Then let me add to my list. We try to offer too much, instead of actually teaching the core.
My smallish school (180 in my class) only offered Spanish and German as languages. That was large enough to offer two years of computer classes, two years of Chemistry, and Honors English. We did not offer AP courses, I admit.
The vocational classes were offered at the County level, though my school district was one small town in the County.
Those large schools and districts may offer more classes, but IMHO they offer less parental involvement and individual attention.
My daughter was in a series of language videos meant for Japanese schools. They made 11 of them (they were to be shown monthly) because there was not such a big break. Here is the breakdown of the Japanese school year. They get August off, but teachers still come to school.
When I was in high school, 40 years ago, I heard that some large amount of learning gets lost over the summer, so the beginning of the year has to be spent in review.
Our district in New Jersey had one more period than the good district we moved to in California. Not surprisingly, there was time for a lot more, including more science and more language. My daughter, who was in 8th grade, was almost a full year ahead of her peers here.
I had the opposite problem–it was hard to fill out the required periods with anything interesting. The sciences were there, even if they effed them up one year, but if you weren’t looking to go that way, there really wasn’t much, and half the electives were taught by teachers who didn’t know the subject. I didn’t take a full course load in grade 10 because there wasn’t anything else I was interested in–I almost had to pick a class at random just figuring out how to fill in what I was required to take. The core classes weren’t a problem, but there wasn’t much else.
I agree with this one a lot! Especially very early - with accelerated expectations, some kids less mature than their peers get behind and stay behind. Our district in NJ had a pre-first program which let kids who weren’t really mature enough to go into first grade have an extra year without being held back in kindergarten. One of our friends put her son into it, and thought it was great. Our younger daughter would have been the youngest in her class, so we gave her another year of nursery school, and it has paid off right through college.
I’ve been to plenty of GATE parent meetings, and the accepted principle is individualized instruction. It’s fine to mix all levels of ability since the teacher will give the right teaching to each student. Yeah, right! When I was in school in New York, a long time ago, there was sorting by ability. I don’t remember ever feeling dragged back in one of my classes. It happens again when you get to high school in my district, but it might be too late then.
Never had a problem with this. The same kind of screw ups happen to me in commercial endeavors. We got a reasonable amount of communication, but see below.
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Parental involvement, lack of - Of course, the single variable correlated most highly with student success is parental involvement at the school. Better communication, as previously mentioned, would go a long way towards fostering this. But I’d also like to see some sort of mandatory parental service hours - hours spent shelving books in the library, monitoring lunchrooms, making costumes for the school play, teaching special interest units in the parent’s field of expertise, anything. Just get the parents in there and get 'em visible, and that ALONE will increase student achievement more than additional funding, more educated teachers, or all the metal detectors in the world.
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Not going to work, because you’ll get pushback that parents work during the day. Back 40 years ago mothers stayed home and could get involved. The town I lived in in NJ was heavily populated by people working in nearby research centers, and a large number of mothers stayed home also, and the schools and town were never short of volunteers. Kids got enriched from parent visits. It can happen in my CA district, but parents who can find the time are rare so they don’t expect much.
It is a cliche that the parents who show up to back to school night and for conferences are the ones who don’t need to show up, since they just get told how well their kids are doing. I totally agree with you, but the entire economic climate is going to have to shift in a major way to make it happen. I’d be happy if every parent starts to get involved with a kids homework early, before there is the excuse that they don’t know algebra or something.
As a community college professor, I would like to offer my warmest support to WhyNot and Algher’s postings.
Yes, they are posting about K-12, whereas I work in the +12 system, but since our governor (and, it’s my understanding, many governors) are starting to move toward something that they are calling a “P-20” model (seamless system from preschool to graduate school), I feel that I have to weigh in.
I love working in the community college setting. I can focus on being the best educator I can be, about a field I adore beyond measure. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done research and enjoyed it, but teaching is my passionate love.
I love the fact that we get the “last chance” kids, the students who, for whatever reason, couldn’t or wouldn’t succeed in traditional high schools, but want higher education. I love (and hate) the fact that we’re open admission, so that everybody has a shot at higher education. I love the flexibility of course offerings, so the full-time employee and the full-time stay-at-home parent and the third-shift worker can all find a way to fit education into their life. I love seeing a woman (true story) who was the first person in her family not pregnant at 15 and the first to graduate from high school, much less college, get accepted from my institution to a prestigious four-year school, and plan to go on to a doctoral program.
But there are profound problems with our students. One-third of all high school students in America require remedial courses when they get to college. At the community college/junior college level, it’s more like 55%.
Many (not all, certainly!) of the students in my classes are simply unable to write. Unable to read, at least in such a way that draws deeper meaning out of the content. Unable to participate in the learning process in an active way. And, what’s more troubling, unwilling to learn these skills, much less learn the content of what I have to teach.
I don’t necessarily expect them to be able to use higher-order critical thinking skills - I think that’s what college is for. I do, however, expect them to recognize that I, and my colleagues, have something to teach them that is BEYOND high school, beyond standardized testing. I would like for them to understand (or at least be willing to consider) that learning is an active process on their part as well as mine.
I don’t know what the answer is, truly, for K-12 education, since my experience is not in that demographic (you couldn’t really pay me enough to deal with the politics). But I do know that it is deeply saddening to me that so many students show up in my classes with a profound apathy toward learning in general and critical thinking in particular.
A slightly OT question:
do you get kids who couldn’t get into 4 year schools, don’t want to go to 4 years schools, or who can’t go to 4 year schools because of finances - including that parents won’t pay. How many of your students intend to transfer to 4 year schools?
In my experience, the woes of our public school system are vastly overstated. We just like to complain and its an easy target.
Believe it or not, American schools are awesome at teaching critical thinking. Our system doesn’t rely on memorizing lists and trusting the teacher, like almost every other school system in the world. We (try to) teach kids to really think about stuff, analyze it, and compare it. I’m 100% convinced that this is why America continues to play the role that it does and why American know-how is still such a prized commodity around the world.
You have no idea how it is in other places. I know 4th year college students in other countries who cannot conduct research, summarize a passage, or differentiate fact from opinion. These things simply aren’t taught in memorization-based system.
Anyway, I work with Americans teaching abroad, and together we’ve all taught in at least a dozen different countries. All agree there is something special about American students.
When you’re working with a human-sized scale, such as the 10-20 parents whynot references, you address students’ particular interests as individuals or small groups. You know exactly what the specific student in front to you wants and how she learns. There are a lot of things you can do educationally with a single student or a small group that you can’t do with 30.
That big school district with a dozen electives creates the illusion of covering every possible base, but in reality, what they offer are a dozen electives preselected by the administration, out of hundreds of possibilities, and without any awareness of what the students actually want (you can’t hire and fire teachers overnight, and teachers can’t design classes for students they don’t know).
The big high school may offer Photography, Painting and even if you’re really lucky Filmmaking at the bigger school … but if your interest is Ballet or Techno music or Animation or Sculpture or Culinary Arts, you’re just as much out of luck as if you were attending Podunk high.
Yes - sometimes they are there to prove that they are now mature enough to focus on their grades and to prove that they can do college-level work. Sometimes, they screwed around in high school and when they get out, say “crap, I can’t find a decent job anywhere!” Sometimes, they just got lost in the system.
Yes - they prefer the smaller class sizes and more interactivity with professors and staff.
Yes - Colorado has a 60+60 program, in which if you get your first two years (60 credits of general education) of a four-year degree at a community college, those credits are guaranteed to transfer to any public four-year institution in the state. We worked very hard with the four-year professors to ensure that the academic integrity of our courses was sufficient to transfer.
I don’t know the specific statistics of number of students who transfer, they are in my office at school.
And the smaller group is going to find a teacher and equipment for that…where? I’m not saying the small group can’t do it, and you’re right that they can address each student as an individual, but I don’t know that it would be any easier for the group of 20 kids than for the school with 2k.
From my experience teaching at CC – you get all three of the categories named. The % that plan on going to a four year school varies a lot depending on the location. Maybe one in three.
If I may, I would like to offer my take on WhyNot’s points. I have been a public school teacher for seventeen years. For most of that time, I have been a member of the National Education Association (the teacher’s union). I am politically active within and outside that organization.
I think a combination of age and ability grouping is the answer here. That’s how it was done in the past. It works, for the most part. Strict ability grouping can lead to odd things happening. I wouldn’t want my fourteen year old little girl sitting next to a seventeen year old stud in English class. How old should a first grader be? Is ten years old too old to be in a room with six year-olds?
Again, that’s fine. But where will schools put the student parking lots at the elementary schools?
I like this suggestion. I don’t think that PE budgets being slashed is as much an issue as the time for PE being cut. There is enormous pressure on schools to have kids do well on standardized tests. Time for things that don’t directly address this tend to be cut. A reduction in high-stakes testing may help here.
Some good points here. Again, I think that kindergarten is too hard for some students is because the teachers are pushed to get the kids into conformity quickly and get them ready for their testing, which in Texas, begins in third grade. More sane testing may help here, too. A reason that higher grades may be too easy is that, again, more advanced concepts are difficult to test on a “bubble test”. For example, my daughter’s high school geometry class did not do proofs at all. When I was in school, proofs was the core of geometry class. IMO, proofs have disappeared because they don’t fit well with standardized tests.
A longer school year has much to recommend itself. Time must be allowed for family events, but a long summer is not necessary. This would cost money, however. As a teacher, I would like this because it means that teachers would have to be paid more. This may also improve teachers’ image as professionals when they work the same days as other professionals.
Other posters have said that twelve ours is too long, even for upper grades. However, in my experience, twelve hours per day would be a reduction in the school day. A typical student at our school: 7:15AM - dance practice, 7:45AM = “0” hour or tutorials, 8:30 - 3:21 - seven class periods and a 25 minute lunch, 3:45 - 5:30 - athletics practice and other after-school activities (football goes later), 6:00-8:00PM - band practice. Then it’s home for homework, chores, eating, sleeping, social time, family time, and then it’s dance practice in the morning. Not every day is that long, but many are. Some days are longer. In the evening, there are sports games, band concerts, etc. Our small-town kids are busy. Then there’s Saturdays…
I would prefer not to touch this except to say that I have never experienced this.
Schools have assumed roles that parents have abdicated. Who’s fault is that? However, you mention social services like meals and health care. I’m not sure I see why having schools do these things is such a bad thing. Why not take those services to where the kids are? You morphed this into an something about “moral development” and I’m not sure where to go with that. There are vast improvements that can be made in drug and sex education programs. That seems out of the scope of the OP. I would like to ponder this one more before I respond more completely.
Technology is our friend here. Does your school have a website? Check it out.
AMEN!! Preaching to the choir, on this one. We have good parental involvement at our school, but it’s always the SAME parents. It’s never the parents you NEED to see.
There is a lot that is right with public education in our country. Public education has helped create the most powerful force for good in the history of the world.
Darn right. I teach in the CC and score assessment writing tests. Some folks are so remedial that I can’t imagine how they were even able to read the street signs and find their way to the testing center–on their own, I mean.
So in otherwords you think that children should be raised by the state and not their parents.
I personally think schooldays are too long, we expect kids to work more each day than an adult would reasonably accept. No time for childhood.
If you want to change how classes work, then have two three hour classes a day, and split the subjects up by day like you do in college rather than having every subject every day.
They may not be able to; my point was that the large school system is only marginally more capable of addressing the things students actually want to learn beyond the core, and that tn exchange for the potential benefit, there are *definite *costs.
Let’s say I’m hired as the teacher by a group of homeschooling parents. And let’s say a couple of the students evince an interest in political science (I think that was one of your examples). I can think of a dozen educational activities that I could do for a pair of students that would be difficult to impossible to pull off if I was teaching a one-hour-a-day poli sci course at a government school.
[ul]
[li]Attend city council meetings [/li][li]Interview with local politicians & party people[/li][li]Volunteer for a campaign[/li][li]Start a blog about local politics[/li][/ul]
And so on. The fact that I myself don’t have much formal background in political science (certainly not enough to get a formal governmental certification as an poli sci teacher) is irrelevant.
True. I didn’t like the languages offered at my HS, so I just had to get a form signed by a parent and my school counselor to sign up at the CC. Did that sophomore-senior year. Although I did have to pay for it, so it wasn’t free like HS, but I figured that was the cost of being choosy.
This is nothing new. It’s been happening ever since society created academic writing.
Academic writing is not natural, as is speech. It’s an artificial construction, and there’s no reason to assume that every undergraduate is going to be able to produce acceptable academic discourse in writing right off the bat.
Think of it this way: Do you expect every little leaguer to hit home runs when they first get up to bat?
This lament has been going on for over a hundred years. You think your case is something new?
When I was in high school, my high school was small - no elective English courses, no elective Science. Political Science - yeah, right. No calculus - we only went as high as pre-calc. Small high school - and I left it early.
But community college classes were out of the question. I didn’t have access to transportation until I was out of high school. There was no useful public transportation where I lived (if you wanted to get to downtown Minneapolis during rush hour that was possible) and I didn’t have a car, nor were my parents able to buy me one.
I had no problem getting into community collage courses, but no way to get TO community college courses.