<p>What are parents going to do? Get a tutor for the student? I agree with the money, instead of using money on someone else to tutor your student, use that as an incentive for the actual teacher. Better teachers get more $$, like a promotion. That is what happens in the real world right? Do good work then get a raise? But the problems would be effectively measure the teacher’s performance without a bias.</p>
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<p>May be. But first they will lay down the law at home, that 6 hours of studying per day is the norm, and there will be hell to pay if there is any report from school of misbehavior in class, or poor grades.</p>
<p>Hell, I know that parents need to beat their kids. Not literally beat, but spank. I mean look at Asian cultures, the kids seem more disciplined. I am Korean, not being racist, just spanking in the American culture is taboo.</p>
<p>I am Asian too but I abhor any form of violence towards kids. Parents who spank their kids belong in jail.</p>
<p>Vlines I disagree with this statement, " I always felt that a straight A students, top in the school, with appropriate EC’s would have schools all over them. But it is sadly not true." HYP may not be all over them, but many fine schools will be. The higher you aim the heavier the competition will be. But if you develop a sensible list of great schools you will see merit offers and a wonderful set of opportunities.</p>
<p>And to the idea to financially penalize parents whose children do not perform, I disagree. That already happens to a certain extent via success in careers. I am not a fan of linking performance you can’t personally control to pay; look at the cheating scandals that have been revealed recently.</p>
<p>“But first they will lay down the law at home, that 6 hours of studying per day is the norm, and there will be hell to pay if there is any report from school of misbehavior in class, or poor grades.”</p>
<p>IndianParent, after reading your posts, I think you fail to realize that not every student is the same. I agree with you that the parents do need to be involved in their children’s education and that children need to be more dedicated to their studies outside of school, but you seem so stringent. You need to realize that not every student will be in the top of their class, no matter how hard they try. Otherwise, the top of the class would cease to exist; everyone would be average. I also believe that for many children studying for six hours a day can actually be more detrimental than helpful. For example, when my Calc teacher assigned 100 problems for homework every weekend for a month, I completed them just to get them done because I have other obligations outside of school. I value learning very much, a value I gained from my parents, but all of those problems were tedious and just plain ridiculous. Later in the school year, the same Calc teacher assigned no more than 25 problems, so I was able to spend more time on each problem and learn more content more efficiently. Doing more work does not always equal success. It has to be within reason.</p>
<p>As for your tax idea, that’s just ridiculous. My friend’s parents had two children. My friend is a straight-A student. She is completely dedicated and hard-working and has had amazing support from her teachers and parents. Her younger sister has gone through the same school system with the same parents and the same support system. She is a DIFFERENT PERSON. You can’t always blame the parents for the student’s successes and failures. The younger sister is in less advanced classes than her older sister, yet she earns Bs and Cs. Do you think it’s right that her parents’ pay be docked because her interest lies elsewhere and even the strongest support system and the most strict learning environment won’t give her the same academic successes as her sister? What about the single parent whose child has a learning disability and is forced to attend a less-than-stellar school system? It’s easy to say the parent needs to be more involved or the parent needs to get a tutor, but sometimes the resources aren’t available. Should the disadvantaged, struggling parent be put at even more of a disadvantage because (s)he doesn’t have the luxury of the top teachers of the nation or being able to provide for the entire family and then dedicate the same amount of time a stay at home parent could provide to his/her child or the parent of a couple with support could provide to his/her child? Top that with a learning disability, and it is close to impossible to mold that child into a top performer. Would you penalize the parent because (s)he isn’t perfect?</p>
<p>That is an excellent post GHF. You are right - not all kids are the same. Some will not do so well. The moment we accept that we have made a huge stride forward. Now we can group kids into different segments and send them to different types of schools from an early age. This is the German system by the way. The problem American schools have is that all kids are lumped together, even though they clearly do not have the same level of capability, or the same drive, or the same support from parents at home (for justifiable or unjustifiable reasons). So to blame the teachers for trying to make sense out of such a jumble is ridiculous. Segment the kids first, give them different levels of education, and expect different performance out of them. Then you are leveraging the best out of an (still imperfect) education system.</p>
<p>Yes, it could be. My kids have had a few “impaired” teachers–some were let go/retired.</p>
<p>I completely agree with you IndianParent, except I think instead of separate schools, separate classes should be suffice. </p>
<p>I’m 17 years old, and when I was in elementary school, we had different numbers for our classes. Most grades went from 1-6, 1 being the most advanced classes. The only reason I think this would work better is because there would be more integration for social and academic development. When I was in the fourth grade, I tutored number 4, 5, and 6 first and second graders during my lunch breaks. This is purely annectodal, but I do not believe this would have been available if those students would have been in a separate school. This integration outside of academic classes also encouraged the advancement of the 4, 5, and 6 children. Had they have been in separate schools, they would not have been able to have the opportunities and encouragements available to them being surrounded by 1, 2, and 3 children, and especially by the one-on-one tutoring.</p>
<p>I think the main thing I would fear is hurting the fragile mentality of our youth. Physically separating them into separate buildings based on academic prowess can be quite discouraging. I have a twin brother, and in elementary school, and I was in number 1, and he was in number 3. We both fully understood that I was in advanced classes, but he never felt discouraged because he was just down the hall, and he still felt like he could become a number 2 or 1. We also still saw each other at lunch or recess and we still had open communication concerning our academics. I helped him with his work, and he felt like he was getting better. Had he been in a separate school, he might have been discouraged and felt mentally trapped and separated because of the physical separation. With no one more advanced than him around him, he would have had no one to encourage him and no one to whom he could strive academically.</p>
<p>I think keeping everyone in one school could help teachers, as well. Teaching a 6 is different than teaching a 1, and those teachers can learn from each other because just like the number 6 students are different than the number 1 students, each number 1 student is different. Also, a 6 teacher who might work with students with learning disabilities might be able to help a bright, but struggling number 1 student. Teachers might need more diversity than students in order to reach each student in one lesson, which is a daunting task.</p>
<p>That’s fine, but the curriculum needs to be different, and the grade expectations have to be different too.</p>
<p>Completely agree</p>
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I don’t know about where you live, but the per pupil spending here is very high. At D’s public high school the teachers who have been there quite awhile make $90+. That’s pretty good for our area. Why should they get paid millions? If we had to pay the taxes to make the teachers “happy” H and I would have to work 3 jobs and give every SINGLE penny to the freaking school district. NO MORE MONEY. Enough is enough. I for one am not willing to “provide” them with any more. Count me out.</p>
<p>My proposal:
- Tracking: to create more homogeneous classes, students with similar learning styles, similar preparation, even similar cultures at home
- A system (not sure what, this is soooo fundamantal) to motivate the entire country, teachers, students, parents to VALUE EDUCATION as a precious and highly important PRIORITY in our culture: learning skills, memorization, analysis, practice, creativity, independent thinking- it ALL matters and is necessary to get a REAL education!
- A grading system that is not inflated or inflatable, so that there are really high levels to attain, that are extraordinary
- Improved teacher education: not the latest gimmick ( like spiral math) but deep understanding of the material, and ALSO how to transmit it
- Attract the brightest to be teachers
- Curriculum: more advanced from a young age, room for extra-deep work by the top students, cover the basics much better (geography, grammar, persuasive writing, word problems in math and algebra, probability, logic…)
- Defer Gratification/Focus/Practice/Honor Excellence in Performance/Set High Goals: bring these values back so that students can actually achieve mastery
- Turn off the TV! Turn off the computer games! Tun off Facebook! Turn off the IPod! Turn off the cell phone! </p>
<p>As to MONEY- my experience with many schools with unlimited resources, there are still serious problems with individual students, individual teachers, the basic culture.
Just an example, in Japan, the system is not about resources AT ALL. Schools are simple rustic places- the students even clean their own classrooms.<br>
In England, kids are learning cursive and foreign languages at ages 4 and 5, and have already learned to read by that age.
No education system is perfect, and no country’s population is identical. But there are some ideas and lessons to be learned by looking around.</p>
<p>All are good ideas, but some cannot be implemented.</p>
<p>1 is crucial, but will never be done in the name of diversity
2 is impossible to implement in the USA. Just plain impossible.
3 is also crucial but there will be huge pushback against this from both sides of the political aisle
4 will only be possible if the teacher’s unions are systematically broken
5 is skipped
6 will never happen
7 has the same issue as 3
8 and 8 have the same issue as 2</p>
<p>So we are pretty much effed.</p>
<p>Education is just really mirrorring what our society has become. You are fighting media, parenting, technology.</p>
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<p>At our school, the pay scale tops out somewhere in the mid-60s, for a teacher with a master’s and 25+ years of experience. Welcome to rural America.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, your attitude is all too common. That’s why we have such a horrible elementary and secondary education system. If you want smart, dedicated people who have other options to devote their lives to educating our children, they have to be compensated in line with what smart, dedicated people can make in other fields. Otherwise, what you wind up with in the classroom are the people whose career alternatives are working the checkout lines at Target, i.e., the current situation. You get what you pay for. Our children suffer - and ultimately, our country suffers. Chickens eventually do come home to roost.</p>
<p>I am NOT saying that we can solve the problem by throwing more money at the current teachers. What we need is a two-tier system that attracts smart young people into teaching and pays them a wage that is competitive with what they could earn elsewhere AND a way to get rid of the deadwood that clogs the system.</p>
<p>I know in some countries where college education is paid for by the govt., students are told, based on test results, what they can & can’t major in. This would be one way to ensure a higher quaility of intellect majoring in education. However can anyone really invision the USA telling anyone what they can & can’t do?</p>
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<p>In the countries I know about(Both Chinas, Japan, S. Korea, etc), the cutoffs for majors are mainly dependent on the popularity/prestige of the majors…not set by government per se. In my parents’ day in the '50’s ROC, one needed a higher national exam score in the national college entrance exam to get into the Foreign Languages and Literature major than Law whereas I now hear it is reversed. </p>
<p>Moreover, trying to attract those who graduated in the upper portions of their graduating college classes is only one part of the foreign education systems’ good performance. </p>
<p>In the case of the ROC and Japan, it is also accompanied by stringent tracking which weeds out weaker students so that by the end of junior high, only the best are allowed to continue on the college track in “academic high schools” while everyone else is expected to go into vocational institutes or start working immediately. Moreover, the teachers teach to a rigorous national curriculum taught to the top 50% performers, the conventional wisdom is that the teacher’s word is law, and that whenever there is poor academic performance, the presumption of blame always lays first with the student and his/her parents. To blame the teacher would be seen as nothing more than excusemaking to justify the student’s poor performance and would attract widespread opprobrium from the larger society…especially during the '50s-70’s. </p>
<p>Moreover, there is little/no tolerance for disciplinary cases in such systems. Had a Japanese friend who was expelled from junior high in 7th grade and barred from returning to school despite excellent grades because he was involved in one schoolyard fight that would be tame by US standards.</p>
<p>Strict tracking was the norm for many years in US schools. Starting in first grade, we had the “early” group and the “late” group for reading and everyone knew which were the “smart” kids. It makes absolutely no sense educationally or socially to take a 6 yo and condem them to a second class education. First of all, boys would be highly disadvantaged. It is well known that boys (as a group) do not perform as well in elementary school as girls because they tend to be less “teacher pleasers” and have a higher need for physical activity. Tracking also worked better when there were many career paths that did not require college. Now post-HS education is required for most jobs. </p>
<p>What happens to the kid at the margin? He or she misses the college prep track by a point or two and so has to go in a lower track. What happens to the kid that has a bad year and then learns study skills? Or the child who finds the right teacher and soars. </p>
<p>That being said, by high school and even in middle school in many places, there is tracking. Honors and AP class admission usually is limited. </p>
<p>Students that do well are usually rewarded at college admission time. The top students tend to gain places in top colleges or the honors programs at state universities as well a attract merit money at slightly lesser schools. That is a huge reward.</p>
<p>I disagree with the idea that students should be forced to spend 6 hours a day outside of school studying. While that may be required some days, it certainly shouldn’t be every day. If a student has to work that hard, they are in the wrong classes. </p>
<p>I agree that parents need to take a tougher stance on computer and TV time, but a 12-hour school day (6 hours in class and 6 at home) is unnecessary. </p>
<p>There is no one answer. There is a vast different in the issues facing inner-city schools and upscale suburban districts.</p>
<p>^^csdad</p>
<p>In our state, education majors must maintain a certain GPA or they are not allowed to continue in that major. Many colleges here have different admissions standards (grades and SAT scores) for different schools or departments and a GPA requirement to remain in the program. Thus, while not set according to a test, there are lots of kids that are told they can’t continue to study what they want.</p>