Parents should have an outside assessment of their children. This should be voluntary for all parents to have their child independently tested. They would find out that the state assessments are often times flawed and their child is not proficient. This would help parents see the truth and in turn put pressure on the school to improve.
Anne Marie
I'm for national standards but only if they are standards based on Core Knowledge, Singapore Math and Direct Instruction. [ed.: hear! hear!]
Ari HavivWe need national mathematics standards focused on CONTENT, not any specific program.
The abundance of mediocre programs, along with all of the time and money wasted on implementation, has crippled our elementary and middle school math instruction.
Investing more money on "professional development" will yield nothing. We must focus on the content first. It doesn't matter how wonderful the teaching methodology if content nonexistent.
Read the National Mathematics Panel Report.
First things first :D
concerned [ed.: I think I know this person!]
I noted that the representatives of neither candidate had anything to say about whether individual public schools should be autonomous. The empirical evidence clearly indicates that children acquire more academic skills and knowledge when such schools are self-directed.
Patrick GroffAmericans should be concerned that neither party has a serious policy with regard to education. When candidates discuss school reform, they forget about fiscal accountability. If the concern is with standards they won't respond to questions about curriculum.
Americans are sadly misinformed. The Singapore Ministry of Education developed standards and a created a curriculum that did what was promised. It was a curriculum written in English for children who's primary language was not English. Comparisons between Singapore and the US are striking. If the United States adopted Singapore standards there would be no need for standardized testing.
With a strong academic curriculum, more students would graduate from high school and be prepared for college and work. It costs Americans about $6 billion per year for every 10,000 high school dropouts. The past 10 years have been especially devastating for children as I've seen communities become increasingly resegregated. In this inflationary economy, our government is trading our children's futures by making school less efficient.
Nothing is lost by adopting the world’s best curriculum. Our great leaders should at least give communities a choice by putting Singapore on the state's list of adoptable curriculum. Eventually, the pain of not taking that risk will be greater than the reward for accepting it. We are running out of time.
The Singapore project is interesting and effective in a centrally-controlled educational system. The US is a long ways from agreeing that central control is a good idea. With others on this topic, I'd hope that Sens. McCain and Obama can come up with a serious solution for the conflict between federal and state/local governance of education that was started by Goals 2000 and really made worse by NCLB. [ed.: is this the case? What do people think? I haven't been able to form a solid opinion, although I tend to think this Commenter is right....] If educational content is truly a national issue, and if current NGO-type resources (like ASCD) are not up to the task of guaranteeing the content base for (e.g.) a high school diploma, then the whole US plan needs a shakeup and that will take leadership in the White House.
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"Parents should have an outside assessment of their children"
ReplyDeleteQuarterly report cards came home yesterday. Did you know that we have 3 (!) levels of honor rolls and none of them are based on test or quiz grades? Most of the honor rolls are filled with girls.
We have two different rubric scales of evaluation; 6-10 for all of the non-test work (I think), and 1-5 for the academic work (tests and quizzes, I think). The exact division is not clear. Many items of graded homework and tests don't come home. They go into a portfolio that stays at school. Parents can come in to look at them anytime. (Right, we will leave work early on a regular basis to go to the school to review something that should have been sent home.)
The rubrics are so vaguely worded that there is no way to figure out from the grade how to improve. That's if we get to see the grade in the first place. But, we will have a conference with our son at school this week (while the teacher flits around the room) to hear how he is going to improve next quarter. The school creates a gap in the feedback loop and then expects my son to know how to fix it. Thanks, but we have conferences with our son every night, thank you. What I want are conferences with the teachers.
For example, my son got top marks in reading and language arts. I have no clue about what goes on in the class. How come I'm still concerned. His social studies teacher also grades on writing and she gives him average grades. His social studies grade is lower because of his writing. Even the band teacher gives and corrects writing assignments.
What with writing across the curriculum, art for learning, and rubric grades for class participation, if you are shy and not so good at writing and art, you're screwed! You're especially screwed if you don't have parents to help you through this maze.
--Americans should be concerned that neither party has a serious policy with regard to education.
ReplyDelete....
---If educational content is truly a national issue,... then the whole US plan needs a shakeup and that will take leadership in the White House.
I wish people would read our Constitution. What, precisely, can the Executive Branch and the C in C do to solve this issue?
I think these ideas above are mistake. The idea that the NATIONAL POLTICAL PARTIES are where EDUCATION ideas, plans, and decisions get made or promoted means the game's over--we parents have lost. It means we have no control, only big institutional behemoths do, lobbyists do, unions do.
Political parties promote politicking. Political parties promote legislation. Political parties promote ideas for how money is spent. But we are so far in the weeds on WHAT kids need to learn, and HOW kids needs to learn it that jumping to legislation and money continues not to help--because it can't solve the problem of determining a Statewide or Nationwide consensus on what our kids should learn, let alone how to do that.
re: the conflict between the feds and the states:
our national problem is that as a culture, we no longer believe that Society's needs matter. We're in the "X isn't bad for me..so who cares?" or "X works for me, so it should be.." without reference to the big picture of what's needed to sustain society. Instead, the State's stepped in--but without a coherent view of what education is FOR. We don't even agree on this BLOG, and somehow, we're going to get the legislative branch representing 50 states to agree???
There's no mandate for the feds being involved in education at all, and the states want federalism when it suits them but not when they have to pay for it. While the Feds continue to pay a zillion dollars to the states for education, it's not going to improve. But even if you believe education should be a national issue, the legal framework of our federal system doesn't support that goal.
It seems to me we should be moving toward a national benign neglect of these issues, and solving them locally, as much as possible. To the extent that the executive branch can minimize the intrusion of the states into those local solutions, fine. But really--how do you think the executive branch can do that?
re: independent assessment:
ReplyDeleteyou don't need the feds to do it. you just need the private sector. and LO and BEHOLD! that's what the private sector does, right now!
Kumon, Kaplan, Mathnasium, etc. are all independent assessments.
Don't like the for-profit model? Then model it the way the professionally degreed folks do: create boards that license. No one complains that the AMA or ABA don't write decent independent assessments of doctors and attorneys. You could do it what College Boards does, but you could do it for 4th grade, 8th grade, say, so that you still had time to correct before college.
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ReplyDeleteI'm having comment form problems here! (sorry)
ReplyDeleteYes, Catherine, you know me :D
I should have also mentioned fiscal responsibility wrt to our tax dollars...
School math books, nonsense, and the National Science Foundation
http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/nsf.html