Education in CaliforniaFollow

Extend the school year. Kids have too much time off anyway.

Why no. You're the first!



I agree in principle. I think that there's a night and day difference between how well kids do in school and how they absorb information based on how much this was encouraged at an early age. This is most stark between households where kids are encouraged to read and count at an early age by involved parents, and those who are not. Those early programs (like Head Start) are designed to impart that encouragement and direction even for kids whose parents might not do so themselves. And that's a great idea.

The problem is that in those households, you're really still just masking the problem and it comes back once the program is finished. Head Start kids show statistical advantages through grade school. But by high school, there's no statistical difference between kids who went through the program when they were younger and those who didn't. That's a problem since we presumably care most about the result at grade 12. I'm not sure how we can implement something that can retain that kind of success all the way through, but I do agree that it's something worth looking into. Certainly, while those early programs are very important, they don't appear to make enough difference all the way through by themselves.

I'll also point out that this is where I re-inject the idea that if you introduce some method of real competition into the school system, then you will maximize the odds that schools will come up with ways to engage kids in ways our current model doesn't (and likely at a much lower cost than simply extending a Head Start type program all the way through 12th grade). We see this in magnet and charter schools right now. I find it very interesting, in fact, that the most successes with improving education quality in schools has come from removing many of the stringent rules that tend to constrict our public schools. That alone should give us a hint as to a direction to go. Instead of starting at some high bureaucratic level and deciding what they think is best and then applying that down to all the schools in a one-size-fits-all way, how about giving the schools the freedom to tailor their own education programs and let them figure out what works best?

It's funny, because Finland has some of the best education in the world, and their main focus wasn't even improving test scores, but egalitarianism.

Plus, private schools are allowed to expel students based on poor performance, whereas public schools are open to everyone. You perform better when you cut out a chunk of the population that isn't performing well? Who'da thunk it?

Plus, parents hate it when schools have, like, expectations and ****. The main problem is that teachers get zero respect. If they try to manage a classroom, parents go ********

Little Snotleigh is hurt by that F.

Edited, May 9th 2012 5:42pm by Sweetums

Ah, the good old 4-14-14-14-4.

The perfect score was probably because you we the one literate person in Texas at the time.

Thats why my hubby and I really want (and hope) to emigrate. His new employer has sites all over, and once hubby puts in his two years we can go to Finland, the U.K., Australia, Canada..etc

We want better opportunities for our children. For them to learn to be part of a group, to have to deal with possibly being "left behind" and knowing how to cope with failure without allowing it to define them.

How do you not fail kids? Do they just do badly, but still pass the grade?

Sounds to me like a recipe for a successful and productive workforce.