I feel your pain!!!
And the knee-jerk responses / solutions from both sides of the aisle are not doing this generation any justice at all.
Pearson Report Finds US Schools to be Just Average
from educationnews.com
http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/pearson-report-finds-us-schools-to-be-just-average/
A new report by Pearson finds that among the education systems of 40 developed nations around, the world the United States ranks squarely in the middle at #17. Among the countries topping the list are the perennial front-runners South Korea and Finland. In its report, Pearson doesn’t just seek to order the nations based on [...]
This is a great report as far as identifying the issues that have led us to where we are. And like the great Bill Parcells says, "You are what your record says you are". And currently, we are # 17. Middle of the pack amongst comparable nations. Mediocre. The N.Y. Mets of education worldwide. That is unacceptable!!
Lessons in country performance in education
http://thelearningcurve.pearson.com/the-reportWhen a smart guy like Bill Gates cannot make smaller school size (and by extension smaller class sizes) the answer, then that in and of itself won't work. Although his letter on the topic after he gave up the fight is a pretty good outline that folks who are serious about fixing the problem can use to make some real progress.
This is from 2008. And we are still slipping.
Bill Gates - A Forum on Education in America
November 11, 2008
Prepared remarks by Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee
Prepared remarks by Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bill-gates-2008-education-forum-speech.aspx
Actually some of his wife Melinda's comments (linked) and suggestions were as good or better than Bill's:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/melinda-gates-2008-education-forum-speech.aspx
Our foundation has a vision of a thriving post secondary market of community colleges, four-year colleges, online options, and for-profit institutions that would compete for students on the basis of price, value, and convenience–with a premium paid when a student completes a degree that means something in the workplace.
In the next several years, our work will focus on two-year colleges. These are the schools that enroll the majority of low-income students. Most community colleges have open admission, low tuition rates, and with 1,200 of them around the country, most people live near one. Community colleges have untapped potential for getting students the credentials they need to earn a living wage.
We will take this cause to business leaders, labor leaders, civil rights leaders, and do everything we can to unify these voices in a call for change. And we’ll keep coming back, again and again, to call for more.
No country has the resources to guarantee a livelihood for people who aren’t willing to work hard. But nothing is more damaging to a country than to have millions of young people with no opportunities. In any society, there will always be some who perform well and others who don’t.
But in a strong society, those differences are determined by people’s talent and energy and not by the income of their parents.
That’s why we’re committed to this work—we know of no better way to expand opportunity and make the future brighter for millions of Americans.
Higher pay would work, bit only in combination with removal of lower producing slugs who don't really want to be in the profession. When it is 50 times easier for an M.D. to lose his/her license than it is for a teacher to lose their certificate -- when common-sense indicates the ratio probably should be in the reverse -- then clearly something is wrong with the system. And it needs to be fixed!!!
Time for both sides to put some of their pride and prejudices aside (biases, preconceived notions, whatever) and do what is right for the kids.
Timothy Dalrymple wonders whether education reform should be one of the great objectives for American Christians in the twenty-first century. Taking up that cause will require overcoming the intransigence of the teachers’ unions:
Try firing an ineffective teacher. Roughly 1 in 50 doctors lose their medical license. Only 1 in 2500 teachers ever lose their teaching credentials. Process that for a moment. It’s much easier to become a teacher than a doctor, yet teachers are fifty times less likely than doctors to be removed from the profession. One of the statistics cited in Waiting for Superman, an extraordinary documentary on the crisis of American public education, is that only 61 out of Illinois’ 876 school districts have attempted to fire even one teacher, and only 38 of those districts were successful. The tenure system — designed to give the most accomplished university professors the freedom to advance new ideas in their teaching and writing without fear of reprisal from their employers, and gained only after many years and rigorous examination — has become an iron shield protecting ineffective teachers who earned their tenure after two years. Good teachers are a national treasure. Bad teachers who refuse to change their ways are leeches on the system who cannot be removed and who miseducate our children into truancy and joblessness.
from ibtimes.com
US 17th In Global Education Ranking; Finland, South Korea Claim Top Spots:
A report that accompanied the rankings suggested that promoting a culture that is supportive of education is more important than the amount of money invested.
The report said that the success of Asian nations in the rankings reflects the complex impact each society's attitude toward education has in defining its effectiveness.
“More important than money, say most experts, is the level of support for education within the surrounding culture. Although cultural change is inevitably complex, it can be brought about in order to promote better educational outcomes,” the report said.
The study also underscored the importance of good teachers in improving educational output.
“Having a better [teacher] is statistically linked not only to higher income later in life but to a range of social results, including lower chances of teenage pregnancy and a greater tendency to save for their own retirement,” the report noted.
However, there was no agreed-upon list of traits to define or identify an excellent teacher or recipe for obtaining one, the report said.
In general, the teaching profession commands greater respect in nations with successful education systems than in those that do not. However, higher salaries accomplish little by themselves, according to the report.The study suggested that countries with a greater choice of schools provided better educational outcomes than those that offered fewer choices of schools.
“For-profit private education is providing students in some of the least-developed areas of the world an alternative to poor state provision and showing the potential benefits of choice and accountability,” the study said, adding that parental pressure on educational institutes for better performance should not be seen as impediments.
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment