NYTimes Editorial Board Calls for Education Reform

You're the exception.

I definitely feel like mine learns more at home than at preschool right now, where he learns seemingly nothing. I can't wait for him to start kindergarten.

 

Is there a single (non charter) public school that dismisses its kids after 3:00pm? Is there one that doesn't close for 8 (or more) consecutive weeks in the summer?

What school district has the highest rate in the country for firing teachers based on performance? is it over even 1%?

What percentage of kids is required to attend summer school and/or is required to repeat a grade? How does the number compare to a generation ago?

 

One of my biggest concerns is rampant grade inflation. We talk about about holding teachers accountable. Kids aren't accountable any more, either. Everyone has a 4.0. Sorry. A 4.1 or higher. I read - maybe it was in Frank Bruni's recent column - that a lot of schools are graduating 30 or 40 valedictorians.

People bitch about standardized tests and colleges valuing them to the extent they do. But nobody told Podunk High to make every student indistinguishable. And no one told Harvard to do that, either. And yet they both have.

 

It doesn't have to be for everyone. If a school, or a child, is succeeding, then keep doing what works.

If a school, or child, is failing, then let's give the kids more instruction.

8 or more weeks off in a row means kids forget a lot, and the start of the school year is filled with review of old material, and not with new material.

If only some schools were open in the summer, you could recruit the best teachers -- and pay them accordingly -- to work with the students who need the most help over the summer.

 

While there are certainly ways to improve teacher training and performance, a lot of things are out of their hands. For one thing, rising income inequality is being codified by the current education system, not equalized, with rich parents spending way more (as you might expect) on their kids' education outside of school, not to mention who can afford the staggering cost of college.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/07/04/inequality-among-students-rises/AuUbN6qkLDb684uiUysqFP/story.html

And there's not a lot the teachers at my kids' high school can do about this. The percentage of students classified as low-income (eligible for free or reduced-price lunches) was 29 percent in 2009. That number is now 50 percent. My area has a lot of union tradespeople and other working-class families whose income has been slammed since the housing collapse (a lot of them were making money building homes) and the recession-not-a-recession.

http://iirc.niu.edu/School.aspx?source=StudentCharacteristics&source2=LowIncome&Schoolid=070162180160004

 

Again: They don't care about this. You want them to care about this. They don't care about this.

 

I think more money is wasted on "education reform" than anything else. Politicians know it's a hot button so they meddle in it, local districts and administrators all want to put their "stamp" on their tenure so they change things and hope any bump in performance will be attributed to them.
Every three years or so students are informed that they way they've been taught and tested has been wrong and they will be doing things a different way. It isn't like math has changed, or English, or history or science - THAT much in the last 10 years.

 

That sounds great -- but who is going to pay for it? I can't find exact numbers, but generally a majority of school tax issues on the ballot fail, and your best hope (as happened with my elementary district) is to keep putting it on until enough of the public responds to overcome the strong anti-tax opposition that comes every time a school measure is on the ballot.

 

Well sure. And, isn't it tied to social promotion?

If kids who used to receive failing grades are now given passing grades, that leads to inflation for everyone, doesn't it?

It also has to do with teachers not wanting to deal with bitching parents and administrators.

To me, it's one reason why standardized tests are necessary. Schools aren't being honest. Everyone gets a trophy. There has to be some independent/universal way to measure success.

 

Arne Duncan caught 1,000,000 kinds of shit for saying that white suburban soccer moms were the ones raising holy hell about the Common Core, but he was absolutely dead-on.

 

Yes, many of them do. And you're doing a static analysis anyway, looking only at people who are in teaching now. Incentive based pay would change, to some degree, the types of people who go into teaching.

 

He was basically right, but he needs to be smarter about how he says things. It was pretty dismissive, and condescending.