I need to clean up all of these posts maybe add pictures and links in the near future. But for now i will continue with education.
Over the years i have read so many articles about No Child Left Behind and how the school system needs revamping. But what have we done? Not much. The problem i propose is public school systems in the US.
Here is a list of problems and solutions.
1. Attracting teachers:
The pay needs to be based on merit rather then teaching longer. The average teacher takes 3 years to pay their college debt. Why try to teach? We need to encourage the best and the brightest to teach in the system. Merit pay can lead to the best teachers making easily enough to stay in the business from early years and lead to them actually caring if their class succeeds. There should also be rewards for teaching in the cities.
2. Private schools
My proposal is a private school system paid not by parents but by the state, at least to some extent. You choose the school, the state pays the amount it would to a public school you would go to. This will allow you to have very cheap private education and will force public schools to compete or go out of buisness. I believe private schools are good for 3 reasons:
a. they can kick kids out. It is extremely hard to kick kids out or punish in regular school. Acting out in class, fighting. What can a school do? Suspend you? So youll get to hang out out of school? At a private school they could have other kinds of disipline addressed in part 3.
b. parents pay. This means that they will pressure kids to stay in them and work hard.
c. are forced to do well. In the public sector we just through money at the problem. From 1978 to now we spent 2x as much adjusted for inflation on education. In the private sector you dont work you go out of buisness.
3. Disipline
I feel community service can be a disipline. Act out in class? Get sent to principal? Is suspension really going to help? Community service can show you the world around you and open your eyes. It can teach morals to kids and show them how they can succeed.
Also, allow kids to have to clean up if get in trouble like a lunch room or help a janitor. This would help to pay for certain aspects of a school for cheaper as well as be a big reason kids dont get in trouble as then they have to actually work.
4. Keep kids in school/good grades
The money idea proposed and utilized in inner city chicago has done very well. People i spoke to from debate and other activities after school there actually study because they instantly see an incentive from doing the activity. They get paid for extracurriculars, which will save Chicago well on its police budget (keep kids out of trouble) and get kids to learn more leading to a more equal and better future for america.
There is much more to post but i will save it for the future so as not to overwhelm in a single post. These include: educating for the future, educating for college, equalizing city students with those of the rest of the area, fixing the school day etc.
3 comments:
I think it's ridiculous that students (and their parents) can complain about teachers at our own school, but because the teachers have tenure, the school doesn't do anything about it. I believe there are many teachers who deserve more credit for what they do at school (I think some of the younger, newer teachers work a LOT harder than the older ones, and they should be piad that way), and then there are always those teachers who get complaints filed against them, yet nothing changes.
I can't say that I agree with you but I cannot say that I agree with you but for me, I'm fine with the education system in GBN right now.
As a general rule of thumb, the private sector does things better than the government. It would be very interesting to see how a transition to at least semi-private school would affect education.
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