Can we ever remake public schools to get costs under control and better results?

[drebo]

Parents are certainly a part of the problem, but the majority of the problem is institutional, anymore.

There are usually more "administrators" at schools now than there are teachers.

Kids who want to learn and are accellerated are not encouraged to go faster and further, and are instead lumped in with those who cannot or will not put forth effort. The result is not that the slow kids go faster, it's that the fast kids are bored and misbehave.

Parents are partly to blame for not admitting that their kids shouldn't be in the same class as the top kids, but the institution needs to come out and enforce that.

We also need to stop funneling everyone into college. College is not necessary for a well-paying, fulfilling job. Not every job requires college. Not every kid is cut out for college.

There needs to be a wholesale shift in the ideology of our education system and the expectations of that system.

 

[DrPizza]

Re: unions
There are some states that don't have teacher's unions. Guess where they rank?

re: charter schools - sure, if they're allowed to select for the motivated kids, and for the kids from parents who actually care, then of course they're going to have higher average results. If you can't figure that out, you aren't smart enough to get into the charter school.

If the students were completely selected at random to attend a charter school, without any sort of application process (if you have an application process, you just weeded out all the apathetic parents), you're not going to see any improvement. Well, perhaps you'll see some pretend improvements - but when it comes down to "are these kids better" with any standardized measure - AP scores, SAT scores, etc., you'll not see an increase.

 

[drebo]

^^ That just reinforces the point that kids need to be separated by aptitude and willingness to learn.

 

[chucky2]

^^ That just reinforces the point that kids need to be separated by aptitude and willingness to learn.

Racist! Xenophobe! Sexist! ACLU to the rescue!

 

[IronWing]

Charter schools are the answer. Higher quality education, lower costs.

Complete bullshit. Here in Arizona, charter schools cost exactly what public schools cost and with very few exceptions the students perform worse on standardized exams than their public school counterparts. Seems charter schools spend too much time teaching about Jesus and not enough about math.

Anyway, convince parents to give a damn about their kids and public education would be fixed overnight. Maybe we need to require a performance bond from prospective parents. Your kid flunks or goes to jail, you forfeit the bond.

 

[Ronstang]

The bottom line is we arent getting a very good return on our public investment with our school system.

This can be simplified to we are not getting a very good return on our investment in government, at any level. The system fails over time because no one actually has to earn their money. Governments always blame bad results on insufficient funds rather than inefficient people or policies. We are headed straight over a cliff.

 

[marincounty]

Oh, and part of hte problem these days is having two parents working. One parent should be a full time home maker that takes care of the kids, goes to PTO meetings, etc.

This is in part an unintended consequence of women's lib.

No, this is an unintended consequence of the rise of corporatism. Before women entered the workforce, a man working one job could provide well for his family, buying a house, car , groceries and health insurance. Real wages have been stagnant since Reagan.

 

[DanDaManJC]

Oh, and part of hte problem these days is having two parents working. One parent should be a full time home maker that takes care of the kids, goes to PTO meetings, etc.

This is in part an unintended consequence of women's lib.

heh, women's lib is the cause of the two income household? it's more like it has become more expensive to live and the two household income has become a requirement. even for people who live below their means, a single income house is too hard

 

[BoberFett]

No, this is an unintended consequence of the rise of corporatism. Before women entered the workforce, a man working one job could provide well for his family, buying a house, car , groceries and health insurance. Real wages have been stagnant since Reagan.

No, this is what happens when Americans become spoiled children who think having two or more brand new cars parked in the garages of their huge homes filled with tons of crap they don't need is their birthright.

The single income family couldn't live like most Americans expect to now, that's true. But a single income family can easily live the kind of life that people had back when single income families were the norm.

 

[matt0611]

No, this is an unintended consequence of the rise of corporatism. Before women entered the workforce, a man working one job could provide well for his family, buying a house, car , groceries and health insurance. Real wages have been stagnant since Reagan.

Real wages have been stagnant, but real compensation has been keeping up with productivity. Blame health care costs (and government intervention)

Also, back then we had the most capital, high savings, highest productivity, we exported far more than any other country and got paid the highest wages.

How far we have fallen...

 

[Greenman]

My kids went to a very good private school, cost $3500 a year each.

 

[theevilsharpie]

The biggest problem with the public school system is a lack of motivation on behalf of the student. Since social promotion became the norm, there is no consequence to the student for failing, and by the time schools actually begin imposing standards (late high school), students are in a position to legally drop out. You can talk about the ills of overpaid administrators, apathetic parents, or ineffective teachers all day long, but without genuine cooperation from the student, nothing else matters.

So, how do we solve this problem? Simple:

1. Restore accountability by mandating standardized testing at every level from grades 1-12 at giving it real teeth. The student must meet the minimum requirements to pass on to the next grade. If the student doesn't pass the test, they don't move on to the next grade. Period.

2. Incentive students to succeed by paying them for performance. A's are worth more than B's, which are worth more than C's, etc. And by payment, I don't mean bullshit like dance tickets or stuffed animals, I mean cold, hard cash. And to disincentivize failures, fine the parents if the student has to be retained.

These two things alone would dramatically boost scores and eliminate the "achievement gap" in a generation.

 

[Fenixgoon]

yes. the simple solution is to have parents beat their kids and actually be parents for once.

 

[Pulsar]

Baloney it's about the student. It's about the parent.

I'll make this very VERY simple. This week we had 3 snow days because of a storm. I still had to go to work. I got to listen to 4 of my engineers (educated people, right?), talk about how their wives simply couldn't handle having to stay home and deal with the kids.

Yeah, you heard that right. So-called mothers and fathers who can't wait to get their kids back into latchkey and school. In fact 3 of those engineers pay money for the school to keep their 4 year olds in day-long preschool so their wives can go back to work.

What the hell America. We've become a land of idiots who want to keep up with the Jones'. People have kids just because they think they should have them - then they ignore them, ship them to daycare, and can't wait to get them off to college.

Then they wonder why little Johnny is socially maladjusted, doesn't do well in school, and ends up dropping out and holding up a 7-11.

I'll give you a hint. My wife stays home (because she WANTS to). She spends actual time with my children. Each one completes their homework when they get home, and she helps them with it. In addition, they all get tutoring on the subjects they are weakest in. All three of my sons have learning disabilities. One couldn't talk until he was 4. One has trouble with long term memory because he was deprived of oxygen at birth. The last one has a bit of a temper issue that we're working through at home. Yet all 3 get A's in school and ENJOY going.

Yeah, we might be paying too much for all the extra administrative staff, managers, and other bullshit schools have tacked on (business manager? Really?). At the same time, there's only one place to look when kids fail in school and at life - and it isn't the school.

200 years ago school was a LUXURY, yet people still managed to get educated. Yet now we're so much more refined.... and we've got morons who can't raise their kids.

 

[Zorkorist]

Vouchers are the way to go... let the parents place their kids in the school of their choice.

It will neccesitate competition among schools, which can only lead to better students.

-John

 

[iGas]

Can we ever remake public schools to get costs under control and better results?

It is not going to happen, because of the entitlement mentality.

 

[IronWing]

Vouchers are the way to go... let the parents place their kids in the school of their choice.

It will neccesitate competition among schools, which can only lead to better students.

-John

No. We can see that vouchers have bled money from the public schools and disappeared into unaccountable charter schools. We see for-profit charter schools popping up that skim the money intended for education to enrich the owners.

 

[iGas]

Baloney it's about the student. It's about the parent.

I'll make this very VERY simple. This week we had 3 snow days because of a storm. I still had to go to work. I got to listen to 4 of my engineers (educated people, right?), talk about how their wives simply couldn't handle having to stay home and deal with the kids.

Yeah, you heard that right. So-called mothers and fathers who can't wait to get their kids back into latchkey and school. In fact 3 of those engineers pay money for the school to keep their 4 year olds in day-long preschool so their wives can go back to work.

What the hell America. We've become a land of idiots who want to keep up with the Jones'. People have kids just because they think they should have them - then they ignore them, ship them to daycare, and can't wait to get them off to college.

Then they wonder why little Johnny is socially maladjusted, doesn't do well in school, and ends up dropping out and holding up a 7-11.

I'll give you a hint. My wife stays home (because she WANTS to). She spends actual time with my children. Each one completes their homework when they get home, and she helps them with it. In addition, they all get tutoring on the subjects they are weakest in. All three of my sons have learning disabilities. One couldn't talk until he was 4. One has trouble with long term memory because he was deprived of oxygen at birth. The last one has a bit of a temper issue that we're working through at home. Yet all 3 get A's in school and ENJOY going.

Yeah, we might be paying too much for all the extra administrative staff, managers, and other bullshit schools have tacked on (business manager? Really?). At the same time, there's only one place to look when kids fail in school and at life - and it isn't the school.

200 years ago school was a LUXURY, yet people still managed to get educated. Yet now we're so much more refined.... and we've got morons who can't raise their kids.

50 years ago school was a luxury.

 

[IronWing]

50 years ago school was a luxury.

In 1960? In the US? No it wasn't. We had a very strong public education system supported by the vast majority of Americans.

 

[DominionSeraph]

.
7. Reduce the burden that state sponsored standardized testing puts on teachers.
Having to teach kids to pass the standardized tests instead of just teaching them is another huge problem within the education system.
Although I am now years removed from high school, I can still remember the ridiculous amounts of time spent preparing and teaching specifically for the standardized test instead of general teaching that would give us the knowledge to pass the tests without issue.

In my public school test prep just consisted of a week of refreshing what we'd learned two grades before.
A school shifting to teaching to the standardized tests would indicate that their previous methods were failing to keep the students up to standard. If that was not the case there would never have been a need to shift the educational practice. Getting rid of the tests would not help -- you would simply have no metric by which to judge how badly they were failing.

 

[iGas]

In 1960? In the US? No it wasn't. We had a very strong public education system supported by the vast majority of Americans.

My bad, I was thinking of something else. Public school were available for all in the US, but university were out of reach for many people in the 50s~60s (college still is out of reach for many people presently but it is easier to achieve than 50~60 years ago).

Correct me if I'm wrong...I think the first Chinese/Canadian that were allowed to enter university in Canada was 1964 or was it 1946.

 

[Zorkorist]

No. We can see that vouchers have bled money from the public schools and disappeared into unaccountable charter schools. We see for-profit charter schools popping up that skim the money intended for education to enrich the owners.

Vouchers have never been allowed. So we have seen none of that, obv.

-John

 

[IronWing]

Vouchers have never been allowed. So we have seen none of that, obv.

-John

Welcome to Arizona.

 

[Zorkorist]

lol Arizona doesn't have vouchers... and even if it did, what you posted would not be the conclusion.

-John

 

[theeedude]

University of Phoenix model worked out great for higher education, let's apply it to primary.