education in America....
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:48 am
...now, this isn't a glib topic I'm throwing out, but it's one which I think is important. I'm about to head off for another few days, but I'll depart with this thread, and see what comes back.
The other day, I was listening to a local NPR station discussing educational issues up in New Jersey. The usual problems in poorer districts: dropouts, poor test scores, the turn to for-profit outside providers to replace public schools, etc. I got to thinking back a few years when I did a couple terms on a School Board in PA. In those days, I immersed myself in the whole business of public education and studied a lot about it. What I gleaned was this....there is a DIRECT correlation between poverty rate and dropout rate. I mean, almost perfect. If you have a 40% poverty rate in a district, you likely have a 40% dropout rate. Further,the focus on test scores leads to a wholesale attempt to get children with disabilities and learning deficits out of the system, to make it 'look' better. I don't have a single, sure fire answer, or any certain answers as to where we go, but I get the sense that we are still, as a nation, going about it all wrong. And, it matters. I am real leery of standardized testing for a lot of reasons(alters teaching so as to do well on tests, not to teach kids to think, etc). What I focus upon is the successful graduation of functional high-school graduates. In our modern times, this is CRITICAL to the ongoing success of the economy and the nation as a whole. Back a couple generations, not so much so. For instance, I had a great-uncle who dropped out of school, went down to the DuPont company at age 14, lied about his age and ended up(43 years later) as an engineer, thanks to ongoing support and training by DuPont. Others went into trades as apprentices and also made solid lives for themselves. Those trajectories simply do not exist to any extent today, and are becoming less and less viable every minute. We live in a world with a LOT of uneducated laborers, another load of functional office workers, but a limited pool of educated people capable of critical thinking and lifelong learning. Thus, a dropout rate of 40% in 1925 may not have negatively impacted our future workforce or economy, but today it does.
It seems to me that we have to completely rethink, for our modern times, the educational process. We now HAVE to address, within that system, the shortcomings of homes with poverty(hungry children don't learn well). We have to refocus on the role of education in teaching children how to think and analyze, not simply regurgitate. We need to refocus on basic language/literacy skills, and have to, as a society, return education and scholarly pursuits to an esteemed status. It isn't simply 'throwing money' at the issue. It needs a complete, societal rethink of the whole matter. My greatest fear for the coming decades and beyond in America is that we are simply watching the groundwork being laid for a descent into third-rate status, and not taking that seriously. Thoughts? Please, spare us the glib, "lefties want low-education voters", or similar blather. I have faith that the folks here have good thoughts to bring forth. Let's hear them........in the meantime, it's back to the beach for me.
The other day, I was listening to a local NPR station discussing educational issues up in New Jersey. The usual problems in poorer districts: dropouts, poor test scores, the turn to for-profit outside providers to replace public schools, etc. I got to thinking back a few years when I did a couple terms on a School Board in PA. In those days, I immersed myself in the whole business of public education and studied a lot about it. What I gleaned was this....there is a DIRECT correlation between poverty rate and dropout rate. I mean, almost perfect. If you have a 40% poverty rate in a district, you likely have a 40% dropout rate. Further,the focus on test scores leads to a wholesale attempt to get children with disabilities and learning deficits out of the system, to make it 'look' better. I don't have a single, sure fire answer, or any certain answers as to where we go, but I get the sense that we are still, as a nation, going about it all wrong. And, it matters. I am real leery of standardized testing for a lot of reasons(alters teaching so as to do well on tests, not to teach kids to think, etc). What I focus upon is the successful graduation of functional high-school graduates. In our modern times, this is CRITICAL to the ongoing success of the economy and the nation as a whole. Back a couple generations, not so much so. For instance, I had a great-uncle who dropped out of school, went down to the DuPont company at age 14, lied about his age and ended up(43 years later) as an engineer, thanks to ongoing support and training by DuPont. Others went into trades as apprentices and also made solid lives for themselves. Those trajectories simply do not exist to any extent today, and are becoming less and less viable every minute. We live in a world with a LOT of uneducated laborers, another load of functional office workers, but a limited pool of educated people capable of critical thinking and lifelong learning. Thus, a dropout rate of 40% in 1925 may not have negatively impacted our future workforce or economy, but today it does.
It seems to me that we have to completely rethink, for our modern times, the educational process. We now HAVE to address, within that system, the shortcomings of homes with poverty(hungry children don't learn well). We have to refocus on the role of education in teaching children how to think and analyze, not simply regurgitate. We need to refocus on basic language/literacy skills, and have to, as a society, return education and scholarly pursuits to an esteemed status. It isn't simply 'throwing money' at the issue. It needs a complete, societal rethink of the whole matter. My greatest fear for the coming decades and beyond in America is that we are simply watching the groundwork being laid for a descent into third-rate status, and not taking that seriously. Thoughts? Please, spare us the glib, "lefties want low-education voters", or similar blather. I have faith that the folks here have good thoughts to bring forth. Let's hear them........in the meantime, it's back to the beach for me.
