Seeing as how the US already spends more money per student than nearly all other developed nations for worse outcomes, I think it is pretty safe to say that the solution is not to throw more money at the problem and hope that it gets better. I don’t claim to know the answer, but it is abundantly clear that more money isn’t it.
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I don’t doubt there are. But it’s such a minority of homeschooling parents that it doesn’t say anything about homeschooling. Just as parents who have kids so they can exploit them later on are such a minority that it doesn’t say anything about wanting to be a parent.
I don’t have an answer, either, but my opinion is that the only standard metric is student and parent satisfaction. Of course, there are some cases where the state wants a better outcome than the student and parents, but those cases are extremely rare compared to students and parents who want the very best outcome possible.
I remember having to do reading & comprehension test doodads on a regular basis at primary school. You had a little booklet which you were to read, with a test at the back of it, and we would spend a day doing these damn things one after another, then go to the teacher & check your work with the answer key. At which point, I realised I could memorise the next two booklets answers whilst checking the one I had done, and finish the damn thing in no time. At which point, I was allowed to sit quietly and read a book in peace.
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Preach it, sister…
That sounds like every last office job I had, ever.
I really have minimal sympathy for the author. The poor teachers and admins are dependent on test scores for their funding, jobs, and reputation, and I’m willing to bet that her kids are above average students, so losing them will hurt. (Minimally, yes. But you don’t want to open the gates for a mass exodus of kids.)
I get not liking the tests, but walking out doesn’t stick it to the state legislature or board of education, so she’s harming the wrong people. And skipping the test doesn’t change the test-based curriculum, so the harm in that respect is already done.
And for what? Because her precious child gets anxious? Well maybe taking a test or two that’s risk-free for her might give her some good practice.
Except “satisfaction” isn’t a concrete metric, it varies by person. If you objectively want to say one school is better than another, you need an objective standard of measurement.
Now, mind you, if I was in charge, we’d measure simple things: Percent of students performing at grade-appropriate reading and math levels. On the theory that if they can read and do math, everything else can be learned.
Of course, If I was in charge, we’d ALSO bring back vocational education, and shop and home-ec classes for EVERYONE. But then, I have a rather Heinleinian ideal of the Competent Man, which some might not agree with. . . .
It’s probably worse than that, there are probably penalties for any student that doesn’t take the test, because principals would otherwise exempt their special education and ESL students to look better on the tests. This was a big controversy a few years ago around here, and some schools got rather harshly penalized for not including their special education students in the aggregate test scores.
This is true. But the exact same thing can be said about education and its purpose.
Student satisfaction doesn’t have to be the only metric, but I believe it’s an essential one. Patient satisfaction is an important metric at hospitals, and I see no reason to not use it similarly in schools.
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Most parents are “satisfied” when young Johnny or Janie brings home good grades and does not get into trouble.
I can achieve THAT by minimal discipline and grade inflation. I’m going to dig WAAAAAY back into the old “Lensman” books of the 1940s. . .
Excerpt from “Children of the Lens”, chapter 23:
“Consider, please, and recite, the manufacture of a fine tool of ultimate quality.”
"The correct alloy. Hot working–perhaps cold, too.
Forging–heating–quenching–drawing…"
"Enough, youth. Think you that the steel, if sentient, would enjoy those treatments? While you did not enjoy them, you are able to appreciate their necessity.
You are now a finished tool, forged and tempered."
This is true. That’s partly because we’ve been taught to accept good grades as an objective metric for good education.
But I don’t think that it’s our job to “manufacture” well-educated youth, while ignoring their protestations that they’re not enjoying the process. That’s exactly why so many intelligent, curious students have hated and continue to hate school. We treat them as if they weren’t sentient. They complain, and we tell them we know what, when, and how they need to learn (and eat and talk, etc.).
It’s our job to offer all opportunities for a quality education, working with and for students so that they can have an educational experience that is effective, satisfying, and, ultimately, self-propelled and never-ending.
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Montessori? It moves from concrete representations of complex math problems, physical things that kids and touch and manipulate and see, and moves them to the abstract version of math… I’m not sure how your run of the mill public school is teaching math now. @kogunkogun, is it markedly different from what we grew up with (which, I don’t think did me much good…).
http://www.justmontessori.com/math/
I was and remain bad at math, and I think that my kiddo will have a firmer foundation with this method.
But I wonder how we “get stuff” rests in part in how they were introduced to us when we were young? [quote=“maggiek, post:77, topic:25048”]
when what you probably really want to be doing is giving teachers tools to teach different kids in different ways.
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Montessori is supposed to work for this too. Everyone gets a lesson on new topics when they are ready for it. Kids are allowed to move about the environment and work on what they like provided they get their weekly work plans done. This allows for both group and individualized instruction. Kids who excel in some area can also help younger kids in the class, which further reinforces their own knowledge of the topic. It’s worked well for my kid, who seems to like to work independently, and is pretty good about making sure all her work is done when it should be.
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My point is, the satisfaction of the STUDENTS is fairly irrelevant, and that of the parents can be gamed.
Either way, it’s NOT an objective measure. Either a student can perform certain tasks that are required for a self-supporting citizen in a technological society, or they cannot. “Feelings” and “satisfaction” don’t come into it. . .
Teachers, by and large yes. Professors, yes in many, probably most, cases, though there’s a significant contingent who see teaching as a nuisance that gets in the way of their research. Administrators, I don’t believe that for a second. Not only my personal experience, and not only that of many parents I know, but that of several friends of mine who are schoolteachers leads me to believe this. Education administration seems to attract stupid, incompetent, self-important, ass-covering jackasses who often keep the better teachers from doing their jobs right.
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And I couldn’t possibly disagree more that the satisfaction of the students is irrelevant at all. It is precisely that attitude which makes school so unbearable for millions of intelligent, curious kids.
It’s pretty easy to find out if a person can read with comprehension, write with clarity, and do basic math with precision. Once someone can do those things, pretending that there can be an objective measurement to tell if they can be a “self-supporting citizen” in a technological society, is, in my opinion, baseless.
The vast, vast majority of students want to be independent, happy citizens. As long as we embrace the idea that their opinions on how to achieve that are irrelevant, we will continue to provide millions of students with an ineffective and unpleasant education system.
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The so-called “skills gap” is a horrible myth. There is low aggregate demand and slow economic growth - which are policy decisions taken by the government. This way businesses can keep wages down permanently by creating a new “structural” unemployment.
If there really was a skills gap, wages would be going up - not down.
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I was trying to point out there are more groups than just religious wackos homeschooling.
I know a girl who is homeschooled due to life-threatening allergies to common substances, for another example.
The homeschooled kids I know are more intellectually developed than those taught in the public school system, although they are not as mature socially.
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Are you referring to that noted liberal George Dubya Bush’s program No Child Left Behind?
Speaking of… our entire senior class (in a public school) had to take the ASVAB. Based on what a teacher in a position to know admitted to me, this was part of a bargain that the school struck with the military: the school wanted to host an SAT or ACT test, but didn’t have that many desks (the auditorium, which could’ve held that many students at once, didn’t have flip-up desktops in the seats). The military loaned the school lap boards for test day, on the condition that the entire senior class sit for the ASVAB.
I recall some of the multiple-choice questions being along the lines of:
Here is a shape: □
Which one of the following shapes matches this shape? a) □ b) △ c) ○ d) ◇
I’m pleased to say that I scored very well on the test, but the result was that the local recruiter kept calling my house during the summer after I graduated.
However, having actually sat through the test, I will not admit to being smart enough to have done the sensible thing: skip the test, and incur whatever short-term penalty I might have received for doing so. (By that point, I’d already been accepted into college, anyway.)
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