Posted on 11/09/2011 6:24:40 AM PST by wintertime
I always like to report progress on a subject close to my classical liberal heart -- namely, the reform of our grotesquely dysfunctional K-12 public school system.
School reform (from a classical liberal perspective) involves at least two things: school choice (i.e., putting the resources for education in the hands of parents, not the educational bureaucrats -- preferably by vouchers) and school employee accountability (i.e., tying teachers' compensation to their actual performance). Of the two, school choice is fundamental, because allowing parents and students to choose where they want the students to attend forces school administrators to worry about student retention, which in turn forces them to hold teachers accountable. (skip)
Start with charter schools. Texas has come a long way from 1995, when the state legislature first allowed charter schools, to today, when the state has 185 of them collectively enrolling 120,000 students. This is an admirable growth, but there is much more to be done. The collective wait list for these schools has exploded, from 17,000 students in 2007-2008 to 40,000 in 2008-2009, and to 56,000 in 2009-2010. The problem here, as in other states, is that the vicious rent-seekers who oppose all school reform -- i.e., teachers' unions and their allies -- put a cap of 215 on the number of charter schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Waiting lists are good. To crack a nut pressure is needed on two sides. On one side there are the desperate parents and children, and those who sympathize with their plight. The pressure on the other side are state budgets and the K=12 socialist school system is more than 50% of expenditures. The legislators are already being squeezed between these to pressures and the K=12 socialist schools will eventually crumble. Hopefully it will be in time to save our nation, our freedom, and our great experiment in self government.
Charles Murray is right. We need qualifying exams. While Murray proposes these exams for post high school education and training, why not start them in first grade? If a child proves that he has mastered a topic, ( for example, addition math facts), he would be immediately moved to the next level in that subject. Certifiable qualifying exams would encourage parents and children to take the initiative in self-learning, promote private tutoring businesses, and encourage private Internet based schooling. The Internet program and testing could even be free if the developer accepted advertising.
Also, any child of any age who passes the GED should be immediately awarded an official high school diploma from his local K-12 socialist-funded high school. The more quickly a child moves through the system and exits the system, then fewer teachers and buildings will be needed.
Finally, **all** state K-12 and university socialist-funded courses should videoed and placed on-line. Taxpayers paid for it. Why hide it from them? Coupled with certifiable qualifying exams, it could speed the education progress through the K-12 years and make attendance on campus less necessary.
Re: Vouchers
Pell Grants and loans on the college level are a form of vouchers. These programs have encouraged the growth of "Big Education" which is really a form of fascism. There has been huge inflation in tuition as government money has poured into these grants and loans. So?...Why do we think things would be different with vouchers? If vouchers lead to complete privatization of K-12 education and complete separation of school and state, then I support them. If they are not a means to that end, then I do not.
There are lots of good ideas on our side about how to fix K-12 education, yours included, but until the several states abolish the monopoly they have given to colleges of education to produce certified (or credentialed or licensed or whatever the legislature decided to call it) teachers, it won’ t help. From my experience, about 15% of ed majors are dedicated, diligent students, who really want to educate children. The other 85% are ditzes who picked the easiest major in the university, are math phobic, and while marginally literate can’t write at what used to be an 11th grade level. The miseducation they get from colleges of education, rubbish from Dewey that’s been dragging down American education for over a century, Vygotsky’s erroneous ideas about the nature of knowledge, whole language reading, whatever the lastest useless enthusiasm in mathematics education is, “self-esteem” as a virtue, . . . Even the “real” stuff taught in colleges of education is at best education lite: a 3 credit course on using audio-visual equipment?? How dumb do you have to be to not be able to use an overhead projector or read the instructions to thread a film projector, or figure out how to give a power-point presentation?
Until the normative credential to teach a subject is an actual degree in the subject, nothing can be fixed.
And there are more in the pipeline.
Thanks for the ping - off to the DDS (again.. ack) be back later.
Vygotsky’s erroneous ideas about the nature of knowledge,
I haven't read the whole thread yet - have to go out the door but will be back and read - but the problem with teachers having degrees in the subject they teach is that not just colleges of education are stuffed with the most radical of leftist teachers, but practically every institution of higher learning is so stuffed. There are very few universities other than a few private colleges that are not flaming cesspools of ultra leftism.
Vygotsky was a Soviet social scientist whose ideas about the “social construction of knowledge” have become fashionable in education circles in the U.S. His ideas are not complete rubbish, but they can’t actually be applied to education without coming perilously close to the denial of objective knowledge, which they turns into if they become a description of what knowledge is, rather than how it is arrived at.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.