"How to fix the schools in 5 easy steps." Great job by Accountable Talk blogger.

[madfloridian]

Very common sense and practical ways to fix the schools....that means "fix" them, not "reform" them or turn them into something else.

Fixing the Schools in 5 Easy Steps:

Step One. Stop the gimmicks

The first thing we need to do costs nothing: Let's stop the gimmicks. Gimmicks are the first resort of the clueless. For example, the latest and most damaging gimmick is to close schools. Closing schools accomplishes less than zero. It upsets parents, disrupts the education of the students, and displaces countless good teachers. Unfortunately, it looks good for the politicians and pundits. "That school was failing, so we closed it!" they say, as they scurry away to some educational jaunt in Bermuda.

Let me say this so that even Bloomklein can understand it. Closing schools does nothing to fix them. The same children--with the same parents--will attend them, and the same social and economic problems will still exist. Unless you fix the underlying problems, nothing will be accomplished. More on how to address these problems in future posts.

In addition to closing or turning schools around into charters, the intense use of "data" is another gimmick that will get us nowhere fast.

Another gimmick that is very popular today is the collection of data. If you walk into almost any school and ask to see the teacher assessment notebooks (TANs) of just about any math or English teacher, you will most likely be presented with a telephone-book-sized binder stuffed to the breaking point with data about each student. It takes so much time to collect all this data that there is precious little time left to do the real work of teaching. The dirty little secret of education is that virtually no one actually uses TANs to help plan; they are mostly kept for hauling out purposes when admins and school evaluators come to visit.

Second step: Enforce Discipline

I don't propose a sea change in handling discipline. Teachers should handle all of the problems they can through traditional methods, and then send the problem up the ladder. But when it becomes clear that one or two students are preventing the others from learning, we need to begin--drumroll--suspending them out of school.

Yeah, yeah, I know. These students have rights. Unfortunately, these students also trample all over the rights of kids who come to school to learn. When rights come into conflict, someone has to win and someone has to lose. I propose that the losers should be the rule-breakers for a change. Send them home and let their parents deal with them. Trust me, when parents have to start missing work or other activities, you'll see their children straighten up and fly right pronto.

The move lately at least in our area is to tell the teachers the buck stops with them. That is a gimmick. There are some children with such behavior that higher-ups must be there for reinforcement.

Hey, charter schools and private schools don't keep problem children. Of course public schools do and should, but teachers need help with special problems. They are not getting anything but blame right now.

The third step is reducing class size, and that goes without saying.

Step Five is my favorite:

Step Four--Attracting and Keeping the Best Teachers

My favorite way of saying that is to hire good teachers, pay them well, give them the resources they need, and then let them teach.

I always hate news stories and editorials that proclaim that we must start hiring the best teachers, as if the ones we have now are chopped liver. I'd estimate that of all the teachers I've ever worked with, I would be satisfied with about 80% of them teaching my own child. Another 10% I'd be ambivalent about, and the final 10% I wouldn't want near my flesh and blood. I think that's actually a fine ratio.

Instead of ridiculing and insulting teachers on tenure, keep it and use it to offer job security to good teachers. It takes a few years to get tenure anyway, and it will help attract the best teachers.

A private college near us did away with tenure a few decades ago. This last year they started it up again, and guess what....they at once attracted professors who refused to come before. It is a way to get quality.

Restore seniority rights. If you want to keep people around, reward them for it. Simple.

Unfortunately though, many of us are starting to feel that finding and keeping good quality teachers is not the goal after all.

As the schools are more and more turned around into schools run by private companies....the bottom line is not good teaching but saving money. The cheaper the teacher the better, I fear.

One of the comments there seems to agree.

I don't think the city is interested in keeping quality teachers. They want cheap ones. And, that is why there might be a buyout--get rid of all us old timers.

They are already doing this in DC. While $20,000 isn't much, that, added to my pension will force me into retirement in June.

Accountable Talk comments

Unfortunately some of us feel that they are now doing Bill Gate's way.

He feels that teachers don't improve after 3 years, and that is a most convenient view for the "reformers". Heck of a lot cheaper to think that.

[madfloridian]

1. Forgot #5, which I gather is facetious. Fire all the administrators.

http://www.accountabletalk.com/2009/01/fixing-schools-step-five-fire-all.html

"Sounds crazy? I don't think it is. Let's talk cost first. There are roughly 1200 principals and another 4000 or so APs. Let's say their average salary is $110,000. If we assume the salary of the average teacher is $65,000, that would mean we could hire 8800 teachers (we might even consider letting some of the principals and APs apply, but only the nice ones). With those additional teachers, we could do two things: reduce class size, and reduce the number of teaching periods from 25 to 22, giving each teacher an additional three periods in which to do the work of the lost lamented admins.

I know, I know--you have enough to do without adding more jobs on top. But remember--a professional is running the business end of the school. You'll use your three additional free periods to meet with parents, plan lessons, order books, observe your peers, and so on. Because teachers will be running things, we can throw out time wasters such as keeping a teacher assessment notebook or other educational gimmicks.

There are some details to be worked out here, such as who does the hiring, firing, evaluating, etc., but I think these can be done by committee or some other arrangement."

This article was written in early 2009....since then the new reform movement is hiring more and more highly paid administrators while firing teachers.

Maybe not so bad an idea, even if not feasible.

[Hello_Kitty]

2. The problem I see with sending disruptive students back to their parents

Is that, often, the parents are the reason the students are disruptive. I say this as a formerly "bad" kid who acted out in school because of an abusive and chaotic environment in my home. When the school would suspend me my parents would explode on me. That made me resentful of my teachers and principals and my behavior would worsen.

That said, I do agree that there are many cases where a lack of discipline and overindulgence in the home is the problem and teachers shouldn't be expected to be family counselors in any case. Because of my own experience I'm a big believer in adequate health and social services in the schools to deal with behavior and family issues so that teachers can focus on teaching. I was shocked to learn recently that most middle schools in my state don't even have a nurse or guidance counselor on campus full time. Apparently the nurses and counselors rotate between several schools. Budget cuts, you know. My friends who are teachers are stretched to the limit trying to maintain order and a learning environment in the classroom while trying to help kids deal with some majorly effed up situations in their homes.

[billlll]

3. Summerhill ENG. model + new LBJ War On Poverty + end bullying

The W. On Poverty ends many students' problems

Lectures etc. against bullying to end it

Summerhill model for self esteem.

Embryo selection for better health.

My best ideas......comments?

[m00nbeam]

4. Whoa,,,

Complete lack of structure and Eugenics...Can we add junk food to get the Trifecta?

[billlll]

7. Summerhill graduates as successful later on as others

Eugenics has many forms. Each to be evaluated on its own. Most are voluntary. All massively reduce human suffering. Eg consider a severe defect avoided via embryo selection.

We intervene in Nature's Will every time we take antibiotics.

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. k and r nt

[exboyfil]

6. On closing schools

When the student population does not match the infrastructure, it becomes very costly to continue with certain schools. Also certain schools need to be rebuilt (think wheelchair access as only one reason).

I do agree with enforcing discipline. Additional thought needs to be brought to this point. I feel very uncomfortable about a Big Brother approach, but perhaps wide use of video cameras and microphones in the school would be a start? They are really inexpensive and collecting images, given how cheap data storage is now, means that teachers' eyes can be in many more places. We can see which kids are being victimized, what classroom teachers are dealing with, etc. Such records serve to document cases of discipline. Of course they also serve as a monitoring technique for the performance of teachers. It makes little sense to monitor teacher performance by attending the class - everyone is going to put on the best show for the audience. Once the outside audience leaves, then the Algebra teacher can go back to her knitting (this is an actual case in our school system).

On attracting and keeping the best teachers. Just because some teachers are long serving, those not make them the best teachers. I view teachers a lot like doctors - you want them with enough experience to have optimal performance, but sometimes they stay around too long and are no longer in tune with modern methods/techniques for teaching. I can think of a Geography teacher which is like this. Of course I would prefer her to one who comes in emphasizing how you feel about things versus studying actual geography (both maps and people). In general I have not been impressed with new graduates. I find around ten years of experience to be the minimum to make for a really competent teacher.

I feel there is a role for virtual schools/charter schools. They serve as an escape hatch for individuals without the means to escape very poor schools. At the High School level, a student can go to the North Dakota Center for Distance Education at $3K/yr (parents cost). What is wrong with offering a $5K voucher to let parents do something like this? I agree many of the virtual schools are crap, but NDCDE has high standards and allowed my daughter to progress a year in Science. They are not the only good virtual school out there.