Is it a lack of funding that stops this from being a reality? A lack of qualified applicants? Is there a good reason this model wouldn't work?
-- no profit in it (as observed above) -- we don't really respect teachers or education in the US -- school boards and local politicians want control over curricula and political agendas. Can you imagine some bright amazing young teacher teaching unadulterated evolution in some counties in Texas?
Kids are seen as a cost, not an asset or an investment, and we like to cut costs. And I do think there are broad swathes of the political establishment that are really invested in keeping America dumb.
That's probably the most important answer right there. If teachers had the same, or even higher, status in society as doctors and lawyers (had just as many tv-series where they were superstars etc.) we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
The same issues with measuring performance exists in those other jobs as well, but the perspective on teaching is always from the top. Everone's an expert in a way that's not true for law and medicine (to carry on the metaphor above).
To me this sounds as crazy as thinking that the US government knew about 9/11. Unless your under living under extraordinary circumstances (a disease bankrupting you, etc) nothing can stop you from learning. People choose how they spend their free time if they choose to watch TV instead of learning, it's their own choice not some mandate from the establishment.
I doubt people are actively trying to keep the population dumb, but this sounds like it would have such a side-effect.
[1]http://www.amazon.com/Building-Better-Teacher-Teaching-Every...
[2]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html...
Herein lies the problem. People in control of the system are afraid to trust. It's a tradeoff for them, and they choose heavily standarized education that delivers mediocre but predictable and consistent results over an education that could deliver significantly better results but is much harder to quantify. They also get measured and promoted based on some performance metrics , so it's not surprising that they decided to screw up the system to make it more quantifiable.
Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework?
Ozkan Erena, Daniel J. Henderson
Following an identification strategy that allows us to largely eliminate unobserved student and teacher traits, we examine the effect of homework on math, science, English and history test scores for eighth grade students in the United States. Noting that failure to control for these effects yields selection biases on the estimated effect of homework, we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.
Google 'flipped classroom' (which is often IT based but need not be) for a common approach in UK.
And now we're right back to evaluating performance and firing.
When I was in college, I knew of only one person who was competent in our mathematics classes whose aim was to be a HS teacher.
For many, teaching is a career they fall into. When a couple starts a family, for instance, one of the spouses will seek a job in teaching so that his or her hours will eventually be aligned with their children's.
I know very few successful engineers or journalists (etc.) who switch to a career in teaching. Those folks teach night school at the local college.
Maybe if we made teachers, full-time, year-round professionals? I know administrators are, but I'm talking about the people who are actually in the classroom. Summers can be spent improving instruction, maybe in a collaborative session with other teachers.
The problem is, again, money.
(Edit: spelling and clarity)
Moreover, most of the professors at my institution came from industry. They also did not originally aim for teaching, but switched into it. Many of them happen to have a PhD, but there is no research at my college (it's a polytechnic institute). If high school teachers had the same level of respect and comparable pay (and were similarly sought after), I see no reason why this couldn't also occur in high schools. We do, after all, see so many articles on HN about how there aren't enough jobs for our graduates.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that this might severely cripple the people who entered the profession because of its' family-friendly schedule.
I'm glad to hear that most of the mathematics majors at your undergrad institution were intending to be teachers. That gives me some hope.
[Specifically, I was responding to the 'hire for one year with oversight' bit.]
I see a cultural basis for some of the problem. Money is a huge factor. But if you are going to give more money, you're going to want to demand more. Some of the teachers in place now aren't particularly competent. By making it a more demanding profession perhaps we can get more people who want to do it for love of a subject rather than convenient hours.
If bad teachers could be fired! then the money spent on inspections would easily cover better pay for the good ones. But the unions must be smashed first.
So I hear teachers whine about their long hours, but I remember perfectly well that "teaching" consists of putting a video on then going outside for a smoke. For the same pay as the guy who actually does a lesson.
You'd do well to consider that not all teachers act the way you describe; but that might require some small effort on your part to get over yourself.
B) Letting great teachers do their thing would require the government to voluntarily give a large group of people autonomy (which is why many great teachers elect to take a lower salary at a private school, where they have more latitude)
The reason why your model wouldn't work is that nothing concrete was stated.
Deleted comment