Accept that not everyone should be educated in the same way for the same goals. That leads to these changes:
At the end of the 9th grade, students declare for one of these choices: College prep, technical school, trade school, or one of a number of private schools that are magnet schools with a particular emphasis. Students are not allowed to graduate from 9th grade without basic reading, writing, and math skills.
Non English speaking students need to be immersed in English proficiency school; the goal of this school is to prepare the student to take all other classes in English…so there wouldn’t be subject matter like Chemistry being taught in XYZ language.
Peer review for teachers should be used. Tenure should be weakened. Poor teachers either improve or leave teaching.
I taught for 30 years and base my suggestions on that experience.
Yep, but those kids HAVE to pass (we don’t find out until August) or they close the school, the district has a million dollars of expense they can’t afford reorganizing the school. Those teachers and those kids worked their butts off to save the school - no one thinking it was a good idea, but they didn’t have much choice.
We LOVE NCLB. Its such great legislation. :rolleyes: After watching the teacher’s heroic efforts for three years - and the students who really are trying - I have nothing but admiration for both sets.
My idea would be to group types of learners together as much as possible. And don’t be afraid of even higher consolidation to get it to happen. Instead of trying to teach with every method, focus on the method that works for that child.
The other thing would be to institute the Montessori method. With it, we had one teacher for every 25 students, and they still had time to teach everyone at their own pace. Each lesson is extremely minimal: you learn 2 new things at a time. And the majority of people who came out were ahead of the curve in public school.
And, of course, you’ve got to really teach how to learn, and stop focusing on testing skills so early on. And start letting memorization take a back seat to learning, as you don’t need to know everything all at once. You can always go back and look things up.
How to implement that last paragraph, I have no idea.
I have a friend who was taught strictly Montissori through eighth grade. His mother is a Montissori teacher. It certainly doesn’t work well for all students - he is a great case of someone who would have succeeded under a different structure, but lacked the discipline for the Montissori methods.
Very bright, very creative, learned what he was interested in - but the rote memorization required to spell or do math quickly - he wasn’t encouraged to pick up and failed in high school miserably because his basic skills weren’t sufficient. Thirty years after high school he is modestly successful and fulfilled, but its been a struggle.