Testing Teachers

[Arathena]

In areas where there is a single large school district, which has wealth available to it, go for it.

But, in many places, school districts are SMALL. Outside of California and Texas, the suburban districts and their board, where the money is, do not have authority over the rural and urban districts, where the money is not. Driving from my home to downtown Pittsburgh, I pass through not less than six independant school districts... and probably two to three more I don't care enough about to know about... in an hour of driving time. Most contain less than 5,000 students. One of them is wealthy enough to issue laptops to high school students. Another district can't get kids to stop dealing crystal meth in the fucking hallways, let alone teach them and give them stuff. The Pittsburgh school system cannot draw on the resources of either of those systems, or it would - it's perpetually broke.

Then you have the rural district that my fiancee taught in for a year in South Carolina - the district that paid her ~$25,000 a year, and couldn't afford to buy her a pencil or notepad for her own usage. (Also, no union.) The "city" was a rest stop on an interstate highway, something like four hours from the nearest real population center. Who's going to put up the dollars for that school?

I like the general idea, but the how is the problem. You simply can't pry the money out of nowhere. No one has the power to implement it nation wide.

[Embar Angylwrath]

So lets not implement it nationwide.

Lets try it where we get the most bang for the buck, like Texas, California and New York (and other large urban school districts). Why shelve something that might work for 80% of kids just because it might not work in districts with 5,000 kids? I go back to Partha's statement (with which I agree) that our current system doesn't work. We need to try something different. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but until we try it, we won't know. All we DO know is what Partha already told us.. what we are doing now isn't working. So why the resistance to trying something different?

[Arathena]

So lets not implement it nationwide.

Lets try it where we get the most bang for the buck, like Texas, California and New York (and other large urban school districts). Why shelve something that might work for 80% of kids just because it might not work in districts with 5,000 kids? I go back to Partha's statement (with which I agree) that our current system doesn't work. We need to try something different. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but until we try it, we won't know. All we DO know is what Partha already told us.. what we are doing now isn't working. So why the resistance to trying something different?

I'm not trying to shelve it, just trying to get you to think bigger.

[Partha]

Lets try it where we get the most bang for the buck, like Texas, California and New York (and other large urban school districts). Why shelve something that might work for 80% of kids just because it might not work in districts with 5,000 kids?

Because that way you're guaranteeing education ghettoes in the same way that the current system guarantees education ghettoes, the only difference is the zip code. Plus you still have to make those funding changes that wealthier parents have been resisting for a couple hundred years now. Hell, if you remember your history, part of the phenomenon of 'white flight' was caused by changing how education worked.

If you want to do a complete overhaul of our educational systems, you're going to have to start from the ground up.

You're going to have to start with implementation of new teaching techniques and standards with preschoolers and before. The first Montessori schools worked with two year olds. You're going to have to start somewhere around there, if not earlier. (There's a good semi-related article from the NYT magazine called 'The Moral Life of Babies'.) You're going to have to figure out from the earliest parts of life how they learn best and tailor their education accordingly. And this is going to cost a LOT of money. You're going to have to pay people outrageous amounts to teach, because people with that skillset are in high demand in other fields where they make actual money. That's assuming you actually WANT to do this.

Then you're going to have to roll your implementation forward with the kids you've started down this road. If you start, you can't halfass it and let it peter out back to the old ways in middle and high school. You can't let it be derailed by people who refuse to believe in basic science or who have certain beliefs about who's worthy of a tax dollar and who's not. You're going to have national standards so you don't get 50 Oklahomas. And every single thing I've outlined here will be fought tooth and nail, and not by people like me.