What changes do you feel are needed in are educational system?

Question

I have read a few questions/ answers that blame teachers' unions. The answer to solving America's problem with our educational system is much more complicated. While some of the actions of teachers' unions are too blame, without them, teacher's pay would be too low.

1. Tenure - It is almost impossible to get rid of bad teachers and what could be very good teachers become complacent and stubborn if they know they have total job security. Also merit based incentives for teachers seem to be a good idea.

2. Parental/ Society Accountability - School districts are being held accountable for not being able to teach kids that do not want to learn and parents that are not in a position to help.

3. Stigma against vocational programs - sometimes kids are right when they say they will never use what they are being taught in high school. Let's begin career preparations earlier in life, and design education programs to be more career focused.

What do you think???

Answer 1

My kid is in elementary school. I think that #1 - the incentives for teachers to earn merit-based rewards would really help. I respect the teaching profession but I find that many public school teachers let too many things go and our children are traumatized whether they are above average student to a child that needs addtional help. (Geniuses aside who are over-rewarded and traumatized much later, but still traumatized).

I think #2 would help if we empower parents to a degree and offer assistance to families with single parents, both parents working and if only 1 parent is earning, and all other scenarios.

I'm not sure if #3 would work, That would require a lot of change in the way the children are taught in the US - and children learn in different ways and different times so that might be hard. We may end up putting so much pressure on our kids that we would regret it. Also, I think that would lead to limitations on the child to fit into a particular vocational learning. I think that the future needs to be guided, not pre-defined.

Answer 2

I am going on 42 years old and started public school in 1969. The public school system in the US was guided by local school boards, there was no National Education Association. In Florida, where I grew up, phonics was taught beginning in Kindgergarten and up though the lower grades, so kids were reading by 1st grade and progressed from there. In 1976 Jimmy Carter was elected president and he created the National Education Association, who promptly threw out everything in every state that worked and brought in their own liberal view of "learning". They got rid of phonics and brought in the "sight words" way of learning to read. The classroom curriculum was now set by the Association instead of local school boards and teachers who knew what their kids needed best. Also, desegregation was a factor, it was a necessary thing, but not at the expense of bussing kids miles and miles from thier homes to attend a different school all because of their skin color. This affected not only the neighborhoods these kids lived in (some neighborhoods went bust), but also affected the fact that kids were sent to schools across town and were forced into unfamiliar environments. Anyway, the national curriculum became so degraded that kids that graduated from high school in the late 70's and early 80's were not prepared for college or life in the real world. I graduated in 1982, with business math and 1 course of liturature, and very little science. I never had algebra or anything beyond that, I never had any kind of writting class that involved research, I never had any kind of science beyond what would be considered 8th grade by today's standards. Yes, in the past 25 years education has improved. But I believe that in order to get kids today to the level they once had, the locals need to take back over the education of their own communities. Yes, there was always a national standard, but local educators know their kids and communities the best. We also need to put the power back into the teachers hands and not the administrators.

Answer 3

I think that tenure isn't really a big issue. Let an experienced teacher do what they know how to do. If they aren't good teachers don't let them stay around long enough to get tenure. As far as vocational programs are concerned, I think that if children were able to choose more of what they learned in high school they would be more likely to actually learn it.

Answer 4

I believe the educational system needs to get back to the job of preparing people to grasp basic concepts of understanding. Schools need to steer away from parenting and trying to "enlighten" students about individuality, let them explore that at recess. It's not that complicated to push a reading, writing, arithmitic agenda, devoid of any multi-culturalism, pro-diversity, or anything not directly related to gaining the 'basic' skills to get along at the lowest common denominator.

Too much of teacher and administrator's time is focused on trying to inform, instead of teach. Get the focus off of culture and back to understanding basic concepts. Too much discussion is placed on diversity, creating more conversation, using up more time that could truly be used more effectively educating. Too many offending scenarios occur when you try and accomodate everyone's "uniqueness". I have not found too many folks that get offended by a math lesson.

This isn't the most well-thought-out answer, but doesn't it kind of make sense?? Keep it simple, keep multi-layered administration out, and give students enough of a solid foundation to expand off of without totally occupying their time with offence avoidance.

Answer 5

Ship off into other classrooms/schools bad kids, kids who have NO desire to learn. Back in the day when I was a punk, they put the bad kids in Gym Apprecation(Gym 1.5 hours per daily).

Classroom disruption is NO way to teach, learn and thrive in school.

Put more emphasis on vo-tech programs which will have a future...auto, hvac, computer eng, construction trades.......

Btw...Teacher should be paid more.......

Answer 6

give responsibility for kids back to the parents, take it away from the law...go back to the three R's, the way they used to teach from the 50's back...make our teachers go back to school, half of them are idiots..give teachers absolute power over students, the way it used to be.
Ahhh, forget about it, it'll never happen, our society's shot to hell anyway !!!!!!!!!

Answer 7

I think teachers should be paid more. We pay our sports heros and rock stars, why do we not pay the people who are educating our future?? Maybe they would feel more appreciated and respected.

Answer 8

Can not have the blind leading the blind.