i bet germany and finland teachers didn't have the lowest average SAT scores of any college major when they entered college, like teachers in the USA do.
my top 10 ways to erode HS student performance:
10 - create "ebonics" as a legtimate course of language study
9 - make sure high school instruction "teaches to the SAT test" rather than actual critical thinking and reading skills, because we're worried about low test scores
8 - enlist teachers to fight tooth and nail to resist charter schools and vouchers as experiments to see if there other educational models which might work better.
7 - invite parents to "vet" library books, so that objectionable classics like "huck finn" can be purged from the shelves
6 - put metal detectors at all the school entrances, but when you catch students with weapons and drugs simply suspend them for a few days, then "reintegrate them" back into the same school rather than send them a more restrictive setting. (trayvon martin was a 3-peat offender, and was on suspension for beating up his bus driver on the day he assaulted Zimmerman)
5 - do not tie privileges like athletic participation and parkign your car on high school premises to any meaningful academic performance - the lowest achievements are good enough
4 - take no action when studious kids are beaten up in the hood because doing homework is "acting white"
3 - spend far more time squabbling about cafeteria menus than curriculum excellence
2 - make sure your school budget contains higher expenditures for administrators' cell phone bills than for new library books. (this one was "outed" right here in baltimore)
1 - ensure that a year in DC public schools costs the taxpayers more a year of full tuition at an ivy league school - because we can never spend too much money on our kids !!
