6 ms·

Reinventing the School

40 points by olivercameron 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago
I like the topic, but it's a little too idealistic to tell an underfunded school system to double the pay of teachers just because you can't afford to be timid in reform.
- thejteam 13y ago
  Not only that, but doubling the pay of teachers will only improve your results if you get rid of your current teachers. Which will be difficult to do. Otherwise you are just paying the same people more money and probably getting the same results.
  - syncerr 13y ago
    Based them, in some way, on standardized test scores?
    - jeltz 13y ago
      That encourages teaching for the standardised tests.
      - mathattack 13y ago
        There are horror stories in New York around parents asking, "Why no social studies for Junior this year?" and being told, "Social Studies is only covered on the high stakes exam next year, so that's not my problem." Standardized testing implies you really have to nail the test design, and be vigilant that people aren't working just to the metric, and aren't cheating. (Freakonomics has a chapter on how they caught cheaters in Chicago. Apparently they caught them in other cities too but didn't have the courage to fire them elsewhere.)
  - jerf 13y ago
    The idea is that if you pay more, you may be able to attract more people who are skilled enough to make more than $52K in the private sector, and thereby hopefully duck around the "those who can, do, those who can't, teach", as, alas, there's more than a kernel of truth to that.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      This is very true. I just don't like the idea of "Pay up because we idealists think it's urgent. It should be important like surgeons." It's very hard to get to a social change to pay them like Singapore. I think the means to this ends is via charter schools. Parents know who the good teachers are, and they fight to get taught by them. Charter schools have found a way in some cases to pay up. I think parental voting (with their feet) can be even better than test-based metrics, which are imperfect at best. (Everything not on the test gets neglected) This is a very complicated problem.
      - jerf 13y ago
        For what it's worth, I don't think it will work either. But not agreeing with an argument is no excuse to not understand it.
vtempest 13y ago
Good ideas, but lets just not have classrooms / teachers - just learn online and then come in to use teacher as consultant
- skullum 13y ago
  I agree. I think stuff like Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ https://www.khanacademy.org/ is the future.
  - MarcScott 13y ago
    Although I use video instruction occasionally in my own lessons, it is not a solution. It is a one-shoe fits all approach. The talent of a teacher is to be able to engage learners of all ability ranges and adapt their lessons according to the progress made by individual students. Software can't do this (yet).
    - ironchef 13y ago
      Agreed. The khan academy and similar solutions are good for pupils who are engaged and will act as their own advocates; however, a significant number don't respond as well to that currently.
    - robbiemitchell 13y ago
      Actually, it can, at least in part: http://www.knewton.com http://www.knewton.com (my employer)
- SirSkidmore 13y ago
  Online learning can be good, but it can also be absolutely detrimental to education. I just graduated from high school in a relatively rural community where online classes were extremely popular among students. You got time in the computer lab, and had an "adviser" for each of your online classes. There were notes, assignments, tests, and quizzes. Sounds great right? Except students quickly discovered their "adviser" cared a lot less about online classes than the real counterparts, so notes and assignments quickly vanished from the curriculum. Computer lab time wasn't regulated by any means, so many students "helped" (read: cheated) each other on their quizzes and tests no one cared, even after several incidents were reported. I even took two online classes my senior year. Each course was supposed to be a semester long, yet I got both of them done in less than a month. Sure, I was an honors/AP/gifted student, but a semester course shouldn't be that easy to complete in such a short amount of time. I took "Online Intro to Creative Writing," and none, NONE, of the writing assignments were required by my adviser. There was no context for the lessons; no discussions to solidify concepts. Sure, my one experience is probably relatively isolated, but I have heard similar stories from other students in the state. Online learning, imho, isn't helping the problem, it's making it worse.
2arrs2ells 13y ago
"Let’s imagine that a tablet sits on every child's desk, and text books have been banished. The tablet is filled to the brim with the best educational content curated by the finest teaching minds in the country. The content isn’t simply paragraphs and images, it’s completely interactive. Don’t understand Pythagoras theorem? Here’s a demonstrative video. A word in Shakespeare’s Macbeth that you don’t understand? Simply highlight it and see the definition. Photosynthesis just not making sense right now? Mark it to read later so you can study it at home. Your entire educational life would live on this tablet, from homework to novels to quizzes." This is happening today, we're helping power this transition at Clever (YC S12). Interested in helping out? We're hiring: http://getclever.com/about/jobs http://getclever.com/about/jobs
thejteam 13y ago
Not sure what is meant by getting rid of textbooks. If they mean dropping physical books and going electronic, even interactive... fine, doesn't matter one way or the other to me. If they mean dropping the idea of books in favor of a hodgepodge of apps and websites and videos... I'm not so sure. There is merit to having a consistent voice throughout and stepping from one subject to the next. This is something that googling for information on the internet and reading wikipedia haven't replaced yet.
blhack 13y ago
The school isn't the problem. There are huge social problems that need to be addressed, which are unfortunately politically-incorrect, before we start changing schools. Go visit a school in a very poor area sometime. They need social workers, not teachers. The problem is that a lot of teachers don't want to be social workers, they want to be teachers.
- ironchef 13y ago
  They need _way_ more socioeconomic support. Social workers, counselors (completely underfunded), administration, and teachers. It _is_ a hard knock life.
- jarrett 13y ago
  Very true, but it's not just socioeconomically disadvantaged schools that are in trouble. Schools serving middle-class populations often have the problems the author enumerates. For example, the author says that classes do not teach practical skills such as filing taxes or negotiating. He also says that teacher pay is too low, considering its social importance. These (and other) problems the author addresses are not at all confined to poorer schools. So yes, deeper issues of inequality play a major role in education outcomes. But the education itself is also flawed. Part of the reason for this is the political culture in our country. We tend to lurch from quick fix to quick fix. A reform is introduced, and three years later the world hasn't turned upside down, so a new reform replaces it. Repeat indefinitely. Or else, a simplistic solution, like expanding standardized testing, is pushed farther and farther every year, in the hopes that if we just take it far enough, it will solve all our problems.
  - ironchef 13y ago
    Sure...and part of it is that to do things well there's (generally) not a one-size fits all solution. Unfortunately that's what most americans are geared towards. To get a multitude of solutions is typically more costly. Spot on about the middle classes also feeling it by the way. On the plus side, I know even in a poor school here they have consumer education classes which includes things such as balancing checkbooks, how financing big purchases works, how the stock market works, etc. It's very nice to see.
ironchef 13y ago
OP has a number of interesting points; however, I would suggest he's also _probably_ myopic in his views on education. I think the reason that the post feels all over the board to me is because of the complexity of the situation. The system is made up of teachers, administrators, boards, parents, materials, and (most importantly) kids. Fixing one doesn't fix them all. It gets even more complex when one looks at the socioeconomic situations of the systems. Teachers are not in it for the money. The majority (nix that...the good ones I know) want to make a difference in society and the world around them. That being said, I'd love it if they were making more. The socioeconomic ties can NOT be underplayed. Give every kid in a poor section of town an ipad and I would guarantee you that some would be sold, a lot would get busted, etc. OP stated that "parents today are often left in the dark as to their child’s progress". This can be true. A lot of parents I see also can not be bothered to lift a finger to check up on how their kids are doing. As a part of the system, EVERY piece must be willing to step up. Only if most of the parts are strong can the system deal with weakness in other components. Let's say a quarter of the parents are doing a crappy job. The teachers of those students have to work extra hard to engage those kids. Those kids have to work extra hard to push themselves. Got some crappy teachers? Then the parents and kids need to work extra hard. tl;dr: it's a complex system and every part must improve and take responsibility.
msluyter 13y ago
I'd love to pay teachers more -- if I were appointed Dictator of the United States, I would also (at least) double their salaries. But how would we actually go about achieving that goal in the actual world we live in? Well, we'd have to raise taxes[2], and a solid third of US citizens would veto any raise in taxes for any reason whatsoever, and another 50% or so would veto raising teacher salaries on tribal affiliation grounds (I'm assuming a fair amount of overlap between these groups), meaning, you probably have at least a solid plurality against the idea[1]. Not to mention the difficulty of how a city like Stockton, CA (now bankrupt) could achieve such a goal. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I tend to believe that anything beyond tinkering with the margins of the school system is unlikely and probably politically impossible. [1] For example, in Austin, TX, 2/4 of the last round of AISD bond initiatives passed, by very slim margins. And Austin is a rather liberal city. http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/election_results/2013.05.11/Official/20130511aisdcume.pdf http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/elect... [2] Edit: or cut other things, in which case we're back to the same debate that's more or less immobilized our country for the last few years, thus illustrating my point.
- MarcScott 13y ago
  Have a look at these charts and ask yourself whether tax increases are really necessary, or whether a few cuts might do the job. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/e...
- matula 13y ago
  The problem with the AISD bonds was the school district getting cocky and assuming they could ANYTHING through. There were inconsistencies and vagueness throughout the proposals, and I think voters are finally getting tired of AISD's "just throw money at the problem" attitude, with no real plans for making low-performing schools better. IMHO, if we want to fix our education system, we need to cut the ties between funding and property values. Also, Democrats in office should probably get over the hard-line "no vouchers" position. With vouchers, they could also increase schools' funding to give them a better chance at competing. Of course, Republicans won't allow for the increased funding or "robin hood" funding. So yeah... we're screwed.
koops 13y ago
Normally this could slide: "...most of it’s citizens..." But in a piece about the importance of education? (The apostrophe doesn't belong in the possessive version.)
codva 13y ago
Instead of reinventing the school, I think we need to be thinking outside the school. The institution of school comes with a whole host of problems that are just systemic to the idea of everybody reporting to a central location and being primarily segregated by age. Not that you can't get a decent education in school, because many of us did. We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate and dedicated teachers. Passion trumps intelligence for teachers just about every time. The best teachers don't teach so much as they light the fire in a kid to learn. It's a subtle but important difference. If I were designing better schools I'd stick with the basic group format up through about 8th grade, then go to a community college type model where every kid could branch off to follow their interests. The universe of stuff that everybody needs to know is much smaller than most people presume. Everybody needs to write well, read well, and handle math up through about Algebra I. After that, it is all electives. So after about 8th grade, when the 3 Rs should be solid in most kids, let them do what they want. That is how we handled our kids educations (we homeschooled) and it worked out very well. HSing is not an option for most, but the "system" can learn a lot from what works for homeschoolers.
- arethuza 13y ago
  A quick question - when you say "where every kid could branch off to follow their interests" does this imply that kids in the US education system don't choose a set of subjects to focus on at about 14?
  - SirSkidmore 13y ago
    Completely true, if not implied. I just graduated from secondary school in the US. I want to be a programmer, but I never once took a programming class; my school didn't offer them. Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college. At least at my school (a small rural secondary school), there just weren't enough classes to to "specialize" or focus on any one particular field. You just took the core classes every year: a science (sometimes), a math, an English.
    - 13y ago
hxrts 13y ago
If you think about the people you know, the people you admire, how many of them are teachers? I would wager very few. The teaching profession (at least in the US) is not structured to attract quality candidates in the same way other professions do. The public / private divide exacerbates this problem. This requires money and legislation which makes the issue nearly intractable because efforts are most often put toward short-term gain rather than sustainable infrastructure.
MarcScott 13y ago
As a teacher myself I agree with most of what is said here. However, with few exceptions, I can spot students who are going to succeed in school within a week of teaching them. These are the students who have supportive parents that are engaged in their children's education. As a profession we strive to get all our students to engage, but we are with them for a few hours a week at best and have nowhere near as much impact on their lives as their parents. Note, however, that I said 'succeed in school'. Many students have passed through my classroom door over the years, who have not achieved academically, but have gone on to achieve in later life. These students are often those for whom the Model Victorian Classroom is simply not appropriate. The very concept that you can take a random sample of thirty teenagers, place them in a socially pressured environment and then expect them all to make academic progress under the tutelage of a single individual is frankly ridiculous. Ken Robinson say's it far more eloquently than me though, and with pretty graphics to hammer home the point. http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-changing-paradigms http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-...
deleted 13y ago
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fellowniusmonk 13y ago
Teacher pay is the last thing that should be investigated at this point. Not the first. Social services would be a much better starting point. Every time someone mentions teachers pay relationship to education/grade quality I think they simply haven't taken a step back to compare against alternatives and looked at the numbers (adjusted). Sure a bad system will have marginally better performance when you throw money at it, but that is practically a given and doesn't provide proper systemic evaluation. On average private school teachers make significantly less... http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 And on average private school highschoolers have better or equal grades... (adjusted for student characteristics) http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.as... Public school per student cost: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 (The above cost is excepted as an undercount by every source I can find though there is dispute by how much, see: "They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools" and a rebuttal here: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-they-spend-what http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-they-spend-what that agrees with the undercounting but disagrees with CATO institutes exact figures). Cost per student and a rebuttal/additional findings: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303822204577468783242379036.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230382220457746... http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-31/news/36831030_1_religious-affiliation-private-schools-school-vouchers http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-31/news/36831030_... Taking into account "cost per student" grades are the same or better with equivalent spending and are simply more cost efficient teaching systems. All this is without further drilling down into private school methodology to identify the highest efficiency implementations (the NAEP study suggests that the lutherans might be a one of several starting points for that investigation). When you are putting people into a flawed system with perverse incentives, throwing money at the people involved is a poor attempt at a solution and is "mostly" a red herring. If the claim is that these grade differences aren't really an education but a cultural and societal issue (ask yourself why "schools of choice" perform better?) than it needs to be addressed as such using a change in methodology and improvements in social services systems/spending.
dgv 13y ago
Ricardo Semler lecture in Learning and Technology World Forum 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkELvSqiUDw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkELvSqiUDw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-lY4OufXI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-lY4OufXI
pappyo 13y ago
Aaahhhhh! This type of post aggravates me. It's part of the reason why nothing ever gets fixed. Everyone thinks they're an expert when it comes to education. Yet no one understands the problems. 1. Education is not about employment. If you teach a kid to be a great widget maker, his/her entire life hinges on the demand for widgets. If widgets become irrelevant, the skill set s/he has developed over 12+ years are useless. [a] Can anyone, with any certainty, claim their skill set will create a livable income for them for the next 20 years? Probably not. So why would any k-12 school create a curriculum around todays job market? 2. The Education system is not broken (mostly). Everyone likes to point to the fact that the US educational system is failing in comparison to the rest of the world. Except...it isn't. "While reading proficiency in Mississippi is comparable to Russia or Bulgaria, Massachusetts performs more like Singapore, Japan, or South Korea. Often better: Massachusetts students rank fifth in the world in reading, lapping Singapore and Japan, and needless to say, every state in the union." [1][2] Our problem isn't that the system is broken. The problem is the most of the country isn't implementing the system correctly.[3] There are a lot of reasons for that, many of which have nothing to do with the educational system directly. Now that's not to say there aren't problems with the current system: a. Standardized tests only show how good kids are at taking a test. A skill that is wholly unneeded throughout the rest of society. b. The US system is structured like a factory. The structure made sense when we lived in a time when we needed factory workers. Now we need people who can analyze, think and execute. We do not have a public school system that caters to that. c. There is too much emphasis on employment and not enough on creating life long learning. 3. Education can't be solved with an algorithm. Here's a personal anecdote. I taught geometry in an urban [code for black, hispanic and immigrant] school system. Each year I taught, I had at least 2 kids who would leave school and go to McDonalds to work a 4-11 pm shift 3-4 nights a week. They did this so they could help feed themselves and their family [4]. They never did their homework. They never studies. They slept in the class frequently and most of them failed. Do you think you can write some code to fix that problem? 4. Educate yourself before you fix the problem. People who write posts like the OP have not spent any time talking to teachers or admins, let alone spending time in a classroom. Solving the education problem is incredibly complicated and, actually, doesn't have much to do with the schools. [a]: Fun fact: My aunt graduated from college with a degree in Soviet Economics in 1987. She thought it guaranteed her a job in government for a long time. Hahaha!!!!! [1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/massachusetts_is_the_best_state_in_the_union_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201... [2]: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_GloballyChallenged.pdf http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_Globall... [3]: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?tkn=RLRF%2B4mUV1fjxGZAPk7Od%2FfW1p2K2SFHTAx9&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=EW-QC13-EWH http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?... [4]: This is just one problem in particular. I also had a number of kids with drug problems, problems at home, safety issues walking/taking the bus to school and a slew of other non-school related issues. This problem stand out because nobody is actively doing the wrong thing.

40 points by olivercameron 13y ago

I like the topic, but it's a little too idealistic to tell an underfunded school system to double the pay of teachers just because you can't afford to be timid in reform.

thejteam 13y ago
Not only that, but doubling the pay of teachers will only improve your results if you get rid of your current teachers. Which will be difficult to do. Otherwise you are just paying the same people more money and probably getting the same results.
- syncerr 13y ago
  Based them, in some way, on standardized test scores?
  - jeltz 13y ago
    That encourages teaching for the standardised tests.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      There are horror stories in New York around parents asking, "Why no social studies for Junior this year?" and being told, "Social Studies is only covered on the high stakes exam next year, so that's not my problem." Standardized testing implies you really have to nail the test design, and be vigilant that people aren't working just to the metric, and aren't cheating. (Freakonomics has a chapter on how they caught cheaters in Chicago. Apparently they caught them in other cities too but didn't have the courage to fire them elsewhere.)
- jerf 13y ago
  The idea is that if you pay more, you may be able to attract more people who are skilled enough to make more than $52K in the private sector, and thereby hopefully duck around the "those who can, do, those who can't, teach", as, alas, there's more than a kernel of truth to that.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    This is very true. I just don't like the idea of "Pay up because we idealists think it's urgent. It should be important like surgeons." It's very hard to get to a social change to pay them like Singapore. I think the means to this ends is via charter schools. Parents know who the good teachers are, and they fight to get taught by them. Charter schools have found a way in some cases to pay up. I think parental voting (with their feet) can be even better than test-based metrics, which are imperfect at best. (Everything not on the test gets neglected) This is a very complicated problem.
    - jerf 13y ago
      For what it's worth, I don't think it will work either. But not agreeing with an argument is no excuse to not understand it.

vtempest 13y ago

Good ideas, but lets just not have classrooms / teachers - just learn online and then come in to use teacher as consultant

skullum 13y ago
I agree. I think stuff like Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ https://www.khanacademy.org/ is the future.
- MarcScott 13y ago
  Although I use video instruction occasionally in my own lessons, it is not a solution. It is a one-shoe fits all approach. The talent of a teacher is to be able to engage learners of all ability ranges and adapt their lessons according to the progress made by individual students. Software can't do this (yet).
  - ironchef 13y ago
    Agreed. The khan academy and similar solutions are good for pupils who are engaged and will act as their own advocates; however, a significant number don't respond as well to that currently.
  - robbiemitchell 13y ago
    Actually, it can, at least in part: http://www.knewton.com http://www.knewton.com (my employer)
SirSkidmore 13y ago
Online learning can be good, but it can also be absolutely detrimental to education. I just graduated from high school in a relatively rural community where online classes were extremely popular among students. You got time in the computer lab, and had an "adviser" for each of your online classes. There were notes, assignments, tests, and quizzes. Sounds great right? Except students quickly discovered their "adviser" cared a lot less about online classes than the real counterparts, so notes and assignments quickly vanished from the curriculum. Computer lab time wasn't regulated by any means, so many students "helped" (read: cheated) each other on their quizzes and tests no one cared, even after several incidents were reported. I even took two online classes my senior year. Each course was supposed to be a semester long, yet I got both of them done in less than a month. Sure, I was an honors/AP/gifted student, but a semester course shouldn't be that easy to complete in such a short amount of time. I took "Online Intro to Creative Writing," and none, NONE, of the writing assignments were required by my adviser. There was no context for the lessons; no discussions to solidify concepts. Sure, my one experience is probably relatively isolated, but I have heard similar stories from other students in the state. Online learning, imho, isn't helping the problem, it's making it worse.

2arrs2ells 13y ago

"Let’s imagine that a tablet sits on every child's desk, and text books have been banished. The tablet is filled to the brim with the best educational content curated by the finest teaching minds in the country. The content isn’t simply paragraphs and images, it’s completely interactive. Don’t understand Pythagoras theorem? Here’s a demonstrative video. A word in Shakespeare’s Macbeth that you don’t understand? Simply highlight it and see the definition. Photosynthesis just not making sense right now? Mark it to read later so you can study it at home. Your entire educational life would live on this tablet, from homework to novels to quizzes." This is happening today, we're helping power this transition at Clever (YC S12). Interested in helping out? We're hiring: http://getclever.com/about/jobs http://getclever.com/about/jobs

thejteam 13y ago

Not sure what is meant by getting rid of textbooks. If they mean dropping physical books and going electronic, even interactive... fine, doesn't matter one way or the other to me. If they mean dropping the idea of books in favor of a hodgepodge of apps and websites and videos... I'm not so sure. There is merit to having a consistent voice throughout and stepping from one subject to the next. This is something that googling for information on the internet and reading wikipedia haven't replaced yet.

blhack 13y ago

The school isn't the problem. There are huge social problems that need to be addressed, which are unfortunately politically-incorrect, before we start changing schools. Go visit a school in a very poor area sometime. They need social workers, not teachers. The problem is that a lot of teachers don't want to be social workers, they want to be teachers.

ironchef 13y ago
They need _way_ more socioeconomic support. Social workers, counselors (completely underfunded), administration, and teachers. It _is_ a hard knock life.
jarrett 13y ago
Very true, but it's not just socioeconomically disadvantaged schools that are in trouble. Schools serving middle-class populations often have the problems the author enumerates. For example, the author says that classes do not teach practical skills such as filing taxes or negotiating. He also says that teacher pay is too low, considering its social importance. These (and other) problems the author addresses are not at all confined to poorer schools. So yes, deeper issues of inequality play a major role in education outcomes. But the education itself is also flawed. Part of the reason for this is the political culture in our country. We tend to lurch from quick fix to quick fix. A reform is introduced, and three years later the world hasn't turned upside down, so a new reform replaces it. Repeat indefinitely. Or else, a simplistic solution, like expanding standardized testing, is pushed farther and farther every year, in the hopes that if we just take it far enough, it will solve all our problems.
- ironchef 13y ago
  Sure...and part of it is that to do things well there's (generally) not a one-size fits all solution. Unfortunately that's what most americans are geared towards. To get a multitude of solutions is typically more costly. Spot on about the middle classes also feeling it by the way. On the plus side, I know even in a poor school here they have consumer education classes which includes things such as balancing checkbooks, how financing big purchases works, how the stock market works, etc. It's very nice to see.

ironchef 13y ago

OP has a number of interesting points; however, I would suggest he's also _probably_ myopic in his views on education. I think the reason that the post feels all over the board to me is because of the complexity of the situation. The system is made up of teachers, administrators, boards, parents, materials, and (most importantly) kids. Fixing one doesn't fix them all. It gets even more complex when one looks at the socioeconomic situations of the systems. Teachers are not in it for the money. The majority (nix that...the good ones I know) want to make a difference in society and the world around them. That being said, I'd love it if they were making more. The socioeconomic ties can NOT be underplayed. Give every kid in a poor section of town an ipad and I would guarantee you that some would be sold, a lot would get busted, etc. OP stated that "parents today are often left in the dark as to their child’s progress". This can be true. A lot of parents I see also can not be bothered to lift a finger to check up on how their kids are doing. As a part of the system, EVERY piece must be willing to step up. Only if most of the parts are strong can the system deal with weakness in other components. Let's say a quarter of the parents are doing a crappy job. The teachers of those students have to work extra hard to engage those kids. Those kids have to work extra hard to push themselves. Got some crappy teachers? Then the parents and kids need to work extra hard. tl;dr: it's a complex system and every part must improve and take responsibility.

msluyter 13y ago

I'd love to pay teachers more -- if I were appointed Dictator of the United States, I would also (at least) double their salaries. But how would we actually go about achieving that goal in the actual world we live in? Well, we'd have to raise taxes[2], and a solid third of US citizens would veto any raise in taxes for any reason whatsoever, and another 50% or so would veto raising teacher salaries on tribal affiliation grounds (I'm assuming a fair amount of overlap between these groups), meaning, you probably have at least a solid plurality against the idea[1]. Not to mention the difficulty of how a city like Stockton, CA (now bankrupt) could achieve such a goal. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I tend to believe that anything beyond tinkering with the margins of the school system is unlikely and probably politically impossible. [1] For example, in Austin, TX, 2/4 of the last round of AISD bond initiatives passed, by very slim margins. And Austin is a rather liberal city. http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/election_results/2013.05.11/Official/20130511aisdcume.pdf http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/elect... [2] Edit: or cut other things, in which case we're back to the same debate that's more or less immobilized our country for the last few years, thus illustrating my point.

MarcScott 13y ago
Have a look at these charts and ask yourself whether tax increases are really necessary, or whether a few cuts might do the job. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/e...
matula 13y ago
The problem with the AISD bonds was the school district getting cocky and assuming they could ANYTHING through. There were inconsistencies and vagueness throughout the proposals, and I think voters are finally getting tired of AISD's "just throw money at the problem" attitude, with no real plans for making low-performing schools better. IMHO, if we want to fix our education system, we need to cut the ties between funding and property values. Also, Democrats in office should probably get over the hard-line "no vouchers" position. With vouchers, they could also increase schools' funding to give them a better chance at competing. Of course, Republicans won't allow for the increased funding or "robin hood" funding. So yeah... we're screwed.

koops 13y ago

Normally this could slide: "...most of it’s citizens..." But in a piece about the importance of education? (The apostrophe doesn't belong in the possessive version.)

codva 13y ago

Instead of reinventing the school, I think we need to be thinking outside the school. The institution of school comes with a whole host of problems that are just systemic to the idea of everybody reporting to a central location and being primarily segregated by age. Not that you can't get a decent education in school, because many of us did. We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate and dedicated teachers. Passion trumps intelligence for teachers just about every time. The best teachers don't teach so much as they light the fire in a kid to learn. It's a subtle but important difference. If I were designing better schools I'd stick with the basic group format up through about 8th grade, then go to a community college type model where every kid could branch off to follow their interests. The universe of stuff that everybody needs to know is much smaller than most people presume. Everybody needs to write well, read well, and handle math up through about Algebra I. After that, it is all electives. So after about 8th grade, when the 3 Rs should be solid in most kids, let them do what they want. That is how we handled our kids educations (we homeschooled) and it worked out very well. HSing is not an option for most, but the "system" can learn a lot from what works for homeschoolers.

arethuza 13y ago
A quick question - when you say "where every kid could branch off to follow their interests" does this imply that kids in the US education system don't choose a set of subjects to focus on at about 14?
- SirSkidmore 13y ago
  Completely true, if not implied. I just graduated from secondary school in the US. I want to be a programmer, but I never once took a programming class; my school didn't offer them. Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college. At least at my school (a small rural secondary school), there just weren't enough classes to to "specialize" or focus on any one particular field. You just took the core classes every year: a science (sometimes), a math, an English.
  - 13y ago

hxrts 13y ago

If you think about the people you know, the people you admire, how many of them are teachers? I would wager very few. The teaching profession (at least in the US) is not structured to attract quality candidates in the same way other professions do. The public / private divide exacerbates this problem. This requires money and legislation which makes the issue nearly intractable because efforts are most often put toward short-term gain rather than sustainable infrastructure.

MarcScott 13y ago

As a teacher myself I agree with most of what is said here. However, with few exceptions, I can spot students who are going to succeed in school within a week of teaching them. These are the students who have supportive parents that are engaged in their children's education. As a profession we strive to get all our students to engage, but we are with them for a few hours a week at best and have nowhere near as much impact on their lives as their parents. Note, however, that I said 'succeed in school'. Many students have passed through my classroom door over the years, who have not achieved academically, but have gone on to achieve in later life. These students are often those for whom the Model Victorian Classroom is simply not appropriate. The very concept that you can take a random sample of thirty teenagers, place them in a socially pressured environment and then expect them all to make academic progress under the tutelage of a single individual is frankly ridiculous. Ken Robinson say's it far more eloquently than me though, and with pretty graphics to hammer home the point. http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-changing-paradigms http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-...

deleted 13y ago

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fellowniusmonk 13y ago

Teacher pay is the last thing that should be investigated at this point. Not the first. Social services would be a much better starting point. Every time someone mentions teachers pay relationship to education/grade quality I think they simply haven't taken a step back to compare against alternatives and looked at the numbers (adjusted). Sure a bad system will have marginally better performance when you throw money at it, but that is practically a given and doesn't provide proper systemic evaluation. On average private school teachers make significantly less... http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 And on average private school highschoolers have better or equal grades... (adjusted for student characteristics) http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.as... Public school per student cost: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 (The above cost is excepted as an undercount by every source I can find though there is dispute by how much, see: "They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools" and a rebuttal here: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-they-spend-what http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-they-spend-what that agrees with the undercounting but disagrees with CATO institutes exact figures). Cost per student and a rebuttal/additional findings: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303822204577468783242379036.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230382220457746... http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-31/news/36831030_1_religious-affiliation-private-schools-school-vouchers http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-31/news/36831030_... Taking into account "cost per student" grades are the same or better with equivalent spending and are simply more cost efficient teaching systems. All this is without further drilling down into private school methodology to identify the highest efficiency implementations (the NAEP study suggests that the lutherans might be a one of several starting points for that investigation). When you are putting people into a flawed system with perverse incentives, throwing money at the people involved is a poor attempt at a solution and is "mostly" a red herring. If the claim is that these grade differences aren't really an education but a cultural and societal issue (ask yourself why "schools of choice" perform better?) than it needs to be addressed as such using a change in methodology and improvements in social services systems/spending.

dgv 13y ago

Ricardo Semler lecture in Learning and Technology World Forum 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkELvSqiUDw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkELvSqiUDw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-lY4OufXI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-lY4OufXI

pappyo 13y ago

Aaahhhhh! This type of post aggravates me. It's part of the reason why nothing ever gets fixed. Everyone thinks they're an expert when it comes to education. Yet no one understands the problems. 1. Education is not about employment. If you teach a kid to be a great widget maker, his/her entire life hinges on the demand for widgets. If widgets become irrelevant, the skill set s/he has developed over 12+ years are useless. [a] Can anyone, with any certainty, claim their skill set will create a livable income for them for the next 20 years? Probably not. So why would any k-12 school create a curriculum around todays job market? 2. The Education system is not broken (mostly). Everyone likes to point to the fact that the US educational system is failing in comparison to the rest of the world. Except...it isn't. "While reading proficiency in Mississippi is comparable to Russia or Bulgaria, Massachusetts performs more like Singapore, Japan, or South Korea. Often better: Massachusetts students rank fifth in the world in reading, lapping Singapore and Japan, and needless to say, every state in the union." [1][2] Our problem isn't that the system is broken. The problem is the most of the country isn't implementing the system correctly.[3] There are a lot of reasons for that, many of which have nothing to do with the educational system directly. Now that's not to say there aren't problems with the current system: a. Standardized tests only show how good kids are at taking a test. A skill that is wholly unneeded throughout the rest of society. b. The US system is structured like a factory. The structure made sense when we lived in a time when we needed factory workers. Now we need people who can analyze, think and execute. We do not have a public school system that caters to that. c. There is too much emphasis on employment and not enough on creating life long learning. 3. Education can't be solved with an algorithm. Here's a personal anecdote. I taught geometry in an urban [code for black, hispanic and immigrant] school system. Each year I taught, I had at least 2 kids who would leave school and go to McDonalds to work a 4-11 pm shift 3-4 nights a week. They did this so they could help feed themselves and their family [4]. They never did their homework. They never studies. They slept in the class frequently and most of them failed. Do you think you can write some code to fix that problem? 4. Educate yourself before you fix the problem. People who write posts like the OP have not spent any time talking to teachers or admins, let alone spending time in a classroom. Solving the education problem is incredibly complicated and, actually, doesn't have much to do with the schools. [a]: Fun fact: My aunt graduated from college with a degree in Soviet Economics in 1987. She thought it guaranteed her a job in government for a long time. Hahaha!!!!! [1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/massachusetts_is_the_best_state_in_the_union_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201... [2]: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_GloballyChallenged.pdf http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_Globall... [3]: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?tkn=RLRF%2B4mUV1fjxGZAPk7Od%2FfW1p2K2SFHTAx9&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=EW-QC13-EWH http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?... [4]: This is just one problem in particular. I also had a number of kids with drug problems, problems at home, safety issues walking/taking the bus to school and a slew of other non-school related issues. This problem stand out because nobody is actively doing the wrong thing.