
How to Fix Our Education System - babyshake
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704754804574491180197671224.html#mod=todays_us_
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neovive
Instead of focusing so much on standardized testing, we need to start valuing
creativity, ingenuity and communication. Just because a school can increase
test scores year-over-year, does not mean that the graduating students will
make the country more competitive. In fact, so much emphasis on standardized
testing is likely to produce less innovation as students and teachers are
forced to teach within very strict models. Unfortunately, it is hard to
measure creative output, but very easy to measure test scores.

I recall reading a while back about the Gates Foundation funding the creation
of new schools that focus on team work and creative problem solving. This
seemed to be the right approach.

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anamax
> Instead of focusing so much on standardized testing, we need to start
> valuing creativity, ingenuity and communication. Just because a school can
> increase test scores year-over-year, does not mean that the graduating
> students will make the country more competitive.

The idea that "valuing creativity, ingenuity and communication" more will make
the country more competitive is appealing, but how about turning it into a
scientific theory. You know, testable and falsifiable.

Failure to take those steps gets us useless twaddle like self-esteem programs.

BTW - If you do succeed, you get to compete with the twaddle for educational
resources. Sorry about that.

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tokenadult
I read this in the print edition this afternoon. The expert panel identify one
problem with education reform: lack of incentives that will move the key
actors who could make things better.

"MR. MURRAY: When NIH funding discovers some protein that will cure some
disease, it gets snapped up in a heartbeat by big pharmaceutical companies who
capitalize on it and make it widely available at a profit. When we have lots
of successful experiments in education, the mechanisms for transmitting that
success to the broader system don't seem to work very well. Why?

"MR. KLEIN: In part because there are not competitive influences that drive
it. In a public-delivery system like ours, competition is not typically a
driver."

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hristov
It is very hard to have incentives and competitive influences in education. It
is just the nature of education -- the result of a good or bad education is
not immediately obvious.

If you buy a TV you will know soon after you use it whether it is a good or a
bad TV. Not so much with your kids. Although, a very bad school may be
immediately obvious a lot of mediocre ones will not be and they will not be
distinguishable from very good ones.

So, unfortunately, one cannot use general competition to make schools better.
One has to rely on teachers and administrators desire to do good.

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tptacek
It's also a well-known factoid that the best developers outperform the worst
by a factor of 10, and yet despite huge incentives to develop a reliable
scheme to rate developers, none exists. Just because we "need" to segment the
good teachers (or developers, or doctors) from the bad doesn't mean we can.

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HistoryInAction
One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter
what/, unless they drop out. Students have little immediate incentive to work
to succeed, and social pressure seems set up to disincentivize students
towards learning.

One possibility I've thought of is that there should be early separation of
students into high and low performers to 'scare' parents into pushing their
kids towards the 'high' performance. If you can't succeed, you can't, but if
you don't try, you'll never get anywhere. Nothing wrong (and a lot right) with
vocational education, but so many kids waste money on a college education that
they're not able to take advantage of.

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tokenadult
_One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter
what/, unless they drop out._

Once upon a time, schools weren't organized to segregate children into grades
by age.

<http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html>

A lot of scholars think it was crazy ever to start organizing schools that
way.

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tptacek
So if you believe this, then why do you advocate for policies that will
further regiment and ossify the school system we have? Shouldn't you want to
give teachers more freedom with their curricula?

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tokenadult
_Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula?_

I don't recall that I have said that I wouldn't do that, although I suppose
you are concerned about my posting the link in which a third-party
organization advocated that student achievement should be one element of
teacher evaluation. Yes, I think teachers ought to have great freedom in
curriculum design (in particular, they ought to be free to choose their own
preferred textbooks and supplemental materials within very broad limits). But
I also think that if a teacher announces "I teach English writing" that there
ought to be some independent way to show that the students in the class made
some progress in English writing by the end of an academic year. Or, at the
very least, that students ought to be able to shop for preferred teachers who
make them feel honored as learners and who make all the students in the class
stay on task in learning. Different teachers may be a different fit for
different students--that seems quite likely--so teachers shouldn't be assigned
to students by administrators who never enter the classrooms to see what is
going on.

In general, I advocate policies that deregiment and unossify the school system
we have, but perhaps that has not been apparent in the threads in which you
and I have most recently interacted. I'm very much in favor of providing more
choices to more learners and more teachers.

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camccann
I don't buy the assumption that the biggest problem is teacher quality. Hasn't
it been repeatedly shown that, statistically, the factors that most strongly
predict a child's academic success are far and away related to their family,
not their school?

Of course, getting up in public to say "these kids are failing school--and
it's their parents' fault" doesn't really advance anyone's political agenda.

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steveplace
_I don't buy the assumption that the biggest problem is teacher quality._

It's half and half. My wife has a 2nd and 4th block, same material, same
environment, except the latter has such a poor group dynamic that they
significantly underperform the other class. Variables here are time, teacher
fatigue, blood sugar, and the students. I feel that the last factor has the
greatest effect.

And I totally agree with the fact that there's an abdication of responsibility
from the parent/guardian(s) in that they feel the intrinsic motivation for the
student ought to be provided by the state.

But then we have teachers who have tenure that play videos all day. Good
times.

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camccann
_Variables here are time, teacher fatigue, blood sugar, and the students._

I'd say that, at least up to some age, any problems attributable to "the
students" are really the failing of the parents, though maybe that's what you
were getting at.

I agree that some teachers aren't really _helping_ matters any, but without
good parental influence I don't think improving teacher quality is going to
accomplish all that much.

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pragmatic
<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/>

The economic system is sending a strong signal.

When you can just get by in school, become a banker and still make the
equivalent of an engineer, you'd be almost foolish to go with the
match/science degree.

Can you do that in India/China/other third world country?

~~~
pragmatic
To clarify, I'm saying that students in a third world country have a much
greater incentive to study the hard sciences. If you're brother in law can't
get a job in his bank then the only way out of poverty is to study hard.

Even in relatively poor areas of the country (midwest, south) you can make a
very good living as a banker (loan officer, etc).

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known
I believe we need more schools of type <http://www.olin.edu/>

