American Teacher

Can't below tools work?
1) Result of students
2) A one paragraph feedback of students about their teachers
3) A one paragraph feedback of parents about their children's students

You nailed it. I totally agree with your point...
Also I had had teachers who otherwise would have been a total failure as engineers or doctors, but they were the only reason for who I am today and each and every marvel job if any I do is totally because of those Gems of my life...
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I heard an interpretation from a friend. She says the policy makers dont want a nation full of intelligent leaders. They want only a thin layer of leaders and rest of the population to be good followers. People who are just good people with limited skills and who would just follow the law, rules and earn some money and pay tax. Even though I could not comprehend to what she said, I thought it just cant be the case! Or is it?

 

I'm on the P&C (Parents and Citizens, though stuff all non-parents turn up!) of my kids school. One of our jobs is to raise money for the school. What this mostly entails is members of the school community paying extra (whether it is a school fair, trivia night, sausage sizzle etc.). This is not tax, but after tax dollars that we raise. For a 250 child school, we raise about $15,000 a year that is used for better equipment, facilities and casual staff. I'd think a lot of schools (this is a government run/public school) would do something similar. Having said this, the P&C meetings are usually attended by a very small majority of parents, but the events we run are quite well supported by the school community.

For example, our new principal is keen to get students involved in Robotics and we have spent a chunk of our earnings from last year to enable her to get stuff to help with this.

With respect to standardized tests, we have a similar system in Oz called NAPLAN. The issue with these is that government run schools (like ours) HAVE TO accept any student that lives in our catchment, including "special needs" and ESL (English as a Second Language) students - these WILL lower your NAPLAN scores and affect the ranking our your school. Still, it is pretty easy (by talking to parents) to find out whether they think the local school has a good reputation. I know I wouldn't hesitate to recommend my kids school to others.

More info on the NAPLAN tests if interested:
http://www.naplan.edu.au/

 

It makes strategic sense for the elite to maintain their grasp on power and authority by minimizing the number of potential contenders for the top spot.

Could be the case.

Then again, it may simply be incompetence and idiocy that created America's education system.

 

Working in SPED I have seen this problem to be so huge. The principal in one of our city districts recently said, in a meeting, (I am paraphrasing) that "The bad principal in me would say that we can't meet the needs of these two students and that they need to go to the ISD classrooms. These two students are costing us 100,000 a year in services and we aren't getting any extra funding for providing these services." The ISD is our intermediate school district and they have 3 classrooms for serving the severely disabled students from all of our two counties. He was accurately portraying the amount of teachers and money that is being spent to serve only a few special education students.

 

My children's school has a 'learning disability' classroom, so *we* get children from around the area with mental or physical disability. They have a dedicated teacher and teachers aide for the 6 or 7 children they had last year. You shouldn't discount the benefits having these children at your children's school provide to the other students. Intangibles like tolerance etc.

Our school does receive extra funding for them, though, similar sounding to the ISD classrooms mentioned above. They are just run inside an existing school, rather than being completely separate.

 

Germany's educational system also started on a local level and is still largely controlled by each state (the differences between some states are very far-reaching when it comes to education). Germany has a whole bunch of regulations on the schools' curriculi, prescriptive teaching methodology, mandatory material/topics to be covered by each class in every year, nutritional requirements for lunches (and in primary schools, breakfasts), safety requirements, and special educational programmes. Also take into consideration that Germany has three types of schools (standard, full-day, evening) with four different modi operandi (Gymnasium, Realschule, Hauptschule, Sonderschule), with whole sets of different regulations for each modus operandi.

I severely doubt administrative tasks/work for American schools are above German ones. Though, German schools have it much easier in completing those administrative tasks/duties because the federal and state governments, as mentioned before, have worked hard to streamline bureaucratic processes, and to provide a clear and logical oversight over the applicable regulations in line with their government planning. Something that, it appears from the above quote of yours, is not the case with the American government institutions.

Both of the above quotes underline something I have mentioned in both my previous comments in this thread: the sheer idiocy of slashing funds from/underfunding the educational system. Again, I would not blame the specific schools or their teachers, but the American government for establishing the programs and regulations it did without the appropriate funding.

As is the case in Oregon, the German education budget is controlled by the state government and schools receive a pre-set amount of funding per student. They also receive state subsidies for lunches (and breakfasts) of students they sell on-site. Lastly, they also receive extra funding in order to accommodate mentally/physically disabled students.

I'm sorry, but that is the definition of incompetence right there.

 

There is record of such policy making having been made.

'citation needed' for the following, which is my shaky memory of a 'History of education in England' when I did my teacher training.
In England, somewhere between 1895 and 1905, there was a Parliamentray debate about education. A specific section of that debate was 'how can we provide enough education so people can operate these more complex machines (given the industrial revolution), but not so much that they begin thinking 'beyond their station'.

 

I heard a politician today on the news who says that it was a mistake that he voted for the 'No Child Left Behind Act'. While the act has it's problems the idea of federally regulating our public school system is a good idea and IMHO necessary. As you Snowy it is a problem with politics.

 

Thanks for the tag Remixer....This looks like my cup of tea.
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I believe teachers should be supported, and held accountable like any other professional. They should also be paid in the same salary range.

The happiness, and pleasure I gained teaching, far outweighed the monetary deficiencies. If being rich is the most important goal in your life....teaching is not for you. It is a mentally demanding profession, but the intrinsic rewards are phenomenal. You can't beat the feeling when the "I understand now" light clicks when you are teaching a concept.