How to fix our crisis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Add lots of migrant kids, get rid of high-level math so some kids aren’t embarrassed, lots of multiple choice tests, bullcrap extra credit & exam re-takes so everyone can get an A. I’d say Democrats & teachers unions are doing a fine job with our public schools, wouldn’t you?

Why do you think unions have anything to do with the curriculum? They exist to protect their members. If the curriculum is crap, blame the people who chose it. Hint: it isn’t the teachers. Most teachers I know want a return to a mastery of basic literacy. They are sick of students being passed through the grades without anywhere near mastery.

[Anonymous]

Possible starting points for conversation:

Address tech

Concrete and abstract societal respect and value regarding professional educators (and healthcare, safety, and all the professions which make for thriving communities)

Emphasize working on-the-spot functional knowledge and processes beginning in early grades over surface-only polish

Adaptive flexible autonomy and functional accountability

Support for public libraries as access points for cross-generational places of instruction, creation and innovation, and support

Listen to special educators when reimagining classrooms and instruction

Bring back career/hobby days for children

Physical textbooks

Art and music education as essential in the early years

Continuing neuroscience education for educators

Improve and address infrastructure

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As much as we talk about the difficulty of college admissions, American high school students are not learning enough content to compete in a global market. The SAT is not rigorous and barely tests at a pre-calculus level. Our students are dropping out of STEM programs like flies, and students aren’t graduating with the skills needed to compete in the entry level market. What reforms should we make?

One party continues to gut public education and use public money for parochial education that focuses on religious studies and not the 4 R's.

This isn't hard. America was great when people had a chance to succeed and then reward the country that made the conditions for success with taxes to bring others up with the same opportunity. The GOP has been gaslighting the middle and lower classes and consolidating wealth in the 1% and is now going to fight to bring in skilled labor from other countries so they can control those workers with their visa's while native born Americans become chattel in an increasing dystopian world.

The way to break it is to get private and foreign money out of our elections and limit or eliminate gerrymandering.

Yes, but I think we are past the inflection point where this would have been possible. Our best chance was probably Bernie, though at the time I was not a supporter. Perhaps it does have to get worse before it gets better, sadly. I think we are seeing the first wave of employment contractions due to AI. There was an article in the WSJ recently about the coming end of entry level jobs, as they will be outsourced to AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched the stand up special from Ronny Chieng last night and he had a really funny bit about how his MAGA friends are willing to die for America but there not willing to do math homework for America, and what America really needs is more people who are willing to learn the skills for a post-manufacturing economy.
I’m not doing it justice but it was both funny and very smart.

There's no need to bring politics into this, but since you did... tell us all about the abysmal schools and test scores of urban inner-city kids. Are they "willing to do their math homework" and "willing to learn the skills for a post-manufacturing economy"? We'll wait.

Of course you bring urban kids in first. The dog whistle is really getting slobber all over it from the people on this forum. Could’ve talked about anyone else.

Found someone else who is completely unable to read. The above post is in response to the PPP - you? - who thought it would be clever to $hit on MAGA in the college forum. I’ve helpfully bolded the pertinent words for you. Get a grip.

+1
PP is selectively outraged. So typical.

[Anonymous]

Get rid of foreign entities owning land. People can grow up and be owners in the community when they don't have to fight foreigners for land. Why would someone want to go into a low paying job field in this day and age? They won't be able to afford life.

[Anonymous]

Removing cell phones from class (or putting them away, etc.) was a good first step. Thank you, Gov. Youngkin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop teaching so many courses. We could consolidate many ap English and history courses to a series of Humanities courses- literally call them Humanities 1, 2, and 3. Make them rigorous general education courses on US and global history, English Literature, and potentially add in some philosophy/sociology in the later coursework. Increase and normalize the “fast track” where Algebra 1 is taken in 8th grade across the country; then, by senior year have students choose between a project-based stats course or calc.

Stop making students take every class under the sun for elite colleges and have them tested across these two courses: Humanities and Math to free up space for whatever electives they want. If you wanna take Humanities, Calc 3, Physics, Bio, and Chem with a language, do it. If you wanna take Humanities, Stats, Latin, Advanced European history, do it. No reason why we have to take so many classes across the spectrum that we don’t care about.

If my child doesn’t immediately take to the water in swim lessons, that doesn’t mean learning to swim is a waste of time. Learning how not to drown is an important bar, and it is not the only benefit from the process.

DP but their solution seems to be decent. The humanities people on here really hate STEM and actively want to reduce the math they learn, so let them continue complaining about pre cal and then they can take a stats class that should be useful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched the stand up special from Ronny Chieng last night and he had a really funny bit about how his MAGA friends are willing to die for America but there not willing to do math homework for America, and what America really needs is more people who are willing to learn the skills for a post-manufacturing economy.
I’m not doing it justice but it was both funny and very smart.

There's no need to bring politics into this, but since you did... tell us all about the abysmal schools and test scores of urban inner-city kids. Are they "willing to do their math homework" and "willing to learn the skills for a post-manufacturing economy"? We'll wait.

Of course you bring urban kids in first. The dog whistle is really getting slobber all over it from the people on this forum. Could’ve talked about anyone else.

Found someone else who is completely unable to read. The above post is in response to the PPP - you? - who thought it would be clever to $hit on MAGA in the college forum. I’ve helpfully bolded the pertinent words for you. Get a grip.

+1
PP is selectively outraged. So typical.

Still makes no sense to make fun of “urban” kids because someone came after your political clique…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Add lots of migrant kids, get rid of high-level math so some kids aren’t embarrassed, lots of multiple choice tests, bullcrap extra credit & exam re-takes so everyone can get an A. I’d say Democrats & teachers unions are doing a fine job with our public schools, wouldn’t you?

I’m from a republican state with a republican school council. Their reforms? Pull 100s of books off the shelves, dismantling funding for low income schools, budget cuts all the time, awful teacher retention, attempts to put the Bible in the classroom, creating a ton of administrative bloat to stamp out critical race theory (it doesn’t exist, just banning an MLK book), constant attempts to convert public schools to charters with no actual data that this would improve the schools, and there’s more but I hope you can see the point by now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This site is a perfect example of why things are going down.

1. Instead of taking the time to research anything, go to the internet and ask strangers for advice.
2. Take anything posted as the gospel truth.
3. Spread misinformation or at least be heavily influenced by it.
4. Never stop to do critical analysis or use critical thinking skills.
5. Set this example and your kids will follow.

Result: a society of non-thinking, lazy people who somehow feel entitled to the best things in life.

Mind you, these are various elite college alumni.

[Anonymous]

My changes would be…
1) banning social promotion and failure of state exams -> re-entering the current class you are in
2) Cell phone bans
3) top down redesign of curriculum. More IB programs. Foreign language in elementary school and required every year until high school. Better health and wellness instruction in PE.
4) dismantling funding towards STEAM programs. More lab-based science classes in high school with required lab reports. Complete redesign of certain science curricula (physics, looking at you)
5) research-based history education in middle school. Teach students to evaluate historic documents and whether a source is credible or not
6) disempower parental rights groups from the classroom, particularly books. Average parent knows squat above education.
7) Bring back lost G&T programs, take notes of what works from the magnet school mode
8) Bring Back In School Suspension and make it a mark against promotion to the next grade
9) rework the canon. Some things are working (Of Mice and Men, The Alchemist, The Great Gatsby, Antigone, Fahrenheit 451- note the prevalence of American literature and how students engage with it) Some things are not working (Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, dismissing important writers like Shelley, Walker, and some male authors to get the boys more excited, also this guy named Shakespeare, get him out)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

Except 80%+ of people do NOT need calculus in their careers, even those with a college degree. It would be much more useful to require Stats classes and personal finance.

Not everyone is cut out to be an engineering major, nor should they be---we need a variety of people in this world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We could start by getting rid of Test Optional (cant wait to read about this nonsense in the history books - justifiied by it's "too easy" to fake with testing but total un-uniform GPAs are more reliable). We could start with lengthening the school day and the school year. Getting rid of retests and No-Fail policies. Strong intervention in early elementary for kids falling behind. Less focus on playing 3 travel sports and more focus on education and learning (not just rote memory but true education). Empahsis on critical thinking. Bring back cursive writing. No Cell Phones in schools. Get rid of Teachers Unions and pay good teachers 100-150K a year. Fire low results teachers. Make measurements public for both schools and teachers. Limit class sizes to 25. Have chatGPT write the curriculms so they arent dull, as they often are.

How exactly do you plan to define "low results"? Like "NCLB" where if kids are not at or above grade level the teacher has failed? How about in a 90%+ FARMS school where the kids enter 2nd grade with 70% of the class at the K reading level. Well if that teacher takes those kids to end of 1st grade or early 2nd grade reading level by the end of 2nd grade, they have stellar accomplishments ---they have completed what others have not done, despite the kids still being "below grade level". Yet that was punished with NCLB, and still is---there are more issues than just school for many kids, until you fix the early learning and home life (seriously, hard to study if you are worried about gunfire coming thru your living room window nightly or if mom's latest BF is going to beat the crap out of her and/or you and your siblings).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

Except 80%+ of people do NOT need calculus in their careers, even those with a college degree. It would be much more useful to require Stats classes and personal finance.

Not everyone is cut out to be an engineering major, nor should they be---we need a variety of people in this world.

If we taught education based on what 80% of people needed, we wouldn’t have any of our current system. I don’t touch any of the sciences in my career or my life. I don’t actively think about the water cycle every time it rains. I still had to learn biology, chemistry and physics through high school and through college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

How ridiculous. Unless one is going into a STEM field, calculus is completely unnecessary - and useless.

“Calculus is useless” is exactly why our education system is so bad. So many parents happy to have ignorant kids.

Once again, unless you are going into STEM field, calculus is NOT needed. So why force kids to take it when they could instead be taking more useful courses? Like Statistics for useful math, and personal finance for kids not on a college path (along with stats).

I'd prefer my kid who wants to be a journalism major be editor of the school newspaper, or take a period or two to intern while in HS, rather than being forced to take calculus