3 ms·

No, what broke education is a fundamental misalignment in motives between the folks advocating for, paying for, and running education, and the actual children w

No, what broke education is a fundamental misalignment in motives between the folks advocating for, paying for, and running education, and the actual children who go through with it. The things the decision makers are optimizing for are so very far removed from the actual experience of children. Like, how exactly does administering a multi-day standardized test help children? It's clear how it helps parents - they get to send their children to "better" schools. It's clear how it helps administrators - it gives them political cover for the decisions they make. But the actual children involved? Pretty damn near pointless, and the test is just the tip of the iceberg really. I don't have high hopes for education reform movements, either. The direction education needs to go to get better is simply "less", and there's no incentives for doing so. (After all, how can you get credit for "helping children" if you're not actively doing anything?).

candiodari 10y ago
In my experience, what Common Core is really doing is allowing (and giving cover for) teachers who don't know the subject they're teaching. They cheat, because the only alternative is to actually become decent and fast in the subjects themselves, and that requires more knowledge and work than they'll ever put in. My kids math teacher tried to defend for >20 minutes to me that you cannot ever differentiate an equation with matrices instead of numbers. Well ... I made sure my kids double check with me if something sounds odd, and I'm forcing them to go through khan academy exercises. This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences. Are you kidding? Administrators live or die on test scores, and the non-brain-dead ones realize that good teachers are the best way to get those test scores. They don't really have a choice, though -- they work with what they're given in tax money and in many states don't even have any autonomy in compensation (NEA). IMO the problem is way earlier in the pipeline, anyways. Even if administrators deeply cared about quality, they'd find a shallow pool. As a good rule of thumb, people who are good at mathematics don't become teachers. They become engineers or go into finance and consulting or write software. And it's all about pay and quality of work environment. I'd teach high school math in a heart beat if the working conditions were more reasonable and it paid even half as well as my other options.
helthanatos 10y ago
I agree with that too. I don't know how to get politicians that have genuine desires to help people and I think part of that is because if we did find them, they would be voted out because they didn't do anything. I think that it might be too late right now because unless that politician could prove what they were doing before hand, the media would tear them apart. I slightly agree with basing teachers off performance, but measuring that performance with tests that change every year is not the best way. Possibly make a test that doesn't constantly change - every little bit to correct something (clearly the problems need reworded and such) if you're teaching kids, the test should fall in line with what is being taught. Teaching for a test is fundamentally flawed because not only does it lower the chance anyone actually learned anything, it also creates a neuroticism in both teachers and students. Something definitely needs done. Removing a few tests and school days from the calendar probably wouldn't do much; it may make everyone happier, though.

candiodari 10y ago

In my experience, what Common Core is really doing is allowing (and giving cover for) teachers who don't know the subject they're teaching. They cheat, because the only alternative is to actually become decent and fast in the subjects themselves, and that requires more knowledge and work than they'll ever put in. My kids math teacher tried to defend for >20 minutes to me that you cannot ever differentiate an equation with matrices instead of numbers. Well ... I made sure my kids double check with me if something sounds odd, and I'm forcing them to go through khan academy exercises. This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences.

throwaway729 10y ago
> This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences. Are you kidding? Administrators live or die on test scores, and the non-brain-dead ones realize that good teachers are the best way to get those test scores. They don't really have a choice, though -- they work with what they're given in tax money and in many states don't even have any autonomy in compensation (NEA). IMO the problem is way earlier in the pipeline, anyways. Even if administrators deeply cared about quality, they'd find a shallow pool. As a good rule of thumb, people who are good at mathematics don't become teachers. They become engineers or go into finance and consulting or write software. And it's all about pay and quality of work environment. I'd teach high school math in a heart beat if the working conditions were more reasonable and it paid even half as well as my other options.

helthanatos 10y ago

I agree with that too. I don't know how to get politicians that have genuine desires to help people and I think part of that is because if we did find them, they would be voted out because they didn't do anything. I think that it might be too late right now because unless that politician could prove what they were doing before hand, the media would tear them apart. I slightly agree with basing teachers off performance, but measuring that performance with tests that change every year is not the best way. Possibly make a test that doesn't constantly change - every little bit to correct something (clearly the problems need reworded and such) if you're teaching kids, the test should fall in line with what is being taught. Teaching for a test is fundamentally flawed because not only does it lower the chance anyone actually learned anything, it also creates a neuroticism in both teachers and students. Something definitely needs done. Removing a few tests and school days from the calendar probably wouldn't do much; it may make everyone happier, though.