"Fixing" schools

7 thoughts on ““Fixing” schools”

1. I know what I’d change, and I don’t hear some of this discussed much.

   (a) get rid of the CSAP immediately; spend the time teaching

   (b) establish a system where teachers regularly sit in on each others’ classes to strengthen their own teaching skills, and to share ideas and approaches so that poor teaching isn’t allowed to continue in isolation

   (c) weaken the age segregation, especially in grades 4 through 8

   (e) offer part-time teaching programs, in which those with other time-flexible jobs can teach a class or two.  Do this especially in science, math, or technology at the middle school and upward levels

   (f) ONLY after a and b have a chance to run for a few years such that the school is able to get a realistic picture of teaching performance, implement some kind of merit pay system on a school by school basis

   (g) Look in per-student property tax contributions to the district; and use PPR to correct for property tax disparities.

   That’s a start.  Honestly, my beef with the so-called school “reform” movement is that their changes so often seem designed to undermine the public school system, rather than strengthen it.  I doubt so many people would have a problem with real reform efforts, if the decisions were clearly aimed at improving public schools rather than the other way around.

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   1. cdsmith – a quick response to a couple of your points.

      First, I’m fine with losing the CSAP as long as we find and implement a decent standard testing model. You cannot fix what you cannot identify and you cannot reward performance without tracking progress. CSAP is not the best testing model… fine… let’s find one that is better. (I’ll bet everyone on this blog remembers the IOWA Basic tests right?

      I love (c)… GREAT idea. It’s been proven many times over that mixing age groups (within reason) is a highly effective pedagogical method.

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2. is that when you evaluate success based on measurements that you don’t really care about, the system will adapt to optimize them — at the expense of what you do care about.  What we really care about ought to be having students who can solve problems, and go on to advance the state of human knowledge and participate fruitfully in society.  I don’t really care whether students can perform well on standardized tests.  Schools are spending way too much time “teaching” students to do well on standardized tests.

   At another level, the same problem applies again.  We want teachers to teach where they are needed, and to devote themselves to ensuring that all students have the opportunity to succeed.  But if what we measure and use to evaluate teachers is whether they teach kids who are adequately prepared to learn, who can honestly be surprised when good teachers are sorely lacking in some of the places they are needed most?

   The problem with a truly valuable education is that you can’t evaluate it with standardized testing.  Beyond basic skills like reading or writing, it often just doesn’t matter what students learn.  Science education is very important to me; I’ve dedicated a lot of my life to ensuring kids in Colorado are well-educated in science; but I can’t say I honestly care whether kids end up knowing all the points of Colorado’s science curriculum standards.  I’d rather they get the experience of doing an in-depth study of one subject area until they obtain some real expertise in it; because the skills they learn in the process will help them in many, many more areas of life in the future.  But those are precisely the skills that are NOT measured by standardized testing.

   So I can’t agree that some kind of standardized test is necessary.  I can agree that some way for level of success to be understood is important; then we can start the discussion of what that is.  I think my second suggestion is the starting point for that discussion.

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3. forces public schools to fix themselves. 

   Of course, with massive Third World immigration by people who aren’t even literate in their own language, and the abomination called Pyler vs. Doe, the public schools are doomed to fail all but the most illiterate.

   Wanna boost test scores nation-wide?  Demand that the SCOTUS rehear Pyler.  Then demand that border be enforced so that the schools don’t continue to spiral towards hell.

   Oh wait a minute, hell is reserved for school choice advocates.  Well, they’re (the public schools) sprialing somewhere, just not up.

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   1. It is Plyler vs. Doe

      And, “public schools are doomed to fail all but the most illiterate”?!

      Doesn’t make much sense there, does it Skippy?

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      1. LOL!

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   2. It’s not that I want to dismiss the idea of vouchers or charter schools.  It’s just not on topic; this is about fixing public schools.  Perhaps vouchers or charters would provide motivation for that to happen; but HOW?  The mere existence of these programs obviously doesn’t help public schools — it obviously hurts public schools at face value.  So the question is what changes public schools could make to adapt, whether or not anyone believes that vouchers or charters are necessary to push them into it.

      But you don’t seem to have an answer.  You seem to say that the effort to educate all children to the best of their ability.  You say we should abandon that effort, and then siphon off the kids you care about into other options.  So long as this remains your answer, this should immediately disqualify you from being taken seriously in a debate on education.

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