How to improve American Education in 2021. (1 Viewer)

[Paul]

The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

U.S. students' academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries

U.S. students continue to rank near the middle, and behind many other advanced industrial nations, in international math, science and reading assessments.

www.pewresearch.org

My suggestion is rather simple.

1. Study why immigrants from East Asia, India, and Nigeria do well with American education. Apply that insight to other groups (if possible).
2. Manage public schools as if though they were private schools with uniforms and discipline.
3. Create high end special schools for those that are truly disenfranchised.
4. Create a force of social workers to treat family dysfunction with regards to education.
5. Reduce the curriculum to the simple basics and repeat that on a yearly basis.
6. At about 10th grade divide college bound students away from non-college bound.
7. Provide solid basic education and trade training for non-college bound kids. There is no point in offering free college to these kids.

 

[Goatman saint]

Paul:

there are 20 some states that have gotten rid of the extra unemployment due to Covid. They have not seen an uptick in applications for the jobs that are unfilled. So no, the shortage of workers is probably not because of extra federal money. At least it doesn’t appear so right now. It’s been a right wing talking point, though, so I get why you would repeat it.

I imagine the current atmosphere of hostility toward teachers, carefully cultivated by right wing crazies, has something to do with the current teacher shortage. That’s just my opinion.

The pay isn’t great when you look at the education levels needed. You catch it from parents, children and admin, and have to balance all 3. You have a lot of people in this profession who have never grown up and treat school as high school with cliques and all. It’s a dead end job essentially. No matter how good you are you’ll always have people complain. Work in a tough area and you’ll always be a failure because your scores on paper will never match kids in rich well to do areas. Rather than teaching for student need and interest you’ll have curriculum and such shoved down your throat.

I dunno. Should I go on? Guess what. I haven’t recommended teaching as a career to anyone

 

[Paul]

Just because you know math doesn’t mean you know how to teach it. Schools are filled with people who know math (need to have that single subject) but can’t teach worth anything. Subject matter competence doesn’t equal good teaching ability.

I fully agreeHowever, the public school system insists on paying math teachers the same salary they lay a social studies teacher. That is a mistake.

 

[Paul]

I dunno. Should I go on? Guess what. I haven’t recommended teaching as a career to anyone

The best teachers my kids had in Catholic school were retired people that wanted to teach part time. They had no formal training on how to teach but were experts on their fields and wanted to work part time on retirement. They had tremendous dedication because they were doing it for their own pleasure

 

[RobF]

The pay isn’t great when you look at the education levels needed. You catch it from parents, children and admin, and have to balance all 3. You have a lot of people in this profession who have never grown up and treat school as high school with cliques and all. It’s a dead end job essentially. No matter how good you are you’ll always have people complain. Work in a tough area and you’ll always be a failure because your scores on paper will never match kids in rich well to do areas. Rather than teaching for student need and interest you’ll have curriculum and such shoved down your throat.

I dunno. Should I go on? Guess what. I haven’t recommended teaching as a career to anyone

Right? And it's similar in the UK in a lot of ways, just maybe not quite to the same degree.

I thought I'd take a quick look and contrast with other relatively successful school systems- i.e. not the magical fantasy of private schools that exists in Paul's head - at least as indicated by PISA, and went to start with the most recent PISA results linked from Paul's original post.

So the first thing is those aren't the most recent results. The article he's linked to is actually from 2017, and is talking about the PISA results from 2015. It's done every three years (although the next one is bumped to 2022), the most recent results are from 2018: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm

But if you look at the top performing countries there, there's quite a range of different approaches. The only thing they have in common is they clearly value education, but even then they approach that in very different ways. The fact that, for example, Canada, Finland and Estonia do so well with their different but overwhelmingly public school systems clearly shows that public school systems can be highly effective, and any notion otherwise is clearly false.

Similarly, for example, teachers in Finland are fully unionized. So clearly unionization can be part of an effective school system.

So if we look at other countries, there's clearly multiple paths to improving education in the USA, but the things that stand out are investment and putting a high priority on education across all socio-economic groups.

So I would suggest that would be the starting point. And not, you know, wild notions of privatisation fueled with willful ignorance and infused with racism and bigotry.

(Side note: it's also still weird to me that anyone in the US would suggest that privatisation is a magical solution to anything like this, when arguably the epitome of bloated, inefficient, and under-performing systems is the US healthcare system).

 

[Paul]

That is military service, and entirely a different subject.

I’m assuming by all your other posts your intention is the old spare the rod, spoil the child approach. Unlike you, this is what I do for a living. I teach the kids you are constantly putting down. The kids that act up, act out and cause issues almost always have significant issues at home. They don’t need additional discipline. They don’t need to toughen up or be knuckled under. They need someone who will care, put some trust in them and be a mentor and role model for. Your cavalier attitude to towards throwing these kids into military schools, boarding schools, whatever your latest plan is flies in the face of every shred of mental health research that is out right now.

OK, good post. The main people is the home. That is why some schools appear to be better than others. It is not so much the quality the schools, but the quality of the home where kids come from. IN my neck of the woods there are many East Asian, Jewish, and Indian kids that come from homes where they care about education.

 

[RobF]

The best teachers my kids had in Catholic school were retired people that wanted to teach part time. They had no formal training on how to teach but were experts on their fields and wanted to work part time on retirement. They had tremendous dedication because they were doing it for their own pleasure

Oh hey, look, it's another anecdote from the guy who complains every time someone else posts an anecdote.

 

[samiam5211]

I fully agreeHowever, the public school system insists on paying math teachers the same salary they lay a social studies teacher. That is a mistake.

Social studies has never been more important than it is today.

 

[Goatman saint]

Right? And it's similar in the UK in a lot of ways, just maybe not quite to the same degree.

I thought I'd take a quick look and contrast with other relatively successful school systems- i.e. not the magical fantasy of private schools that exists in Paul's head - at least as indicated by PISA, and went to start with the most recent PISA results linked from Paul's original post.

So the first thing is those aren't the most recent results. The article he's linked to is actually from 2017, and is talking about the PISA results from 2015. It's done every three years (although the next one is bumped to 2022), the most recent results are from 2018: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm

But if you look at the top performing countries there, there's quite a range of different approaches. The only thing they have in common is they clearly value education, but even then they approach that in very different ways. The fact that, for example, Canada, Finland and Estonia do so well with their different but overwhelmingly public school systems clearly shows that public school systems can be highly effective, and any notion otherwise is clearly false.

Similarly, for example, teachers in Finland are fully unionized. So clearly unionization can be part of an effective school system.

So if we look at other countries, there's clearly multiple paths to improving education in the USA, but the things that stand out are investment and putting a high priority on education across all socio-economic groups.

So I would suggest that would be the starting point. And not, you know, wild notions of privatisation fueled with willful ignorance and infused with racism and bigotry.

(Side note: it's also still weird to me that anyone in the US would suggest that privatisation is a magical solution to anything like this, when arguably the epitome of bloated, inefficient, and under-performing systems is the US healthcare system).

Privatization is simply nothing more than taking a public service and giving it to for profit entities, then allowing that entity to suck off the tax dollar. It’s nothing but fattening the pockets of the already well off who have lobbied to make it happen, then step in to buy these things at pennies on the dollar. But they have to make people believe government is incompetent, and how private business can solve your problem.

 

[Goatman saint]

The best teachers my kids had in Catholic school were retired people that wanted to teach part time. They had no formal training on how to teach but were experts on their fields and wanted to work part time on retirement. They had tremendous dedication because they were doing it for their own pleasure

Where’s the proof? Have you been in those classes? Have you seen The results? Have you looked at scores, teaching methods and such. Or is this just an assumption?

That whole no formal training how to teach and poof they are magically great teachers is a line of garbage. It’s pretty easy to teach kids which already know. Send those amazing teachers somewhere where they actually have to teach then let’s see what happens.

 

[Paul]

Where’s the proof? Have you been in those classes? Have you seen The results? Have you looked at scores, teaching methods and such. Or is this just an assumption?

That whole no formal training how to teach and poof they are magically great teachers is a line of garbage. It’s pretty easy to teach kids which already know. Send those amazing teachers somewhere where they actually have to teach then let’s see what happens.

My daughter had a retired physicist teaching the AP physics course. He was the most beloved teacher in school. He was dynamic and totally into it. However, you are correct, he was teaching a girls only prep school and there were zero discipline issues. All the kids in the class were there because they loved the class and the teacher.

Public schools miss out on these type of teachers with no formal pedagogic training. The red type and bureaucrasy does not allow the public school system to hire people like this. BTW, the school needed a competent calculus teacher for the advanced students and they ended up hiring a young gentleman that would come to school three days a week during lunch time to teach the class. He was another one with no formal pedagogic training.

The history teacher was a retired US Army Colonel that was a history fanatic, also with no formal pedagogic training. But, as you said the kids teach themselves.

 

[MT15]

Paul, many states have begun recruiting people with advanced degrees that didn’t get their teaching license originally. My state does this, I’m not sure what courses they require after beginning teaching for these folks, but I had a colleague who left the hospital to teach science in a public high school.

So your statement that ”red tape and bureaucracy” doesn’t allow public schools to hire these people is wrong. I wish you would quit making blanket statements that are just false.

 

[Paul]

Paul, many states have begun recruiting people with advanced degrees that didn’t get their teaching license originally. My state does this, I’m not sure what courses they require after beginning teaching for these folks, but I had a colleague who left the hospital to teach science in a public high school.

So your statement that ”red tape and bureaucracy” doesn’t allow public schools to hire these people is wrong. I wish you would quit making blanket statements that are just false.

OK, I was unaware the public school systems were hiring people who are experts in their fields with no teaching certification. OK, my bad this must be a new trend and I am glad this is happening.

Thanks for pointing that out. Good for them!

 

[insidejob]

The unions will not allow the school to raise the salaries of math teachers.

lolwut?

 

[MT15]

OK, I was unaware the public school systems were hiring people who are experts in their fields with no teaching certification. OK, my bad this must be a new trend and I am glad this is happening.

Thanks for pointing that out. Good for them!

Well, I don’t think it’s all that recent. My colleague went into teaching directly from the hospital over 15 years ago.

 

[insidejob]

Well, I don’t think it’s all that recent. My colleague went into teaching directly from the hospital over 15 years ago.

My sister did the same 12 years ago. Certainly not some new trend. Hell, I barely had any teachers in grades 5-7 who graduated from college with degrees in education. It was also one of the toughest all boys schools to get into in New Orleans for those grades.

 

[DaveXA]

The best teachers my kids had in Catholic school were retired people that wanted to teach part time. They had no formal training on how to teach but were experts on their fields and wanted to work part time on retirement. They had tremendous dedication because they were doing it for their own pleasure

I'm just gonna go ahead and quote you. I figure you'll understand your words better than mine.

I love anecdotes.
I once jumped from a 4th floor balcony and was not hurt. It happens!

Yeah...

 

[Optimus Prime]

A few years ago when the term “thought leader” started appearing I wondered what was the difference between a thought leader and an expert

It was explained to me that an easy was to think of it was this:

An expert knows the information

A thought leader can teach the information

Teaching is an industry unto itself and just because you know a topic like the back of your hand and have spent decades in the field doesn’t mean you can do a good job explaining it to students be it third grade or tenth (especially if you spent your career surrounded by other experts in the field)

1+1= 2

Doesn’t get any simpler than that

After you explain it to a small child, maybe the same way you were taught it what do you do when the kid is still confused?

There’s only so many ways you can explain 1+1 and what do you do when you’ve exhausted those ways?

I’m not a teacher or know much about the field but sure seems there’s a lot more to it than just knowing the material

Dealing with bullies and class clowns, the shy kids, the know it all’s, the not getting its vs the not even trying to get its

 

[Optimus Prime]

Posted this on EE too
================
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — One desperate California school district is sending flyers home in students’lunchboxes, telling parents it’s “now hiring.” Elsewhere, principals are filling in as crossing guards, teachers are being offered signing bonuses and schools are moving back to online learning.

Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen.

Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem.

The stress of teaching in the COVID-19 era has triggered a spike in retirements and resignations. Schools also need to hire staffers like tutors and special aides to make up for learning losses and more teachers to run online school for those not ready to return…….

COVID-19 creates dire US shortage of teachers, school staff

Schools have welcomed students back to classrooms but face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen.

apnews.com