Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pay teachers more. Better pay = better teachers.

If we eliminate the fat pensions, we can pay them market and just give em 401ks like everyone else.

The pensions aren’t fat anymore

Exactly, they’re pretty much just 401Ks at this point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are miserable. Schools are full of problems. What could be done to revamp public education? How about privatizing education and giving people vouchers for online schools, homeschools, or privates? Could there be some radical change in the next century or will the system remain as is? Thoughts or ideas?

The biggest problem with education is people without any thinking they know how to solve it.

These are currently some of the things making education worse. The standardized testing revolution was the beginning of the end, and NCLB and RTT did tremendous harm to public education, and those policies, still largely in place, continue to make it worse and worse. Now that some people have figured out how much cheaper online education is, and are trying to pass it off as a substitute for the real thing, it's pretty much doomed. I see no hope at all for improvement.

So, so accurate. My career has been spent in a struggling school and we were marked as failing by NCLB. Despite all the “interventions,” test scores have only dropped since then. So much of what the administration and instruction focuses on is a numbers game to maintain accreditation. On paper it looks like our kids are improving in literacy but the raw data is appalling, and we instead focus immense resources on science and social studies because those numbers matter too. It seems to be up to individual principals (and not district leadership) to figure out how to educate kids who are years behind, so there is great incentive for admin to pull up one data point or the other and ride that accomplishment to a different job.

As a teacher here are my thoughts:

-Nationwide ban on cell phones in schools. It is seriously damaging student learning and engagement. No teacher activity can realistically compete with a curated professionally design addictive app. Students have little desire to even interact with each other in class now.
-Require parent participation. We can’t raise their kids for them.
-Hold students accountable. Students know exactly what they are doing and what the consequences are. Lowering standards achieves nothing but lowering student engagement.
-Lower the cost of college. Right now students are giving up hope and many don’t see the point of doing beyond the bare minimum.
-Increase career programs. However, they cannot be dumping grounds. Students must apply and already have the required skills.
-Fix immigration. A lot of our ESOL students have made it clear they are here just for jobs and only come to school due to court requirements.
-Expand virtual schools for disruptive students or students who don’t want to come to school. About 10% of my students barely come to school for various reasons. Yet it’s my fault if they don’t pass.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pay teachers more. Better pay = better teachers.

If we eliminate the fat pensions, we can pay them market and just give em 401ks like everyone else.

The pensions aren’t fat anymore

Right? The only draw of teaching was the great benefits and pension. Then the school board decided it would be "better to give teachers cash" than a pension, so teachers got an increase of about a thousand a year but lost any possibility of retiring and not ending up living in a car somewhere when they are 80. Great deal. No wonder people are clamoring for teaching jobs.

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are miserable. Schools are full of problems. What could be done to revamp public education? How about privatizing education and giving people vouchers for online schools, homeschools, or privates? Could there be some radical change in the next century or will the system remain as is? Thoughts or ideas?

The biggest problem with education is people without any thinking they know how to solve it.

These are currently some of the things making education worse. The standardized testing revolution was the beginning of the end, and NCLB and RTT did tremendous harm to public education, and those policies, still largely in place, continue to make it worse and worse. Now that some people have figured out how much cheaper online education is, and are trying to pass it off as a substitute for the real thing, it's pretty much doomed. I see no hope at all for improvement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot even go to a live comedy show in NYC with a cellphone in NYC as an adult. The venues literally lock them up. It's insane underaged kids area allowed cellphone use on any school grounds during learnig hours.

Cellphones should be taken away, period.

I know I’m getting old when I say “back in my day”… but … back in my day, we had cellphones— we even had the early versions of smartphones— and we absolutely could not have them during the school day or they’d be confiscated for something like a week! I remember having my brick phone in my locker for calling my parents after practice, and that’s it. Your parents called the office if there was some emergency or if they needed to get in touch.

So why are kids allowed to have phones in schools now?! My kids are still too young and this hasn’t even occurred to me until I’ve heard parents of older kids complaining about excessive phone usage in class. It actually shocked me.

My DW teaches a MS grade. Since her admin has started enforcing rules she says the phones have not been a problem. They have an icon on their computer desktop that opens a template that can be sent to admin through Outlook. It lets the administrators know there is a problem.

1st offense, admin comes and takes the phone. The student gets it back at the end of the day. 2nd offense, admin takes it and a parent has to pick it up. 3rd time (and there seldom is a 3rd time) the phone is taken and the parent(s), student, counselor and admin have to have a meeting to discuss the cell phone.

Anonymous wrote:I cannot even go to a live comedy show in NYC with a cellphone in NYC as an adult. The venues literally lock them up. It's insane underaged kids area allowed cellphone use on any school grounds during learnig hours.

Cellphones should be taken away, period.

I know I’m getting old when I say “back in my day”… but … back in my day, we had cellphones— we even had the early versions of smartphones— and we absolutely could not have them during the school day or they’d be confiscated for something like a week! I remember having my brick phone in my locker for calling my parents after practice, and that’s it. Your parents called the office if there was some emergency or if they needed to get in touch.

So why are kids allowed to have phones in schools now?! My kids are still too young and this hasn’t even occurred to me until I’ve heard parents of older kids complaining about excessive phone usage in class. It actually shocked me.

I cannot even go to a live comedy show in NYC with a cellphone in NYC as an adult. The venues literally lock them up. It's insane underaged kids area allowed cellphone use on any school grounds during learnig hours.

Cellphones should be taken away, period.

Anonymous wrote:We need to re-delineate the responsibilities of all interested parties: teachers, admin, counselors and social workers, students and parents.

95% of my training is in teaching content (specifically literacy). For many years, that was what I did all day: teach. But these days, 95% of my effort and training is going into managing intensely challenging student behavior and mental health issues. The actual instruction is an afterthought in a lot of ways.

Good advice. This should not be the case. Kids that eat up ex easier a
Points of time to manage their behavior in a class need moved to a different environment.

We need to re-delineate the responsibilities of all interested parties: teachers, admin, counselors and social workers, students and parents.

95% of my training is in teaching content (specifically literacy). For many years, that was what I did all day: teach. But these days, 95% of my effort and training is going into managing intensely challenging student behavior and mental health issues. The actual instruction is an afterthought in a lot of ways.

Ban all cell phones.

Whip student ass when they act out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pay teachers more. Better pay = better teachers.

If we eliminate the fat pensions, we can pay them market and just give em 401ks like everyone else.

If they are so fat, why can’t we get people to do these jobs?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pay teachers more. Better pay = better teachers.

If we eliminate the fat pensions, we can pay them market and just give em 401ks like everyone else.

The pensions aren’t fat anymore

Anonymous wrote:The MD Blueprint is a 2 billion dollar disaster and a 10+ year waste of time. Future is bleak in Maryland.

+1. Simple politics reward your base. Has next to nothing to do with kids education.

Also students see the revolving door and principals getting million dollar payouts for supporting manipulating and bullying teachers for higher numbers. This tells them that teaching is a bad decision. You can't have teachers who are smart when a contingent of being a teacher is admitting that you are not a smart person.