What Would a Teacher Do?
Posted on | July 3, 2012 | 3 Comments
Sometimes I can go on a tear and have something that I want to write about here at the Exchange just about every single day. Then we have a stretch like this recent one, where I go missing for a week and a half. What’s brought me back is another number. The number is 15,800,000,000.
Throw a dollar sign at the front of that number and you get $15.8 billion. That’s the dollar figure put on the cost of aligning state standards to the new Common Core, according to the Pioneer Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
Education reform, Common Core, NCLB, Race to the Top, Bill Gates, Waiting for Superman, STEM. That’s barely scratching the surface of what seems to me to be a fundamentally flawed process in trying to fix what people think is wrong with education in America today. When was the last time someone came into your classroom and asked, “Mailbox teacher, what do you think we need to do to improve public school education in America?”
So I’m asking you. And I can’t wait for your answer.
Tags: 15.8 billion > America > Bill Gates > CCSS > Common Core > education > NCLB > numbers > public education > public schools > Race to the Top > STEM > The Mailbox > Waiting for Superman
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3 Responses to “What Would a Teacher Do?”
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About the Upper Grades Exchange Blog
My name is Todd Savelle, caretaker of The Upper Grades Exchange blog from The Mailbox. The Exchange is where grades 4 through 8 teachers can find the ideas, solutions, and inspiration that make the middle years of a child’s education easier and more fun. Share your teaching tips and classroom management techniques, engage in lively discussions about current education issues, and engage with your peers with ideas for supplementing today’s fluid curriculum. Upper Grades Exchange will make you think of The Mailbox in a whole new way.
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July 7th, 2012 at 8:43 am
To reform education we need to start with the education of new teachers… Too many new teachers are coming into the classroom unprepared and undereducated themselves.
July 5th, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Students need to be assessed as early as kindergarten, first and second for retention. According to research, children being held back during the primary grades have a better chance at catching up and improved self esteem. Also, if a student still has academic challenges they should continue to have a pull out program to meet the needd. I know the push is to all be mainstreamed, but realistically that is unlikely when the standards are placed extremely high. As professional educators we want our students to receive the best chance in being successful, so offer them an opportunity.
July 4th, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Two things need to change to improve our current educational problems. First, stop forcing down the curriculum to younger and younger children. Go back to where children learned to read in 1st grade and learned to multiply in 3rd grade, etc.
Second, From Kdg through 3rd grade, the teacher child ratio should be no more than 15 to one. This has been proven by research and backed by the NAEYC for years.