More A's, More Pay 366
theodp writes "Little slashdotters may find teacher a tad more upset when they screw up on a test. The Dept. of Education just launched the first federal program that uses bonuses to motivate teachers who raise test scores in at-risk communities, awarding $42M this month to 16 school systems. Any fears that teachers might cook the books to score a typical $5,000 payoff? Not to worry, says Chicago's school chief, there are statistical analyses in place that spot testing irregularities, presumably better at catching Cheaters than those used in the past."
This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
In any public job, allowing the employee to grade their output is going to end up with the grades falling into the average level as much as possible. If a public employee has too many failing students, they'll get fired. If they have too many students doing above average, they don't have a reason to ask for more money. With mostly average students (say, grade C or so), you can always say you can do better with more money. Since most teachers don't have a student for more than a few years, this can go on ad infinitum.
I'm against publicly funded education entirely, but I would be 100% satisfied with TRUE free market grading systems. The ACT and SAT are not realistic scoring systems -- even though the ACT says they are a private organization. We need REAL grading companies who settle the knowledge of students. Why should a 12 year old always be in the 6th grade? Shouldn't various students of various abilities be judged to their level by what the market needs? Shouldn't education be partially based on what will be required of the student if they were to enter the industry at a certain knowledge level?
To me, this feels like more teachers' union cronyism and preferential treatment to keep private industry out of the education system. What we need is more competition and less paternalism in this very-important market. Let us see what would happen when real competition creeps into the system -- not more regulation.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
But letting the "free market" handle it is suicide. You'd end up with multiple "tiers" of schools. Good schools for rich people, bad schools for poor people. Which is exactly how it is now, except that the poor people would be even WORSE off, because they'd be paying more, and wouldn't get any funding from the state to fix things, or any hope of changing the situation through elections.
Or are you one of those idealists that thinks that companies in the "education business" would actually give a shit about the schools in poor areas? Because they wouldn't. They'd run them as cheaply as possible, and simply raise the rates at the schools for rich people. Much better margins on the rich kids, you see. The schools for poor kids aren't where the money is at.
The "free market" isn't good at providing services for the public good, because what is good for the public is rarely good for the bottom-line.
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For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people. And what about Wal*Mart? They take back any returns without many questions, offer incredible price discounts, and pay their long-term employees well. What about the ma
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't say that a privately-run school would "take advantage" of the poor. I said that they would spend as little as possible, since they would know that their customers couldn't pay very much.
Let's say you had a privately-run school in a poor area. They offer the absolute bare-minimum education, and their margins are very, very low. Eventually, they decide that they aren't making enough money, or possibly are even LOSING money, so they sell the school to a different company. What is that company going to do first? Cut costs in every way. They'd have to. Hire cheaper teachers, buy cheaper equipment, cut every corner. Eventually THAT company will probably give up.
What happens when no company wants to serve a given area with schools, because they can't really make a decent profit on it? Remember, a given corporation/investment group doesn't HAVE to start a school with their money. They can do whatever they want. Why would they invest millions into a school in a poor area if they could invest that same money in to some more profitable venture?
And you want me to show you one competitive market that is bad to the poor? You've never found any, you say? How about health insurance, or healthcare in general. There's a couple of free-markets that have screwed the poor. You really didn't think of those?
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In other words, privatizing the educa
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One of the problems a lot of people seem to have is that there will be disparity between the education of the wealthy, and the education of the poor.
You got part of it right (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Most people are not qualified to comparison shop. To truly coparison shop between drugs, treatments and hospitals you need lots of information and some knowledge of statistics. Most people just can't do this type of analysis. Therefore you need to rely on the opinions of health care providers and licensing boards. It is not like shopping for clothes and comparing Wal-Mart to Target.
2) Even if you are qualified to do this, in
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you'd know that they're being taught how to pass some third party standard which is probably going to make them corporate drones. The companies in turn don't give a damn since they're importing all their actual non-drone workers from asia and using visas to keep them in line.
Go to your township tomorrow, get a budget of the local education system, and divide it by teachers. Guess what? You'll probably come up with a 70% loss rate -- where'd the money go? To the bureaucrats!
Since we all know that facilities, supplies, non-teacher workers (janitors, security guards, etc.), field trips, after school programs don't cost anything.
they might also pick a school that sticks with the same basic education text books for a few years rather than replacing them every year with little-to-no difference.
Have you even GONE to a public school in the US or do you just pull all of this out of your ass? I mean, hell in my elementary school we used books from the 70s and 80s due to budget reasons, they only got new ones when the old ones became so inconsistent or plain old as to be unusable.
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The school district in my community is in a tough situation. They've been teaching eleme
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Here's a clue. Wal*Mart can charge so little for two reasons: they are gigantic, and their product are crap.
For point one, the government is gigantic. For good or bad, they do have the infrustructure already in place to handle this shit. We aren't funding our schools enough. I mean for fuck's s
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Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Public education programs like M2M in Georgia (majority to minority) give kids from downtown atlanta a chance to get a better public education in the 'burbs on the state's dime. Many of these kids are from low income families where education is not exactly an emphasis.
A lot of these kids who I graduated with were insistant on getting formal "college prep" education, and the schools downtown focus on "job prep" degrees.. in a free market, these students would have been lost in the ghetto forever.
As for "no truely competitive markets that are bad for the poor" - the only thing more ridiculous than liberal idealism is economic idealism. There is no such thing as a "truely competitive market," and if there was, the poor would be the last ones to be able to take advantage of it. Poor people are at the disadvantage of not being able to drive around like people with cars and BP cards, so shopping around isnt exactly an option. Maybe you've heard of the "food desert" theory of urban nutrition? People without vehicles have to go where they can walk or where the bus can take them. You would leave a lot of kids out in the cold - the whole American Dream(tm) where a kid from the most humble upbringing can get an education and a good job depends heavily on standardized public education.
Now, our public school system as a whole is very corrupted, but I think that the tenure system put in place by teachers unions is the root of the problem. Young, freshly educated teachers are put in the worst possible situations and have to spend years to get anywhere in the system, while old crotchety dinosaurs climb the ranks and get the raises merely because they have been there the longest... not exactly a good formula for growth and development, eh? Also, it leads to a lot of "I put my time in, I'm getting mine" behavior - there was a scandal around here with teachers 'retiring' and getting rehired immediately so that they could be drawing pensions AND getting paid their salaries.. its stealing, plain and simple. Taking twice the paycheck for doing the same amount of work, taking money away from the education system in the process. SOMETHING needs to change, but I don't feel like a Free Market system would be the right choice.
Im all for a free-market TEACHER system with standardized testing. Maybe try and adjust it with a baseline score to reflect improvement versus just raw scores to avoid punishing educators in less educated-oriented environments.. Give raises to the teachers who TEACH. Just make sure they dont take a dive for the pre-test...
This is all a ramble- its like 3am here and i've been studying medchem all day.. take from it what you will. Remember though, its like grandaddy said:
"if there was an easy answer, no one would have to argue about it, would they?"
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How about private police? Private firefighters? Private hospitals? Private schools? All of these were the norm before the government (mostly) took over. And guess what, poor people couldn't afford them. You are assuming that just because education would become cheaper overall that it would still be affordable for poor people. Without a government monopoly these things ar
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Yeah right everybody knows that the gov't is more efficient and wastes less money than private companies that are actually interested in keeping their customers. Oh wait.
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That's a pretty ridiculous concept, actually, considering that the free market of competition helps the poor more than it helps the rich.
How do you figure that ?
For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people.
Exactly. And because you're "rich", you have more disposable income leftover after paying for a service with a price set so the poor can afford
Free market: like in your healthcare system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same basically as the American healthcare system
I think you really need to rethink your 'let the free market sort it out' kind of philosophy.
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Wrong question - Can you find poor areas that don't have Wal-Marts? While I don't know about Wal-Mart itself, I do know that a lot of businesses avoid high-crime, low-income areas, which are generally the areas that are suffering the most from the inadequacies of the current system.
Competitive markets are based on two things: profit margins, and that some companies will fail.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Interesting)
That the "buyer" of public education is a citizen. But it doesn't have to be.
The "buyer" of public education can remain, as it is now, the government. By this criteria, the government decides how to reward schools for good performance and part of that could be rewarding for improving education in poor areas. In other words, the system breaking down under your analysis assumes that the citizens pay and rich citizens can pay more. This part of the free market system actually already exists. It's called a private school.
What the department of education is doing is creating competition within their suppliers of education (i.e. public schools).
I'd say, if you "objectively" rate education levels and reward based on objective criteria, this system has a chance of working.
Make no mistake, an algorithm for doing this requires some thought, but I think it can be done.
For example, consider this:
Schools earn x-y dollars per student where the actual value is determined by an objective performance measurement
Objective performance measurements are done nationally.
The performance measurement changes year by year based on national averages.
Of course, this does mean that areas pre-disposed to have smarter kids (e.g. rich kids who can afford better education aids, tutors, books, etc.) would tend to have better schools because it is easier to get better results but these schools would also tend to have more competition.
The free market would come up with innovative ways to tap the lower end market with new education ideas. Possibly things like more computer aided teaching so that there could be a lower teacher/student ratio without sacrificing education quality. Never underestimate the power of a free market and the desire to earn a buck.
Imagine if you were an entertainment company and you could sell software to schools that would teach kids how to read at an accelerated pace in a fun environment with less teacher involvement. Make kids want to learn. You'd have an automatic market for your product because the schools would want to buy it to increase their bottom line.
I know there are issues with this model but I also believe that a model can be designed that would ultimately be quite simple that would work and, I bet you almost any amount of money, you'd see amazingly innovative ideas that would give us better education cheaper.
Sunny
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Excellent. Schools that suffer the poorest performance, hence need the most help, get the least funding. Bravo. You've managed to reverse engineer the existing problem to perfection while maintaining that your new and fresh 'solution' is a bright alternative. You have a strong future in School Board politics.
Seriously, the vast vast vast majority of people who complain about and make decision
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a few seconds of google-fu and you can check your dire predictions against school voucher programs in practice.
A few artic
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Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Most families with children who make under 30 or 35K per year are in the same boat. If we eliminated property tax for landlords, this would amount to approximately $50-100 per month on an apartment valued at $50K. This would not solve the problem. And if we removed employer paid FICA, this would just kill Social Security and Medicare, which is all most of our poor population has to rely on after 65.
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This is for the US? I would dearly love to see your sources on this. Mine indicate that before the 1980s, income tax rates were significantly higher at the higher ends of incomes, although I'd be interested in seeing
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The parent wrote:
It's an awfully good thing you chose to put the word "partially" in there. As I see it, education is supposed to produce people who can:
Re:This is cronyism at its finest (Score:5, Interesting)
This is unbelievable and one of the reasons I've always "lobbied" against public education where teachers are also graders. It is my firm belief that you don't grade your own work.
You've never taught, have you ? Grading is by far the most time consuming part of the job, and the most unpleasant. It's so f*cking boring that I'd have rather filtered raw sewage by hand than do it, sometimes. Why ? Because after reading 10 times the same half-learned, half out-of-ass statements, including blatant ripoffs of the immediate neighbours, you're completely fed up, and you know you've still got 30 to go. In my branch, one essay is roughly 15 minutes worth of my time, do the maths.
Teaching is pleasant ; I'd be more than happy to have someone else grade for me. But it's so damn exhausting that it takes a teacher dedication to do it. I can't count how many times I was offered money to grade some private inter-universities competitions between students (sort of extracurricular events to know who's pissing farther) and flatly turned them down. Nobody in his right mind would grade alone, even for money.
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You've never taught, have you ? (...) Nobody in his right mind would grade alone, even for money.
I tought for 12 years in high-school and undergraduate college courses, and fully agree with you in one thing: grading sucks!
In the other hand, in many situations I felt that grading my own students was unfair. As a teacher, you have some freedom at designing tests, or even grading the answers. There's always a gap for teachers' own personal criteria, that can be influenced by it's own performance (extremes
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One school I went to was both privatively funded and government funded as it was the only school in the county. Being that it was classified as a private school it was free to teach whatever it wanted and spend money on whatever. Si
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I'm against publicly funded education entirely [...]
While it's not at all surprising someone thinks the public education system could be improved (and from what I've gathered, the US has one of the worst systems in the world), the mind-boggling clusterfuck that would result from fully-privatised education would be infinitely worse.
(Unless, of course, you're trying to go back to the good old days of distinct societal classes, in which case it'd work a treat.)
Universal, publically-funded education might n
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Because you can pick your college, you can pick what you want/need/can afford.
Where exactly are you proving that public education comes out of capitalism? We have very few pure-capitalist markets in the U.S. because of cro
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The problem with letting private companies manage education is that education is from an investment perspective a looser. I know I invest/trade and education is a money looser and has to be subsidized by somebody. The subsidy has to come from either the student or the government, etc. The reason why we educate ourse
IMO, a step towards improving our education (Score:4, Insightful)
We expect our teachers to put more and more hours in (most work tons of nights and weekend hours) for "the love of the children", and without any incremental pay. Shouldn't we reward them for their good work? Instead, we treat all teachers the same, and then provide tenure after 5 years (or so, depending on the school/state) that protects even the poor performing teachers. This is detrimental to our children, our future, and to our teachers.
The only problem I see with the program is that it only addresses at-risk schools. While school teachers in more affluent areas often get paid more (in my area, the difference is ~$15,000 between the wealthy and inner city school teachers), saying they shouldn't be compensated for good performance is like saying our "at risk" students matter more than everyone else. Rolling out the bonus program to all school districts could be a huge win for our education system.
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Blind capitalism doesn't work in social situations (Score:2)
I'll give you an example of how this approach can fail badly if the wrong performance metrics are used - the example is from health care but it still applies. In my state (not in the USA) we have a system where hospitals get a bonus dependent on the number and type of complex procedures performed. A hospital administrator had a perfect employee for t
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great, my degree means even less now (Score:3, Insightful)
Freakonomics & CPS (Score:3, Informative)
What degree? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with post-secondary education, which is still the only place you get a degree.
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Why this is a corrupt and BAD ideas. (Score:5, Insightful)
My friend taught science and math in a Chicago school in a poor neighborhood.
In all the years he taught there; they NEVER had books, they NEVER had lab supplies, they SELDOM had working AV equipment, they NEVER had a computer.
Not that this effected the average grades, because any grade he assigned that was below a C was magically changed to a C by the principal.
How the fsck can you teach school without books?
I submit to you that basing his pay on the number of A's is corrupt in the extreme. (Though, thankfully, he is retired now.)
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Why do you think that's what they're doing? It seems more like they're paying bonuses for something like number of students with SAT scores over 1200. I.e. an *external* test, not a test created and graded by the teacher.
The cooking the books issue is about doing things like answering questions during the test.
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How do you suppose those children will score more than 400 on a 1200 point scale given those conditions of education.
Isn't going to happen whether you use teacher assigned A's or SAT assigned numbers.
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This reminds me... (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Dilbert (Score:3, Funny)
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Easier Exams On The Way (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't think the exams will get easier since they are standardized tests (I did not RTFA, but the summary seems to say that). The teachers who stand to benefit from easier tests shouldn't be the ones creating the tests.
Do first things first! (Score:5, Insightful)
What hurts me most is the fact that these kids excel at written English and write much better essays yet they have to learn the language in addition to their vernaculars. American kids, who [mostly] speak English from childhood have horrible English, so solve the discipline question then we can go from there.
Re:Do first things first! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have some experience which proves that Americans can learn discipline in school: here in Niceville Florida, some high school students are allowed to attend what is called a "collegiate high school." What this means is that they are taking college level courses with other high school and college students at Okaloosa Walton College. They are given high school credit AND college credit, and after two years taking a college work load they are given a high school diploma AND a two-year AA degree, which transfers 100% to any Florida university or college. Obviously this explanation is greatly simplified, but the system works and the students are far more disciplined than those at any high school I ever attended. Note that I'm just a college student at OWC, so I don't have much info on the college high school system, but I'm sure you could find more on their website: http://www.owcollegiatehigh.org/ [owcollegiatehigh.org] . I believe the system is funded by state taxes and the students pay absolutely nil, but they are dropped from the system if they do not maintain a reasonable GPA, and attendance is as strict as high school.
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Right... It's the kids' fault their biology teacher flunked out of medical school, and can just barely work up the motivation to stand up at the beginning of the class, and tell them what pages to read, and which questions to answer... BTW, that's not a made-up senario, either.
IMHO, and I speak from my own experience, the biggest of the problems is the lowest-common-denominator education. For the first 6 years, they teach you how
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We need to reorient our education system to move away from supporti
Adapt to the culture (Score:2)
It wasn't Ghana, but I read one teacher's account of teaching students from a culture with a similar feature.
She split the class into small groups which would then pick a spokesperson to deliver their report or answer questions. The kids would freeze up if they felt alone but thrived as part of a team.
10$ (Score:2)
Freakonomics (Score:2, Informative)
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The chapter in Freakonomics about cheating teachers deals with this. If you have any interest in learning about how they detect such behavior, give the book a read.
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There is only one answer, really. It is to treat teaching like any other career, and seek to recruit and promote the best by proper incentives. Such schemes already exi
The real worry (Score:2)
This is a good thing if the test is a good one - meaning, if the test evaluates authentic skills in an authentic application.
The unfortunate reality: standardized tests are rarely (if ever) authentic assessments of student learning.
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We have a system which rates schools based on their performance. The only measurement of performance is final grades. This has lead over the last 10 years to lessons becoming little more than coaching sessions. Children are taught how to pass exams rather than being taught a subject and then being examined on that
Statistics catches bad treatment of kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
<sarcasm>
Yes, I'm sure their system will catch this stuff, too [bloomberg.com]. How? Magic, maybe.
</sarcasm>
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However I read this interesting chapter from the book Freakonomics [bsx.ru] [PDF] where they identify the teachers who might be trying to fudge the system to make their students score better! Read the chapter called "What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?" to identify how the economist Levitt is identifying the people.
Having said that, I am not sure it helps doing this at a
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In the case of teachers, apart from ensuring testing is done by entirely different people, without the teachers present, one possibility is to include an assessment of students feedbacks in the evaluation: Make all the students fill out a questionnaire about their teachers. Of course you would have to treat such ass
This is probably not wise. (Score:2, Insightful)
In scenario 1, this is bad because it creates an obvious incentive to grade very kindly. People can try to test for that influence to prevent it all they want, but if they create a market out of good grades, the market is going to react.
Scenario 2 doesn't fair much better,
This isn't the solution. (Score:2)
This only breads corruption. It is going to encourage educational institutions to cook the books, as the author says, in order to get money. The solution would be to give money with no strings attatched, in hopes that districts would be able to improve education (not just test scores) that way.
Block grants or vouchers would be the key.
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It's absolutely ludicrous to believe, further, that vouchers or private "free market" schools would solve any of the problems facing this nation. The wealthy school districts already have better schools, properly funded and with the requisite community support. The free market wouldn't lift up the crappy s
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1. Parents beating children who don't do well.
2. Children cheating on tests.
3. Parents helping children cheat on tests.
Learn for tests, that's all you need it for. (Score:2, Interesting)
supply the teachers (Score:4, Interesting)
Between the pharmaceutical companies and the bureaucrats kids today are being used as test subjects. I'm considering home schooling.
Teaching to the test (Score:2)
The big problem the US has with education is that people haven't agreed on a problem statement.
If there's a standardized curriculum (which most industrialized countries have); if there's a core set of knowledge and skills that everyone thinks are indispensable for a citizen; if there's a standardized test that accurately measures those -- then the test is simply a necessary feedback mechanism and "teaching to the test" simply means concentrating on the basics.
Every one of those "if"
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The Real Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Double that number and then increase all corporate american taxes to get an amount of money equal that doubled number. (Corporations benefit from well educated workers, so should be willing to pay to get them)
Then distribute this amount of money evenly to all schools nationwide based upon the number of students that were enlisted in the previous year. Beyond that the federal government should have no say other than that money should be spent by the school district it was allocated to ONLY. Let the states manage their educational systems. Increase this number and the tax amount by the previous year's inflation numbers published by the federal reserve and you have a well funded local educational system.
This has the dual effect of increasing nearly all school's budgets (and rich parents can still donate money in rich areas if they want an elite school) and at the same time reducing the dependence on local property values for school income (and theoretically reduce local taxes) This is Democratization of American Education.
And to the critics that say doubling the amount spent on average in American public schools - public education is the ONE thing that this nation can throw money "away" on or "spend money frivilously on".
John B
Obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
Guess what, it isn't money that makes a school better. If so you could not have systems that spend 10k doing worse than those spending 6k per student by your logic.
The only good point you had was getting the feds out of education. Everything they touch turns into a mess. You must also get the unions out of education. The various teacher unions must
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1) The United States is a democratic republic. There are plenty of reasons that power needs to remain at the state levels, not least because different regions have different feelings for the value of education. Rather than universalize the funding (across the US) I'd agree that such a plan is both more palatable, and more consistent with the original vision of the US by doing it on a state-by-state basis, dividing up the 'pot' of tax money paid within a state
The problem with the "more money" solution (Score:3)
Seen this before... (Score:2)
Great Idea, but with one change (Score:4, Insightful)
The teachers should get a bonus according to the amount that they have improved the student's level of education over the year that they spent with the teacher. You look at their grades for the year before they were with the teacher, and the grades for the year after, and the teacher gets a bonus according to the improvement. That way the teacher is making an investment in their own future by improving the student's education.
This elimates some of the cheating problem.
Teachers would have no control then (Score:2)
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They're going the wrong way (Score:3, Interesting)
How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. My wife, who, while following my moves, has worked in three different school districts. In each one, she was required to work for 10 months out of the year (between classroom instruction and required continuing education). In addition, her average day was 10 hours long. She works more hours in an average year than the average american worker. This also doesn't count the grading that goes on in the evenings and weekends.
We already provide some of the best health benefits out there.
While teachers generally do get good benefits, that's less and less true with the budget crises that have been hitting local communities. For instance, my employers health insurance is much better than the one offered through my wife's teacher's contract.
The unions that teachers belong to do not allow merit raises
This is a problem that needs to be addressed. I like Tim Pawlenty's idea in MN to create "super teachers". Basically these are teachers who perform well in the suburbs, move to teach in the inner cities, and if they still perform well and get the students to perform, they receive high pay (upwards of $100k). But standardized tests are not the way to judge a teacher's performance.
they do not allow the school to fire poor performing teachers
This is another lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. While it is not easy to fire poor performing teachers, it's possible, and done. What the unions require is that you can show the teacher is actually performing poorly. The problem is that parent's of C children, don't like that, and want there children to get A's. It's much easier to blame the teacher and urge the school board and local politicians to fire the teacher, than it is to accept the fact that junior isn't performing very well. My concern is that if the union wasn't there to help the teacher, that teachers would have to be even more careful about the children of the rich and powerful, and that's not a good thing.
School budgets are out of control, spending is through the roof.
But this spending is going towards testing and not towards attracting and keeping good teachers, and not towards supplies for the classroom (believe me, I have a huge file of receipts for items that my wife has bought for her classroom with our money).
substantially decrease State interference into the curriculum,
Exactly, education should be a local issue. The state and federal dept's of education should make sure that success stories are available to other districts to utilize.
and get rid of all of the staff that just loves throwing around money for magic beans.
I'm not sure if I'm inferring correctly, but the spending comes from the administration and school board, not the teachers.
-dave
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Yes and no, it would be more stable, but not stable. The lesson plans need to change some every year, maybe not completely, but if you look at the new material being forced down from above (NCLB - written by a bunch of folks who don't send their kids to public school), it is not stable.
Teaching is not the only career that you are expected to work overtime without additional compensation.
Certification vs. Education (Score:5, Insightful)
This applies here too. Essentially they are assessing worth by attaching a numerical value to "intelligence" or "education". Most of the time if you just went to these schools and sat down in the classes you would get a better idea than assigning some standardized test. Then again, the costs associated with that would be astronomical and end up taking away from what the schools have. .
I don't care what you mod me (if at all) this was just a stupid rant, I just wonder if its me or if others out there agree.
Too close to the Texas experience (Score:2)
Wunderfill ideya (Score:2)
ket gutchar tung? nah, eye meen ta say dis
Re:Wunderfill ideya (Skore: 7, Troll) (Score:2)
Teaching how to get good test scores? (Score:2)
I'd think that it would be good if the students knew their subject matter, which, as a side effect, might also increase the test scores. But if you pay the teachers after the test scores of their students, they will teach how to score high in tests, not how to understand the subject matter.
For the individual student it may be a competitive advantage to optimize solely after high test scores. But only if the other stude
we have this in the UK. it doesn't work. (Score:3, Informative)
this has lead to a race of "dumbing down" of examinations. while the exams are not set by the schools, there are several examination boards for each subject, and the schools can pick and choose which ones to set. the schools want higher results, obviously, so they gravitate towards the easier curriculums and examinations. the exam boards try to create the easiest courses they can while still operating within their guidelines (i'm not sure how their regulation works), as the more popular they are, the more money they earn. it's worth noting if you get an A-level in Geography, for instance, it is just that, not an A-level in Geography from xxxx exam board.
continue this for 15 years, and you end up with vast numbers of students passing. consult http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2193169.stm [bbc.co.uk] for some statistics. this only covers until 2002, it's continued to rise - 96.2% of entrants passed in 2005. the problem is in effect at the top of the scale too, somewhere around 20% of entrants achieve the top grade, an A or A*. universities are ending up being unable to discern top candidates, and complain about A-grade students lacking skills they used to arrive with in the past. they are considering bringing in their own examinations to grade students' aptitude, a move that would completely undermine A-levels.
qualifications are meant to sort the top candidates from everyone else, they are elitist by nature. they are not meant to be all-inclusive "gold star for everyone who takes part" affairs where all but the dumbest 4% are awarded a qualification. aiming for higher pass rates shifts the standard down for everybody, and, perhaps most importantly, challenges the best candidates less, leaving them behind their counterparts in other countries who get pushed harder.
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Seems a little spotty to me.
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There's an interesting response regarding this subject on Google Answers [google.com]. You'll even find a very pertinent example:
Regina received four A's on her report card.
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A good jab at the submitter, but this usage of the apostrophe is actually correct [cuny.edu] in this situation, as it may not be clear from the headline itself that "As" is referring to multiple letter grades of "A."
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And it's "its" in your post. Sorry, but you walked right into it.
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Some people may call it bribery, but I call it getting paid to go to work a full day.
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Pay for the improvement, not the absolute scores (Score:2)
If you pay for the improvement of the student (how much of his learning capacity he has used the last trimester), you are actually rewarding learning. The downside is t
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