Fixing the Public Schools k-12

[Mike M (the other one)]

Let's try a different approach to things now instead of arguing over the Politics. We have some good minds in here with different ideas, let's see if we can come up with ways to improve public education for kids.


We all know there needs to be some major overhaul done to help public inner city schools.

I propose that all teachers that teach a required class (English, Math, Science and History) be paid at the same level, where teachers that teach electives get slightly less, and of course the base salary is based off of tenure.

Inner city teachers would get a pay boost vs those teaching in the sub-burbs.

Curriculum needs to be the same for all grade levels at all schools across the US.
I find it silly that if someone moves from 1 area to another area their kid could be behind/ahead of the other students by a significant margin. They should all be roughly taught at the same speed with the same books etc.

I'm not a huge fan of the voucher system that allows parents to move their kids from public to private, but I understand the private schools can be better run and get better results (grade wise) for their kids.

in your opinions, what other big/little things can be done to help start improving the public schools?

[*bfine32*]

I've always been a fan of rewarding an Educator whose pupils excel at the next level. For instance if you are a Elemantary School teacher and your former pupils do well in Middle-School then you received fanicial reward.

[Au165]

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Let's try a different approach to things now instead of arguing over the Politics. We have some good minds in here with different ideas, let's see if we can come up with ways to improve public education for kids.


We all know there needs to be some major overhaul done to help public inner city schools.

I propose that all teachers that teach a required class (English, Math, Science and History) be paid at the same level, where teachers that teach electives get slightly less, and of course the base salary is based off of tenure.

Inner city teachers would get a pay boost vs those teaching in the sub-burbs.

Curriculum needs to be the same for all grade levels at all schools across the US.
I find it silly that if someone moves from 1 area to another area their kid could be behind/ahead of the other students by a significant margin. They should all be roughly taught at the same speed with the same books etc.

I'm not a huge fan of the voucher system that allows parents to move their kids from public to private, but I understand the private schools can be better run and get better results (grade wise) for their kids.

in your opinions, what other big/little things can be done to help start improving the public schools?

Not specific to inner city schools, but hire people with business backgrounds to run the schools.

[GMDino]

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Let's try a different approach to things now instead of arguing over the Politics. We have some good minds in here with different ideas, let's see if we can come up with ways to improve public education for kids.


We all know there needs to be some major overhaul done to help public inner city schools.

A lot needs to be done to help besides just overhauling the school and curriculum. But for the sake of discussion I'll go with your suggestions.

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: I propose that all teachers that teach a required class (English, Math, Science and History) be paid at the same level, where teachers that teach electives get slightly less, and of course the base salary is based off of tenure.

I think this happens already in most areas.

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Inner city teachers would get a pay boost vs those teaching in the sub-burbs.

I've had friends get certain benefits from teaching in "bad" school districts. Like student loan relief for example.

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Curriculum needs to be the same for all grade levels at all schools across the US.
I find it silly that if someone moves from 1 area to another area their kid could be behind/ahead of the other students by a significant margin. They should all be roughly taught at the same speed with the same books etc.

Isn't this what common core is suppose to do? Get everyone on the same page at the same time?

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: I'm not a huge fan of the voucher system that allows parents to move their kids from public to private, but I understand the private schools can be better run and get better results (grade wise) for their kids.

in your opinions, what other big/little things can be done to help start improving the public schools?

I went to Catholic school my entire life. They were better at hiding the bad results and removing the ones they couldn't hide. Giving parents a choice is good if the school is bad. But bad students won't last in the private schools either. Unless we go to for profit schooling. Then they'll happily take your money and results be damned.

I am currently on the Catholic school board in my area and they have received some students who get relief from tuition because the public school
they would attend is below average in their state test results. So this is already going on too.

I don't know if pushing these further would help a whole bunch or not.

[Benton]

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Let's try a different approach to things now instead of arguing over the Politics. We have some good minds in here with different ideas, let's see if we can come up with ways to improve public education for kids.


We all know there needs to be some major overhaul done to help public inner city schools.

I propose that all teachers that teach a required class (English, Math, Science and History) be paid at the same level, where teachers that teach electives get slightly less, and of course the base salary is based off of tenure.

Inner city teachers would get a pay boost vs those teaching in the sub-burbs.

Curriculum needs to be the same for all grade levels at all schools across the US.
I find it silly that if someone moves from 1 area to another area their kid could be behind/ahead of the other students by a significant margin. They should all be roughly taught at the same speed with the same books etc.

I'm not a huge fan of the voucher system that allows parents to move their kids from public to private, but I understand the private schools can be better run and get better results (grade wise) for their kids.

in your opinions, what other big/little things can be done to help start improving the public schools?

Why penalize the elective teachers? Sometimes those elective classes are more important to a student than the core classes (I'm thinking of content centered education like engineering or arts programs at charter schools, or vocational education which producers welders, carpenters and people who make a pretty decent blue collar living). There should be a push on reading, math and sciences, but some of the more successful model schools in the country are heading more and more to promoting and adding those electives so kids develop skills instead of just testable knowledge.

The curriculum issue is part of common core. That's already being addressed. Or was, efforts to reduce communication at the federal level will probably slow down that progress, but I think most states will continue to work in that direction. It will just take longer without federal facilitation of ideas. Common core doesn't tell districts what books they have to use — and that's a positive as districts can chose ones that work better for their students — but it does set the standards for what students need to be learning from the books.

I'd like to see more public schools able to go in the electives direction. Expand vocational schools and co-op opportunities so some of the kids learn a skill and have a chance to earn a decent wage, instead of just hoping that teaching them algebra means they won't work at McDonald's.

We also need to do a better job of identifying aptitude at a younger age. Just as an anecdote to that, it turns out my daughter is scoring off the chart in math. I can barely multiply single digits without using my fingers, so I hadn't really noticed how good she is, but it's good enough her teacher noticed. I'm thankful for that, and that she goes to a good school where it got noticed. I can encourage that skill, and so can her teachers. If it wasn't for them, I probably wouldn't have known until it was too late, because I just wasn't looking. I was too busy worried that her spelling is horrible.

Schools in urban areas tend to have the highest and lowest scores. That comes, typically, from having the students from the highest and lowest economic backgrounds. But one thing I've noticed about high performing rural districts or smaller high performing schools is that they almost always have high interaction between teachers and students, and usually lots of involvement from parents. I asked the superintendent of a state top 20 district — which is one of the smallest in Kentucky and hasn't had a school funding increase since 1992 — how they do it. He said every teacher in every school knows every student's name. They know their parents. They know what they're going through at home. If a student doesn't show up for class, it's not uncommon for a teacher's aide to go to the kid's house, wake them up, take them to get something to eat and bring them to school.

That can't be applied to larger schools in metro areas, but having more teachers and more involvement and interaction would go a long way in improving student ability and interest.

[CageTheBengal]

The culture needs to be changed entirely. Just graduating from High School in 2011 I still remember it pretty well. I went to a large suburban High School with like over 700 in my graduating class then switched to a rural school with 60 in my class so I've seen 2 different sides.

Teachers need to be encouraged to be innovative and find a better way to get kids engaged. In most of my classes the year started with teachers handing out a massive amounts of books while the teacher teaches out of the "teachers edition". There was little time to teach anything that wasn't out of these books because there is always a clock to beat with the next big test always around the corner. You cover something for a day or two and you move on. No time to make sure everybody is on the same page and if you get left behind it's the student's job to hunt down a teacher and get them to finish teaching you even though they will look as bad as the student if you fail. Then once it's time for the test everybody has crammed and a week later hardly anybody can repeat what they apparently just learned. We need a system in place where schools aren't obsessed with funding and test scores.

Why rely on these books so heavily? Why a gauntlet of tests? Why can't teachers teach on their own terms while being helped by books but not lean on them so much? If teachers aren't qualified to teach without a teachers book guiding them the whole way are they really teachers? Let's pay them more, raise the standards and make teaching a more respectable position to bring in better teachers who actually want to teach kids not just people who couldn't think of anything better to do with themselves. So many of my teachers just seemed burnt out and like they hated their job. Only a small portion actually wanted to help students and not just take a paycheck. This was a lot worse at the larger school then the smaller one but an issue in both.

Let's start showing the public school system some respect and update the system. K-6th should be learning your basic studies, 7th-9th should be doing more basic studies but more practical classes start being thrown in the mix. Classes that teach you how to manage your funds, classes that teach about auto repair and etc. At this point we need to be getting the bug in student's ears about life after public school. What's your plan? 10th-12th start putting that plan into motion. Let students experiment with different occupations through classes and field trips and only teach them what they want/need to know. If you want to be a journalist why the hell are you required to take Trigonometry? 10th-12th needs to be focused on transitioning kids out of school and into adulthood. Giving kids a series of math classes they might not ever need isn't accomplishing that.

We need to change our attitude about giving our schools money. My senior year of High School we got a brand new large LCD sign donated from someone in town that sat in the front lawn. Meanwhile there was hardly any modern technology in the building and we just lost the enitre art section of our school due to lack of funds. That's messed up. Generally I don't think people even realize how lacking a lot of schools are.

Kids aren't as dumb as they seem. The quickest way for a teacher to lose my respect was for them to fail the question "Why do we need to learn this?" or to act like the teachers book was the entire class.

Everything that happens to us as children influences us for the rest of our lives so why aren't we more up in arms by our joke of an education system? Kids spend more time there then they do at home. I can't even imagine what it's like in ghetto areas.

[fredtoast]

-My daughters are very high performing, but they attend a smaller school that does not offer as many different specialty classes. there should be some way that students like this could take specialty classes over the internet. Have a virtual classroom with just a few students from each small school.

-Need to put more emphasis on giving kids an education that will help them earn a living if they are not interested or qualified to go to college. College is very expensive and there are a lot of kids wasting a lot of money chasing degrees that they will not get a lot of benefit from. So there should be more technical/vocational studies at the high school level.

-There needs to be some sort of way to equalize the funding for public schools. Right now the schools in the best areas have the most money because the property taxes raise so much more money. This needs to be spread out so that all schools receive equal shares of the tax revenue.

[BmorePat87]

(11-29-2016, 12:53 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: I propose that all teachers that teach a required class (English, Math, Science and History) be paid at the same level, where teachers that teach electives get slightly less, and of course the base salary is based off of tenure.

The base is already based off tenure. I'm not sure what the intended result of this proposal is, other than reduce the salaries of an already struggling field because you do not value those other content areas. 

Quote:Inner city teachers would get a pay boost vs those teaching in the sub-burbs.

That's up to the district. Teachers are probably more likely to take less pay to teach in better funded schools. 

Quote:Curriculum needs to be the same for all grade levels at all schools across the US.

I disagree. My county is really good. I like our curriculum. I don't want orders coming from what is likely to be a more partisan group possibly representing states that do not value education as much as mine telling me what I teach.

This is covered by Common Core in that there are standards that all grades across all states share, but what you teach to reach those standards is determined by your own curriculum.

Quote:I find it silly that if someone moves from 1 area to another area their kid could be behind/ahead of the other students by a significant margin. They should all be roughly taught at the same speed with the same books etc.

Covered by Common Core. I like the idea of having roughly the same things taught per level, but you can't be as controlling as a national curriculum. Common Core is the right level of oversight (just standards). There's a case to be made against tracking, but it won't go away. I want schools to have textbook choices. Add competition for publishers to make better books. 

Quote:I'm not a huge fan of the voucher system that allows parents to move their kids from public to private, but I understand the private schools can be better run and get better results (grade wise) for their kids.

Little evidence to suggest they do on average. Same with charter schools. Some are awesome and some suck. Some are average. These programs are often used by those who would already send their kids to private schools to have the government fund it. The likely future completely unqualified Sec of Education used her massive wallet to push for this in Michigan. The result is people who have no business running schools opening charter schools and failing while taking government money. Charter schools can be awesome experiments where really great and new styles of learning are tested. But when you set up a system that lets almost anyone start one, it means a TON of low performing schools that waste our money.

Quote:in your opinions, what other big/little things can be done to help start improving the public schools?

Class is starting. When it's over, I'll have my own ideas.

[Au165]

Here is another one, can we require a basic finance course be required for everyone to graduate high school? We require maths and sciences that the majority will never use, but basic financial knowledge that everyone will use isn't required to be taught. It makes no sense. Not sure it'll improve schools, but it'll improve our country.

[Benton]

(11-29-2016, 03:15 PM)fredtoast Wrote: -My daughters are very high performing, but they attend a smaller school that does not offer as many different specialty classes.  there should be some way that students like this could take specialty classes over the internet.  Have a virtual classroom with just a few students from each small school.

 

That's becoming something I've seen a lot more. Teleconferencing is also a thing some schools are using, where one class can talk to another class in another state or another country. One of the elementary schools I cover was Skyping with a school in Guatemala once a week for their fourth grade classes. Each class spent an hour or so talking to students there. Some of the Spanish peaking high school students came in to translate.

[Beaker]

1. Parents need to give a shit. Too many have other "more important" things to worry about. And they need to instill the value of an education in their kids. I continually hear that teachers need to get kids more engaged with more interesting lessons. I have some very innovative lessons in science using virtual labs, student led projects, collaborative activities, etc. But if there is zero internal motivation, none of that matters.

2. Fund public schools with sales taxes as opposed to property taxes.

[BmorePat87]

Sorry, my day got busy.

Some proposals that are going to address a variety of things, because the problems with schools aren't just falling onto one group.

Teachers:

-Better education/training. Despite tons of research into best practices, these are not always being taught by post-secondary programs.
-More classroom management training.
-More student teaching.
-Funding for programs to mentor teachers in their first few years. A large chunk of teachers quit in their first few years.
-Better pay to attract better teachers. A lot of training does go in to becoming a teacher, and even more should on top of that. Pay teachers as professionals.
-Develop teacher evaluation methods catered to level and content area.
-Change tenure so that teachers who fall below an evaluation threshold can have their tenure suspended, making it easier to fire poorly performing teachers.
-No pay for student performance. In a perfect system, teachers have similar classes with similar students. In practice, teachers who suck at teaching struggling students get honors classes. Teachers who do well with those struggling students get stuck with 5 sections of regular level classes.

In terms of what is being taught:

-I've stated before that I oppose a national curriculum. I prefer the use of states voluntarily adopting common standards that measure what you should be able to do by the end of a grade.
- I'd like to see more vocational training
-Some of these courses may have only a few students per school, so long distance education should be an option. We do that in my county for classes like Chinese and AP US History (US History is a 9th grade class and 9th graders cannot sign up for AP. So very few retake it as an elective their junior or senior years for college credit).
-Schools need to be held accountable for how they educated students with disabilities. Too many do not fully include those students who should be spending most of their day in the general education setting.
-Push for the use of teaching styles that address multiple learning styles. I am a big fan of using problem based learning. We tried replacing our first unit this year with a month long problem based learning where the students were working for the UN and had to recommend a new government for Burundi. Through this activity, they learned all of their introduction to government content.
-Push for the adoption of academies or majors within schools starting in 7th or 8th grade. You choose what you'll specialize in and content will be catered towards that. Let's say I am a social sciences major. In addition to my algebra and geometry class, I'd then take a statistics class that teaches me how to use numbers for research, polling, surveying, etc.

Various:
-Standardize testing should not be mandated by the federal government.
-School vouchers do not have the intended result, unless the intended result is to help private schools
-Encourage charter schools as ways to test new ideas, but screen and monitor new charter schools.
-Stop teaching pseudo-science and revisionist history in public schools.
-Fund mentoring and after school programs. Kids need a place to go when there is none elsewhere.
-More male teachers, particularly those of color Boys are the most at risk students. They need to see positive role models that they can relate too more.

There are other hosts of issues that the government won't directly fix through education policy. Poorer students do not do as well. They're less likely to have support, less likely to see the benefits of education in their life, and less likely to have received interventions when younger that make them better students. As Beaker said, if the parents do not care, the student is less likely to care. If education isn't valued at home, they won't value it.

Fail more kids in middle school. We get kids in high school who are not prepared but were passed along.

Challenge kids to be more creative.

Start writing more earlier. Encourage kids to journal at a young age.

Push kids to read for fun

Have kids practice more activities that require them to discover the answer. It is better to guide a student to an answer than to give it. I rarely give lecture notes. I try to find ways to flip the notes.

teach kids that it is ok to fail at points in life.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(11-29-2016, 01:58 PM)Au165 Wrote: Not specific to inner city schools, but hire people with business backgrounds to run the schools.

That might not be a bad idea. Unfortunately though, it would limit teachers because there would be no chain for them to move up to Principal etc.

(11-29-2016, 02:22 PM)GMDino Wrote: A lot needs to be done to help besides just overhauling the school and curriculum.  But for the sake of discussion I'll go with your suggestions.


I think this happens already in most areas.


I've had friends get certain benefits from teaching in "bad" school districts.  Like student loan relief for example.


Isn't this what common core is suppose to do?  Get everyone on the same page at the same time?


I went to Catholic school my entire life.  They were better at hiding the bad results and removing the ones they couldn't hide.  Giving parents a choice is good if the school is bad.  But bad students won't last in the private schools either.  Unless we go to for profit schooling.  Then they'll happily take your money and results be damned.

I am currently on the Catholic school board in my area and they have received some students who get relief from tuition because the public school
they would attend is below average in their state test results.  So this is already going on too.

I don't know if pushing these further would help a whole bunch or not.

Yes, I've heard of that bonus and I'm fine with it as well.

Well I thought that was what Common Core is about, but have you tried doing that math common core style? And why are so many people up in arms about it? I still have 2 more years before my little man gets introduced to it, so I'm not so clear as to what all it entails.

[Au165]

(11-30-2016, 12:46 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: That might not be a bad idea. Unfortunately though, it would limit teachers because there would be no chain for them to move up to Principal etc.

Let them go back and get an MBA if they want to be in the leadership roles. Also there would probably need to be administrative positions created to advise the principal/superintendent, think of like a VP of curriculum or something. That would still allow for upward movement.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(11-29-2016, 02:28 PM)Benton Wrote: Why penalize the elective teachers? Sometimes those elective classes are more important to a student than the core classes (I'm thinking of content centered education like engineering or arts programs at charter schools, or vocational education which producers welders, carpenters and people who make a pretty decent blue collar living). There should be a push on reading, math and sciences, but some of the more successful model schools in the country are heading more and more to promoting and adding those electives so kids develop skills instead of just testable knowledge.

The curriculum issue is part of common core. That's already being addressed. Or was, efforts to reduce communication at the federal level will probably slow down that progress, but I think most states will continue to work in that direction. It will just take longer without federal facilitation of ideas. Common core doesn't tell districts what books they have to use — and that's a positive as districts can chose ones that work better for their students — but it does set the standards for what students need to be learning from the books.

I'd like to see more public schools able to go in the electives direction. Expand vocational schools and co-op opportunities so some of the kids learn a skill and have a chance to earn a decent wage, instead of just hoping that teaching them algebra means they won't work at McDonald's.

We also need to do a better job of identifying aptitude at a younger age. Just as an anecdote to that, it turns out my daughter is scoring off the chart in math. I can barely multiply single digits without using my fingers, so I hadn't really noticed how good she is, but it's good enough her teacher noticed. I'm thankful for that, and that she goes to a good school where it got noticed. I can encourage that skill, and so can her teachers. If it wasn't for them, I probably wouldn't have known until it was too late, because I just wasn't looking. I was too busy worried that her spelling is horrible.

Schools in urban areas tend to have the highest and lowest scores. That comes, typically, from having the students from the highest and lowest economic backgrounds. But one thing I've noticed about high performing rural districts or smaller high performing schools is that they almost always have high interaction between teachers and students, and usually lots of involvement from parents. I asked the superintendent of a state top 20 district — which is one of the smallest in Kentucky and hasn't had a school funding increase since 1992 — how they do it. He said every teacher in every school knows every student's name. They know their parents. They know what they're going through at home. If a student doesn't show up for class, it's not uncommon for a teacher's aide to go to the kid's house, wake them up, take them to get something to eat and bring them to school.

That can't be applied to larger schools in metro areas, but having more teachers and more involvement and interaction would go a long way in improving student ability and interest.

Well I went with the bonus for required curriculum, but at the same time, I didn't specify that I would want some new classes to become required as well, but I see your point.

For example, understand how to balance a checkbook, basic cooking should be included as well. I thought about a few others as well such as basics on guns, basics on cars (such as how to change a tire, oil and basic maintenance). I'm sure there's a few others that would make sense as well. They don't have to be year round classes, they can break them up into semesters.

(11-29-2016, 02:46 PM)CageTheBengal Wrote: The culture needs to be changed entirely. Just graduating from High School in 2011 I still remember it pretty well. I went to a large suburban High School with like over 700 in my graduating class then switched to a rural school with 60 in my class so I've seen 2 different  sides.

Teachers need to be encouraged to be innovative and find a better way to get kids engaged. In most of my classes the year started with teachers handing out a massive amounts of books while the teacher teaches out of the "teachers edition".  There was little time to teach anything that wasn't out of these books because there is always a clock to beat with the next big test always around the corner. You cover something for a day or two and you move on. No time to make sure everybody is on the same page and if you get left behind it's the student's job to hunt down a teacher and get them to finish teaching you even though they will look as bad as the student if you fail. Then once it's time for the test everybody has crammed and a week later hardly anybody can repeat what they apparently just learned. We need a system in place where schools aren't obsessed with funding and test scores.

Why rely on these books so heavily? Why a gauntlet of tests? Why can't teachers teach on their own terms while being helped by books but not lean on them so much? If teachers aren't qualified to teach without a teachers book guiding them the whole way are they really teachers? Let's pay them more, raise the standards and make teaching a more respectable position to bring in better teachers who actually want to teach kids not just people who couldn't think of anything better to do with themselves. So many of my teachers just seemed burnt out and like they hated their job. Only a small portion actually wanted to help students and not just take a paycheck. This was a lot worse at the larger school then the smaller one but an issue in both.

Let's start showing the public school system some respect and update the system. K-6th should be learning your basic studies, 7th-9th should be doing more basic studies but more practical classes start being thrown in the mix. Classes that teach you how to manage your funds, classes that teach about auto repair and etc. At this point we need to be getting the bug in student's ears about life after public school. What's your plan? 10th-12th start putting that plan into motion. Let students experiment with different occupations through classes and field trips and only teach them what they want/need to know. If you want to be a journalist why the hell are you required to take Trigonometry? 10th-12th needs to be focused on transitioning kids out of school and into adulthood.  Giving kids a series of math classes they might not ever need isn't accomplishing that.

We need to change our attitude about giving our schools money. My senior year of High School we got a brand new large LCD sign donated from someone in town that sat in the front lawn. Meanwhile there was hardly any modern technology in the building and we just lost the enitre art section of our school due to lack of funds. That's messed up. Generally I don't think people even realize how lacking a lot of schools are.

Kids aren't as dumb as they seem. The quickest way for a teacher to lose my respect was for them to fail the question "Why do we need to learn this?" or to act like the teachers book was the entire class.  

Everything that happens to us as children influences us for the rest of our lives so why aren't we more up in arms by our joke of an education system? Kids spend more time there then they do at home. I can't even imagine what it's like in ghetto areas.

I agree wholeheartedly with your first sentence.
I also agree that we spend too much $$ trying to get the kids ready for testing and on testing itself. The teaching should prepare them for the testing, don't need to go above and beyond to make sure they get good scores.

Yes, getting them ready for the transition to adult hood would be a major boon, vocational schools could help with this. Of course not everyone will want to go there, but it would at least give some a leg up in a non degreed profession. For those that do go that path, they should get certified in their respective fields just as if an adult were taking the classes.

(11-29-2016, 03:15 PM)fredtoast Wrote: -My daughters are very high performing, but they attend a smaller school that does not offer as many different specialty classes.  there should be some way that students like this could take specialty classes over the internet.  Have a virtual classroom with just a few students from each small school.

-Need to put more emphasis on giving kids an education that will help them earn a living if they are not interested or qualified to go to college.  College is very expensive and there are a lot of kids wasting a lot of money chasing degrees that they will not get a lot of benefit from.  So there should be more technical/vocational studies at the high school level.

-There needs to be some sort of way to equalize the funding for public schools.  Right now the schools in the best areas have the most money because the property taxes raise so much more money.  This needs to be spread out so that all schools receive equal shares of the tax revenue.

Virtual teaching will be a part of our future, and a great way for it to be presented is just like you said.
Use them for special electives, that way all students in any school can have access to those.

I thought about raising property taxes, but I'd rather the schools spend what they have more wisely before going that route. I am for fair shares on the money side.

[*bfine32*]

(11-30-2016, 01:36 AM)Beaker Wrote: 1. Parents need to give a shit. Too many have other "more important" things to worry about. And they need to instill the value of an education in their kids. I continually hear that teachers need to get kids more engaged with more interesting lessons. I have some very innovative lessons in science using virtual labs, student led projects, collaborative activities, etc. But if there is zero internal motivation, none of that matters.

2. Fund public schools with sales taxes as opposed to property taxes.

1) This is why I've mentioned that child tax break should be tied to school performance or if you are receiving welfare for a dependent child, the amount should be tied to such performance

[Mike M (the other one)]

(11-30-2016, 01:36 AM)Beaker Wrote: 1. Parents need to give a shit. Too many have other "more important" things to worry about. And they need to instill the value of an education in their kids. I continually hear that teachers need to get kids more engaged with more interesting lessons. I have some very innovative lessons in science using virtual labs, student led projects, collaborative activities, etc. But if there is zero internal motivation, none of that matters.

2. Fund public schools with sales taxes as opposed to property taxes.

Of course students whose parents take an active interest in their child's education will fare better than those that don't.
Is there a way we can minimize the parents activity or lack of to benefit the students more?

What about an extra required class at the end of each day that is primarily a study hall for the kids to get their homework done?

Now I could get on funding via a State Sales tax before Property tax better and distributed evenly to all schools, or should it be based on number of students? Smaller schools would need more money for the technology for web based electives.

(11-30-2016, 01:59 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Sorry, my day got busy.

Some proposals that are going to address a variety of things, because the problems with schools aren't just falling onto one group.

Teachers:

-Better education/training. Despite tons of research into best practices, these are not always being taught by post-secondary programs.
-More classroom management training.
-More student teaching.
-Funding for programs to mentor teachers in their first few years. A large chunk of teachers quit in their first few years.
-Better pay to attract better teachers. A lot of training does go in to becoming a teacher, and even more should on top of that. Pay teachers as professionals.
-Develop teacher evaluation methods catered to level and content area.
-Change tenure so that teachers who fall below an evaluation threshold can have their tenure suspended, making it easier to fire poorly performing teachers.
-No pay for student performance. In a perfect system, teachers have similar classes with similar students. In practice, teachers who suck at teaching struggling students get honors classes. Teachers who do well with those struggling students get stuck with 5 sections of regular level classes.

Good ideas there. As I have said before, I'm not looking to take salary away from them. They play a vital role in educating our children and it's not an easy job to begin with.

Mentoring for a few years is a good way for them to learn with out tossing them into the fire.

There we go, a way to fine poor teachers, and I'm not a huge fan of no pay for student performance, that has the opposite effect that it was intended for.

(11-30-2016, 01:59 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: In terms of what is being taught:

-I've stated before that I oppose a national curriculum. I prefer the use of states voluntarily adopting common standards that measure what you should be able to do by the end of a grade.
- I'd like to see more vocational training
-Some of these courses may have only a few students per school, so long distance education should be an option. We do that in my county for classes like Chinese and AP US History (US History is a 9th grade class and 9th graders cannot sign up for AP. So very few retake it as an elective their junior or senior years for college credit).
-Schools need to be held accountable for how they educated students with disabilities. Too many do not fully include those students who should be spending most of their day in the general education setting.
-Push for the use of teaching styles that address multiple learning styles. I am a big fan of using problem based learning. We tried replacing our first unit this year with a month long problem based learning where the students were working for the UN and had to recommend a new government for Burundi. Through this activity, they learned all of their introduction to government content.
-Push for the adoption of academies or majors within schools starting in 7th or 8th grade. You choose what you'll specialize in and content will be catered towards that. Let's say I am a social sciences major. In addition to my algebra and geometry class, I'd then take a statistics class that teaches me how to use numbers for research, polling, surveying, etc.

I understand opposing an national curriculum, but if your school is doing really well, why wouldn't you want to share it with other schools? It shouldn't be about bringing your school down to the level of the one across town, but about bringing that one up to yours.

Definitely more vocational options. Not everyone is college material and this would help people get certified in a field they plan to make a career out of. I went to a vocational school and I have to say, it was very challenging and rewarding. I absolutely flourished at working at my own speed. So much so that I was doing 2nd year stuff in my 1st year and by the time I started my 2nd year stuff, I was done with all of that after 1 quarter. I understand not every class will work like that, but mine was book/lab/test based, so it was easier than those that are more physically demanding. Also I was very bummed that my time spent at a vocational school was not going to count for college, that needs to be changed if it hasn't been already.

I can agree that students with disabilities should be part of the general education. no need to single them out.

Tailoring classes starting in the 7th or 8th grade would be easier to do with teleconferencing electives. No complaints here with that idea.

(11-30-2016, 01:59 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Various:
-Standardize testing should not be mandated by the federal government.
-School vouchers do not have the intended result, unless the intended result is to help private schools
-Encourage charter schools as ways to test new ideas, but screen and monitor new charter schools.
-Stop teaching pseudo-science and revisionist history in public schools.
-Fund mentoring and after school programs. Kids need a place to go when there is none elsewhere.
-More male teachers, particularly those of color Boys are the most at risk students. They need to see positive role models that they can relate too more.

There still needs to be a test done, maybe 1 at start and end of year to make sure that the students have improved accordingly. if not then maybe consider holding them back a year, based on the teachers recommendations.

(11-30-2016, 01:59 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: There are other hosts of issues that the government won't directly fix through education policy. Poorer students do not do as well. They're less likely to have support, less likely to see the benefits of education in their life, and less likely to have received interventions when younger that make them better students. As Beaker said, if the parents do not care, the student is less likely to care. If education isn't valued at home, they won't value it.

Fail more kids in middle school. We get kids in high school who are not prepared but were passed along.

Challenge kids to be more creative.

Start writing more earlier. Encourage kids to journal at a young age.

Push kids to read for fun

Have kids practice more activities that require them to discover the answer. It is better to guide a student to an answer than to give it. I rarely give lecture notes. I try to find ways to flip the notes.

teach kids that it is ok to fail at points in life.

Yes, poorer students tend to not do as well as better off students do, but that's where the focus needs to be. The opportunity still needs to be there for them. Some will start excelling and you don't want to hold them back. The whole planning your curriculum for your career might help with that. Gets them into it at an earlier age.

Good Ideas Pat.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(11-30-2016, 01:21 PM)bfine32 Wrote: 1) This is why I've mentioned that child tax break should be tied to school performance or if you are receiving welfare for a dependent child, the amount should be tied to such performance

Interesting, but how big can you make the difference between an A and a B or D with out the lack of aid hurting the kid?

[BmorePat87]

(11-30-2016, 03:03 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Good ideas there. As I have said before, I'm not looking to take salary away from them. They play a vital role in educating our children and it's not an easy job to begin with.

Mentoring for a few years is a good way for them to learn with out tossing them into the fire.

Yea, this tries to overcome no parenting at home or just parents who cannot help, even if they want to. Kids need positive influences.

Quote:There we go, a way to fine poor teachers, and I'm not a huge fan of no pay for student performance, that has the opposite effect that it was intended for.

I meant that to mean "No to paying teachers more for student performance" because it's not a fair system. I only teach regular level classes where half the class is special ed, 504, or ELL, haha, so I have more at risk kids than the guy only teaching AP government classes. This is me being greedy.

Quote:I understand opposing an national curriculum, but if your school is doing really well, why wouldn't you want to share it with other schools? It shouldn't be about bringing your school down to the level of the one across town, but about bringing that one up to yours.

In practice, I completely agree. We need to share what works. I just see the actual implementation as being partisan. That's what sucks about education. Lots of good intentions ruined by partisan politics. 

Quote:Definitely more vocational options. Not everyone is college material and this would help people get certified in a field they plan to make a career out of. I went to a vocational school and I have to say, it was very challenging and rewarding. I absolutely flourished at working at my own speed. So much so that I was doing 2nd year stuff in my 1st year and by the time I started my 2nd year stuff, I was done with all of that after 1 quarter. I understand not every class will work like that, but mine was book/lab/test based, so it was easier than those that are more physically demanding. Also I was very bummed that my time spent at a vocational school was not going to count for college, that needs to be changed if it hasn't been already.

This also means community colleges need more vocational classes. We call our version of Common Core "College and Career Readiness Standards" to emphasize that careers matter too, but all our admins care about is SAT and AP. When I only teach regular level kids, I care about getting them ready to graduate and find a job. We have a lot of programs for students with disabilities, but not for other students. Then sometimes the only vocational schools after high school are for profit and wastes of money. 

 

Quote:I can agree that students with disabilities should be part of the general education. no need to single them out.

Tailoring classes starting in the 7th or 8th grade would be easier to do with teleconferencing electives. No complaints here with that idea.

:andy:

Quote:There still needs to be a test done, maybe 1 at start and end of year to make sure that the students have improved accordingly. if not then maybe consider holding them back a year, based on the teachers recommendations.

The problem is they're often poor indicators of performance. They only measure what they're specifically designed to measure. It also means we often are just teaching to a test. We need assessments, but that can mean a lot of things. So I am not opposed to assessments, just in the form of only doing standard tests. 

Quote:Yes, poorer students tend to not do as well as better off students do, but that's where the focus needs to be. The opportunity still needs to be there for them. Some will start excelling and you don't want to hold them back. The whole planning your curriculum for your career might help with that. Gets them into it at an earlier age. 

Good Ideas Pat.

For as much as we can disagree on issues, you're always a class act when you're trying to find common ground and just get to the root of issues. Thanks for this thread. Great nonpartisan ideas being floated around that a lot of us seem to agree with. Schools need to be tougher, but they also need to be more flexible, if that makes sense. 

[BmorePat87]

(11-30-2016, 03:07 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Interesting, but how big can you make the difference between an A and a B or D with out the lack of aid hurting the kid?

Poorer kids tend to be identified at higher rates as having disabilities that affect education, often times because they lacked the same resources when they were younger or did not get the same interventions that similar kids were able to get who were from better off families. 

So, I can see your concern here. It could have an unintended side effect of causing families to get less help and making kids perform worse as a result. 

It sucks because a lot of us don't want to see bad parents rewarded... but that just means the kids suffer.