AngelicVampire

I am not in the US (UK citizen), we tend to have class sizes of 20 for practical subjects (Chemistry, Physics etc) and 30-33 for other subjects (English, Maths etc). Streaming (placing kids in classes based on ability within their own year) used to be done and is now coming back in (now called Setting though!).

Going through the school system I never understood why they couldn't divide classes up more, at our 5th year level (15-17 ish) we had 3 levels of classes (and you could move between them), intermediate 1, 2 and Higher. It seems to work fairly well, however there is no real incentive to work hard. Bad children get attention, poor children get attention however bright hard workers get nothing.

I think the systems need to reward attainment, personally I think a minimum level of attainment should be needed to clear each year, or at least the school, so many people come out of schools basically illiterate or unable to count that its scary.

Disciple in schools is also a major problem, personally I think there should be a three strikes system, after 3 offenses you are removed from the system and it becomes your parents job to educate you (you have a right to an education, if you don't want it or want to distrub others educations then you should lose this right). Make the parents deal with problems or get the police involved (many cases at local schools of pupils throwing chairs etc at others or teachers... should be arrested for assault.).

my 0.0002

MoonDog

I am a grant writer for a rural school district in PA, and get to do a lot of research on a variety of education topics. One of my most recent grants (was for $75,000 to provide for teacher training in the area of differentiated instruction.

With DI, teachers are trained to understand that their students may have drastically different learning styles, meaning that while Student A picks up the info from lectures, Student B may need more - like the use of manipulatives, visual aides, etc. I guess there are actually quite a few different types of learning styles that students can exhibit.

Anyway, teachers use differentiated instruction techniques to assess the styles of the students in their class, adapt their lesson plans, and encourage student achievement.

This isn't a cure-all, but it is one of the approaches out there for improving education. I can't say that I agree with everything I see, but I am not an "educator".

I do have to agree with a lot of what OneSnowyOwl had to say. My district clings to the "old ways" that worked in 1966, and refuse to acknowledge changes in the way education is delivered, or even changes in county demographics that are forcing hard decisions.

I could rant for days on the subject of public education...

ZeRoGRaViTY

I absolutely agree that individuals should take the initiative and start taking responsibility for one's self. The average college in the rochester area costs 14k a semester. A full time job for a college student wouldn't even come close to making up for the sudden loss of the 2 + 2 program. I was touching more on the sudden loss of these programs and people within our education system that is crippling our community. But definitly agreed that people and their parents should take more responsibilty in advance to avoid these situations. Just not everyone has the means to control what their parents did when they were growing up. They do however still have a right for a fair opportunity to further themselves. Regardless of their economic situation.

aceventura3

http://news.lp.findlaw.com/ap/o/632/...ca36b0737.html
In California, acording to AP, about 100,000 out of 450,000 high school seniors have not passed one of the sections on the high school exit exam. The "Govenator" put $40 mil in the budget for tutoring students next year. That's $400 per student that has not passed yet.

Think about it for a moment.

If on average we spent, lets say $6,000 per student per year for 12 years thats $72,000. After spending all that money more than 1 in 5 can not pass a 10th grade level test. On top of that some of those students have filed a class action suit against the board of education.

Heeelp!! I fell down a rabbit hole and have stepped through the looking glass.

P.S. - Just send money. Thanks

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AngelicVampire

I think the problem is that education is not competitive, people strive to do well at sports because it is competitive however being a nerd is well nerdy... Make education competitive and more students might start taking an interest?

Bill O'Rights

I dunno...I think that education already is competitive. To some degree, anyway. The trick is to make it "cool". When society starts worshiping scholars, the way that it worships it's sports stars, then...problem over.

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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

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uncle phil

just a thought...are any of the students in schools today taught "consequences?" since "paddles" were taken out of the hands of teachers in the mid-60s and social services has dictated how parents can discipline their children for the past couple of decades, maybe we need another branch of education to serve as an adjunct to "readin', writin', and 'rithmatic?"

"hey kid...wanna act like a jerk? wanna end up a clerk at radio shack or a floor-walker at wal-mart after 20 years of hangin' out with the boyz in the hood? or do you wanna get a grip on life and enter the wonderful world of newton? for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction! smarten up before it's too late!"

i know numerous principals, administrators, and school board members in school systems in new york and florida and i don't miss too many opportunities to espouse my views on the direction in which i see our future "citizens" headed. they respond as if their hands are tied. are they?

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- Robert S. McNamara
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"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
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never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

JumpinJesus

Here is an anecdotal example that will hopefully illustrate what is faced by many of us. There is a girl in my class who is classified as a special education student. She was labelled such due to emotional and behavior problems. She is a 13 year old 6th grader reading on a 2nd grade level. She and I have a good relationship now but it wasn't always that way.

Last year she and I had a bit of a run-in. My students were in the hallway and she walked out of her room in a huff and shoved two of my students out of the way. "Excuse me!" I said to her. "I don't care how mad you are at your teacher, you don't walk through my students like that and shove them. You owe them an apology."
Her response was, and I quote: "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about." I wrote up a referral and sent it to the vice principal. When I spoke to him, he told me, "There's nothing I can do. She's already been suspended 10 days this year and we can't suspend Special Ed students more than 10 days in a school year." He was right. State Law forbids it. The next day, she was in the hallway, "They didn't do shit to me," she bragged to a friend. I approached her again and said, "You know, you've got quite a foul mouth. Your mother lets you talk like that?"
"She don't care."
So I called the mother. The mother said, "I told her not to cuss at school."
The following day, she had another incident with yet another teacher. This time, she threatened to kill the teacher in question. Walking out of the teacher's room, she slammed the door hard enough that the window in the door shattered.

The teacher she threatened called the police and wanted to press charges since the school could do nothing in the area of consequences for this. The teacher said, "I won't press charges if you transfer the student out of this school." She was told that the girl's mother was claiming to be homeless so the girl couldn't be transferred. The only consequence we could come up with was to take her recess away. That very day, at recess, she told her teacher, "I'm going outside to play. Try and stop me." Guess what? We couldn't stop her, nor could we discipline her for disobeying because she had already been suspended for 10 days.

This is just one example of some of the problems we face on a daily basis in our school. The main reason for this is the lawsuits schools have faced over the years. In most school systems, the board will settle the suit rather than face the publicity, so policies over the years have been implemented to avoid any possible lawsuit.

2 weeks ago, a teacher broke up a fight in which a 5th grader was beating the living hell out of a 3rd grader in the hallway outside of a class. The teacher who broke up the fight is now being investigated for child abuse for grabbing the 5th grader and pulling her off the 3rd grader. She's under investigation because the 5th grader went home and told her mother the teacher threw her against the wall. The mother called DCFS and is now threatening to sue. The videotape from the hallway clearly shows that the teacher did not throw the student against the wall, but that has not stopped the investigation nor the threat of the lawsuit. We are now being told that if we witness a fight, we are to do nothing to stop it. We are only to call security and stand back. Yet, I can assure you that the next time a student is injured in a fight, we will be threatened with a lawsuit for not stopping it.

This is one of the major reasons why I argued in my earlier post to do away with Compulsory Attendance. One of the main reasons private schools and charter schools perform so much better than public schools on standardized tests is because they are able to pick and choose their students. If you are able to select which students attend your school, you are easily able to remove students who continually create an unsafe environment.

This isn't the only reason that public schools are in such poor shape, but it helps illustrate that yes, in most cases, our hands are tied.

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