Originally Posted by
Synnen
Having grown up in a state that ended up in the top 10 for education pretty much every year I've ever looked, and then working in a university in a state that was in the LAST 5 pretty much every year, I can give an idea on what it is:
It's how we distribute pay to teachers and administrators.
Schools that have a high percentage of students passing certain standardized tests (and please note--some states do NOT use nationally standardized tests) are the schools that get raises, get money to spend on upgrading the school, and essentially get more "perks".
Schools that do not score as high often have layoffs and restructuring every few years to try to get them to do "better", but the constant change of teachers, staff, and programming results in more confusion, and in no one wanting to work at those schools.
Then the "No Child Left Behind" thing screwed EVERYTHING up. That program needs to be deleted. Self esteem isn't something that teachers should be teaching--it's what parents should be teaching. Ask some school in another first-world country whether or not they CARE whether a child's feelings were hurt when they got an F instead of an OK on their test. Their feelings SHOULD be hurt!
Get rid of paying according to students passing a test that you can teach them.
Get rid of "no child left behind"
Get rid of teachers having to teach more than education. Self esteem, respect, proper grooming, all of that sort of thing---that should be taught by PARENTS.
Start holding PARENTS responsible for their kids not doing well in school, instead of the teachers. Stop giving Welfare to drop-outs---a high school diploma or GED should be required to get Welfare, don't you think? Hold kids back that can't read, and haven't learned anything. FAIL students that don't make the effort to learn.
The MAIN problem is that people look on education in the US as a RIGHT and not a PRIVILEGE.