Picking up the pieces - how do we address problems were are facing in education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every thread like this just makes me think we need vouchers and competition. Teachers and admins don’t want what parents want or what’s good for students. They want what’s good for them.

Of course they want what’s good for them. Oversight from publicly-accountable officials should be enough, except the teachers unions have paid off school boards and other local elected officials.

[Anonymous]

Can we please float ideas for improving education other than increasing teachers' salaries?

What can be done in the near term to make public education better?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we please float ideas for improving education other than increasing teachers' salaries?

What can be done in the near term to make public education better?

Get rid of all of the teacher busywork so teachers can plan and grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every thread like this just makes me think we need vouchers and competition. Teachers and admins don’t want what parents want or what’s good for students. They want what’s good for them.

GOP troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we please float ideas for improving education other than increasing teachers' salaries?

What can be done in the near term to make public education better?

Get rid of all of the teacher busywork so teachers can plan and grade.

+1 yes actually allow teachers to have planning time-stop with all the extra online trainings-stop with unnecessary emails and meetings. Let teachers teach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we please float ideas for improving education other than increasing teachers' salaries?

What can be done in the near term to make public education better?

Get rid of all of the teacher busywork so teachers can plan and grade.

As a parent, what can I do about this? Would contacting/emailing the principal help? Or contacting my school board members? Or the new superintendent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every thread like this just makes me think we need vouchers and competition. Teachers and admins don’t want what parents want or what’s good for students. They want what’s good for them.

Vouchers and private school are great and all until it’s your kid who needs accommodations or gets counseled out.

[Anonymous]

Smaller class sizes would go a long way to fixing many of the other issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we please float ideas for improving education other than increasing teachers' salaries?

What can be done in the near term to make public education better?

Can you define what is the problem you are trying to solve?

[Anonymous]

There were major issues in deviation long before the pandemic. The learning loss argument is a lot of propaganda. Do you know how many kids couldn’t read way before COVID? The firsts hurdle, in MD at least, is ditching any curriculum not backed by science. We continue to fund reading curriculums that are proven to HARM children. Virtual schooling opened up the eyes of a lot of parents about what is or isn’t actually happening at school.

Our society doesn’t want to fund what’s actually needed for a fair education for all. Smaller classes and smaller schools so they aren’t run like prisons. Teachers paid on the same scale as other professions that require advanced degrees. WAY more time in the work day where teachers aren’t in front of a captive audience. Time with students does not equal quality unless there is enough time away from them with proper resources to reflect, analayze and plan for the next time.

We also have to address what is happening outside of school that causes so many children to have higher needs. We use schools to deliver all kinds of social safety net programs such as free food and health care. There are other plenty of ways to do this that don’t overburden schools. Our schools aren’t safe for students or teachers. The air and water aren’t clean and we live in fear of school shootings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we please float ideas for improving education other than increasing teachers' salaries?

What can be done in the near term to make public education better?

Get rid of all of the teacher busywork so teachers can plan and grade.

+1 yes actually allow teachers to have planning time-stop with all the extra online trainings-stop with unnecessary emails and meetings. Let teachers teach.

I do think this is a good concrete solution. We are in DCPS and a lot of the dissatisfaction from teachers seems to stem with frustration with the central office and the often arbitrary-seeming administrative requirements put on teachers. They also really seem to hate IMPACT. I have mixed feelings about that because I do think we need a way to evaluate teachers -- the district used to have a lot of ineffective teachers and that is simply not true anymore, and I think IMPACT can be credited with some of that. But I can also see that the way it is administered, and how often it is administered, is incredibly stressful for teachers. I think there should be a less combative way to check in on how teachers are doing.

But here's the flip side of that -- one reason IMPACT and other tools for evaluating teachers are combative is that teachers unions have a long history of fighting the ability of districts to do something about ineffective teachers. The "rubber rooms" are a famous example, but there are many others on a smaller scale. I've heard horror stories from parents of teachers who hit kids or simply refused to teach (putting the kids in front of a movie or tv show and ignoring them for hours at a time) and watched the school district protect the teacher or just shuffle them to another school. I'm about as pro-union as they come but there is a reason that teachers unions gained a reputation for working in opposition to the interests of families. It's not every union and of course anti-union activists exploit the bad examples, but also -- there shouldn't be so many bad examples to exploit, you know?

I understand why teachers get frustrated. Their job is hard, they often don't get the respect they deserve, and district administration is often simply looking out for themselves. But we need ways to evaluate teachers and hold them accountable -- they are positions of real power of young children and if you've ever had your kid in a classroom with a bad teacher, you know how scary and frustrating it can be. We need a system that is fair and accessible and hard to exploit. That means transparency and oversight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pay teachers more. We’re going to need the best and brightest, or at least the better and brighter, to tackle this.

MCPS has a 3 BILLION a YEAR budget. They are choosing not to pay teachers more, even though 90% of the budget goes to salaries, healthcare and pensions. This cannot be the main issue

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There were major issues in deviation long before the pandemic. The learning loss argument is a lot of propaganda. Do you know how many kids couldn’t read way before COVID? The firsts hurdle, in MD at least, is ditching any curriculum not backed by science. We continue to fund reading curriculums that are proven to HARM children. Virtual schooling opened up the eyes of a lot of parents about what is or isn’t actually happening at school.

Our society doesn’t want to fund what’s actually needed for a fair education for all. Smaller classes and smaller schools so they aren’t run like prisons. Teachers paid on the same scale as other professions that require advanced degrees. WAY more time in the work day where teachers aren’t in front of a captive audience. Time with students does not equal quality unless there is enough time away from them with proper resources to reflect, analayze and plan for the next time.

We also have to address what is happening outside of school that causes so many children to have higher needs. We use schools to deliver all kinds of social safety net programs such as free food and health care. There are other plenty of ways to do this that don’t overburden schools. Our schools aren’t safe for students or teachers. The air and water aren’t clean and we live in fear of school shootings.

Agree that moving schools to a "science of reading" curriculum is huge. It's amazing how pervasive the anti-phonics, anti reading-science people attitudes are, even among educators. But it doesn't take much to change that. When teachers and schools that have been using a Lucy Calkins method introduce even one small unit on science of reading, the results have been so profound that even previously very opposed educators quickly change their tune.

I do think a big obstacle we face in the other things you suggests (smaller classes, smaller schools) is that the anti-public-education people (DeVos and her ilk) use the current problems of overcrowding and the teaching shortage as evidence of the failure of public education. They convince people that the answer is charters (first) and then private vouchers (the ultimate goal). It's a hard sell to convince people that we can do public education better if we really invest.

I'd love to see one of these celebrities or billionaires who claim to care about public education launch a pilot project in a midsize city where they funded a radical overhaul of public education to show what it could be. See what happens. Prove it can be done. Maybe that would convince people to stop acting like public education dollars are a waste of funds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone be specific about what the "trauma" is kids are experiencing right now? I have a 12th grader and a college sophomore (and I teach elementary school) so I may not be aware of what issues other kids are having. My personal children are all very active in sports and activities in high school and college now, despite being in virtual schooling for over a year. I'm not aware of a large amount of trauma and stress in their peer group, except for the stress of college applications of course.

Our ES school seems pretty much normal emotionally. Academically there are still some gaps. We spent much of last year bringing students who were behind up to where they should be, academically but it is true that for some students, there are still gaps especially in math. What these students need IMO is individual or very small group tutoring, summer school, after school extra help. We can't provide it during the day because we have to (our school district insists that we) stick to the curriculum unfortunately. I believe this policy is misguided. They tell us we can "weave in" remediation in "mini-lessons" but what these students need are actual lessons, not ad hoc mini lessons.

But emotional trauma at the elementary school level? What are people seeing that needs to be dealt with?

I was wondering the same thing. I have a 9th grader and 11th grader so my days of being in tune with an elementary school are long gone. The pendulum seems to be swinging back to being more strict with the kids and their behaviors after being extremely understanding last year. That is what I see at my kids' high schools at least.

Shouldn't the same be happening in elementary school? A "carry on, then" attitude? It doesn't need to super strict, but these young kids need to learn they still need to carry-on and what the expectations really are. I find it hard to believe elementary kids are still too "traumatized" for that.

Have you ever had to deal with a child with depression? "Just move on" doesn't work for adults or children. "Have you tried not being depressed?"

Yikes.

NP. Out of the four of us, DH and DS and DD and me, three of us really struggled with an increase in depression and anxiety during the pandemic and virtual school and afterward. Now, while DH and I are doing so-so, DS is doing fine, as is DD. A return to school, return to expectations, return to/making new friendships is what he needed and what he got.

The academic learning loss is an issue - but schools are the solution to the emotional and psychological trauma for kids, imo. Although I like OP's suggestion for increased mentoring and buddying, which was something that our ES used to do but hasn't resumed yet.

It’s debatable that schools achieve their main goal, educating a population. Why would we add healing from trauma to their plate? People need to parent and get their kids the help they need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There were major issues in deviation long before the pandemic. The learning loss argument is a lot of propaganda. Do you know how many kids couldn’t read way before COVID? The firsts hurdle, in MD at least, is ditching any curriculum not backed by science. We continue to fund reading curriculums that are proven to HARM children. Virtual schooling opened up the eyes of a lot of parents about what is or isn’t actually happening at school.

Our society doesn’t want to fund what’s actually needed for a fair education for all. Smaller classes and smaller schools so they aren’t run like prisons. Teachers paid on the same scale as other professions that require advanced degrees. WAY more time in the work day where teachers aren’t in front of a captive audience. Time with students does not equal quality unless there is enough time away from them with proper resources to reflect, analayze and plan for the next time.

We also have to address what is happening outside of school that causes so many children to have higher needs. We use schools to deliver all kinds of social safety net programs such as free food and health care. There are other plenty of ways to do this that don’t overburden schools. Our schools aren’t safe for students or teachers. The air and water aren’t clean and we live in fear of school shootings.

Agree that moving schools to a "science of reading" curriculum is huge. It's amazing how pervasive the anti-phonics, anti reading-science people attitudes are, even among educators. But it doesn't take much to change that. When teachers and schools that have been using a Lucy Calkins method introduce even one small unit on science of reading, the results have been so profound that even previously very opposed educators quickly change their tune.

I do think a big obstacle we face in the other things you suggests (smaller classes, smaller schools) is that the anti-public-education people (DeVos and her ilk) use the current problems of overcrowding and the teaching shortage as evidence of the failure of public education. They convince people that the answer is charters (first) and then private vouchers (the ultimate goal). It's a hard sell to convince people that we can do public education better if we really invest.

I'd love to see one of these celebrities or billionaires who claim to care about public education launch a pilot project in a midsize city where they funded a radical overhaul of public education to show what it could be. See what happens. Prove it can be done. Maybe that would convince people to stop acting like public education dollars are a waste of funds.

This exact thing has already been tried. It was an almost complete failure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/business/dealbook/the-melting-of-mark-zuckerbergs-donation-to-newark-schools.html