College Student

Because Ed schools do such a lousy job teaching teachers how to teach and how children learn, teachers often develop their own theories on teaching and learning based on their own observations. Often these theories are wrong.

Here’s Dan Meyer blogging about a common teacher misconception: the supposed instructional value of allowing/encouraging students to struggle:

The good teacher knows if the learner learns through the ears, the eyes, or the hands just like the good spotter knows where the lifter wants support — at the wrists or under the elbows or on the bar. The good spotter is unhelpful; the good spotter doesn’t intervene at the first sign of struggle but realizes that the struggle is essential, that the struggle is the entire reason they are there, and waits as long as possible before intervening.

The good teacher puts weight on the student’s intellectual bar and lets her struggle under that weight as long as possible, asking questions to help her cut through the confusion, just like the spotter shouts encouragement at the lifter. (emphasis added)

I hate to ruin a colorful analogy, but the theory is wrong. Students struggling with material is not good for learning, retention, or motivation. Here’s Engelmann on the topic:

Always place students appropriately for more rapid mastery progress. This fact contradicts the belief that students are placed appropriately in a sequence if they have to struggle—scratch their head, make false starts, sigh, frown, gut it out. According to one version of this belief, if there are no signs of hard work there is no evidence of learning. This belief does not place emphasis on the program and the teacher to make learning manageable but on the grit of the student to meet the “challenge.” In the traditional interpretation, much of the “homework” assigned to students (and their families) is motivated by this belief. The assumption seems to be that students will be strengthened if they are “challenged.”

This belief is flatly wrong. If students are placed appropriately, the work is relatively easy. Students tend to learn it without as much “struggle.” They tend to retain it better and they tend to apply it better, if they learn it with fewer mistakes.

The prevalence of this misconception about “effort” was illustrated by the field tryouts of the Spelling Mastery programs. Over half of the tryout teachers who field tested the first and second levels of Spelling Mastery with lower performers indicated on their summary forms that they thought the program was too easy for the children. Note that most of these teachers were not DI teachers and had never taught DI programs before. When asked about whether they had ever used a program that induced more skills in the same amount of time, all responded, “No.” Nearly all agreed that the lower performers had learned substantially more than similar children had in the past. When asked if students were bored with the program, all responded, “No.”

What led the teachers to believe that the programs were too easy? All cited the same evidence: students didn’t have to struggle. For them, it wasn’t appropriate instruction if it wasn’t difficult for the lower performers. (p. 17)

This is the danger for a would-be-profession that eschews empiricism in favor of individual intuition.

Authority Education Sites-

Research Papers – Everything you need to know about formatting, researching, writing and presenting you research paper is available at the tip of your fingers at http://www.essaycapital.com/research_papers.php. Whether you doing a paper on Arts, Business or Science, our thorough guides will clear any questions you might have about any aspect of you assignment.

Professional Resume Service – Not content with your professional life? Writing a resume and making it look good enough for people to want to hire you is an art. Let the professionals handle it for you at http://www.grandresume.com. In today’s competitive market, a professionally written resume is just the edge you are looking for.

Custom Dissertation – If you are looking for professionals to write up a dissertation that is custom- made for you, just visit http://www.dissertation-service.co.uk and let the experts help you with your assignment. For 100% plagiarism-free and relevant write-ups, our experts will keep revising the content until you are completely satisfied.

Coursework Help – For top notch academic writing services, visit http://www.coursework-writing.co.uk. Our premier services are specifically for GSCE, A-Level and University level students. Whether your assignment requires an essay or some kind of analytical, problem solving write-up, our experts will make one specifically for you.

Buy Essay – At http://www.paramountessays.com our expert writers will custom-make essays and term papers for your particular requirements. We have a team of carefully selected, reliable writers who will ensure that your assignment is above par at all times. We have zero-tolerance for plagiarism and our writers make sure that your paper is all yours and not picked up from somewhere else. We have access to the best libraries and online databases.

Essay Help – The best writers are waiting to write your paper at http://www.valwriting.com. If you want valedictorian writers writing for you, this is the service to pick up. Our first rate writers and competitive prices will be impossible to ignore. Whether you want essays, research papers, dissertations or term papers, our writers give you the cutting edge over others.

Custom Essays – We at http://www.masterpapers.com have been in the business of giving you the competitive edge for years. We have been named the world’s finest custom essay and dissertation writing service. Our network of writers, are from all over the globe will ensure that your assignment says what you want to say and not what they want to say. We also have a 24/7 customer care line for your convenience.

Essays – The work you submit is the key to your educational success and we at http://www.essaycapital.com will open doors for you that you never thought possible. Our team of writers will make sure that your essay stands out in the crowd every time. Our custom essay writing service ensures that you don’t have to worry about submitting a sub-par assignment on top of the gamut of stresses you face as a student.

Essay – http://www.customessays.co.uk is at your service, to make sure that you are properly guided through the process of writing an assignment that will grab attention. Our writers will not only custom-write essays for you, but also guide you on asking the right questions and finding the write answers so that your topic is at your fingertips as far as comprehension is concerned.

Essay Writing – http://www.bestessay4u.com is the place to be if you need any kind of guidance at any stage of doing your assignment. Whether you need an assignment written from scratch, or you need someone to assure you that you are going in the right direction with your paper, or you need some help editing your thesis, or you are not too sure about your admission essay, or even if you just need grammatical guidance from the best in the business, we are right here waiting for your click.

Custom Essay Writing Services – We at http://www.fastessays.co.uk are aware that no matter what topic you need us to write on, it needs to be customized according to your level and your particular field of study. With this in mind, our team of writers will ensure that your essays are outstanding and that you are absolutely clear about every aspect of it. With more than ten years experience, we will ensure your success every time.

Book Reports – Writing a book report is not to be misconstrued with summarizing a book. At http://www.masterpapers.com/book_reports/php, our team will ensure that your report grabs that kind of attention it is meant to. We will not simply prepare a synopsis of your book but go beyond what is written, into the unwritten words as well.

Dissertation Help – http://www.ma-dissertations.com is the place to be if you want the guidance of expert writers, but at the same time, maintain control over your dissertation. Be clear about what you want, be sure about the additional information you need and then just let our writers take care of it for you. But remember that at every stage, you will have control over your dissertation.

Buy College Essay – Buy college essay written according to the instructions provided by you! We promise on-time delivery of your paper no matter what your research topic is. We have written thousands of college essays!

Education Secretary Arne Duncan believes that American schoolchildren need more class time and more school choice.

One out of two ain’t so bad.

More School

Duncan believes that American school children should be in school at least six days a week, 11 months a year if they are to be competitive with students abroad.

I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short and our school year is too short.

You’re competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; eleven, twelve months a year.

Presently, this proposal is a waste of time.

Is more seat time really needed in today’s poor instructional environment? If you’re in the top third of the student distribution, you’re already forced to endure an instructional pace that is too slow, resulting in wasted time and opportunity and plenty o’ boredom. if you’re in the bottom third of the distribution, you’re mostly lost because the instructional pace is too fast. More seat time isn’t going to help. Just because KIPP has been successful with an expanded school day and school year, doesn’t mean that other schools will find the same success.

Duncan’s comparisons with foreign countries is misplaced. The U.S. is competitive with foreign countries once you control for demographics. Our white students are competitive with white students from European. Our Asian students are competitive with Asian students from Asian countries. And no country does a particularly good job educating black and Hispanic students in large numbers.

If we want to do a better job educating students, we need to get government out of the education business and limit its role (on all governmental levels) to the education funding distribution and regulation business which is more difficult to screw up.

This is not to say that our currently antiquated system is ideal. It isn’t. But there are bigger fish to fry before we force most students to endure more seat time. Our colleges are the envy of the world and they make due with about 20% less class time than our current system. Maybe we should reduce class time?

More Choice

Duncan also believes that students need more choice.

I’m a big believer that students and parents should have a choice what school they want to go to.

Me too. The problem, however, is that current voucher and charter schools are too tiny to provide sufficient choice or develop an adequate market of educational choice from which students can chose.

Currently, most schools (private, public, and charter) look remarkably similar from an instructional standpoint. If you like your Model T in black you are in luck. There are a few reason for this.

• Lack of information on the relative merits of different instructional practices. (The Internet is starting to make a dent here.)
• Popular instructional practices (i.e., the norm) serve the middle-class adequately. (In fact, most instructional practices will provide adequate instruction to this population.)
• There are other non-instructional considerations (like school environment, extracurricular offerings, peer environment, school prestige, and the like) that are relevant and serve as an independent basis for picking one school from another
• The measures for measuring the relative merits of instructional are few and far between, not widely used and/or made publicly available, and are population dependent.

To improve, we need a well-functioning and competitive education market which provided real choices to students. And, the best way to accomplish this is to give the public school funding directly to parents and let them decide (within regulatory limits) the appropriate use of the funding. (After the system has been rebooted, naturally.) That stills sounds like a public education system to me.

Here are the Stats

Nearly 600 posts. (Maybe 15% were decent.)

Countless typos.

190,000 Visits. (Mostly from the same dozen people)

300,000 Page Views.

317 Google Reader Subscribers

60 Bloglines Subscribers

Top Referring Websites (Other than Search Engines)

1. Joanne Jacobs
2. Kitchentable Math
3. Eduwonk
4. Wapo
5. OEDB
6. This Week in Education
7. RRF Message Board
8. EconLog
9. Core Knowledge Blog
10. Rightwing Nation

Most Popular Posts From the Past Year

1. Science Leadership Academy (What they say vs. what their students can do) (Series)
2. Learning Styles are Bunk
3. Today’s Chart (Pass rates vs. % Free/Reduced Meal Students)
4. Improving Socioeconomic Status (A fool’s Errand)
5. Developmentally Appropriate Practice is Not Developmentally Appropriate
6. Efficiency and Spelling
7. New DI Program: Differentiated Reading
8. Decodable vs. Predictable Texts
9. Theory II: Teacher’s Salaries
10. Your Pet Reform is Suckier Than You Think

Most Popular Posts From the Archives

1. It’s Official: Everyday Math Sucks (Sept. 2006)
2. Alfie Kohn: Dangerous Jackass (Aug. 2006)
3. How to Effectively Manage a Classroom (Oct. 2007) (Guest Post by teacher PalisadesK)
4. Differentiated Nonsense (May 2006)
5. Everyday Math on Long Division (Oct. 2006)
6. Kid Writing (Aug. 2006)
7. Reading Mastery III Sample Lesson (Part 1) (May 2006)
8. Effective Mathematics Instruction The Importance of Curriculum (April 2007)
9. It’s the Vocabulary, Stupid (Nov. 2006)
10. New Way to Teach Penmanship (Dec. 2006)

Thanks to all the readers, commenters, and other edu-bloggers.

The NYT reports that during a press phone call yesterday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan “unleashed a barrage of dismal statistics about the South Carolina schools” whose Governor, Mark Sanford “has told the Obama administration that he would not accept some $577 million in educational stimulus money for South Carolina unless he could use it to pay down state debt.”

During the putative barrage of dismal statistics Duncan noted that “only 15 percent of the state’s black students are proficient in math and that the state has one of the nation’s worst high school graduation rates.”

This is a pot kettle black moment.

Duncan, who up until he was tapped by the Obama administration, served as CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Why don’t we take a look at how well the Chicago Public Schools has fared under Duncan’s astute management?

In 2007, only 10% of 4th Grade black students in Chicago tested at the proficient level in Reading. (Table A-5) And, only 9% of 8th Grade black students tested at the proficient level. (Table A-6)

In 2007, only 8% of 4th Grade black students in Chicago tested at the proficient level in Math. (Table A-5) And, only 6% of 8th Grade black students tested at the proficient level. (Table A-6)

These dismal results were obtained with spending of between $13k – $14k per pupil — far higher than what South Carolina spends. Apparently, how much a district spends has little to do with how well it educates.

Now there goes some performance information on our public schools that is “embarrassing.”

Uncle Jay has a good column on how the need for parental involvement in low-income schools isn’t all that critical.

The story of his school and others like it suggests that the importance of parental involvement, at least in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, has been exaggerated, probably because middle-class commentators have been imposing their suburban experiences on very different situations. Unchallenged, this misunderstanding of what works for low-income children could stymie efforts to improve the country’s worst schools.

The best school leaders say that they don’t need much parental involvement when they are hiring staff, creating class schedules and putting discipline procedures in place.

…

Low-income parents may often be distracted just trying to make a living, but they know what works. Once they see a school keeping its promises, they provide the kind of support found in suburban schools. But it’s important to remember that good schooling must come before parental support, not the other way around.

That seems about right to me. Parents need to make sure their kids get to school timely and regularly. But then the school needs to demonstrate that it is doing its job. Or why would parents think its important to send their kids to school every day?

In this post I’ll lay out the final main points in my plan for school reform.

Lots of Data, Set Free

The most important aspect of the plan is data. Useful data must be made freely available to all parents and students so that parents can make sense of the various educational offerings. Parents must be able to answer the following questions:

• What is the predicted performance of my child in this education program based on the past performance of children, like my child, in this program?

• How much better (or worse) is the predicted performance of my child in education program A compared to educational programs B, C, … , n.

The disaggregation of data made available has to go far beyond that provided under NCLB. For example, a male student with two Hispanic parents – one with a high school degree and the other with a college STEM degree, a family income of $ x, from neighborhood z, with various scores on prior tests taken should be able to drill down through the data and find out similar students like him and see how they fared in a particular course.

Such a system is predicated on accurate demographic data being collected, initial placement exams being taken when the student enters formal education, and all subsequent testing results.

Furthermore, the data should be made publicly available (while respecting FERPA regs) so that organizations, like S& P, can provide services for the public to use to evaluate the various educational offerings.

Maintain the Default System, Allowing Educators to Experiment with Their Top-Down Schemes

Under my plan, in which teachers take responsibility for student learning within the agreed upon obligations agreed upon by the students, there will remain some students that no teachers believe thay are capable of educating. These students must still be provided with a free appropriate education, so an educational system of last resort must be maintained. In all liklihood, states will maintain a scaled-down version of their present public education system for these children (and those parenst who favor the present system and wish to keep their children in it). These children will remain a political problem and states and the federal government will continue to employ top-down edicts and experiments in an attempt to solve the problem. They’ll also continue to pump money into the system. None of it will work because the nature of the present precludes such a system working. Nonetheless, eventually some educators will be enticed by the per pupil funding available (the reward) and agree to the risks inherent in educating this kids.

Funding

I’ve left this one for last because I have no ecific ideas how to employ an equitable funding system. Basically, some kids are much easier to educate than others and, as such, require more effort to educate. This effort is likely to cost more and you’d think there should be additional compensation for those endeavoring to educate these kids.

There’s also an argument that the present funding levels are more than adequate to educate most kids.

I don’t have an answer for this problem. Nor does anyone else.

I do know how you might go about solving the problem. First you gather all the educators who think they know how to educate these kids. Then have all of these educators bid to take as many schools worth of children that they think they can handle. The losing educators can then be offered to participate in a small scale experiment and take a random sample of children at the winning bid price and see what they can do. The winning bidder will be paid only for the children they are capable of successfully educating. If the winning bidder (and any of the successful losing bidders) is sufficinetly successful, they should be provided any needed funding to scale up.

****

That’s it. The minimal framework needed for a bottom-up evolution of the present system within a top-down regulatory framework which provides for a fair environment for professional educators to work and permits for top-down efforts for the difficult to educate children.

I’ll discuss how a system might work in practice in my next post.

I noted in the previous post that the public education system needs a reboot to get a fresh start.

To use another metaphor, the public school system needs to be declared bankrupt so it can be restructured, eliminating all the conditions that drove it into bankruptcy in the first place.

The primary reason for the reboot, as opposed to less drastic measures, is to extinguish all the bad contracts, obligations, and relationships they’ve entangled themselves in and have had thrust upon them by political means.

As I pointed out in the previous post, after the great reboot of aught nine you’d have students, teachers, buildings, equipment/instructional material, and existing funding. All that is needed is to restructure the relationship between these existing elements so the incentives are better aligned while avoiding the mistakes of the present system.

So how should the system be rebuilt?

Power to the People

The first, and most important, fix is to return the power to the people. Education funding should go directly to the students to spend on education services as they see fit. One way to do this would be to set up education savings accounts for each student, like medical savings accounts, that can only be used for education services.

People pay taxes for education. A certain percentage of those taxes go to fund the education for the benefit of the public. But a person should a get a credit for a percentage of the taxes they pay each year that goes into their education savings account for at least the benefit of their own children’s education. The idea is to provide parents (and students) control over their children’s education commensurate with resources they’ve contributed into the system free from interference from the government or otherwise. To the extent that students are being subsidized from public funds, then it is likely that taxpayers, through their elected representatives, will want some control how those funds are spent. That seems to me to be a fair compromise.

Teachers Will Be Professionals

Teachers need to be professionalized, whether they like it or not, with all the benefits and responsibilities that flow from that status. We need professionals to do the hard work of education because we need educators to be responsible for student outcomes. Teachers should be like treated like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals. Doctors don’t have to cure every patient and lawyers don’t have to win every dispute, but they are required to render their services competently. If they fail to do so they risk having their license revoked and having to compensate for their malpractice. The upside is that as professionals, teachers will be free to render their services (within the guidelines established by the profession) in the manner of their choosing and free from the silly micro-regulations in effect today because educators have failed to police themselves like other professions.

The main benefit for teachers for professionalizing is that teachers themselves get to decide how they will organize themselves to offer their services. Any professional teacher can put out a shingle and offer services as a sole practitioner. Or than can partner up with one or more lawyers and offer services as a partnership. They can enter into more complicated organizational structures as they grow, much like modern day law firms and doctor practices.

Of course, since educators haven’t yet developed their own code of professional responsibility (especially one that people trust), they’re going to need some objective criteria for determining when services have been rendered adequately. This can be accomplished by …

All Educational Services Will be Rendered on a Contractual Basis

Students and their teacher would have a contract setting forth the manner in which educational services will be rendered and criteria against which learning will be measured. Students will have obligations and so would teachers. Ideally, the system might work like this:

The teachers would determine her entrance requirements and placement criteria. The teacher should be able to determine if the student has the skills,knowledge, and other factors needed to succeed in the class. The teacher would also determine the obligations of the students accepted for instruction, such attendance criteria, homework criteria, and the like. Teachers are in the best position to determine whether a student is capable of succeeding with the instructional methods that will be employed and the teacher’s assessment of her own skills. This is only fair since the teacher will be on the hook for educating the students she accepts. Bear in mind that the more stringent the teacher’s requirements, the more difficult it will be for the teacher to attract students, so this process should find an efficient equilibrium point that satisfies both teachers and students.

teachers will also be required to spell out everything that will take place in the classroom and exactly what skills and knowledge will be taught and learned by the students — what will be taught, how it will be taught, what curriculum will be used, how will the curriculum be supplemented, and the like. The student and her parents should be able to determine in advance exactly what will be taking place in the classroom and what will be learned.

Most importantly, the education contract will specify the class’s exit criteria and whether it has been met by the student. The exit criteria should include the content specified by the State which will likely be a minimal skills test to assure the public that it has gotten the expected value from its investment. The exit criteria should also include any additional content, if any, that the teacher has promised to teach in the education contract.

Also, spelled out in the education contract should be the downstream teachers/programs that accept this teacher’s final exam as fulfilling their entrance requirements. For example, the final arithmetic teacher would specify in her education contract which algebra teachers accept a passing grade in her class as fulfilling their algebra class prerequisites. This will encourage teachers to work together to develop their own standards that will carry students from the beginning of their formal education to the end, whether it be college or work.

As professionals, teachers would be responsible for assuring that all the students they accept learn everything they’ve promised to teach and pass the final exam. Otherwise, the teacher will be given a brief period (say two weeks) to cure the student’s deficiencies through remediation. Failing to cure the student’s deficiencies will result in the teaching forfeiting some or all of the funding she received to educate the student which will go to remediating the student.

Education Colleges Will No Longer Have a Monopoly on Teacher Preparation

Any person with an undergraduate degree should be able to teach if she is capable of passing the state’s licensing exam and background check. This would include degrees from college’s of education.

College’s of education mostly teach pedagogy. But pedagogy should be determined by practicing teachers. Some teachers may find value in the pedagogy taught in Ed colleges in which case they should be free to hire Ed school graduates. Other teachers may feel that content knowledge is more valuable and that pedagogy is best taught by them according to their own philosophy in which case they should be free to hire graduates of their choosing.

Classrooms should be allocated to teachers who’ve attracted sufficient students in the district the school Building serves

Since the community owns the school buildings and the equipment therein, these resources should be offered to any teacher who has attracted sufficient students from the district to consume the eduction services they’re offering.

Any licensed teacher (or group of teachers) should be able to offer educational services to students in any school district. For example, before every semester there might be an educational services “fair” in which all teachers interested in offering educational services in a particular school district advertise their offerings and attempt to attract students. Each classroom should be rated as to the minimum and maximum students it can hold. Once a teacher has attracted the minimum number of students in the district that teacher would be entitled to lease a classroom in that district for that semester. That teacher determines the maximum number of students she believes she can educate. The number of students successfully educated per semester determines the compensation that teacher receives. This provides an incentive for teachers to maximize the efficiency of the services they provide.

If students don’t like the educational services offered in their home district, they are free to go to any other school district that has room. In this way, classroom space will be efficiently allocated. This also permits niche educational offerings to pull students from different districts.

I’m going to stop here for this post and let you chew this over. I haven’t included everything that a well run public school system should have, such as funding allocation, but I think you have enough to see how my proposed system better aligns the incentives needed to improve education.

No doubt I’ve failed to include much and have failed to account for various factors. That’s what the comments are for to point out my mistakes and help to improve on this basic framework. Or to argue that certain parts should simply be thrown out.

Do your worst.

I’ll attempt to draft a post that includes the rest of the framework while responding to your critiques.

As some commenters may have noticed I’ve activated the CAPTCHA verification system and the comment moderation system for posts older than 30 days old. I had to do this to combat the influx of Chinese spam I’ve been receiving over the course of the last week. Last night alone I had to manually delete, one by one, about 200 comments that were spam. Let’s see if this drives them away. if it does I’ll remove the CAPTCHA system.

I’m currently trying to finish my reboot post. It’s turning out to be a little more difficult than I originally thought.

I’ll answer Brian’s and Dick’s comments after I’ve posted the conclusion of the reboot post.

The administration’s tentative rhetoric-heavy, action-light education policies aren’t going to work.

Wishful thinking isn’t going to make up the deficiencies.

The problem isn’t necessarily that the Administration’s policies are bad, though in this case most of them are. (The Bush Administration’s policies weren’t much better.)

And let’s not forget that each state has the primary role in education anyway. That’s federalism and it’s usually a good thing. Mississippi’s education needs are much different than Massachusetts’. Why should their education policies be the same? Moreover, no one has found the recipe for providing a good education for all students yet, so the need for experimentation remains. And, the more laboratories the better until one state finds a system that works and can be replicated.

To improve education, the Administration needs to take an important first step:

Admit defeat.

The current system simply doesn’t work well for many children (and teachers). The incentives are all screwed up. There is not enough “choice” in the system, hence all the “wars.” There is a “reading war” because some parents don’t agree with the reading instruction services favored by some educators, yet have no choice when it comes to selecting those services. Educators should be able to choose what instructional services they offer and parents and students should be able to choose which educator’s services they want to consume. There would be a market for both “progressive” education services and “traditional” education services.

Henry Ford used to offer his Model T automobile in any color the customer wanted provided they wanted black. Ford’s competitors soon offered a choice of colors. Everybody was happy, except perhaps Henry. In education you’re only happy if you like black. If you don’t, you’re at “war” with the system because you don’t have a choice.

But I digress.

The first step to improve education has to be to admit defeat. We picked a bad system a century or so ago and it didn’t deliver on its promises. We tried to educate the masses and we failed. We don’t educate the masses; we educate the same small group of students that have always been easily educable. For the rest, we offer an expensive facsimile of education that fails to educate. We’re good at claiming we’ve educated; not so good on delivering the education. We’re good at shifting goal posts to make it appear that we’re doing a good job, but few people are fooled.

Worse yet, the present system has attracted many powerful entrenched special interests whose best interest is to maintain the status quo. Those special interests are not students or teachers.

Instead of playing the blame game, it is more productive to say that the education incentives are not aligned. They need to be aligned for the system to work. Until they are aligned, no “reform” is going to work. There is lots of data proving this point.

To get the incentives aligned you need to take the right second step after you admit defeat. Admitting defeat provides the political will to take the second step. And, there’s only one right second step. And that is to …

Reboot.

The system needs to be rebooted.

We need a do over.

All the existing ties need to be severed. Then they can be rebuilt. The right way.

After the reboot what would have when the system comes back online?

• A bunch of students with varying education needs.
• A bunch of teachers with varying teaching abilities.
• A bunch of administrators and support personnel with varying administrative capabilities.
• A bunch of school buildings where education services and transportation services can be provided.
• A lot of instructional material and many publishers willing to supply almost any instructional need.
• Over $10k per student for operational expenses from existing tax revenue.
• An information superhighway capable of providing all the information services needed for a transparent network linking parents, students, taxpayers, and educators.

That’s more than enough to get us started on Education System 2.0 – 21^st century edition.

Actually, you need to do one more thing. Throw out all the existing rules and regulations and institute a ten year moratorium on all education-specific rules, like we did with the Internet when it was opened up to consumers. When the reboot goes into effect, you want only a bare minimum of rules in place to bootstrap the new system.

Then its just a matter of realigning the incentives which is easy.

That’ll be the next post.

Is it me, or is the the new P21 Video lacking some 21st century skills or, at least, 21st century production values?

I mean it’s not exactly a good use of technology or the video format.

Would you buy a suit from this guy.