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<p>Nor should we. What we should do is compensate for it. Which we haven’t.</p>
<p>Here in NY state the “everyone is Regents” decree has IMHO not been successfull. We are forcing students with low ability levels to pass classes & tests, that were initially instituted as a tool for admission into 4 year SUNY colleges. This is increasing our drop out rate, increasing our remedial & special education costs, and making teaching more difficult. Any teacher will tell you that the smaller the range of ability in a class, the more you can get done…be it low or high ability. College is not for everyone & that is OK, but our insistance that it is casues a number of problems.</p>
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<p>How do we compensate for that? You seemed to have agreed to the 4 points earlier. As I showed you, 2 of the points are the same or better today, 1 is not going to change, and 1 definitely has taken a turn for the worse. It is great to compensate for the 1 that is not going to change, but I also think it is important to focus on the 1 that has worsened, steeply.</p>
<p>What do people think of my academic tax idea? If parents have a skin in the game I think they will push the kids more to do well. But then again, some parents may just want the teachers to hand out good grades like it is candy, and let the kids be kids.</p>
<p>If anybody has not noticed, majority of the teachers, at least the ones I had, teach us what’s on the test. That is the wrong way to teach. Testing has become so entangled into education that teachers, let alone students and parents, are deluded into thinking that test scores are everything. If I ask a teacher regarding a topic just outside what’s tested, they will either say “it is not on the test, don’t worry about it” or they wouldn’t know. Of course, my math teacher did not know how to differentiate trig functions. All she knew was what to remember. She had no idea what she was teaching, all she was doing was copying off of the math department’s notes.</p>
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<p>Yes. And when I become czar, we will devote a lot more money to education, at all levels.</p>
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<p>Yes, there are a lot of lousy teachers out there. That we know. The problem is what to do about it.</p>
<p>Annasdad, if the statistics showed that all students would benefit, then it would be fine. But that is not what is happening. It is counterproductive for top scoring students to improve under NCLB.</p>
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<p>There I completely agree with you, but in the mean time, I wouldn’t take resources out of teaching the top performers and put it towards teaching the bottom performers. Would you?</p>
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<p>To save you the trouble of rereading my earlier posts, let me summarize:</p>
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<li><p>Make it easier to get rid of bad teachers</p></li>
<li><p>Attract quality young people to the teaching profession and keep them there</p></li>
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<p>The problem is not with teaching to the test. The problem is with the level of the terst. Make the tests far more difficult and the problem of teaching tot he tests will go away.</p>
<p>Fire the terrible teachers. If enough students and parents petition, they can get fired. However, we have had many attempts to fire a teacher, but the teachers would gang up and petition against that. Now, who has more weight in the arguments? The teacher who has been teaching for 14 years or some students and their parents?</p>
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<p>To me, that’s kind of saying - if you want to be improve your basketball game, just grow taller. How do you do that?</p>
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<p>If it comes to that tradeoff, yes, I would - on the premise that the top performers will find a way to excel regardless of the resources made available but that the bottom half will continue to struggle unless they are given a hand up.</p>
<p>I don’t know about you, but the best teachers I have had were older. 50+. One teacher taught for more than 30 years, she was just fantastic. Now, my favorite teacher has a doctorate in EE, and taught for about 11 years. He got offers to be a professor, but he went into NASA then into education. Just fantastic man.</p>
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<p>It starts with money. Lots and lots of money. Once we’ve decided to provide that, then we can move on to a discussion of what else we need to do. Until then, the discussion is pointless.</p>
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<p>On that, I agree. So given that this discussion is pointless, why even bother? You can’t do anything to improve the quality of teachers. But you can still influence the parents. Why not focus there?</p>
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<p>All the petitions in the world can’t get a tenured teacher fired, at least in most places. Fortunately, there are movements afoot to make it easier to get rid of the deadwood.</p>
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<p>Oh, but you CAN improve the quality of the teachers, and we know how to do it. It just takes the will to do it, as in money.</p>
<p>I’d love to hear your proposal for “influencing the parents.”</p>
<p>I gave my proposal already. Financially penalize the parents if the kids do not perform. Reward (to a disproportionate level) if they do. I am assuming here that parents wouldn’t just petition for better grades at this point. If they do, I would call social services and take the kids away. Drastic, I know. But I am rather frustrated with the attitude of many (middle class) parents who feel that the kids are being pushed too hard.</p>