Yesterday I spoke to the nation's governors at their annual meeting in Washington, D.C. They are grappling with more than state budget deficits; they're also confronting deep education deficits. I encouraged them to flip the curve on how much we spend vs. how well students do in school.
Over the last four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained flat, and other countries have raced ahead. The same pattern holds for higher education. Spending has climbed, but our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared to other countries.
To build a dynamic 21st-century economy and offer every American a high-quality education, we need to flip the curve. For more than 30 years, spending has risen while performance stayed flat. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more.
When you need more achievement, you have to change the way you spend the money. This year, the governors are launching "Complete to Compete," a program to help colleges get more value for the money they spend. It will develop metrics to help show which colleges graduate more students for less money, so we can see what works and what doesn't.
In K-12, we know more about what works. Of all the variables under a school's control, the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching. It's astonishing what great teachers can do for their students.
Unfortunately, compared to the countries that outperform us in education, we do very little to measure, develop, and reward excellent teaching. We have been expecting teachers to be effective without giving them feedback.
To flip the curve, we have to identify great teachers, find out what makes them so effective, and transfer those skills to others -- so more students can benefit from top teachers and high achievement.
Compared to other countries, America has spent more and achieved less. We need to build exceptional teacher personnel systems that identify great teaching, reward it, and help every teacher get better.
It's the one thing we've been missing, and it can turn our schools around.
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We seem to have no basic National Standard for curriculums that every Institution must meet as a minimum requirement. Once the National Standard is met, then the States can add their own additional class requirements for local Schools. Testing is meaningless if the material is being presented poorly to begin with.
You might also consider that we are still using the "One Room School-house" model to educate all ages of students. Standing at the head of the class and lecturing only goes so far, especially in this interactive age. Perhaps we might try a new 21st Century way of doing things?
We can increase class sizes with Combined Cooperative Interactive Learning, CCIL, or some variation of this system I developed whilst tutoring. If you put students in groups of 3 to 6, the groups can work together on assignments during the session. The Teacher can then manage the groups, as the students themselves help each other learn too. Those who excel can then be placed with others who are having difficulty keeping up. This system can promote a greater Social Interactivity between students. And of course, if we can give the students enough of a challenge, and work, to keep them occupied, it might help to keep them out of trouble too, especially at our Universities.
I presume that you are familiar with the 80/20 rule; that 80% of your issues and costs are caused by 20% of your customers. Schools can't take advantage of the flip side to this rule like Microsoft can; nor can they control their raw materials like MS. Prior to NCLB, the highest need students, who were also the highest cost students, fell through the cracks; it let schools focus on the top 80%. Of course I don't think this is the way things shouldbe done; but while schools receive maybe $10K/year to educate a student, districts often have multiple students who cost $100K/year or more. And, let's be clear that the Charter Schools you fund have nowhere near the numbers of high cost students that comparable public schools do. Just check the mandated school reporting by SPED, ELL, and high poverty rates in the same districts your charter schools are in; they rarely have half the numbers.
Again, I appreciate your spirit and desire to help, but you're a bit misguided as to the issues.
Elementary schools pre-K to at least 6th grade. Class size, 8 to 12 students, depending on subject matter. twenty first century curricula, (i.e. global) Cisco has a commercial out where a class of thirty elementary children visit China by Satellite television hook up. Good commercial but it encourages depersonalizing humans and pushes the "Media is the Message". I would prefer that the class actually visit the farm. Finally we should stop arguing about how wrong Piaget was and admit that he has done his home work. Over reliance on technologies is very dangerous. Computers don't conform to people, they are binary and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
1) The profession would attract more applicants.
2) In America's highly materialist culture, teachers would have higher status (face it, Americans worship the well heeled).
3) With elevated respect for teachers, discipline issues disappear or at least decrease.
4) Increased respect for teachers ("educated elite") will increase the desirability of employment that requires difficult education (science, engineering, etc) => Motivated students!
Since most of the increases in education spending have been on useless administrative personnel, a solution to the problem could be to require that ALL school employees other than the custodian and secretary (and only have one each of those per school, like they do in Japan) and cooking staff achieve teacher certification and teach classes in addition to sitting in their offices and surfing the web. Let's face it, even guidance councilors could teach something like Social Studies or Civics, and if they can't then they don't belong in a school.
I'm not suggesting that administrators take on a full teaching workload, but if they could teach five or ten classes per week it would dramatically reduce class sizes for the real teachers. Further, requiring that ALL professional employees of the school district be certified teachers who actually teach ensures that the entire organization is kept focused upon the essence of their mission.
As for the poverty argument, I'm not ready to believe it yet, but it is another area where we spend more and get no improvement. So there is one point of correlation; neither one improves as we spend more money.
It's time to stop pretending that there is some magic amount of money we can spend that will magically reverse the trend of 40 years and start looking for different solutions.
Don't want to upset the bleeding liberals who just love what Gates did in Africa.
As long as every classroom is equipped with at least 2 PCs with Windows just in case one of them continuously crashes for no apparent reason.
If you read Gates' full rant on the topic (go to any right wing trash site for the full rant) you would think all teachers are incompetent oafs whose base salary should be pittance with an added bonus for "performance".
You are making the same ridiculous proposals that Oprah, Obama and Michelle Rhee made. Sounds brutal and the result is insignificant. The system is perfect. The problem is AT HOME. Students don't get pushed, get no motivation to move on. I know parents who push their high school children to get children.
On top of that, people tend to blame the high schools which is completely wrong! Students leave elementary performing high, even internationally. Then they get out of middle school and high school teachers stand in front of a crowd that is behind on everything. So what High school teachers end up doing is teaching students Middle school materials so that they can barely understand what's going on in High school.
So where is the problems? At home and in Middle school! NOT high schools, NOT the teachers, NOT the concept behind public schools or whatever ridiculous stuff people make up.
Perhaps if we accorded more status to teachers than we do to people who have been lucky enough to earn a fortune, we would attract and keep more high quality teachers.