Teaching In A Ghetto School

[Aesop]

I see that as a selling point, not a problem.

[Termite]

I see that as a selling point, not a problem.

For the parents that care, sure. For the ones that don't, not so much.

Look, some of ya'll think Pawpaw doesn't "get it" because he's nearly 60 and you think he doesn't understand current education problems. But keep in mind that he has been in a school with both the brightest kids and the short bus kids, for years. He also came thru the racial integration of public schools, and has seen the successes and the failures of it.
He and I agree on a lot w/regards to education.

My personal opinion:

There needs to be 3 general levels of primary & secondary education.

Tier 1: the advanced classes.
Tier 2: general classes.
Tier 3: remedial.
No kid would be "locked in" to any tier permanently, they could move up or down dependent on performance.

And the true MRs get their own school. Seriously. With the best care and training........ PRACTICAL.

Oh, and we need to bring back vocational training. Big time.

[Erik]

I've long believed that we should have a high-stakes test in 8th grade that determines whether or not you get to go to high school. Truly high-stakes. If you pass, you go to high school. If you don't you're passed on to the vo-tech system.

When my wife and I hosted international exchange students, they told us that their systems worked like that. If you didn't pass your eighth-grade test, you didn't go to high school. Period. These kids were mainly northern European and I don't think they were pulling the Crazy American's leg. It sounds like a reasonable idea to me, and there is still a large demand for skilled craftsmen in any number of disciplines, from the construction trades to office work.

I cant speak for all of Northern Europe, but Scandinavia is in Northern Europe and it's not quite true here.

The education system is slightly different, so it's difficult to make a strict comparison, but I'll try to get as close as possible. First, it's not one big test. The grades you get at midterms in 9th grade are the ones you apply to high school with. Those grades are supposed to cover all you've done in 7th, 8th and half of 9th grade, not just the last few months. It's not a "pass or fail" grade, but your acceptance to high school is based on them. So if you want to go into certain HS programs, you'll need certain grades, and a certain GPA. When I applied to HS, you'd need a GPA of 4.0 or more (out of 5) to get you into a program that put you on a track to college. At my high school, there were only room for 30 students in my program, and acceptance was based on the highest grades. Overall there were maybe 150 students each year in the programs that put you on a direct college track, something like 25-30% of all students. (not all of them did go to college though)

If you didn't make the grades, you could still apply to less advanced programs, with less options after graduation. Those were shorter and required less actual studying, but if you had no intention of going to college they still gave you a good education for other career paths.

Or you could go into the more practical crafts programs, like "vehicle technician", "woodworking", "industrial", where they taught more technical skills like fixing cars and using machinery, and had very little math and language classes.

What this does is it puts the motivated students together. If in 8th grade you were the star of the class and were coasting along, you'd have a tough time in HS when you were put together with 30 other students just as bright as you were.
On the other hand, if you hated school and loathed studying for tests, you could go into a more practical program where you were taught to actually put your hands on stuff and fix them, and the only studying you had to do was directly related to your practical work. From what I've seen it's absolutely the right direction for some.

[Aesop]

Build all the tiers of school you want.

Out of your own pocket.

[PawPaw]

Build all the tiers of school you want.

Out of your own pocket.

Generally, I concur, but public education is well established in the US and has been for many many years. The question is how to best use that tax dollar and how to give the taxpayer the best system for the available dollars.

[blackeagle603]

With schools, the parallels with manufacturing are strong. Schoenberger's "World Class Manufacturing" has some lessons. Schools (esp diverse, messed up schools) should be going to "lot size of one" manufacturing methods.

The school system is designed for an earlier time with a more homogeneous society that allowed for batch processing of kids. That doesn't work when by analogy each incoming unit is messed up and need of repair or rework before even going on the assy line.

Batch processing is old school. We need to adopt self paced "mass customization" methods at least until students achieve a certain level of preparedness and are ready for group classes. It's really less effort and quality and throughput go up.

We've seen great success with kids who got way behind in inner city public schools and then checked in to private schools where classes of 20+ with a teacher and aide; each kid worked in a cube on self paced lessons. They were tested upon entry in each subject and matched to their correct curriculum level. As their learning style became evident, material from a different curriculum supplier might be substituted. We had 13 year olds test in at 2nd grade level and be back doing 8th grade level work in a year.

[Aesop]

Generally, I concur, but public education is well established in the US and has been for many many years. The question is how to best use that tax dollar and how to give the taxpayer the best system for the available dollars.

And how well has that worked out for the taxpayer with the Post Office, the VA, HeadStart, the TSA, etc. ad infinitum...?

I'd like a humane chicken neck-wringing, but I'll settle for a slow strangulation, or enforced starvation until the subject looks like the institutional version of an Auschwitz survivor.

[Termite]

What Erik described is very similiar to what I have in mind.