Reinventing the School
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We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate and dedicated teachers. Passion trumps intelligence for teachers just about every time. The best teachers don't teach so much as they light the fire in a kid to learn. It's a subtle but important difference.
If I were designing better schools I'd stick with the basic group format up through about 8th grade, then go to a community college type model where every kid could branch off to follow their interests. The universe of stuff that everybody needs to know is much smaller than most people presume. Everybody needs to write well, read well, and handle math up through about Algebra I. After that, it is all electives. So after about 8th grade, when the 3 Rs should be solid in most kids, let them do what they want. That is how we handled our kids educations (we homeschooled) and it worked out very well. HSing is not an option for most, but the "system" can learn a lot from what works for homeschoolers.
At least at my school (a small rural secondary school), there just weren't enough classes to to "specialize" or focus on any one particular field. You just took the core classes every year: a science (sometimes), a math, an English.
Normally I would say "that's okay, you've got plenty of time to do that in secondary school (middle/high school)". But then you go on to say this:
> Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college.
If you just graduated from primary school, why are your peers going to college? That's quite odd. I suspect, in declining order of likelihood, that either "primary school", or "college", or "peers" is an error...
Yes, it does. [1]
> Secondary school is college.
No, secondary school is either equivalent to "high school" or equivalent to "middle and high school". [2] College is "post-secondary school". [3]
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_school#United_States
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_school#United_States
[3] e.g., http://www.cpec.ca.gov/SecondPages/CommissionHistory.asp
IE, my 8-12th grades had strict guidelines : must finish algebra, must have a course in each of the 4 primary sciences, must have world and us history and government, must have literature classes covering 4 time blocks from early writing -> Renaissance writing -> new world writing -> modern writing.
Must have gym, must have a foreign language (after 6 years of Spanish, and 2 years out of college, I can't remember a word of it since I never used it). I think I got one class per year I could "pick", and the closest to software / IT was web design which was just how to make a wordpress site, and never touched html / css / js.
In 5th year (~16 years old) you usually do 5 subjects - not sure if any of these are compulsory (English used to be, but I don't think it is now) - these are examined in your "Highers" (Higher Grades). I did Maths, Chemistry, Physics, English and Engineering Drawing (this was before CS was available, it is now).
Highers are used for University entrance and, in Scotland, depending on your birthday you can get your Highers and be off to University when you are 17. Sixth year at secondary school in Scotland is either used top up your exams if you didn't get enough to do the course you want, doing more advanced courses and/or going to parties...
The downside of this approach is that you specialise very early - basically you choose at 14. Which is great if you know what you want to do and not so good if you don't. This is aggravated by UK Universities traditionally having very focused courses e.g. I did a CS course and all we had was 4 years of Computer Science and Maths classes with some Statistics for light relief. Again this is great if you pick the right course and dreadful if you make a mistake.
[NB I have a 14 year old son and we've just been through the trauma of picking Standard Grade courses]
FYI Here is a exam paper for an Advanced Higher in Computing, which I think is pretty good:
http://www.sqa.org.uk/pastpapers/papers/papers/2012/AH_Compu...
The curriculum that schools follow turns people off to learning in my opinion. We as a society have become so set on fulfilling educational requirements that it takes the fun out of learning. I have a piece of paper worth over $100,000 that symbolizes my ability to memorize, regurgitate and forget information that my college decided would make me a contributing member of society. Don't get me wrong, I did take courses that I was interested in and I still use to this day, but I would bet that I can't tell you one thing that I learned from the majority of the required courses that I took because I was not interested in them.
Now that my curriculum days are done I've rediscovered the fun in learning. I would attribute that to my interest in the areas that I am exploring. What I find for myself, and this may be true for others as well, is that if I am truly interested in an area that I am learning about I can remember and actually use the information.
Teach children the basics and then the rest of their education should be interest based.
Agreed. It is reasonable that people who did poorly academically will be the ones who have the best insight on how to improve academic performance, and the teachers who struggled to understand a subject area will have the best insight on how to make the subject easier to learn.
*This trend did vary by demographics. Asian teachers had lower-than-average-for-a-teacher SAT's; African Americans had higher.
There are huge social problems that need to be addressed, which are unfortunately politically-incorrect, before we start changing schools.
Go visit a school in a very poor area sometime. They need social workers, not teachers.
The problem is that a lot of teachers don't want to be social workers, they want to be teachers.
So yes, deeper issues of inequality play a major role in education outcomes. But the education itself is also flawed.
Part of the reason for this is the political culture in our country. We tend to lurch from quick fix to quick fix. A reform is introduced, and three years later the world hasn't turned upside down, so a new reform replaces it. Repeat indefinitely. Or else, a simplistic solution, like expanding standardized testing, is pushed farther and farther every year, in the hopes that if we just take it far enough, it will solve all our problems.
Spot on about the middle classes also feeling it by the way. On the plus side, I know even in a poor school here they have consumer education classes which includes things such as balancing checkbooks, how financing big purchases works, how the stock market works, etc. It's very nice to see.
That may be true, but it is not clear if that will translate into a better education. Teacher pay in Canada puts many of them into the top 5% of earners, yet when demographically adjusted, students in the USA perform on par or sometimes even better than their Canadian counterparts. When observed as a whole, Canadian students show better performance, but that is, according to the study that I cannot seem to find now, due to demographic cohesion that is not found in the US.
This is happening today, we're helping power this transition at Clever (YC S12). Interested in helping out? We're hiring: http://getclever.com/about/jobs
But how would we actually go about achieving that goal in the actual world we live in? Well, we'd have to raise taxes[2], and a solid third of US citizens would veto any raise in taxes for any reason whatsoever, and another 50% or so would veto raising teacher salaries on tribal affiliation grounds (I'm assuming a fair amount of overlap between these groups), meaning, you probably have at least a solid plurality against the idea[1]. Not to mention the difficulty of how a city like Stockton, CA (now bankrupt) could achieve such a goal.
I hate to be so pessimistic, but I tend to believe that anything beyond tinkering with the margins of the school system is unlikely and probably politically impossible.
[1] For example, in Austin, TX, 2/4 of the last round of AISD bond initiatives passed, by very slim margins. And Austin is a rather liberal city.
http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/content/images/elect...
[2] Edit: or cut other things, in which case we're back to the same debate that's more or less immobilized our country for the last few years, thus illustrating my point.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/e...
IMHO, if we want to fix our education system, we need to cut the ties between funding and property values. Also, Democrats in office should probably get over the hard-line "no vouchers" position. With vouchers, they could also increase schools' funding to give them a better chance at competing. Of course, Republicans won't allow for the increased funding or "robin hood" funding. So yeah... we're screwed.
Maybe democrats should be a little less hardline but just expanding vouchers willy-nilly won't fix anything about the opportunity gap facing kids today.
I think the reason that the post feels all over the board to me is because of the complexity of the situation. The system is made up of teachers, administrators, boards, parents, materials, and (most importantly) kids. Fixing one doesn't fix them all. It gets even more complex when one looks at the socioeconomic situations of the systems.
Teachers are not in it for the money. The majority (nix that...the good ones I know) want to make a difference in society and the world around them. That being said, I'd love it if they were making more.
The socioeconomic ties can NOT be underplayed. Give every kid in a poor section of town an ipad and I would guarantee you that some would be sold, a lot would get busted, etc.
OP stated that "parents today are often left in the dark as to their child’s progress". This can be true. A lot of parents I see also can not be bothered to lift a finger to check up on how their kids are doing. As a part of the system, EVERY piece must be willing to step up. Only if most of the parts are strong can the system deal with weakness in other components.
Let's say a quarter of the parents are doing a crappy job. The teachers of those students have to work extra hard to engage those kids. Those kids have to work extra hard to push themselves.
Got some crappy teachers? Then the parents and kids need to work extra hard.
tl;dr: it's a complex system and every part must improve and take responsibility.
As a profession we strive to get all our students to engage, but we are with them for a few hours a week at best and have nowhere near as much impact on their lives as their parents.
Note, however, that I said 'succeed in school'. Many students have passed through my classroom door over the years, who have not achieved academically, but have gone on to achieve in later life. These students are often those for whom the Model Victorian Classroom is simply not appropriate.
The very concept that you can take a random sample of thirty teenagers, place them in a socially pressured environment and then expect them all to make academic progress under the tutelage of a single individual is frankly ridiculous.
Ken Robinson say's it far more eloquently than me though, and with pretty graphics to hammer home the point.
http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-...
Standardized testing implies you really have to nail the test design, and be vigilant that people aren't working just to the metric, and aren't cheating. (Freakonomics has a chapter on how they caught cheaters in Chicago. Apparently they caught them in other cities too but didn't have the courage to fire them elsewhere.)
It's very hard to get to a social change to pay them like Singapore.
I think the means to this ends is via charter schools. Parents know who the good teachers are, and they fight to get taught by them. Charter schools have found a way in some cases to pay up. I think parental voting (with their feet) can be even better than test-based metrics, which are imperfect at best. (Everything not on the test gets neglected)
This is a very complicated problem.
This type of post aggravates me. It's part of the reason why nothing ever gets fixed. Everyone thinks they're an expert when it comes to education. Yet no one understands the problems.
1. Education is not about employment.
If you teach a kid to be a great widget maker, his/her entire life hinges on the demand for widgets. If widgets become irrelevant, the skill set s/he has developed over 12+ years are useless. [a]
Can anyone, with any certainty, claim their skill set will create a livable income for them for the next 20 years? Probably not. So why would any k-12 school create a curriculum around todays job market?
2. The Education system is not broken (mostly).
Everyone likes to point to the fact that the US educational system is failing in comparison to the rest of the world.
Except...it isn't.
"While reading proficiency in Mississippi is comparable to Russia or Bulgaria, Massachusetts performs more like Singapore, Japan, or South Korea. Often better: Massachusetts students rank fifth in the world in reading, lapping Singapore and Japan, and needless to say, every state in the union." [1][2]
Our problem isn't that the system is broken. The problem is the most of the country isn't implementing the system correctly.[3] There are a lot of reasons for that, many of which have nothing to do with the educational system directly.
Now that's not to say there aren't problems with the current system:
a. Standardized tests only show how good kids are at taking a test. A skill that is wholly unneeded throughout the rest of society.
b. The US system is structured like a factory. The structure made sense when we lived in a time when we needed factory workers. Now we need people who can analyze, think and execute. We do not have a public school system that caters to that.
c. There is too much emphasis on employment and not enough on creating life long learning.
3. Education can't be solved with an algorithm.
Here's a personal anecdote.
I taught geometry in an urban [code for black, hispanic and immigrant] school system. Each year I taught, I had at least 2 kids who would leave school and go to McDonalds to work a 4-11 pm shift 3-4 nights a week. They did this so they could help feed themselves and their family [4].
They never did their homework. They never studies. They slept in the class frequently and most of them failed.
Do you think you can write some code to fix that problem?
4. Educate yourself before you fix the problem.
People who write posts like the OP have not spent any time talking to teachers or admins, let alone spending time in a classroom. Solving the education problem is incredibly complicated and, actually, doesn't have much to do with the schools.
[a]: Fun fact: My aunt graduated from college with a degree in Soviet Economics in 1987. She thought it guaranteed her a job in government for a long time. Hahaha!!!!!
[1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...
[2]: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_Globall...
[3]: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?...
[4]: This is just one problem in particular. I also had a number of kids with drug problems, problems at home, safety issues walking/taking the bus to school and a slew of other non-school related issues. This problem stand out because nobody is actively doing the wrong thing.
Every time someone mentions teachers pay relationship to education/grade quality I think they simply haven't taken a step back to compare against alternatives and looked at the numbers (adjusted). Sure a bad system will have marginally better performance when you throw money at it, but that is practically a given and doesn't provide proper systemic evaluation.
On average private school teachers make significantly less... http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55
And on average private school highschoolers have better or equal grades... (adjusted for student characteristics) http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.as...
Public school per student cost: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
(The above cost is excepted as an undercount by every source I can find though there is dispute by how much, see: "They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools" and a rebuttal here: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-they-spend-what that agrees with the undercounting but disagrees with CATO institutes exact figures).
Cost per student and a rebuttal/additional findings: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230382220457746... http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-31/news/36831030_...
Taking into account "cost per student" grades are the same or better with equivalent spending and are simply more cost efficient teaching systems. All this is without further drilling down into private school methodology to identify the highest efficiency implementations (the NAEP study suggests that the lutherans might be a one of several starting points for that investigation).
When you are putting people into a flawed system with perverse incentives, throwing money at the people involved is a poor attempt at a solution and is "mostly" a red herring.
If the claim is that these grade differences aren't really an education but a cultural and societal issue (ask yourself why "schools of choice" perform better?) than it needs to be addressed as such using a change in methodology and improvements in social services systems/spending.
I just graduated from high school in a relatively rural community where online classes were extremely popular among students. You got time in the computer lab, and had an "adviser" for each of your online classes. There were notes, assignments, tests, and quizzes. Sounds great right? Except students quickly discovered their "adviser" cared a lot less about online classes than the real counterparts, so notes and assignments quickly vanished from the curriculum. Computer lab time wasn't regulated by any means, so many students "helped" (read: cheated) each other on their quizzes and tests no one cared, even after several incidents were reported.
I even took two online classes my senior year. Each course was supposed to be a semester long, yet I got both of them done in less than a month. Sure, I was an honors/AP/gifted student, but a semester course shouldn't be that easy to complete in such a short amount of time. I took "Online Intro to Creative Writing," and none, NONE, of the writing assignments were required by my adviser. There was no context for the lessons; no discussions to solidify concepts.
Sure, my one experience is probably relatively isolated, but I have heard similar stories from other students in the state. Online learning, imho, isn't helping the problem, it's making it worse.
> a semester course shouldn't be that easy to complete in such a short amount of time.
Sure they can. When you go to college, by the way, take an absurd amount of CLEP tests. Preferably now. You can skip upwards of a year or two of attendance and save buttloads of money. You also save a lot of time. I completely avoided a senior year of college by CLEP testing out of all my schools requirement courses and it took me around 2 weeks of study per subject (rigorous, 4 - 6 hours a day) to accure enough to pass the tests. And I passed all 6 of them.
Your problem just demonstrates the trend - there is no "do this and everyone learns wonderfully and the world is butterflies and rainbows". People are different, will interact differently, and the capacity of an education system hinges on the participation and good intentions of all parties involved. I think that requires more voluntarism and self-motivation on the parts of students, and instructors and mentors that have passion for their craft.
The first thing that needs doing is to decouple learning speed and interests from the classroom, and to invert the teacher relationship from being the mass transmitter to being a consultant an coach.
Educational software will almost always be able to explain any particular subject better than the teacher who is located near you, but you still need to learn how to use that educational software, how to focus (or not) your interests, how to interact with online communities, and know what to do when things go wrong.