It's way past time to overhaul our education system

While there is some truth to what you say... that's not the entire story. We have all seen too many success stories from truly deplorable situations to say that circumstances alone is the reason for poor educational output.

IMHO, throwing money at education is not the answer. The education problem will never be solved until -

a. systems divest themselves of the mediocrity imposed upon them by the federal gov't
b. a hard results-based approach is taken
c. attitudes are changed at the "parent" level

There's nothing wrong with our public education system, it's perfectly good, the problem is with students and parents. You get what you put in to public education. If parents want their children to read then they'll emphasize that in the home and the kids will carry that into the classroom, if not then they'll grow up to be functionally illiterate. I'm perfectly fine with that being how it is, we need fry cooks and garbage men and if they want to self select more power to them.

quote:

---

Anyone with a degree can get a educator job, hiring standards are so low and should be raised to an acceptable level.

---

This is changing (largely because of stagnant property tax revenues). "Anyone" can get an education degree. But when my wife gets 400 applications for a teaching opening, she can be pretty picky.

I agree the education system needs an overhaul. The challenge is each state and really each city inside of a state presents unique challenges to fix. Some challenges overlap such has teacher certification. I have said numerous times they need to be more specialized and if they want to teach multiple subjects they should be certified in each one.

A unique challenge in Baton Rouge is the shitty deseg ruling that forces kids to be bussed around the city for hours. This renders almost every public school inside of Baton Rouge complete crap. The only ones that really escape are the magnet/speciality schools. The rest of the schools have kids that disrupt the learning of other students or take good students that could achieve and put them in a horrible situation.

The other problem with the bussing is the time spent on it. Some kids spend 3 hours a day on the bus. That means they lose at least 1 hour of valuable sleep and they lose around 2 hours that could be spent on homework. The solution in BR is fairly simple IMO we go back to neighborhood schools and make sure that everyone is getting equal funding.

I have said that once I finish my career I could see myself teaching, but I would never teach high school or lower. I would only teach a college course because it is just a much better setup.

lol, not a teacher, I just believe in personal accountability. The "blaming teachers cuz my kids dumb" and "blaming doctors cuz I is fat" routines are getting old. The resources still exist in this country to do damn near anything you want but we shouldn't have to hold peoples' hands.

quote:

---

Education is a triangle where all three points have to work together to succeed.

---

This is exactly why the entire way of educating our students should be overhauled.

quote:

---

To blame it all on the teachers is short sighted and ignorant.

---

I'm just getting started with the entire education process. I don't think its just the teachers, its the administrators, State education depts, and many more.

I agree you can't blame everything on teachers but some teachers really shouldn't be teaching. Spleen is on the right path with pre college education being a convergence of 3 points. Regulation changes can help strength the caliber of teacher/school but they can't do shite for horrible parents or just flat out dumb kids. The way to fix the flat out dumb kids is to use guidance counselors to find them a alternate career path such as a skilled job vs going onto college. The parents could be publicly beaten or such but outside of that they wont improve.

quote:

---

The rest of the schools have kids that disrupt the learning

---

This really can't be overstated. We moved my youngest to private school this year. When I asked her what the biggest difference between her new school and her old school was, she said, "No one throws their books at the teacher, no one throws their chair at the teacher, no one tries to hit the teacher and she just has to say 'be quiet' one time."

quote:

---

The politician have passed laws that now have teachers prepping students for tests, rather than energizing the students in the curriculum that they teach.

---

You realize you're parroting a union argument here, right?

We don't need individual teachers recreating the wheel when they teach students. We need them transmitting basic facts at the elementary level, an ability to analyze at the middle school level and then the ability to synthesize at a high school level.

quote:

---

This really can't be overstated. We moved my youngest to private school this year. When I asked her what the biggest difference between her new school and her old school was, she said, "No one throws their books at the teacher, no one throws their chair at the teacher, no one tries to hit the teacher and she just has to say 'be quiet' one time."

---

It almost never gets brought up during debates on how to fix our education system. It is a really distracting factor when you have someone that just doesn't give a frick about learning in a class room. People either forget or don't believe that for the most part negative/shitty people will drag down their surroundings.