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Without summer vacation bad parent's would have NO motivation at all to do anything about their kids.

Summer vacation at least means parents have to be parents for a short consecutive period.

School should start later in life, after age 10 for boys, perhaps a year or two earlier for girls.

With a more mature mind you can learn faster; the early years really are wasted for most kids.

School at an early age hurts curiosity and self driven discovery of new things about the world. The teacher/child ratio just isn't there to answer questions, and not being able to get answers to questions results in eventually giving up.

Take the resources we have, cut the time in school in half, double the student/ratio. I think we'd see much better functional literacy if we did that.

I guess I use summers to explore my kids interests in a way that would be infeasible for a school to do. When my oldest was interested in geology, we took a trip to a "gem mine". He had a blast sifting through the dirt and sand, and had a blast trying to use his books to figure out what each thing was.

I also try to work the things they've learned into real-world examples. For example, my oldest has learned about money, geometry, and measuring this year. He's going to help me build something this summer (I haven't quite decided what yet). He also keeps asking me if he has enough money for Minecraft. I've been working with him on figuring out the answer. (He keeps counting dollars as 1¢ and ten dollar bills as 10¢.)

I'd hate for these experience to go away because my kids are in school year-round. This is the part of the year that I get to take charge of their educations.

It is also my observation that the best teachers do not need to be highly paid, they just need to be free to get good results without a stupid system interfering.

If you have a stupid system, and highly paid, you will get the stupid teacher ratio near 100%.

So long as the system is poor, it will spit out and reject good teachers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by widebody911 (Post 9966980)

Which is why Republicans have such a hard-on for charter schools and vouchers; they want their kids educated, and to leave the rest behind to be wage slaves and cannon fodder.

Yes and no. The current way that schools are done is so bad that folks want charter schools so that some kids actually get educated vice indoctrinated or socially advanced. saving a few is better than saving one...and there has been no political will to fix them all by teacher's unions and political manipulators). You cannot teach kids when the classroom cannot enforce discipline or when much of the time is scent teaching "causes". Stop funding and controlling them at the Federal level and have states and local governments do the job. Things were much better before the Dept of Education.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CamB (Post 1872137)

Maybe the low salary makes them reluctant to be accountable. Maybe the low salary self-selects those who have the lowest SATs.

Now why would you want to ruin a good anti-teacher, anti-union rant with logic?
Jobs with low salaries don't attract the best and brightest - who woulda thought?

Back to the 2005 OP...which seems just as pertinent now as then (recent teacher strikes for more pay, the seemingly lesser quality of high school graduates, and the massive amount of student spending/debt that has ensued since then). Isn't choice an equally big problem..spending tens of thousands for a degree that pays little?

Quote:

Originally Posted by fintstone (Post 1872135)

THE MONETARY WORTH OF YOUR COLLEGE DEGREE
Neal Boortz
Some of my listeners just can't stand it when I get into my "choices have consequences" mode. So many people just don't want to believe that they are right where they are, economically, socially and in terms of their health, principally because of the cumulative effect of the choices that they have made in their lives.
Some of the most important choices you will make involve education. In the early years it's whether or not you're even going to go to school, and if you do go whether or not you're going to actually apply yourself. Later on you will have to decide if you are going to continue to college ... and what your major will be. CNN has published a survey showing starting salaries for college graduates with various four-year degrees.
]http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/pf/college/starting_salaries/?cnn=yes
At the top of the list you will find chemical engineering cashing in at $54,000 a year. Electrical, computer, mechanical, and aerospace engineering all pay over $50,000 a year to start. At the bottom of the list we find liberal arts, and at the bottom of the liberal arts list we find ... what else but teaching. Teaching comes in at $29, 733. Here's some more of the list.
Accounting (private): $44,564
Management trainee: $35,811
Teaching: $29,733
Consulting: $49,781
Sales: $37,130
Accounting (public): $41,039
Financial/Treasury analysis: $45,596
Software design/development: $53,729
Design/construction engineering: $47,058
Registered nurse: $38,775
You will notice that you don't see History, English, Social Work or other such disciplines on that list. If you make the choice to go after those majors, you are making a decision to limit your income potential pretty much throughout your life.
Now ... about the teachers. Low salary, right? Well what would you expect for a profession that fights accountability with its every breath? Chemical engineer, accountant, Registered nurse ... all of these people must be accountable for what they do. If they don't do their job well, it's off to the classified. Teachers? Can you spell tenure? Can you spell NEA? That would be the acronym for the National Education Association, the teacher's union. Every year this union meets to discuss and implement new ways and ideas to make sure that teachers are not held accountable for their successes or failures in the classroom.
A few more points to make about the teaching profession. Studies have shown that generally speaking the college freshman who decide to pursue a degree in education come from the bottom of their entering class. By this I mean that their SAT scores are at the bottom compared to the SAT scores for other entering freshmen. Likewise, college graduates who opt for a master's degree in education generally score at the bottom of their class in the GRE, the Graduate Record Exam, the SAT-like test that goes a long way to deciding who does and who does not get into graduate school.
Bottom line? We have the bottom of the entering college freshman class .. and the bottom of the entering graduate school class out there teaching our children. Then they gripe about low salaries. They write comments on report cards like "Johnny are learning to read real good." and expect to be earning the big bucks.
Oh ... and don't forget that extended summer vacation

I have no kids, and little or no interaction with schools anymore. BUT, I went to 11 different schools from 1st grade to 12th grade. I saw a lot of very different systems and rules.

I still believe the "new math" they forced on us was the start of the dumbing-down of American kids. The old way of simple math that had taught generations of kids was ignored because it was not new.

The new ways to teach math is so convoluted as to be silly.

When history is not even taught anymore, and common sense in education has become completely uncommon, I really have no idea what the answer is.

I know I pay a huge chunk of taxes to the local schools and get nothing at all for it. The federal government need to be 100% out of the mix. Shut down the federal department of education, it need to be all done by the state and county and local cities. And the first thing that needs to happen is eliminate the teachers unions but that will happen right after peace in the middle east.

Flint:
College is not public education. There are public colleges, but they are not required to take and educate everyone like the public school system. A state university can actually end up being far more selective than a private college if it's reputation grows.

No one is guaranteed a college education. We do require by law attendance at public school.

I don't know if it better for society to try to teach those that do not want to learn by keeping them corralled at a public school till they are adults and can be locked into a prison, or let them loose because they have been expelled and putting the responsible parent in jail for any miscreation.

Would be interesting to see how many parents fill out paperwork to emaciate their kids if they were responsible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera (Post 9967067)

End the Federal/nation control schools (Department of Education) and you will end the stranglehold the national teachers unions have...because then...all issues would be local.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tadd (Post 9967073)

I think you need to discipline the troublemakers (and there will be a lot fewer). those that still cause problems should be moved to an alternative school (until they prove they are able to return). Charter schools were not needed where I grew up...because the standards were quite high (enough for the brightest students) and other folks just passed with lower marks. Few children disrupted class because the punishment was corporal. Not learning was not tolerated and if you did not meet the minimum, you got summer school, repeated the grade entirely or both.

Flint:
Why should there be discipline? That is a parent problem.

You are there to learn. Don't want to learn, don't be there and there should be NO alternative schools. Again, make parents responsible. They can pay for private daycare for their miscreants.

We need a modern classical education. Everyone gets the same foundation.
1. Reading to the level of classic works like Adam Smith (oh god the corn... man goes on and on about corn...) and Shakespeare.
2. Math through algebra.
3. Basic science of how things work. Physics, chemistry, biology. You should know how your body works. The Krebs cycle is just as basic as 2+2.
4. Physical education.
5. Programming. (replaces foreign language).

Quote:

Originally Posted by tadd (Post 9967133)

Ok. Sounds like my school. We did not have an alternative either.
I would add history/civics.