Thread: K-12 Education: Bad Deal for America

Originally Posted by Dave1mo

Uh...no. That's not what critical thinking is. My students examine a wide variety of texts before they're even allowed to start writing on any subject, especially a politically or socially controversial subject.

By the way, almost every social studies course in a public school (middle or high school) that I've set foot in nearly deifies western culture. I have no idea where you're getting this perception from, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say Glen Beck.

I don't mind teaching students to learn how to think. However, grading essays or projects harder than multiple choice tests is counter-productive to that goal. I agree with you on the 2nd part. World History is really European history in schools. China, India, and the Middle East have been the most important civilizations throughout a large part of history, not Europe. It seems like over 90% of the western world doesn't realize this.

Originally Posted by oldjar07

I don't mind teaching students to learn how to think. However, grading essays or projects harder than multiple choice tests is counter-productive to that goal. I agree with you on the 2nd part. World History is really European history in schools. China, India, and the Middle East have been the most important civilizations throughout a large part of history, not Europe. It seems like over 90% of the western world doesn't realize this.

I grade everything based on rubrics that the students have access to before we start the assignment. They know what's expected of them.

I love this video:

Originally Posted by KSigMason

I love this video:

Stopped watching at the point where the narrator says, "Sure, there are plenty outstanding teachers. But we want to see a typical classroom."

Originally Posted by Taxcutter

Sometimes African schools are better than US schools. And they cost a lot less.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...fpW_story.html

What's that? SOCIALIST Africa has better schools than CAPITALIST America, and they cost less?

Socialism - 1
Capitalism - 0

Thanks

Dave, it makes so great points.

Originally Posted by Dave1mo

I grade everything based on rubrics that the students have access to before we start the assignment. They know what's expected of them.

Rubrics are about the worst grading system you can have. Rubrics punish you 2 or 3 times over for the same mistake most of the time. Explain to me how grading kids harder on critical thinking skills, rather than multiple choice tests, is going to make them want to learn critical thinking skills.

What if the teacher doesn't know the content better than the student? This has happened a lot in my experience, and I've had a lot of things graded wrong that should have been write. For example, my English teacher made us write the definition of certain words. I got a lot of them wrong because we had to use a certain dictionary that he never told us to use. Another example is we had to write socialist countries, and I put down Norway. She counted it wrong, and I asked why. She said it was a socialist country, but we didn't cover it in class. Finally, on a project, I had a German national symbol from another time period, and the guy judging said it was a Nazi symbol. It wasn't a Nazi symbol.

Teachers are dumbasses, and they really shouldn't be the ones teaching critical thinking skills.

Originally Posted by Taxcutter

America is not getting its money’s worth from its primary and secondary schools.

Fair enough, but the question is, what are we going to do to improve the situation? How do we make things better? That's not such an easy question, and it doesn't have any easy answers. But I think the first thing we need to remember is that the US doesn't have a single public school system, we have more then 14,000. That makes it really hard to generalize about them. We have some schools that are really superb, and we have some that are beyond abysmal. We have some schools that are flush with money and have shiny new facilities and plush contracts for their teachers, and we have some schools that are drastically underfunded, with crumbling buildings and underpaid, overworked teachers. We have some schools with open campuses, and we have some with metal detectors and security guards at the doors.

Generally speaking, the primary decision making power in the public schools is at the school district level, and most school districts are primarily funded by property taxes. One of the effects of this is that school performance tends to be highly correlated with the affluence of the school district. This isn't just about money. Richer districts can afford better facilities and to pay their teachers more. That means the best teachers tend to be attracted to the more affluent districts. In turn, that means that parents who put a real premium on education will want to move to those districts. Parents who care most about their kids educations tend to be highly educated themselves, and therefore have higher incomes. Communities with lower levels of education among the adult population tend to have lower incomes, higher rates of poverty, and higher rates of various social ills, such as drugs and crime. What we're looking at is a combination of factors that tends to create a feedback effect where the best schools attract the best teachers and students and the worst teachers and students tend to get concentrated in the worst schools.

I've often heard people say that just throwing money at the schools isn't going to solve the problem. While that's largely true, it does not mean that money is irrelevant or that we can slash school budgets without consequences. Some problems, such as school buildings that are physically falling apart, are entirely about money. And as I was just saying, many factors are connected together in a feedback loop, so problems that are just about money can help create or make worse other problems that aren't.

I think that breaking that feedback loop would be a large part of fixing some of the most immediate problems with the schools. I think that one thing that could help break it would be to make school funding more uniform and more stable. If more of the schools' funding came from taxes collected by the state and federal government rather then local property taxes, that would mean that there would be less of a difference between the funding of "good" districts and "bad" ones, less of a difference between teacher salaries, and therefore the "bad" schools would have a better chance of attracting high quality teachers, which could be a big first step in improving performance. I am not suggesting this would be any kind of panacea. I don't have all the answers, and I'm only suggesting this as one thing among many alternatives that may help improve the situation.

Since there aren't quick and easy answers to fixing the schools, I think that means that we need much less ideology and politics involved and more professionalism and hard data. We need to give different schools the ability to experiment and try different approaches, and then we need to follow up on that with careful studies of what works and why. Some of the basic elements of how we approach teaching may well be outdated and doing more harm then good. But the way to figure out what those are and how to fix them is with small scale experimentation and careful study, not ideologically motivated armchair quarterbacking. And this will take time and a long term commitment to improving the schools. And yes, it'll take money too.

Originally Posted by KSigMason

I love this video:

I really had to laugh when they used phone service to try to illustrate how competition makes everything better. I mean, seriously? Mobile phone contracts are some of the most confusing and misleading service plans around. The phone companies deliberately make their plans as confusing as possible to prevent consumers from being able to directly compare different plans. Service limitations, overage fees, hidden charges - the service is terrible! Not to mention that we have several redundant and incompatible cell tower networks, which both increases costs and makes for spottier coverage. And frankly, my experience has been that I'd much rather deal with a federal agency then Verizon's customer service department. I grew up in the 80's, and I remember my parents frequently complaining how terrible the phone service had been ever since the government screwed up the system by forcing Ma Bell to break up.

Competition does not make everything better. Sometimes it can be very destructive and make things much worse. For example, unregulated competition created the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age. Competition has also given us things like sweat shops, child labor, and blatant disregard for the safety of workers. Competition can be a very good thing, or a very bad thing, depending on the circumstances and how things are implemented. One size does not fit all, and one solution does not fix every problem.

Originally Posted by oldjar07

Teachers are dumbasses, and they really shouldn't be the ones teaching critical thinking skills.

Have you ever been a teacher?

There are lots of things that can be done.

First killing off the Department of Education would also eliminate the "compliance" red tape - the "strings" that always come attached. Teachers complain about there being too many administrators. The teachers may have a point. Most of these administrators are there complying with department of Education requirements. Eliminate the requirements and eliminate the excess administrators.

Admit to ourselves that special education, while well-meaning, has been a complete failure.

Since the 70s a "child-centric" culture has built up in the K-12 system. Again well-meaning, but poor performance makes this culture subject to intense question.

Student motivation has to be addressed. Currently there is no effective "carrots" or "sticks" to motivate student performance. Their condition does not change whether they are performing or goofing off. In many schools the sports programs are the last bastions of motivation. There are plenty of things that can motivate students. You have to make it clear that performers get a more pleasant experience and goof-offs get to be miserable.

When core performance is in question, the schools need to get back to emphasis of fundamentals. We hear all the blather about "critical thinking." Why the emphasis on semi-organized BSing when the kids can't make change? Dump all that nonsense and bear down on the stuff that truly matters.