education reform: what would you do if you were president

Good stuff, but questions 98-100. lol

 

Yea, I amnot going through each problem in each section of the united states. That's why I gave the each section having their problem comment.

How is it the issue when we have more of a decentralized system than anything? The states do most of the decisions. In the mean time, we have been dropping in rankings. Each state has varies ratings on how their education is doing. This allows for one to be well educated in one state and poorly educated in another state. It goes even further with the counties.

The article does not mention what Arne Duncan is implementing from as far as I read. It mention what he thinks of of us lagging behind. Just because he gives his opinion, it does not mean the ED is involved. The ED(department of education) Has the decentralized system been successful? I can tell you that ED is not because it does not have the power to centralize. It only gives out money for the most part. States can ignore what it says and do whatever they want. The NCLB act was again decentralized. so I am happy to report making a decentralized bill to tell each state to set their own standards did not work. That is why Obama is going to come up with a bill to replace it. Had you simply said everyone must take the SAT or ACT and to pass you must have such and such score. That would put everyone on the same level. We do this remarkably for med school or to get into colleges or university and many other important fields and yet it is bad to do it here. why? That is what the NCLB act did. It told each state to make it's own standard and never mind the SAT or ACT you will need to get into college. If you want to set the bar low in that state then go ahead do it.

The purpose of ED is to fund programs. It has never been to improve the education standards. That is the state's purpose which is why I have said that the decentralized system is the problem. We have been dropping year by year due to this system.

 

My mentioning of NCLB was that it was only another government failure.

Didn't no left child behind go through the Department of Education? Why wouldn't this or similar centralizing legislation go through them?

Well isn't it funding programs that purport to be helping raise educational standards. A centralized system would be handled by ED (not DOE, excuse me), so wouldn't that be putting more responsibility/power on that department? I'm guessing you think that's a way to solve the education problem?

 

We need to get off this standardized testing fetish that we're on for one thing. Which can be a horrible indicator of academic performance. Not to mention biased against certain socioeconomic demographics.

I really don't see the need for a year long school year. There are other countries out there that send their children to school less than we do and our children still get out performed by them. To me it just sounds like one of those "tough love" solutions Americans always love to embrace when trying to solve a problem. Looks good on paper, and like 90% of the time still won't solve anything.

The "Merit Pay" for teachers idea sounds absolutely horrible. All it's going to do is discourage teachers, especially good ones, from teaching in low income, low performing, poverty stricken districts, and encourage grade inflation among the teachers who do work at those schools. You're going to have teachers who will not question administration for fear of bad evaluations and will essentially become nothing more than drones and "yes men".

The Department of Education in itself isn't the problem. How it's being run definitely is. I'm not sure who it was who said Ron Paul was right about needing to abolish the DoE but that's crazy. The DoE is broken in many ways but that doesn't mean it can't be fixed. You don't just throw it out and leave it to the states.

Our children are already abysmal when it comes to Math and Science compared to other developed nations. If Ron "Needlin" Paul and Randy "Private Businesses Should Be Able to Discriminate" Paul had their way half the states in this country would be teaching our children the Earth is 6000 years old and Jesus rode around on a dinosaur as perfectly credible theories alongside evolution, if they even bother with evolution. Or they could just do what they tried pulling in Texas, omitting the Transatlantic slave trade and renaming it the Atlantic Triangular trade, and pretty much omitting the Civil Rights movement as well as slavery's role in the Civil War. And downplaying Thomas Jefferson (one of the founding fathers they love going on about so much) seeing how he had a somewhat negative view of Christianity and wasn't afraid to say so.

Children in this country need to be taught how to think critically. Not just given a bunch of rote facts to remember with no understand of their contextual relevance in the hopes of passing a standardized test that doesn't really prove anything. I think how we teach our children, along with the lack of respect for the teaching profession in this country is the bulk of the problem. Parents bear some of the responsibility as well when it comes to instilling values but as far as I'm concerned it's the school's job to educate a child so they can become a productive member of society.

 

Agree with the bolded and that is what I try to do daily. But no matter how good and inspiring a teacher is, if education and it value is not enforced at home, the job is more diffcult by far. Hence why I teach ESL students.

 

That's more an indictment on those states whose populations would allow such a thing.

and archangel,
from their site the Department of Education sounds more than you mentioned

63 billion dollars and these stats from the article:

Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.

Is another 60 billion going to move us to 7th or 8th?? ED is a failure.

 

It has some success but yes it seems to have not worked very well.

The ED can not set standards. That's what the states do. No centralized legislation would go through them since this is a decentralized system. If you are talking about money to fund education than that would be the ED's job. By shutting it down, you basically eliminate stuff like PELL grants to help students get money to graduate. We have a very decentralized system. Too decentralized. That is why the NCLB didn't even try to centralize. It would be impossible without making a new department and getting the states to agree to it. Instead it works with the decentralized system. It simply tells the states to make up their own standards. That is not centralized. A centralized plan would be like what we do to get into college or becoming a doctor. Everyone must pass this one test and get at least this much points. This would help in showing that everyone has at least this much education no matter where you go in the USA.

The ED only gives money. It is heavily complicated to form a centralized system. This is beyond ED's purpose. I want a centralized system so that I can at least have a starting point on what kind of education everyone has. I don't want to go to Oregon and find out kids are getting High school diplomas but can't do geometry meanwhile in the state of Connecticut every one can do calculus. That is not stability. This is something that can happen in this country. All doctors must pass the same test no matter if they are from harvard or a small name college. I see nothing wrong with that or doing the same with students who graduate. It would save us not only money but time as well. We already have the SAT and ACT. Just assign a national score to graduate. This would be a centralized answer to making everything stable. It would not of course solve the problem as each state has issues that their people would have to solve but the concept of putting in centralized standards would solve quiet a few problems.

 

All of these point to giving out money. You don't of course blindly give money away. You also have to know where to give the money hence the collecting data and researching. You have to have rules on how to give money out so you make policies. Lastly, of course, we all know how this decentralized system has and continues to discriminate against minorities. You stop giving money to places that discriminate. You are still giving money away. That is their primary job.



The other section is that they give money away. They do not set standards. You are blaming them for giving money away and not blaming the states for not having a reform of their education system. It is not the ED that tells students when they can graduate. That is the state's job. They set the rules on education in each state from when you can attend to what you should learn to the quality of what you have learned. Your blame is on the wrong person. While I agree, our decentralized system is not working and giving more money to it will not help. taking it away so that the states have fewer resources will not help either. This is why a reform must occur.

 

The government doesn't need an entire 60 bil agency to give pell grants, unless close to that amount is being given in pell grants. Sadly, the rising cost of private tuition has made pell grants less effective than they used to be.

Sorry, must be my mistake, the minute I read decentralization is a problem, I assume you want to give more powers to centralize ED.

So you want one standardized test for all states, instead of individual state standards. At high school? All levels? Given the issues of locality (culture, race, class), I just don't see how that can be done without some large body looking over curriculum. If not ED, who assures we account for/agree/maintain a standard? What happens when teachers/schools are not meeting federal standards for tests?

 

I do not believe that they are just given the money to use for themselves. I believe they are given the money and figure out how to give it out to states. They would have congress on their case if they just simply spent the money for themselves.


Concerning the test:
Yes, that is what we should do. Once they hit 9th grade, you tell them you have 4 shots at it. The test is not there to grade the teachers though. That is a whole other issue. Culture, class, and race are not issues in my opinion on learning. However, there is discrimination still there. That is something else I would have to take a look at.

 

Look at the test BMJ posted? Tough, I never got anything that tough in grade school. Why are standards going down? How about our kids on all these meds or being diagnosed with ADHD/ADD?

 

and when they fail after the 4th try? then what? GED :lol:

 

Standards have not gone down. They have gone up. I was taking calc and college credit classes in high school. You couldn't do that decades ago. The question all depends on how far the child wants to go. I also didn't get a tough test like that but I doubt in real life you will be asked who the secretary of commerce is over knowing how to budget your money and credit cards.

 

Yup!

That's how we do it in FL. We give you three shots though. I passed the first shot.

 

That doesn't account for curriculum. You might be taking college courses, but what are the college levels teaching. Educator John Taylor Gatto writes about this, (he started my interest on this subject). In Junior high in a provincial township in PA in the 50's he was reading the conquest of Gaul in Latin.

 

Naturally. How does the education system in FL compare to the other states?

 

Yup! you are hitting it on the spot! They are reteaching the same damn class. The same algebra you took in high school is what they are teaching in college. The students then have to pay for it when they took it in high school. That is why we have the clep test and other things to avoid retaking a class you already learned. If I was governor(or when I become governor), I'd make a bill to add that any one who gets an A or B in their high School class should be elgible to take the CLEP test. This would save the ED and student some money.

 

We did very well on the race to the top but that is because there is no way to measure inside the system from a federal level. If you look at our graduation rate for black boys, it is horrible. I was very surprised to see this as I didn't know a black boy that didn't graduate from high school. The saying birds of the same feather flock together I suppose. However, I can't compare this state to any others as this is the only state I have lived in. I can do it from stats though.

In some areas, we have developed a system of simply pulling the child out if they are not doing well from the school. This way the school's rating does not go down. We encourage the child to do it online so no one is the wiser. lol
It is not a good system since the education of the child will still be lousy.

However, If you are doing good, we will pay for you to go to college for free. It really falls on the child.

 

America has to develop an educational system that fits its own unique needs, just like every country should. You can increase the school year all you want, if the incentives are not there to value education, it won't take years for it to become another tired idea that is moved to the refuse dump.

I look at America, a country so rich, yet so poor in many other areas of life. The political environment does not serve the reality of modern times. And what the markets, and the Ivy League schools have created are puppets promoting ideology not creativity.

It explains why most kids that get through the school gates, sometimes, end up rushing back to the real world before they are able to complete their degrees so they can innovate, and not be boggled down by worn out ideas that are hardly in sync with their motivations in their lives. School drop-outs that are innovating litter Silicon Valley.

So what is there to do? Make education free. It is a merit good.The more access you allow the more opportunities you create for disadvantaged kids to compete with the children of the elites that have built cultural capital in terms of values and attitudes over generations. The more education you have the more awareness, and the less crime and the better choices you have for people within the shores of America.

Free education should be a national priority not an ideological fight determined on market principles. It should rather be on a value based theme, just like the pursuit of nationals security goals. It should be reclassified as a national security issue just like food security. You don't want overweight kids, fed on junk diets, in America. But rather kids nurtured on respect for ideas and intellectual concerns.

 

Doesn't making it free destroy quality?
There's a reason why the US has more international students than anyone else.