On how the US approaches education

[MadHound]

There is, and has been, a strong movement in this country to privatize our public school system, pay teachers less, subject teachers to merit based pay, bust teacher's unions. We are subjecting our students to endless standardized tests which is resulting in students being taught to the test, one of the worst outcomes of NCLB. Our country's education system has been rated 24th out of twenty five developed countries in education by UNICEF. Yet there are some here who cheer us on, down this path of destruction.

We need to come up with a new paradigm for our school system, and the best place to look is at the top of this UNICEF list. Take Japan, the system that is rated second best, and has consistently placed in the top three for decades. What is different about their system?

For one thing, their culture, their society places a high value on education and on teachers whom they accord the respect, and salary, that we accord doctors. Here in the US we mouth pious platitudes about teaching being one of the most important jobs in this country, yet in reality we pay our teachers and fund our education system almost as an afterthought. Teaching has been considered "women's work" and thus has been devalued through the years, as has the profession itself.

Many on this board are aghast at the RI teachers who dare to ask for $90/hr. Frankly that is the pay range we need to be considering for teachers. Based on a forty hour work week (yeah, I know, since when did teachers work just forty hours a week) and a nine month contract (though in reality between continuing education and training most teachers work around eleven months) that would work out to a salary of $140,400. The average salary for a family practitioner/general practitioner is currently around $141,000. This sort of pay would attract the best and brightest to the profession, many of whom now take a look at education, at the high cost/low monetary reward of getting a degree and move on. Why go into massive debt to get into a field that doesn't pay?


Furthermore we need to fully fund our education facilities. Pay the money to have modern equipment, modern textbooks, a physical plant that is in working order. This is what Japan does, and of course it shows. Our current education infrastructure is crumbling, has been for years, and if we do nothing that crumbling infrastructure will lead to a crumbling education system.

As our society changes our schools have been forced to deal with more and more issues that used to be reserved for the parents. This means that we need to provide our schools with an adequate number of counselors, and simple things like plenty of healthy, nutritious meals for all. Not to mention after school programs for students.

We also need to take many of the decisions about our schools out of the hands of local school boards. Part of what has caused this downhill decline in our educational system is the wave after wave of religious fundies and RW nuts who have packed our local school boards. Does the medical profession allow a bunch of unskilled folks who aren't in their profession to make major decisions for their profession? No, they keep it in house with organizations like the AMA. Same with the legal profession and other professions. Allowing people who aren't knowledgeable, who aren't trained in the profession make major decisions for that profession is simply insane.

Furthermore we need to change the funding formulas for schools. Instead of trying to pry a super majority out of voters for every single bond issue, schools should be automatically funded through the state and federal government. This doesn't mean blindly throwing money at the problem, again we can provide review panels and such made up of teachers to control the finances. But this notion that a professional's salary, not to mention decisions regarding their physical plant and equipment should be placed in the hands of the general public is ludicrous on the face of it. We do this with no other profession, why should we do it with education? Every single person, from local administrators up through the SoE should have teaching experience.

There are many other things we can do to provide progress in our education system, but these are the major ones. And much of this boils down to two things, we need to inject much more money into our education system and we need to give teachers and other education professionals the respect that they deserve. This is what Japan and other top flight countries do with their education system. If we follow these suggestions, our education system will improve dramatically. If not, it will continue its slide to the bottom. The choice is up to us.

[raccoon]

1. About 10 years ago, I heard a woman say there was a conspiracy against the public schools.

At the time, I thought she was :tinfoilhat:. I don't think so any more.

Recd.

[vadawg]

2. thing is if you are going to pay 141k a year then you will get better teachers

but are you willing to pay that much to the bad teachers as well or will there be a system to fire them. I got no problem with paying teachers more but i have a problem with paying a bad teacher more..

[MadHound]

3. There are already mechanisms to get rid of bad teachers,

And yes, that can be strengthened. However it shouldn't be based on student testing and such, but rather on the the entire body of that teacher's work. Observations, peer reviews and such are how we assess other professions should be the norm, not a single test and caving in to the rantings of unskilled locals aren't. Would you make hiring/firing decisions based on the rantings of local RW yahoos for doctors or lawyers? Then why should we do that for teachers?

[vadawg]

4. seems that there are already bad teachers out there that havent or cant be fired

thats the issue, are you prepared to pay the high salary for a teacher who dosent get results, and by results i mean getting students educated to the standard needed. Seems that you want results to not be a criteria by which teachers are judged but some other standard must be used... Also how many teachers that are employed today would you replace as you would have better candidates if you increased the salarys..

[MadHound]

9. Teachers can and have been fired

That includes both bad and good teachers, witness what's going on in RI right now. This notion that teachers can't be fired is simply rabid RW propaganda, nice to see that you're falling for it.

And I guess you missed the point I made about strengthening teacher review. Also the point I made that while teachers shouldn't be judged by a single test, but rather by observation, portfolios and other such methods that take in the whole body of a teacher's work. This is much like we do with lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

As far as replacing teachers with better candidates, yes, that would happen naturally. Retirement, attrition, etc. would take care of that problem. You want specific numbers, sorry, I can't provide them as you well know. You're simply setting up strawmen to try and further your position. Fail, try again.

[vadawg]

no your missing the point im making, if you double the wages tomorrow

then you would expect the standards to be higher tomorrow or do you allow for the lower standard teachers to continue teaching at the increased wage until they retire. My position is real easy and that is if you pay more then we will expect more and people will want results ie better educated kids..

[MadHound]

13. I'm certain that most "lower standard teachers" could work well under higher standards

Those that can't will be weeded out, it's that simple.

However the rubric of measuring for better educated kids is going to have to expand beyond simple testing to include observations, presentations, portfolios, etc. One size fits all testing is not an accurate measurement of student progress, nor teacher performance.

[vadawg]

15. yes but in the end its about gettig the children educated, that trumps everything

so thats the only result that matters, if a teacher isnt getting those results then they need to find a new career..

[MadHound]

16. I agree with your statement, however the current methods that we use to assess

How well our students are being educated is deeply, deeply flawed. Standardized tests have to been shown to be horribly ineffective for measuring student progress due to things such as racial and social bias in the test, test anxiety, and the many different ways students learn and express that learning (go educate yourself on Gardener's Multiple Intelligence theory for starters).

There are other ways to measure student learning, like I've mentioned above, observation, portfolios, presentations, etc. etc. A standardized fill in the bubble test is one of the worst.

[1monster]

25. The idea that teachers have any freedom today in what they teach or how they teach is a grossly

misinformed idea.

Teachers are mandated as to what they teach, how they teach, and even WHEN they teach what they teach by the state legislatures.

Some teachers in some subjects are actually issued scripts and are not allowed to deviate from that script regardless of their students' educational needs.

In current middle school language arts classes, teachers spend so much time teaching students how to write a rough draft, timed (forty-five minutes), five paragraph (called a 5.3 essay because it has a one-paragraph introduction, three paragraphs body, and one paragraph conclusion) that they have no time for teaching the basics of language arts: parts of speech, grammar (including subject-verb agreement and verb tense agreement), puncuation, and voice. (The writing test is given in fourth, eighth, and tenth grades. Once the students take the test, the whole scenario starts again. It isn't until students are in eleventh and twelfth grade that they get to study literature and other types of writing other than the 5.3 essay.) (A sample of FCAT Writes eassay prompts are below.)

If you live in Florida (probably other states have the same thing), check out your child(ren)'s text books. You will find a large section in the text books that are written specifically for taking the FCATs. And I can't even begin to estimate the number of workbooks, practice tests, and other materials that teachers are required to use as teaching aids.

Teachers also have to maintain loads of paperwork (including special instructions in daily lesson plans) for students who have Individual Lesson Plans and/or 504s (medical handicaps).

Federal and State Legislators who don't have a clue about education and teaching have gotten into the micromanagement of school curriculum--it's a big money maker for those corporations who make the tests and the teaching-to-the-test text books, practice tests, and tests. (The Bush Family has several fingers in that pie.)

Yet, somehow, it is the teachers' faults when students don't get good educations.

(And I haven't even mentioned those (few, but increasing in numbers) incorrigible students who ensure that a teacher spends way too much of class time just keeping order.)

Get educated on the subject before you start blaming teachers. Most teachers are good competent teachers. Some are great teachers. A very few are poor teachers and they don't usually last long anymore.

edited to add some FCAT Writes Prompts.

September – Many people think about taking a vacation to a special place. Sometimes they think about a popular tourist attraction, a historical place, or a natural wonder. If you could choose any place for a vacation, where would it be?

I could be a place you have already been or one you would like to visit. Write an expository paper about one place you would like to go for a
vacation. Give details about this place and explain why you would like to go there. (E)

October – Voting is not only a right of each citizen in our democratic form of
government, it is also a responsibility that each citizen should exercise wisely. Write a short letter to the editor of your local newspaper. What will you say to convince people in your community to register as voters and to encourage everyone to show up on Election Day? (P)

* November – People have disagreements. Sometimes the issues are small, such as what to eat or where to spend time. Other times, the issue is bigger, like how late you are allowed to stay out. No matter what the disagreement is about, you can often settle the issue if you are willing to talk to the other person.

Think about a time when you had a disagreement with a friend, teacher, or family member but settled it by talking with the other
person. Write a narrative paper telling what happened when you had a disagreement with a friend, teacher, or family member but settled it
by talking with the other person. Include specific details,descriptions, and reactions. (N)

[vadawg]

27. no regardless of what they are allowed to teach or how, my whole point is that if you double the

salary then you have a right to expect better results, and to have teachers who are not gettig results to be removed from the positions. You cant really expect pay to increase and no increase in standards...

[tonysam]

42. Please don't repeat that lie about "tenure."

"Tenure" in public education is completely different from tenure in higher education. "Tenure" is only the right to a "due process" hearing, which is almost always rigged against a teacher.

The only thing tenure REALLY does is protect school districts from more wrongful termination lawsuits by putting a brake on the worst impulses of administrators.

The real problem in public education is with administrators, including principals, who have ironclad job security because school districts will back their wrongdoing clear through the court system, except for extremely rare circumstances such as sex with students or even flagrant cheating on standardized tests. They will defend them against teachers no matter what. They have total power over teachers, unlike supervisors in other fields, because there is nobody really supervising the principals.

[Cirque du So-What]

5. Howzabout applying that standard to cops?

Do you advocate stricter standards for police officers, or does this standard of excellence apply only when it's not your ox that's getting gored? I ask this question regarding ANY profession, BTW. I'm not just picking on the police.

[vadawg]

8. no problem if you want to apply it to cops or firefighters, if you want to double my wages then i

presume i would have to have a higher standard and the candidates would be better as well, i agree that if you want to increase teh salarys of any proffession then you will expect to get better results.

[Cirque du So-What]

11. What about the flip side of that coin?

In order to weed out the low performers, the system would have to become more strict and less tolerant - even of mistakes. Would you be willing to risk getting the boot over minor infractions or failing to toe the line? Management has their little tricks, yunno, where they set-up people for failure, even while their 'pets' can be low-performing, clock-watching slack-asses; it's highly subjective. If you're sucked-in tight with management, you've got it made. If you're not focusing on ass-kissing, you're fair game for getting the boot in order to make room for someone's buddy.

It's nothing new, and it's one of the reasons that unions developed in the first place - to avoid nepotism, favortism & arbitrary enforcement of arbitrary rules in order to fuck with people who management wants gone. The seniority system didn't spring to life fully-formed, after all; it was determined to be the most egalitarian way of determining who advances. There's no dispute over when a person first started working for an organization, after all, and everything else is subjective. Everything. Show me one metric of performance that can't be 'gamed' or distorted to fit an agenda and I'll kiss your ass on national TV!

[vadawg]

14. if you are going to pay more then yes you have to weed out the low performers

this already happens across the agencies as the ones that pay the best have more stringent hiring standards and have a lot of applicants to take spaces then someone gets canned, and dude if you think the unions help avoid nepotism then your nuts, they are just as much about who you know as being the bosses son. So as i said if my wages where to be doubled then yes i would expect to have to have twice the standards and results...

[Cirque du So-What]

26. You're proving my point about nepotism & other forms of favortism

If it occurs even in a unionized environment, imagine how bad it is where there are no mandated safeguards in place to avoid favortism. In my experience, the union shop where I worked was very effective in curtailing attempts to enforce favortism. I recall one occasion where management attempted to slide a big ol' suckass into a gravy job. They devised a written test for the candidates, but they slipped the answers to the suckass (I know this to be true, as I plied him with alcohol & obtained a full confession). In all prior instances where a written test was required, the sole criterion was passing the fucker; after that, seniority ruled. This time, however, management wanted to move the goalposts & make the selection based on high score, and as I said, the suckass knew all the answers beforehand. It ended up going to arbitration, where the arbitrator rightly ruled in favor of following the procedures established by past precedent; the job went to the senior candidate who passed the test.

As for your wages...does your statement indicate that everyone is deliberately slacking, waiting for a raise in pay before stepping up the pace? I know that's not what you intended, but that's what comes across.

[vadawg]

28. nope thats not what i intended and thanks for being respectful enough to state that

no im not saying people are slacking, but lets be honest in all jobs there are people who are barely able to do the job and then there are people who could do the job whilst asleep or on DU all day, and there are people who would do a fantastic job if the job paid more and made it worthwhile for them to transition over from another field. This is what im saying in that you are not going to pay double the money without getting a lot better results...

[Fumesucker]

32. Is there a mechanism to get rid of bad doctors? n/t

[vadawg]

33. yeah, best one is word of mouth and patients leaving, after that there is the board

but if a doctor just sucks then patients can always leave...

[Fumesucker]

34. Other doctors are remarkably reluctant to discipline a bad doctor.

Rather like cops in that regard, you never know when your own ass is going to be on the line, eh?

I had two doctors in my family for a while, the stories they would tell of incompetent colleagues were chilling.

[vadawg]

36. yup i agree, but patients are pretty good at getting the message out

and with the internets nowadays the info spreads like wildfire, yup i can see its a lot like cops in the regard that the lay person might not understand why something went down the way it did, kinda like the surgeon who nicked murthas intestine, i got no idea how hard that surgery is or how easy it is to make that simple mistake in the same way as the average layperson dosent get what i do...

[Fumesucker]

37. But we don't get to choose our own doctors..

Or at least a lot of us don't..

I had a doctor I was comfortable with and liked, then thanks to a job/insurance change I could no longer go to that doctor, the next one I got told me flat out he wasn't going to help me with one of the problems I had.

Just like we don't get to choose the cops we must interact with.

[vadawg]

41. so could you have walked away and got another doctor, my wife doctor shopped a lot

for the kids, for her, me i dont really care who i see. With the cops you cant choose who you will deal with but you can help a lot in how that interaction is going to turn out...

[Fumesucker]

44. Depends where you live..

I live in a rural area, doctors are few and far between and then the insurance companies give you a severely limited subset of the few available ones.

As for cops I've had both outstandingly good interactions as well as abysmally awful, I don't see the difference as being in my own actions since I try to treat people, including cops, consistently the way I would like to be treated.

[proudohioan]

48. Why not? Wall St. doesn't mind paying their bad employees huge salaries?

:sarcasm:

[Odin2005]

6. The way we do education in this country is broken at it's very core.

[MadHound]

12. It has been deliberatly broken

In order that our public school system can be privatized and transfer even more wealth to the rich and elite.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. We don't value children in this country

If we did we would pay their teachers far more than we do.

Great OP. :)

But I always object to the comparison to Japan. Their kids have a much higher suicide rate than ours. So no, I don't want to be just like them.

[MadHound]

10. Thanks,

I agree, we don't need to put that kind of pressure on our kids. But paying and treating our teachers like the professionals that we are is something that is desperately needed in this country.

[prairierose]

22. MadHound, yes you are correct that part of the problem ...

is the fact that we do not respect the teaching profession and we do not pay them well. But I feel that another part of the problem is that many Americans do not value education in general and in fact hate/fear those who are educated. Of course, there has been a deliberate campaign by the rw nutjobs to smear intellectuals and ivy league schools. How many times have you heard "ivy league intellectual" spoken in the sneering tones used by so many of the rw?

We pay lip service to caring about children and wanting a good education for them but when it comes right down to it, children are not cared for and education is being sold off to the highest bidder.

There are so many areas where we do not care for children. If you look around and see some of the problems children face, you begin to see that we as a nation do not care for children.

If you look around at the numbers of people who have little education and are proud of it. You begin to see some of the problem education faces. Since these same people are eligible to be elected to the local school board. Look at the fact that the nation's textbooks are influenced/written for a bunch of ignorant agenda driven rw fundamentalist nutjobs who think that Jesus rode dinosaurs around for fun 6000 years ago when the earth was brand new from gawd's hand. These are the same people who have no compunction about lying to everyone about what great christians Washighton, Franklin and Jefferson were. They believe and spread the story that this country was founded as a christian nation. I have been running into this with students more and more as the propaganda seeps further into the population.

To these people, ignorance is bliss. Not just because it is easier to live if you do not see the big problems but because ignorant people are so much easier to control. They can't think their way out of a wet paper bag and prefer so have someone else do their thinking for them. This anti-intellectualism is one of the big problems that we have to fight.

Now, I know that I would rather be around smart and curious people rather than ignorant and complacent people but how do you convince the public, who sit on their couch watching the latest incarnation of American Idol, that they should want to be educated rather than ignorant?

[MadHound]

23. Oh I agree with everything you say

Being intelligent and educated has been a curse in this country for sixty years or more. Adlai Stevenson got blasted as an egghead while Ike won by being a guy you could have a beer with (Ike was actually quite intelligent, but he had good handlers who helped him appeal to the "everyman").

The trouble with valuing ignorance over intelligence is that it will destroy our country, as your examples point out.

Yes, we'll have to have a paradigm change in that sort of ingrained thought, but one of the best places to start is with our education system. Turn out generation after generation who are better educated than their parents and it will be a good thing for everybody.

[prairierose]

50. That is quite true... I hope that we can accomplish that but...

with Duncan as Sec of Ed and so determined to go the charter school route as a method of destroying our public schools, I don't see much chance of that outcome.

[cali]

17. I think teachers salaries could be increased

but no, I don't think they should be payed as much as a gp. A doctor has more education and such things as malpractice insurance.

[MadHound]

20. An undergraduate teacher in a quality program generally takes more hours than any other student

If you're teaching in an elementary setting you have to take methods and philosophy classes on each topic that you're going to teach, math, reading, writing, social studies, science, art, music, etc. etc. Not to mention practicums and such. If you're teaching a specific subject in middle or high school, you have to essentially get two degrees, one in education and one in history. I'm graduating with degrees in middle school and elementary school education and in history. I've got well over one hundred and forty hours for my undergrad career and those who are getting just one degree generally have 120 plus hours.

Once we get out of college, we are required to start on our masters within four years, not to mention many other hours of ongoing training and education that continues throughout our careers.

Our education level is on par with a doctor's, and yes, we have malpractice and liability insurance as well. Paid for out of our own pocket. Before I even stepped into a classroom for my first practicum I had to purchase malpractice and liability insurance, how many other undergrads have to do that?

All that money, all that education, all that debt for a career that doesn't pay well.

Furthermore, putting teacher's pay on par with doctors is a way of showing both teachers and the rest of our society that we truly do value education as one of the most important jobs in this country. Are you saying that you simply want to pay lip service to that sentiment, or do you want to back it up with some substance? Japan backs it up with substance, as do other top flight education countries. We don't, and look at our education system.

You've got to pay the big bucks to get the best talent. I've seen student after top flight student drop out of education because they were looking at huge student debt for little pay and they decided to go where the money, but not where their heart was. Talent is constantly flowing away from education because of the abysmal pay. Shouldn't we provide our students with the best? Then we have to pay for it, both in terms of teachers' salaries and in repairing and replacing the actual physical infrastructure. Anything else and we're selling our children short.

[cali]

24. for sure, but still not even close to what a GP

(though there really aren't such things anymore) puts in. I'm sorry, but med school, internship and residency far exceed what the average teacher puts in in terms of education.

[proud2BlibKansan]

30. Not true

My cousin is a doctor and has exactly the same number of college hours I do. We've compared our transcripts.

She has gone back to school to become an anesthesiologist. So she'll end up with more hours than I have. But as a GP her hours are the same.

[MadHound]

31. That's not true,

Sorry, but I'll be easily matching what a GP (and yes, there are still GP's around, at least out here in the Midwest) puts in to their education by the time I'm done with my master's degree (and residency is considered to be post grad hours, required, but so are teacher's post grad hours).

Yes a specialist will put in more hours, but then again so will many teaching specialists. And if you're going to try and point out the long hours put into residency, don't forget the long hours that student teachers put in or the long hours put into a dissertation.

[Tailormyst]

18. Really great post- thank you for this.

[ThomWV]

19. None of those things is possible as long as we maintain and use the world's largest war machine

And in fact as long as we keep our war machine there isn't all that much reason to have an educated population. You don't need to know much to pull a trigger.

[MadHound]

21. Yep, fucked up American priorities.

Death and destruction over peace, education and prosperity.

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. THis is not a years trend, but a conflict

since at least Independence.

Back in the day Washington and Jefferson wanted a NATIONAL system, with NATIONAL standards, and of course well paid et al.

From the beginning there was a fight against the fans of LOCAL control. Hell Emerson became the first head of a State School System in the 1830s, (New York) and that alone was a damn fight.

Americans do not believe in education either and distrust egg heads. And as long as that continues, forget it.

I will be brutally honest, I am damn happy I don't have children. If I did... that is another reason to look at moving from this country. And I am serious as a heart attack. Oh and that is the other reason why the US is the most religious nation of OECD economies.

Oh and I am not counting on the US changing anytime soon. I do not know what it will take to change the culture, but it just gotten worst, and it will continue to get worst. What you see in this board are the fans of LOCAL control that have never, ever seen systems that work far better than ours. And ours is a damn disaster and the country will pay the price, but people will continue to cheer on.

And that is a sad comment on the nature of the US.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. In Japan, the whole society focuses on the importance of education

For example, it is common for parents to buy children a desk when they enter school. The message is, "This is going to be an important part of your life."

Now there are some aspects of the Japanese system that would be difficult to replicate here, such as strict dress codes, homework over vacations, even, in the case of one family I know, the school requiring the parents to notify the school if the family was going out of town during summer vacation.

Furthermore, the whole cram school system, with immense pressure for college-bound students in the K-12 years, followed by complete slackerdom for most students during college, has its problems.

The system keeps everyone together in grades 1-9 (kindergarten exists, but it is not part of the public school system), and then there are entrance exams to determine which senior high school a student goes to. These range from pressure cooker academic powerhouses to blackboard jungles.

There are two features of the Japanese system that I really like:

1) Everyone has to take every subject. What you get here in the States is students refusing to take certain subjects because they JUST KNOW that they're no good at them. With a standardized curriculum, students may not be good at a certain subject, but at least they know that from experience, rather than their parents saying, "I was never good at math. You don't need it anyway."

2) There is an emphasis on trying hard. improving one's results, and not giving up. One of the most common complaints among my fellow college professors was students who shut down if new material was a bit above their competence. I took a cue from this Japanese attitude and offered prizes (small Japanese knicknacks or manga), not for the best students but for the ones who had improved the most since midterm.

The Japanese system has a LOT of problems, but I've noticed two things in everyday life over there. Every store clerk knows how to make change, and everyone can write my name phonetically in katakana when I pronounce it for them. Also, the levels of general knowledge, ability to draw, and willingness to sing in public are far higher than in the U.S. population.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Most OECD economies

do not have optional classes, nor honors.

Hell, many countries OUTSIDE the OECD economies do not have these either.

I will draw from my experience.

First year of Junior High in Mexico oh a lifetime ago.

Algebra I
Physics I
Chemistry I
History
Spanish Lit
PE
Biology I
Labs for all the sciences
English I
Civics I

Oh and I forgot, we got also one OPTIONAL class. I took technical drawing. My other choice was typing.

That was the official program.

Over the last few years it has slackened quite a bit (thanks the RW PAN), and people are SCREAMING.

Of course it was a private school so we also got the non official program.

Hebrew, Jewish History, and readying the torah in Hebrew, but the top... that was the OFFICIAL Federal Program for all First Year Junior High Students. Ok, so you could take (if the school offered it) French or Italian for the Foreign Language Requirement. Most did English.

So that is why I believe in a NATIONAL program and for god sakes... these mandatory and optional classes are just stoopid. Oh and homework did not kill me either. Yes I hated the three hours of it, but did not kill me.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Japanese high school students get to choose which variety of arts class they take

At one school I knew of, they got to choose among music, visual art, or calligraphy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. That is why I said Junior HIgh

Which is eight year.

By the last year of HS I got to chose my area of emphasis to then go to college...

Humanities emphasis, Science, Economics or Business.

When we did our undergrad at San Diego State, there were a few clases that we were able to ahem skip. I mean I took more physics than American students... and to me it felt as if I was repeating HS... the first two years of college that is.

[proud2BlibKansan]

43. One thing I really liked about Japanese schools

(I saw this on a PBS show and don't know if it was just this one school or all of them)

They had no custodians or cafeteria workers. The kids cleaned the school and fixed lunch. What a great way to teach responsibility and build community!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. The kids do clean the school, but they don't actually fix the lunch

They merely take turns serving it to their classmates in their homeroom.

I'm sure that the custom of students cleaning the school cuts down on graffiti and vandalism, though.

[Igel]

45. I often disagree.

1. Valuing and respecting education, i.e., culture, is the problem. You mention it, and then drop it in order to focus on one small consequence. High salaries without that won't happen. A further consequence of the culture is that students, even with crappy teachers, will do better overall. Focus on the larger ill and solve all kinds of problems, instead of trying to leverage discussion of the larger ill--the one that directly affects students and society--to increase teacher salaries. Horses have sensitive noses and do badly when they use them to push carts.

2. Education facilities are of lesser importance. When people are so influenced by their surroundings it speaks poorly of their character. Consider my grad department. It was painted in shades of dull brown, and that paint was peeling; the building was built in the 1920s and hadn't been more than touched up in 50 years. After an earthquake we could see daylight through the walls. It's computers were 5-8 years old, and there were two for the 30 grad students to use. Still, my grad department had top notch faculty and produced some top notch faculty. It had sufficient light, the seating was acceptable, and it had access to sufficient educational materials. The rest was gravy, except to people who worry about superficialities. And, in any event, a focus on education will yield larger increases than a focus on pretty surroundings--and will also, again, lead to nicer surroundings as a consequence. Personally, I disdain horse snot on the back of my carts.

3. I could make the same snotty point about school board membership, but don't need to. The places with many of the worst educational outcomes aren't overseen by fundy-packed boards. They're in large urban areas with a dem majority. This horse is hitched to the wrong cart, in these cases.

In other cases you wind up with fundy school boards but it's unclear that politically appropriate or correct ones would make much of a difference. Many of the dysfunctional urban, secular, Dem-majority schoolboards oversee populations very similar in outlook and culture (which is, of course, distinct from ethnicity) to the poor-performing fundy-dominated areas. Fix the culture, fix the problem. In fact, I've seen some very fundy-oriented schools with top-notch student graduates. It's not the fundies, it's the kind of fundy. And even then, what the fundies focus on are vastly important points in very small universes. I've known creationist biology majors--they just didn't focus on evolution. In chemistry and physics, I find Darwinian evolution's not very useful, sensu stricto, and it's only "stricto" that matters.

4. Local control versus central control is a different issue. Nothing significant hinges on it. It's an irrelevancy, except to the extent that funding is tied in with it. But if you fix the culture, the funding becomes largely irrelevant. I don't need a 2010 edition of a schoolbook in high school chemistry if I'm teaching hard-core chemistry; I learned much of what I learned from books that had been read before (in some cases the margin notes from previous readers were really useful). If I'm worried about relevance and trendiness and making sure that I find lures and goodies to attract weak and flagging student attention, sure--perhaps I do. You have to have something to motivate disinterested, distracted, undisciplined students. But then we're back to the main culture which is, apparently, only important to the extent it doesn't provide money to teachers. Focusing on the latest and greatest draw again involves post-posed equines, by now with copious quantities of splinters up their nostrils.

5. I notice that you object to teachers' salaries being subject to public approval and politics, so we're back to what appears to really matter--money, esp. money for teachers. We don't do this with professionals--except those that work for the government, then we do find strange limitations on lawyer and physician salaries. Oddly, in other countries where doctors *do* work for the government we also find political input and politics for nearly all doctors, and they get paid much less than doctors in the US. In fact, it's one of the things involved in many kinds of single-payer plans. Same was true for those few countries where lawyers are largely in the government's employ. So to the extent you get government control of content and government funding, it's a fair point to mention that you get government control of salaries; and in most systems, government control entails politicking. It's one thing that state universities constantly have to fight over: Whether they can maintain faculty salaries on the public's dime that are competitive with private universities' faculty. By now you've no doubt concluded that your post-carriage equines aren't sufficient, so you have a team of them--with all but the first row dutifully pushing on those in front by shoving their noses deep up the only thing they can push against, other horses' anuses.

You constantly point out the real problem, showing that you're aware of it, then choose to focus on a consequence that, ultimately, is secondary. A consequence that involves less culture and education and more money and formal accoutrements of high status. You've got things backwards--maybe because you view things first and foremost in terms of dollars, perhaps because discussing the real problem is unpleasant, perhaps because throwing money at a problem is profitable and easy when the problem is fairly intractable.

But pity the poor horses with scarred and calloused noses suffering from all those splinters or suffocating from all the crap they're forced to inhale.

[MadHound]

47. Well, nice to see that you get my point,

Though you dance all around it in order to argue for keeping the status quo. OK, let's go.

1. You're right, changing the culture is the ultimate goal, however waiting around for that to happen is going to mean that we continue to do generations a further disservice. In our society one's worth, one's respect, be it an individual or a profession, is measured, in large part, by one rubric, money. Thus if a profession is well paid, it is respected, if it isn't well paid, it doesn't get respect. Furthermore, by paying teachers a top flight salary you are going to get top flight teachers. Too many potential teachers today take a look at their student loans, take a look at current teaching salaries and run for the MBA. If we pay teachers more, we will have better teachers.

2. Education facilities are of utmost importance. Sure, when you're a grad student living a monastical life you can make do with crumbling sub standard facilities (though why you did is beyond me). But for students the facilities of a school are immensely important. We have schools with no school library. We have schools using textbooks that are a decade old or older, which is not good no matter what subject or level you're teaching. If a student is cold, hot, or otherwise distracted, they're not learning. These aren't adults that you can simply tell them to suck it up, these are kids. Are you going to tell an eight year old to suck it up when water is leaking down on her desk? Furthermore schools are taking on an ever greater role in the life of the student, and we need to have the facilities and supplies for that. It has been shown time and again that a student with a full belly is going to do better. Yet we're running out of money for not just food, but supplies and basic necessities. Facilities and infrastructure are of utmost importance.

3-4. You're right, there are urban school boards that don't do well, thank you for proving my point that we need to do away with local school boards comprised of any yahoo that can get themselves elected. I mention the fundies because there has indeed been a huge push over the past twenty five years to put Christian fundamentalists on school boards across the nation, a push that has succeeded all too well. That leaves teachers having to fight school boards over what they teach in history, literature, and yes the sciences. While Darwinian evolution may not be important to chemistry, not everybody is a chemist and for things like biology and the social sciences Darwin's works are quite important.

Furthermore, the reach of some school boards extends beyond their own locale. Take the Texas state school board. They have immense pull in the textbook industry and virtually every single textbook for K-12 is run past them first for approval. Being quite conservative and religious, many things are deleted and this effects the entire country.

But either way, urban or rural, liberal or conservative, local school boards, made up of nascent politicians is not the way to run our schools. Would you want to see your local AMA chapter overseen by a bunch of plumbers? Same principal applies here, put people with experience in education and teaching in charge, from the local level on up.

5. The trouble with local control of funding is how it is set up. Currently in most places it is based on property taxes, always a political football. Let me give you an example. My local school desperately needs a new building to house only the middle school, currently middle school and high school are housed in the same building. They are literally busting at the seams over there, with many of those classroom trailers parked around. We have run bond issue after bond issue by the public, yet they always fail, why? Because of two things, first of all you have to have a super majority to pass any education bond issue, this super majority is common throughout the US and generally ranges from 58-60 percent. That means a minority of voters can kill the bond issue. In many, many places there are people like my neighbors who are rabidly anti-tax, have no kids in school, and don't see the benefit in a well educated populace (back to that culture thing again). These people have held up every single bond issue since I have moved out here and our local school, and more importantly the kids inside, are suffering. They hold classes in the cafeteria, the gym, with offices literally in former broom closets. These scenario is played out over and over again across the country and it is all due to this sort of public input on school finances. Do I think that schools should be totally divorced from public opinion, no. But I see no other profession in this country where the public gets to decide how much teachers get paid and how well that particular area is funded. We don't do that with police, fire, post office or any other public employee, why should we do it with education?

We do need to change the culture in this country when it comes to education, there's no doubt about that. But we need to take concrete action towards that goal rather than simply waiting and hoping for it to happen. Since money is what talks in our society, then we need to address the issue using money, it is that simple. By doing so we will improve the quality of our teaching force, the quality of our educational facilities and the overall quality of our students' education. When that improves then the culture will start to change.
4.

[GermanDem]

49. The culture is the problem, not the money.

I work in higher education (State University), and have children in public schools. We are German, I have been through the German system myself, and my kids went to school in Germany for a year in 2007. I can tell you that money is not the problem. German schools look crappy, and they have almost no money for fancy stuff like computers, special ed counselors etc. All non-existent. The elementary school my children went to in Germany had no computers at all, zero! Parents met in their free time to volunteer to paint the classroom (with donated paint), that's how bad the money situation is. Same on the university level. But the curriculum was rigorous, and students had to work hard to keep up with the pace.

The culture is completely different. Many of my students here at the university are here to get a degree, not an education. On the K-12 level, when I go to a parent-teacher conference at our local Middle School, it is all about the rules: dress code, tardy policies, etc. But they don't talk about the academic agenda, at least not in Middle School (elementary school was different). Studies prove that the Middle School level is when American children start falling behind academically compared to students in other countries, especially in Science and Math.

And one other thing: why that 3-month break in the summer? First of all, it's a real headache for working parents. Most aren't farmers anymore who need their kids' help on the farm in the summer. In many other countries the school years are much longer, and there are less breaks. In Germany e.g, they get 6 weeks off in the summer (more than enough in my opinion), plus 1 week in the fall, 2 weeks over Christmas/New Year, and 2 weeks around Easter.

Finally, I think Obama has already said that he wants to do something about the Math/Science issue, and he has also acknowledged that the school years aren't long enough.

I don't know how to change the culture though. How do you make people value education more? I guess they will have to learn the hard way, when all the good jobs are outsourced to China or India, which is already happening as we all know. I always tell my students in my Freshman Orientation class that they will have to compete on the global job market, so they better work hard!!!

[LWolf]

51. We've been having a conversation

about a truly fundamental shift in the way teaching and learning happens in our district. We've got a group of people, including a board member, DO admins, teachers, a couple of parents, and a representative of local businesses working on it.

What we have all acknowledged is that while the plan is great, and would serve our students much better that the current model, it can't happen without substantial support in the way of staffing, resources, and FUNDING.

Which is not there.

We spent today, a non-student day in our 4-day school week, working without pay to put together a formal presentation to the board in a couple of weeks.

We've got the knowledge and skills to make it happen. We don't have the support and funding.

If our nation TRULY wants to see comprehensive, positive changes and improvements, they'll put their support where it counts, and get behind actual educators to make it happen.