Posted on 12/15/2006 2:46:51 PM PST by shrinkermd
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Education and business leaders urged an overhaul of the U.S. school system, including ending high school at the 10th grade for many students. Current teaching is failing to prepare young Americans for the global economy, members of a bipartisan panel said Thursday.
Beginning teachers should earn more, according to the group, and money for this idea could come from the scrapping of conventional teacher pension plans in favor of other benefits such as 401(k)s.
"People have got to understand what we've got is not working. It's not working for kids, but it's not working for teachers either," said William Brock, a former congressman who was labor secretary and trade representative in the Reagan administration...
...Under the new group's proposal, students would finish 10th grade and then take exams. Depending on how well the students perform, they could go on to community college or stay in school and study for more advanced tests that could earn them a place at a four-year college. Somewhat similar systems are in place in other countries.
The report says that by not spending today's resources on 11th- and 12th-graders and through other changes, the government could eventually save an estimated $60 billion.
The money could pay, for example, for new pre-kindergarten programs and higher teacher salaries, which the report said would help recruit top graduates into the profession...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Bravo to Melinda and Bill Gates for funding it! Anyone with an interest in education should read this carefully. It surely needs implementing.
Godd ideas, but no chance. US public schools are run by Unions and Grifting Administrations.
that by not spending today's resources on 11th- and 12th-graders and through other changes, the government could eventually save an estimated $60 billion. The money could pay, for example, for new pre-kindergarten programs and higher teacher salaries
Thats right, dont spend money on the kids, spend it on teachers and mandatory preschool programs that increases the influence government has over children.
????
Yes, I saw that and forgot to mention it. It returns to a basic pattern that used to exist in Minnesota. That is the providing of services by private vendors who are paid and supervised by a contracted private business. We still do this for snow plowing and other road maintenance in many of our suburbs.
It would be opposed by the School Boards and the Teachers Unions, but just the proposal would set a trend in motion.
I don't understand how we can spend 10,000 per kid in public schools.
For 20 kids in a classroom, that is 200,000. Let's say 70,000 goes to the teacher and 5,000 per month for rent and supplies. That comes to 115,000.
Yes, there are enormous administrative costs as well as a host of social services best provided elsewhere and with different funding.
shifting control to the states from the local districts would be controversial
This doesn't comfort me. We trade locals for state-level politicians' buddies.
the commission recommends moving away from traditional, defined benefit pensions to less generous retirement plans commonly found in the private sector.
Well, I don't have a "pension"--at least not in the sense that big teachers' union states do. The state of Texas withdraws a certain amount from every paycheck and then applies a 2.x multiplier to the fund and calls it teacher retirement. Texas teachers can't draw social security, BTW. I contribute to my own 409-b [or whatever the number is].
Did Bill and Melinda run this by the NEA or NFT yet? I tend to think they might take exception to someone messing with the status quo.
Get rid of the notion that even the stupid and criminally insane must graduate from high school, and focus on educating people who want to and are able to learn, and then we won't have this problem.
That seems to worked for places where the prison system was turned over to private contractors.
Hey, WAIT! Have you been to a high school lately. They look more like prisons than schools with all the guards and the lock-downs.
You can have no opinion in this matter. Your political correctedness rating factor is below 12.5. Politically incorrect speech is not allowed. You are a teacher only rich billionaires can have opinions on this matter.
Come on now what could a teacher really know about all of this?
That was a tricky way of saying "vouchers", but they were very careful to not use the "v" word. :-)
At least as important is completely overhauling the post-secondary education system. Currently to qualify for federal financial aid or a college's own financial aid, a student must be enrolled in a "degree program" and "making satisfactory progress towards a degree". In addition, most schools give non-degree candidates limited access to course registration, i.e. they only get to register after all degree candidates have registered. So if you want to learn calculus or chemistry and pay for it yourself, while you continue to work full time, you're likely to be prevented from doing so at any remotely selective school. The effect is that, in order to have access to tough courses in serious subjects, students are required to attend at least half time and in many cases full time, AND required to waste time and money taking idiotic PC classes to fulfill requirements like "social justice" and "gender studies".
The PC faculty generates jobs for itself by building these requirements into the degree programs, thus effectively preventing most students from bypassing the waste-of-time social indoctrination courses. They are taking advantage of both federal financial aid rules, and of federal and state employment rules that require/reward a "degree" rather than any specific knowledge or skills. Federal financial aid (as long as we're stuck with its very existence) should be available on a course by course basis, and only for courses clearly related to workforce needs. No federal financial aid for drama classes for naive aspiring actresses, or for courses in "The Portrayal of Gender in 19th Century Queer Poetry", and other worthless garbage that does not move students towards employability or productivity.
Federal, state, and municipal governments should eliminate all degree requirements for employment, and instead have relevant requirements for documented knowledge/skill in the areas needed for the job. Break the back of the post-secondary education industry by forcing it into the free market. No school that gets one penny in federal funds should be turning students away from lab science classes (a problem area at almost all schools, due to the specific facility requirements) or math classes, while offering a wide array of unfilled classes in useless feel-good subjects.
That is a good post and contains information I never dreamed of. Thank you.
Spread the word!
I'm tired of being forced to subsidize garbage like Leonard Jefferies teaching City College of New York students his theories about warm loving "sun people" (i.e. blacks) and cold heartless "ice people" (whites) and how it's all due to the obvious melanin deficiency that white people have which makes them just hopelessly inferior. Meanwhile, we've got a critical nationwide shortage of nurses, and are importing marginally qualified ones from third world countries which desperately need to keep them, while US nursing schools are turning away thousands of QUALIFIED applicants every year, for lack of funding to expand faculties and facilities.
The whole degree-tied-to-federal-aid thing is part of shrewd conspiracy by post-secondary educrats, that's just as evil and damaging as the NEA conspiracy.
Don't believe the $10,000 figure. In most large cities and upper-middle class suburbs the real figure is more like $20,000. In my district it was $24,000 last I heard. When you hear a number in the $10,000 range, it's reflecting operating costs only -- totally excludes capital costs like purchasing land and putting up buildings for the schools.
P.S -- I just noticed the irony of my post being on this particular thread . . . about a worthy project funded by DEGREE-LESS self-made multi-billionaire Bill Gates.
It looks like Bill Gates sees things in a similar way that we did on this other thread... We have been discussing inexpensive ways to fast track kids through high school to avoid the liberal agenda:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315730/posts?page=84#84
The thread title was not well thought out, because some parents might instinctively skip over it due to attached stigma, whether real or imagined.
When you add in the special ed teachers, resource teachers, administrators, school nurses (for the few schools that still have them), etc... I'm sure it runs up to at least 200,000.
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