents who do not value education. </p>
<p>As I said in an earlier post, many people claim to value high standards and expectations from schools, until it is their child who fails to meet them.</p>
<p>I’m with you: give the money to the teachers. If we attract the right kind of people to education, we can save in many other areas. A good teacher doesn’t need much to inspire students. I just wonder, though, whether shifting money from administrators to teachers will be enough to cause the sort of cultural shift required to truly reform schools. I certainly hope so. </p>
<p>Reeze and wharfrat,</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that the broader culture lies at the heart of the problem. But that just begs the question: What, if anything, can we do within the education system that will help shift the culture, that will really send the message that we “worship” learning? Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Ok…spent quite awhile going through this thread and now want to put in my 2 cents…</p>
<p>In my opinion John Stossel is an excellent journalist (hard to come by these days…but he’s not perfect by any means) and opened my eyes to the other side of the voucher/educational system debate. I have long been wary of school vouchers due to the issues of taking money away from public schools and the likes. However, though I have not fully retreated my position on school vouchers, I did learn that I need to educate myself further in order to make an educated platform decision on this issue.</p>
<p>I also must say that I fully agree that the problem is very difficult to ascertain due its complexity. There are documented problems with teaching quality and teacher retention. There are documented problems with student disicpline. There are documented problems with spending (both with too much and too little). There are documented problems with the attitude of students towards learning. etc. etc. etc. the list would go on forever. </p>
<p>However, I believe the root of the problem lies in the parents of students. A nurturing educational environment must start at home. Read to children when they are young so they are interested in learning to read as they get older (though a problem does arise with the high rates of adult illiteracy…), get them interested in learning, and most of all, allow your children to realize that education is cool and don’t let the other children get to them in middle/high school. </p>
<p>As for the last suggestion, it is near and dear to my heart. I remember as it was yesterday the hurt I felt inside when students laughed at me for even attempting to complete homework assignments or answering questions in middle school. The actions of whom I thought at the time were ‘cool’ and ‘cute’ boys in my class were very hurtful and resulted in me not trying very hard in the second half of 7th grade until 11th grade. I was not placed into ‘level 1’ (honors-track) classes where students acted a little bit more positively towards working for grades (btw, they placed kids into ‘tracks’ in my school district in 4th grade…I was in the higher level in 4th grade, but placed into ‘level 2’ in 5th grade due to an A- rather than an A in the math unit that dealt with fractions…not fair, but since I was the first child, my parents didn’t know there was any recourse on placements). I finally got the idea in 11th grade that getting good grades was easy if you tried hard enough and it carrying me through today (2nd year of graduate school). I really wish my parents had recognized that the grades problem I was having was due to peer pressure to do poorly and not care. However, I was very introverted at that time and didn’t speak my feelings as clearly as I do today. </p>
<p>My mom always said that there is definately something wrong with the state of middle school in this country if all three of her children with three vastly different personalities came home from their first day of middle school in tears. I agree with some posters that middle school should be a time for acceleration, not stagnation. I believe the stagnation helps fuel students to not care about there grades, since they can do reasonably well (or just get by) without much work. It also allows for a lot of free time to encourage students to engage in abusive behavior (mostly verbally abusive in my experience). </p>
<p>Well that’s my 2 cents, and I apologize for the dis-organization of my response.</p>
<p>The good schools would only be available to the rich who could afford to pay the unsubsidized portion of the tuition… the bad schools would be for the poor people.</p>
<p>So under this system, the rich get good education and the poor don’t… </p>
<p>there would have to be some government regulation on the prices charged by schools… also how would you account for tax payment differences between different areas… </p>
<p>can someone explain to me how this would actually work in reality? So if I live in a REALLY nice area and say pay $15,000 towards eduaction in taxes and person B lives in a less nice area and pays $10,000 in education taxes, and C pays $5,000</p>
<p>does that mean that we have that much money to spend on schools? What about people who don’t pay taxes?</p>
<p>Basically, how will everyone be able to afford schools? Where will the money come from?</p>
<p>I am a liberal, and I hate the teacher’s unions. The rest of the world is a meritocracy; when will our schools catch on? Principals and school boards should be able to easily fire teachers. Teachers should be paid more; tenure should be removed. The number of education schools should be downsized; they are turning out teachers like no tomorrow when there are not many positions available. If we are to trim the fat and wasted energy from our education system, we must eliminate the unions.</p>
<p>I don’t really have any idea how one would go about eliminating a teacher’s union. They’re so powerful, and the cost would be enormous. Maybe schools could hire only non-union teachers for more pay than union teachers get. Teachers do need merit pay though. I don’t know how to go about determining merit, but hey, there must be some way to reward them.</p>
<p>I for one come from a single-parent household and could never dream of going to a private school. I have been in the public school system for all my schooling and until I got a job where I met others my age who went to school in a better suburb, I had always believed school was the same all over: dozens of rude, idiotic teens wasting away. I always was touted as the best student, yet now I am seeing that I am average compared to many of the people on here. The past two years in high school (I am a senior now) have been terrible because I realize that I am trapped in a district that has kept me back without my even knowing it. I have been subjected to class sizes of 62 (I had a 6/7 hour block with two teachers and 62 students–only one of the teachers would take us on at a time–it got so bad they split us up and one of the teachers took over empty rooms and the cafeteria just to keep the 62 of us separate). I have been stuck in classes where one student shouts out obnoxious noises and words and phrases and is joined by five others; they all squeak by with D- grades. Then you have the students who sleep and dn’t do the work because they just don’t care. Or they don’t come. Then there are the slow students who just don’t know how to do the work and don’t receive help on it. Then there are the “good” students who just do the work and pass. I am one of the “excellent” students because I actually want to learn and know things before college. I’m on the prep track. There is no other option for me in this country except the college track. However, I plan to rebel against “typical jobs” by going into film. Film is the anti-“job”-job. If you’re a film editor you go to work in jeans. If you are a film director you can wear shorts. If I am a film critic I can spend more time out of the office and watching films, as opposed to having a normal “job”-job that keeps me in formal attire and sitting at a desk all day.</p>
<p>Everyone should go back and reread anxiousmom’s post about the students she has in HER classroom and school. On this board, I believe many of us do not see these students and may not realize how many of them there are, or how much they impact our classrooms and the results of standardized testing. There are oodles of students who live in conditions or homes we would be not believe exist - it is not an occasional student in some communities, it is the norm in some communitites. I work in a pediatric hospital that specializes in medical/educational evaluations for children with medical/developmental/emotional disorders and I attend many team meetings for students that include parents, evaluators and educators. My neighbors and friends would never believe the stories I could tell. I have been in my field for 25 years and my experience with parents/families today is much different than it was 15 years ago. Today, I cannot focus on the child’s disorder without providing some “social work”. Often, we conclude that the home environment is a big part of the problem, not the child, but now the child has problems that will require services (at a cost to the school system, btw). We have many, many dysfunctional families, described quite accurately by anxiousmom, I believe, and there is only so much the schools can do when the home environment is chaotic, uninformed, uneducated, dysfunctional, legally compromised (illegal immigrants, parents in jail, parents in rehab, abusive boyfriend of parent, etc), and in many cases extremely frightening for the child. Many of the kids who come to our center for assessment come because DSS has stepped in and is trying to help the child, or because a teacher knows that there is more than educational issues impacting the child. It is so sad to see the potential these kids have lost to their family environments and experiences. How can the school solve these problems? </p>
<p>That said, I am not an advocate for the present structure of education. I work in healthcare and there are many healthcare professions that work long hours, with low pay, and no unions. Yet, we are all held to very high levels of accountability for performance, safety, outcome and currency. Schools should have the accountability that organizations like JCAHO and “evidence based practices” (HMO monitoring of indicators, etc) bring to healthcare - the present system for education hasn’t kept up with requirements of other professions, it seems. Professionalism in healthcare means that you take personal responsibility for the care of your patient and the outcome. I am not sure that all teachers feel that way or that the system allows them to actually control much of the outcome but I do not think teachers contribute to an image of professionalism with the nit-picky adherence to union negotiated paramaters of their responsibilities. In talking with friends who teach I often have to bite my tongue when they complain about parents wanting to meet with them befoe or after school. When I am still with patients or at work at 6:00 because someone needed more explanation or someone missed their bus and came late, or because the patient’s case required more time…or because I had to squeeze in a STAT case, or have to get the results out TODAY, I have little compassion for the teacher’s complailnts. I do not get extra pay for that time but it is part of the job and the professionalism that goes with the job. I know that teaching is complex - and I don’t mean to sound like I don’t understand how complicated the position of teacher is. Certainly we have made teachers jobs much more complicated with our legal mandates as well, which is a whole 'nother discussion. Basically, it seem like a good time to review what works and doesn’t work TODAY in education.</p>
<p>I agree with ophiolite regarding parental responsibility. </p>
<p>She is very astute in recognizing that, in America, things seem to start going wrong at the middle school level. I felt like these were the hardest years for my children as well. It’s hard to see bright kids hiding their gifts because they fear being ridiculed for raising their hand in class, for participating in educational extracurriculars like DI, spelling bees, science competitions, or for even making good grades and being the ‘curve-buster’. But kids are not born bullies, they are created by parents with wrong priorities. If a parent’s inferiority complex manifests itself in an attitude of caring only about driving the newest Mercedes, showing off the latest Louis Vuitton bag and exclusively associating with only the most influential people, it stands to reason their children will be burdened with the same inferiority complex and the same compulsion to act out. They become toxic and destructive to others and themselves. And this is compounded by the fact that these destructive kids know in their hearts that their high achieving classmates are the children of parents who prioritize their kids above themselves…and then you have envy in the toxic mix as well. As destructive as the kids are to others, they are far worse on themselves. This is why we have boys getting drunk at 8th grade dances and girls who have performed certain sex acts before they ever get to high school.</p>
<p>I know…I see this every single day in our neighborhood. I can remember getting a backhanded compliment from a parent after my daughter was recognized in the Duke talent search. In front of a group of other moms, she made a comment to me about my children being freakishly smart and how ‘different’ they were from the other kids. Her tone was mocking and her intent was malicious. And the looks I received from some of the same people, when I said that we would be willing sell and cash in our home equity if our kids were lucky enough to get into a good private college. What?! I would sell the big house for college?! It was like I was speaking Greek.</p>
<p>These parents are the same ones who prioritize the superficial in educational spending. Got to have the best football stadium, the prettiest, most expensive drill team uniforms and all the bells and whistles for the children’s perfect little school experience. But heaven forbid they be educated properly…wouldn’t want them to turn out ‘freakishly smart’ or ‘different’ now would they? </p>
<p>As bad as it is in our educational system; until the parents get it together, nothing will change.</p>
<p>Rileydog, In defense of teachers, they do not get to say you are a noncompliant student, and so I will no longer treat you. A private physician can do this. They do not get to say this teaching technique is not working, so I will try another (sometimes they can, but often they cannot b/c they are teaching a group rather than one individual. That child may need need one on one to get the care they need, even a specialist, and the school often will not do that). The teacher does not get paid enough to sit until 6:00 in our area. They leave to make more money by tutoring other kids. They show up 50 minutes before school, which is very early in the morning and they hang around for 30 minutes to help their students some more. Then they leave for their private tutoring business, or stay to earn extra money by coaching a sport.</p>
<p>the requirements and expectations in America are out of whack. Let’s have kids reading and writing by the 5th or 6th grade. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Kids should all be expected to know how to write cursive by the 2nd grade and finish learning times tables in 1st grade. Things like this should be expected. If not, kids should be held back. A rigorous system is needed with more advanced text books. I look at the American school text books of my sister in 2nd grade and then I looked at the textbooks my parents bought from Singapore for my sister to learn at home with. You’d be amazed at the difference in expectations for a 2nd grader in the rest of the world. The books are all in English and made for 2nd graders.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I remember learning in elementary and middle school about a math technique called “guess and check”</p>
<p>wha ??</p>
<p>How do you guess and check, that’s not a strategy. My parents would teach me any problem I needed to “guess and check” for. They would teach me how to do it the mathematical right way. Guess and check should be BANNED from school. </p>
<p>That’s just one example. The curriculum is not nearly rigorous enough.</p>
<p>And let me remind you that this is happening in “competitive” school systems; I live in a semi-wealthy suburb. I think our schools leave plenty to be desired, even though we send kids to ivy schools and 90% students go on to get degrees after high school.</p>
<p>can someone explain how vouchers would work money wise? I’d be concrned that not everyone could afford to send their kids to the top schools.</p>
<p>so if you guys are arguing it’s all about the parents, do you feel that the parents in other countires are better? (I’m not arguing, I’m just trying to understand what you are trying to say)</p>