US education

[Marcus Aurelius]

Thanks to all who answered with intelligent summaries, with, of course, the exception of the kid with the Roman nose.

I was interested to find out why the US, the worlds' only superpower, the richest nation on earth, at the moment, is so low on an international education scale. You're answers, with the one exception, have been most enlightening - again thanks.

Anything to take the heat off the UK for their own pathetic performance, which, after all, is what the article cited by the OP was all about anyway.

 

[Dawg]

Dawg, if you want to identify what makes the US perform worse than the countries ahead of it, it makes sense to identify ways in which it differs significantly from most of them. So, for example, teachers unions wouldn't be a good candidate, since unionization among teachers is a common feature of most of the countries that outperform us. Finland, for example, has a powerful teacher's union, and yet also dominates in the performance rankings. Similarly, smartphones are a poor candidate for the culprit -- most of the top ranking countries have high smartphone ownership, including Finland (home to Nokia, where 92% of people have mobile phones). The US is actually 83rd, internationally, in per capita mobile phone ownership. "Government teet [sic] suckers" are another lousy candidate for a culprit, since nearly all the countries that outrank us have more social spending per capita than we do, including the countries of Scandinavia, which are highly socialized, with social safety nets that put anything in the US to shame. I'd also argue that common core is a poor culprit, since it's recent and poor US rankings go back decades, and since most leading nations have something equivalent to common core (national curriculum guidelines, rather than high levels of local school district autonomy).

So, much of your list is just an attempt to push right-wing propaganda in a context where no sane person would think it's relevant. As for the items in your list I haven't already debunked, they may be worth looking into. It's quite possible our school administrators are overpaid relative to their foreign equivalents, and so we spend a lot of our educational money on things that don't directly impact what is happening in the classroom. One way to decrease that adminisrative expense would be consolidation of more administrative functions at a national level. When businesses merge, the biggest "synergy savings" are job cuts for middle-managers, since you can do more work with fewer people when you consolidate that way. In the same sense, if you had a single group of administrators building curricula, selecting texts, handling a lot of procurement, etc, at a national level, rather than reinventing the wheel in each of thousands of mostly-independent school districts, you could spend lesson administrators, overall.

Maybe single parent homes are a factor, too -- I haven't looked into how the US stands relative to those other countries on that front, but it makes sense that if a single parent is bearing all of the considerable burden of raising a child, he or she could not, on average, do as good a job minding the child's education. If so, we should look into what is driving the US's single parenthood higher than peer nations. Similarly, if you can show our kids are more "spoiled" than their international peers among leading countries, we should look into why that is. What are we doing differently to encourage that spoiled attitude?

You really didn't have to post all that to say I was Right√

 

[Woolleybugger]

The funny thing about all this talk about smart and dumb kids is that by the time you grow up, the differences are not really that important. For instance, one of my friends did not test well in school and did not go to college. He remains though an extremely intelligent adult and has led an interesting life. Both of my brothers were terrible in school and would not know the difference between Dickens and Hemingway but both of them turned out to be very smart men. Some folks are geared towards the type of teaching or learning that we think is correct. Some are not. Why not separate these types of people into groups that line up with their interests? We need smart tradesmen, crafty businessmen, intelligent child rearers and adaptable labor. There is nothing wrong with having a system that encourages growth in the direction you are suited for and there should be no stigma from it.

 

[Queen Titania]

Anything to take the heat off the UK for their own pathetic performance, which, after all, is what the article cited by the OP was all about anyway.

Wulk is Scottish where education is good.the rest of the UK is another matter ......since the 70s it has gone down hill 'education by numbers'. But this is true almost everywhere now especially where Government interferes ................ take our childrens education out of the hands of the Govs and give it back to the educationalists, well the good ones at least, who love children for the jewels they are, each and every one unique.

 

[Dawg]

Loved Connies post, she nailed it. I have a lot of teacher friends and they all try very hard to do the right thing. Parents really started this mess decades ago. Something about the boomers made them think their kids are the most incredible creations to ever walk the earth. Likely because our folks generation was still old school and never really gave a shit about our feelings, they spoke, we listened and obeyed. Our generation apparently wanted to be nice and that extended to teachers. Kid is unruly and gets disciplined, parent goes to principal or courts. Look at communal showers for chrissakes. Kids don't take showers anymore after PE, hell, they don't even have PE in most places. As for tests, I got news for everyone. I grew up in the best public school system in the nation in California in the 60s. When it came time for SATs, we had plenty of lousy scores too. What I remember though is that kids were separated into tracks so that the smart kids all stayed in the same groups throughout school. The slower kids got more attention.

√

 

[Mytzlplk]

What the hell is the matter with US education? In the latest world wide Pisa tests the US came 36th out of 65, even Vietnam was away ahead of you.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25187997

I'll have a guess at the reason: Lack of discipline in the classrooms. Kids talking back to the teacher, ignoring the teacher, talking on cell phones, talking to each other... etc.

Strangely enough, there's an exception, "If Massachusetts was ranked as a country it would be sixth best in the world, ahead of any European country". What's Massachusetts doing that the other States aren't?

probably investing in their schools http://www.massbudget.org/report_wi...on_paper_FY09_data_Sept_2011_release_v04.html amongst other things others aren't

 

[Arkady]

You really didn't have to post all that to say I was Right√

No. And if you're ever right, I'll post a lot less. In the meantime, I'll go with longer posts dissecting your foolishness in great detail.

 

[Dawg]

No. And if you're ever right, I'll post a lot less. In the meantime, I'll go with longer posts dissecting your foolishness in great detail.

Your Honor
I Rest My Case√

I hope you don't melt this easy in court and or call the Judge his foolishness☻

btw: that isn't you in my pundit op is it?

 

[Arkady]

What about "self-esteem"? When I was a kid, the teachers didn't give a rat's ass about our self-esteem. That was good for an otherwise good student like me, whose biggest problems were laziness and inattentiveness. It probably wasn't so good for some of other students who needed a little more caring and attention.

But, then when my stepson went to school, "self-esteem" was all the rage. Alas, my stepson was more like me. What needed most, was someone kicking him in the ass (figuratively) and calling bullshit on him. But...that just wasn't done in the 90's and my stepson worked it for all it was worth - to his ultimate detriment.

I'm also deeply skeptical of the self-esteem movement, as a way to improve academic performance. I once saw something that said that of all demographic groups, black girls demonstrated the highest indicators of self esteem, yet had the lowest academic performance, while Asian girls demonstrated the lowest indicators of self esteem, yet had the second-highest academic performance (after Asian boys). If anything, that would suggest an inverse relationship between pumping up someone's self esteem and getting good academic effort.

 

[Renee]

Well, I do think there is some blame on the home environment when it comes to lack of discipline at school. If you are not teaching your kids to respect others, respect adults, respect themselves, to act appropriately, etc... teachers are going to have a hard time controlling that in school. And, I do think frequently the teachers hands are tied. They are torn between trying to instill discipline and also not get in hot water by offending anyone.

I have yet to meet parents who has told their kids to be disrespectful. So many times parents are shocked that their children act out in class and usually these are very strict parents. And again I repeat, especially in middle school and up that peer pressure is more powerful than parental pressure in many cases. I agree with you that teachers hands are often tied.

 

[Renee]

What about "self-esteem"? When I was a kid, the teachers didn't give a rat's ass about our self-esteem. That was good for an otherwise good student like me, whose biggest problems were laziness and inattentiveness. It probably wasn't so good for some of other students who needed a little more caring and attention.

But, then when my stepson went to school, "self-esteem" was all the rage. Alas, my stepson was more like me. What needed most, was someone kicking him in the ass (figuratively) and calling bullshit on him. But...that just wasn't done in the 90's and my stepson worked it for all it was worth - to his ultimate detriment.

I did both....I worked on self esteem, which should not be minimized, and I figuratively kicked ass, my classroom was called the sanctuary...no one dare dis anyone in my room. ...and it took a few weeks to teach them how to make the classroom safe and they loved knowing no one would put anyone down. ...and survive my tactics

 

[Renee]

Woolley,

I think one of the things we don't do well at all anymore is that we no longer separate the smart kids from the dumb ones. We do at some level with GT programs But, there could be much more striation.

Largely that is a result of our increased goal of mainstreaming kids with educational support needs. And, I think it has come at the detriment to other students.

I think that other countries do a better job of that, particularly at the HS level. You have to test into going to certain schools for instance. What that does though is actually greatly alleviate the need to modify or dumb down your curriculum so that the lower performers can at least keep of the appearance of keeping up. Also, it allows for a better allocation of resources.

I think small class size is key to learning, particularly for struggling learners. On the other hand, many of my HS AP English and Social Studies courses could have been done more college lecture style. You could have easily had 50 or more kids in a class like that. For one, we were all going to be in the thick of that next year as we went to College, so it would have been a nice ice breaker to that sort of format. And, two, when you have highly motivated students who take independent study and work seriously and who do not need so much oversight and support - you can teach more of them at the same time. So, if one teacher can teach 50 or 60 top performers at a time in courswork that goes well with lecture style - then that frees up a teacher or two who can work with smaller groups of kids who may need some extra support. But, we really struggle to make those deliniations like the kids will feel bad or something - so we sort of hide the fact that they are dummies from them. Its disturbing, really.

connie

I know I've told you this but it is worth repeating because it was the greatest educational experience of my life. We had a failing school with over 1000 kids and we need each floor a separate many school with about 300 kids in each school. The classes were small and I had sixth seventh and eighth-graders in one room totally heterogeneous. But because I only had about 18 kids in my class I was able to grade each kid against him or herself.. What was most fascinating was that some kids were very poor readers but were extremely verbal. The kids soared on reading tests and of course as soon as it was successful the funding dried up

 

[Renee]

I think plain and simple is that we should not have tenure and we should pay teaches a lot more. This way we could get rid of teachers who are not that good and hire the best and brightest who don't go into teaching because it doesn't pay enough.
June is a very busy month for me because I am invited to address teachers who want to leave and the administrators hope I can motivate them to stay. I hear over and over , "why take all this disrespect when I can make a lot more on the outside". There goes the idealism

 

[Dawg]

I know I've told you this but it is worth repeating because it was the greatest educational experience of my life. We had a failing school with over 1000 kids and we need each floor a separate many school with about 300 kids in each school. The classes were small and I had sixth seventh and eighth-graders in one room totally heterogeneous. But because I only had about 18 kids in my class I was able to grade each kid against him or herself.. What was most fascinating was that some kids were very poor readers but were extremely verbal. The kids soared on reading tests and of course as soon as it was successful the funding dried up

Is there a translator in the house:
"We had a failing school with over 1000 kids and we need each floor a separate many school with about 300 kids in each school"

or could it be possible for you to translate that mess__________? LOL and you called me "stupid" & "dumb".........☻

 

[Dawg]

I think plain and simple is that we should not have tenure and we should pay teaches a lot more. This way we could get rid of teachers who are not that good and hire the best and brightest who don't go into teaching because it doesn't pay enough.
June is a very busy month for me because I am invited to address teachers who want to leave and the administrators hope I can motivate them to stay. I hear over and over , "why take all this disrespect when I can make a lot more on the outside". There goes the idealism

I think "we should pay teaches a lot more"............me alsoomg that should answer the op√

 

[Renee]

Is there a translator in the house:
"We had a failing school with over 1000 kids and we need each floor a separate many school with about 300 kids in each school"

or could it be possible for you to translate that mess__________? LOL and you called me "stupid" & "dumb".........☻

I didn't check...sorry.it does sound weird.. That is why my tag asks for forgiveness.
We became three separate mini schools within the building and each floor housed a different school. We were a three story building. I learned them a well englush.

 

[Dawg]

I didn't check...sorry.it does sound weird.. That is why my tag asks for forgiveness.
We became three separate mini schools within the building and each floor housed a different school. We were a three story building. I learned them a well englush.

thx for translation.........thought that was what you were saying............but what kind of a boy was it you called me earlier______? That's why I ask..........and my "englush" is Southern........but here libs don't give forgiveness for that....usually just some bigot insult.☻

btw: I know englush was a typo....it's all good√

 

[Renee]

thx for translation.........thought that was what you were saying............but what kind of a boy was it you called me earlier______? That's why I ask..........and my "englush" is Southern........but here libs don't give forgiveness for that....usually just some bigot insult.☻

btw: I know englush was a typo....it's all good√

Lol...englush wasn't a typo!! The sentence was ..I learned them a well Englush. Everything in that sentence was deliberately wrong, it was a joke.

 

[Dawg]

Lol...englush wasn't a typo!! The sentence was ..I learned them a well Englush. Everything in that sentence was deliberately wrong, it was a joke.

haha.............learned them a well English.........would be spoken correct in my woods.......

 

[Wulk]

Anything to take the heat off the UK for their own pathetic performance, which, after all, is what the article cited by the OP was all about anyway.

If the UK, at No 26 is pathetic, what then is the US, at No 36, and why? Which was the thrust of the TP and understood by everyone aside from yourself.