OldManOnFire

With a 70% high school graduation rate in the US, and when approximately 1.2 million drop out annually, this and other indicators in real life tell most of us that our current education system is fundamentally broken. More than 1 out of 4 students do not graduate--this by my standards is not an education system...it is a drop-out factory!

In some public schools the rate is 25%...meaning three out of four students do not graduate! In 2005 there were 13 states with graduation rates between 49.1% and 65.7%.

What angers me most about these numbers, other than the obvious failure to our younger generations, is the administrators of local and national education, supposedly are seasoned professionals, most all with masters and doctorate degrees, all earning significant salaries, and the best they can do, year after year, is 70%?!

As we fail our students we also fail the USA. UNICEF ranked the USA number 18 out of 24 nations in terms of the relative effectiveness of it's education system.

UNICEF finds that educational success or failure is not directly linked to funding, and that there is no clear link between student-to-teacher ratios and test results. By international standards, the United States spends a lot of money on education, and in terms of class sizes, a lot of countries that do well have larger class sizes than the United States.

So if the dismal and failing education system in the USA is not caused by a lack of funding, and is not due to student/teacher ratios in the classroom, both of which we usually hear are the biggest problems, then what are we doing so wrong?

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this question--what are we doing wrong? Also share some creative ideas for any aspect of the education system you feel should be investigated.

I'll start with this idea:

In grades 1 through 4, the student/teacher ratio will be 15:1 and studies will be in general education...reading, writing and arithmetic.

In grades 5 and 6, the student/teacher ratio will be 25:1 with continued general education studies and introduction to all education areas.

In grades 7 and 8, the student/teacher ratio will be 35:1 with continued general education studies, and studies that refer directly to typical careers.

In grades 9 and 10, the student/teacher ratio will be 50:1 with most studies locked into a chosen career path, and this grade ends all general education studies.

Grades 11 through 14, provide the equivalent of an under-graduate degree, with student/teacher ratios of 50:1 to 100:1.


If college level courses are required for higher-paying jobs, and to compete in a global manpower market, then the public education system should provide this level of education. If you planned a nice 250,000 mile trip to the moon, but your travel guide only put enough fuel in the shuttle tanks to get your spacecraft about 175,000 miles, you can probably see you are heading for big trouble--right?? This is what we are doing in our public education system today and even worse; not only are we not giving them all the fuel they need but we are giving them a broken down spacecraft that only has a 7 in 10 chance of making the trip...

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Did you know both our problems and the solutions can be found simply by looking in our mirrors...and...Never confuse the extraordinary stuff I think and write with that of a well-balanced person...

Cookie

Thank goodness you are realizing some startling truths about our government schools. Why are they failing? Because the two most significant determinants of educational success are:

1. Parental involvement

2. Family income level

We could throw money at the schools day and night, and it wouldn't have as much impact as these two factors.

Successful, involved parents beget successful students.

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Corgi butts drive me nuts.

Jonesy

My parents didn't teach me anything (neither did the school system). We had no money, either. I am a product of myself. Almost entirely self-educated.

The school system is too authoritative. A natural system works best. In a mere 6,000 years, one cannot undo 6,000,000,000 years of pure liberty.

ppatt

Hmmm....comparisons of our secondary education system with that of nordic countries really makes for a staggering contradiction to some of the assumptions in Cookies posts. They manage to keep kids in school and prepare them for their future role in society. They do not employ the "lost cause" rationale and they provide education for all, equally. Success is what the student makes of it but this idea that some cannot be elevated by a superior education smacks of elitism and, amazingly enough, is most often employed by parents who have not attained a high level of education themselves. And by the way, the dropout rate is next to nothing so they must be doing something right, don't you think?

My parents could not have taught me a lick of math...my forte and academic success in that area has kept me steadily employed. They had the wisdom to support our local school system and teachers and could not have afforded tuition at a private school.

Today it has turned into a contest between uneducated parents and teachers. Do I detect a hint of jealousy? My wife is a teacher and daily experiences the varied reactions parents have as their little darlings inevitably run up against reality and authority outside the home for the first time.

What she hears from disgruntled parents who claim to have all the answers despite the glaring imperfections of their children most often offers perfect explanations for how their little darlings arrived at the pickle they are in by the time there is a parent-teacher or parent-student-teacher conference. More often than not the parent will come to the conference red-faced and full of rage with a story related by the offending student that somehow omitted the basic facts.

And these are the parents that will straighten out the educational system? So the entire thing becomes an issue all about "Me", the parent...whether one is one of "those kinds of parents" or not.

But then there are other differences in those countries. There are all sorts of stats including % that is spent on education (defying the "just throw money at it" gem of a meme).

But then they have severely progressive tax schedules by which each contributes as they are able. This seems to adequately finance the kind of educational system that suits the needs of the community and evntual placement of student into the work force.

Post secondary education is also government financed, often requiring the student to work a job or perform some other form of service.

Those countries are often scrutinize very closely filling jobs with foreign nationals. There is a requirement to prove that their are not enough employable citizens to meet the demand.

Those countries also take their government very seriously. For example in Sweden there was no question when the Secretary of Transportation got a DUI that they were out of there. It was just expected.

My impression from the reading I've done is that they try what work and leave the educating to the educators. From what I've read, they just support them. We might start by trying something similar and by understanding that just having a kid does not make you smarter than the teacher, or even a fifth grader for that matter. Making the kid was easy. Considering what some teachers have to start with they do a great job.

We've not been failed by the educational system in this country. We've hardly supported it and it has become a political tool for those who evidently could care less, despite what they say.

When your team is losing there needs to be some portion of the overall effort to improve looking at those who keep beating you to try and understand what they are doing right.

Those on the right have been working hard to make education what it has become today. Every single utterance of "I am going to fix it" just beats it down further. Schwarzenegger became governor and immediately looked at pie charts and saw a nice big, fat juicy slice, cutting education by 2 billion and promizing to pay part back, but he never did.

Bush's no child left behind was, in true Bush style punitive, punishing schools that did not do as well Schools in deprived areas and areas predominated by lower socioeconomic demographics always do worse and need more help, not less. I'm just waiting for some ignorantly greedy bastard to cry "Income redistribution."

It is kind of like we have a collective national autoimmune disorder by which we no longer try to cure an ill but instead willfully neglect it. Inasmuch as we are a national body this comes back to haunt us. We all know they old song -- the leg bone's connected to the knee bone.... When an organ or appendage suffers the entire body suffers. Who doesn't believe an educated population to be a sign of national strength?

So instead we make excuses, mostly laced with characterizations of others who are to blame. We've gone on just like this to bring our educational system to a level that keeps the cycle of easy answers and blame going. We do anything but support in a positive way. Wew rationalize reasons not to support saying things like "we just can't throw money at it."

A lot of the people saying that need some personal demonstration that their tax money is being put into good use by the school system. many lack the education themselves to know what a viable demonstration might be. Others think we should displace portions of the science curricumlum in sake of creationism. Ron Paul would just abolish the educational system because he just knows that something better would arise from the ashes.

I don't trust a single one of these loonies or armchair educators. We'd do better having teachers vote on what to do than listening to people who've never been in the business. It takes a politician to screw this up and support of educators to fix it.

ppatt

50:1, 100:1.

Sheesh...sheer genius. Now that could only come from one of those armchair educators. One of the wise looking in from the outside, no doubt.

It's that old irrationalism once again. I know the schtick. The experts have stewed for so long in their expertness that they can no longer be objective about that for which they are expert and that to which they've dedicated their lives. Maybe politicians or preachers can replace all the teachers. Maybe we need a crackdown on teachers since they are the problem or maybe a surge might work.

Now that's what we really need, less experience. The layman leading the expert, the uneducated showing those high-fallutin', know-it-all, smarty pants educators once and for all. The nerve of them thinking they know something about teaching. Well, we'll teach them, won't we?

Crass, ignorant scapegoating of "the elite" aside, haven't the last 8 years taught us that we need to elect someone smarter than ourselves..that experience counts for something?

Elect this man to get back on track once again. Uh-huh!

Jonesy

PE could be so much better. Imagine like a Nintendo DS, but closer to notebook sized. It could be about as light as a DS, and nearly as inexpensive. The software could be created by the best teachers and software engineers. Textbooks, exercises and tests could all be part of the software.

The awesomeness of the device itself would propel students to better perform.

ppatt

Let's patent it and make millions. We can put those dance machines (the ones with the 4 squares that you have to keep time stepping on) in the lunch rooms. They help fitness too, right?

They could get a sugary sweet soda from the adjacent vending machine then burn off those junk calories.

Rollerball

Not "Drop Outs".

The proper term is "Uninformed Voter"

And the Republicans need as many of them as possible! That's why they slash school funding every chance they get.

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Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

TrueBlueAmerican

At the macro level having more and more drop outs is detrimental to society because this creates a mob of dumb masses that could theoretically vote stupidly... or not at all.

But at the micro level, if you made it through the educational system and went on to higher education, having more and more people drop out at the early stages makes you more valuable as a skilled laborer since there are fewer and fewer graduates to do jobs a dropout cant.

ObamalosesKY

The lower class uneducated comes from the liberal party, illegal aliens, poor black project areas. That is your base, get used to it.