If we found a way to lower tuition or even make it free, that would be an even better solution than anything I've seen presented so far.

Solution to what?

Classism? Sorry, prestigeous schools can still accept the wealthy students regardless of what they charge.
People getting 'useless' degrees? I don't see how lower cost education will influence that.

The fact of the matter is that low interest financing is readily available to college students. Cost isn't remotely a barrier to entry for higher education these days. What's a barrier to entry? High school grades, which have been strongly correlated to the class/income/marriage status of the student's family.

You're barking up the wrong tree as far as root causes go.

Teachers need pay, colleges need buildings, and students need books. I mean we could make college entirely online which would greatly reduce the cost but that's not an acceptable option for most people.

If our quality of education correlated to a higher standard of results this would be a valid point, but it doesn't. Countries all over the world outperform the US DRAMATICALLY with far less money spent per student. If we were shooting out Nobel prize winner quality students and spending the kind of money we do I'd probably be fine with it, but we just aren't. We spend more money than anyone in the world, and struggle to be in the middle of the pack.

PRETTY GRAPHICS INCOMING!

Also technically college is practically free as a result of pell grants[/quote]
Clearly I missed a couple memos. My bank account would be much happier if this were the case.

but again this is a huge waste of money since most people go to college for what they want to do not what our society needs.
[/quote]
Why should people go to school for anything other than what they want to do? Work performance has been shown to increase when worker priorities allign with the goals of the organization. If I'm not doing something I want to be doing, I'm going to do a shittier job at it. Would you want an anesthesiologist that didn't care about their job checking you out before you had heart surgery?

I completely agree with you on everything you've been saying but you are only stating facts and giving no clear solutions. I know our education system is subpar and I know our tuition costs are through the roof but what do you suggest we do about it?

I completely agree with you on everything you've been saying but you are only stating facts and giving no clear solutions. I know our education system is subpar and I know our tuition costs are through the roof but what do you suggest we do about it?

I've been thinking about the struggling education system in America for a long time, and I think it really stems from early education; though secondary education also has it's major problems (namely tuition costs keep rising). The real problem though is that we aren't producing adults that are ready to join the workforce our economy is shifting to, and the secondary education problems fall secondary to that imo.

That said, I'm not 100% sure what we can do about it.

I think getting rid of teacher's unions would be a major step in the right direction. At least putting up further restrictions on them. Right now Teacher's unions are larger than the organizations they are dealing with. That is a problem; it's a huge monopsony. It allows them to demand outrageous things and have far too much legal power. Good examples are teachers who've won national awards for being outstanding teachers losing their jobs because they were not part of the union/had no seniority, teacher's who have abused children repeatedly being allowed to continue teaching, and teachers being paid not to work while they wait for reassignment because they were so bad at their jobs. The two largest teacher's unions also both own their health care providers, so they don't have to negotiate for cheaper health care with insurance providers.

The second thing I'd do is increase school choice. Right now if you want your education to be publicly funded you have, at most, 2 choices of schools. More often you have only one choice. I think we need to let our failing schools fail and our good schools grow. We need to be able to hold more schools and teachers accountable for not performing, or at least support parents having the opportunity to take their children away from schools that aren't performing. Even that, though, has been shot down by teacher's unions consistently.

I'm not 100% sure of the solutions, but if you watch "Waiting for Superman" and the "Kids aren't Cars" series you'll get an idea of how bad the primary education system is in America. "Waiting for Superman" is particularly heartbreaking because of how helpless the situation is for lower class families in bad school districts.

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1328299813' post='4909293']

I completely agree with you on everything you've been saying but you are only stating facts and giving no clear solutions. I know our education system is subpar and I know our tuition costs are through the roof but what do you suggest we do about it?
[/quote]

What do you suggest can be done about it?

The problem is systematic and pervasive, social, economic and geographic, and the public in general is far too impatient and simple-minded to accept that there is no quick fix (even in political time) -- progress will be slow and plodding at best, presuming we can muster the gumption to tackle this bog in any real way at all.

Kids are generally unmotivated towards becoming useful members of society, and would rather pursue Athletics etc. Those on a lower economic rung or are geographically disadvantaged have few prospects, and those at an economic advantage are very often so self-entitled that they can't be bothered. The one thing that No Child Left Behind showed us was that rich suburban schools aren't doing all that much better than poor urban schools (though they have fewer drop-outs, literacy and math scores are not much better overall), they just hide it better behind well-kept grounds and Million dollar football fields.

The government says you have to go to school where you live, unless you can afford private school.

The Teachers' Union blocks any form of progress which might threaten the job of even the worst-performing teachers -- its an entire organization dedicated to shouting "Think of the Children!" every time an *adult* might loose their job, even when that adult is fucking kids over (or in some cases, just "allegedly" fucking). They won't permit poor performers to be reprimanded, or even payed based on performance; likewise, they won't allow superior performers to be rewarded, or even recognized, for their great work. A teacher is a teacher, they say, no matter how good or bad they are for the kids. Unions always start out with good intentions, but they often degenerate into total self-interest -- I believe the Teachers' Union to be, frankly, one of the worst and most insidious.

Then there's a whole issue of states and smaller localities defining their own educational standards -- wanting to ignore evolution, proper sex education, or even re-defining pi as 3 (yes, *just* 3) so that their idiot children don't have to remember where to put the dot or multiply numbers that don't fit in a table (it would have been more defensible to re-define it as a picture of actual pie, algebraically speaking).

It's a tangled, tangled mess. Solutions are well out of reach, and progress in any form is the best substitute we have. The public would do well to remember that.

I think getting rid of teacher's unions would be a major step in the right direction.

Except that top performers in primary education are all fully unionized, have no private sector input and/or are fully government controlled (aka communism).

Unions are red herring. It's easy to blame them, especially when union is stigmatized word.

We need to be able to hold more schools and teachers accountable for not performing[/quote]

No - children need to be held accountable for not performing. Then you analyze the reason for it and apply solution.

If you hold schools and teachers accountable by default, learning becomes secondary - why should Johnny do homework, when it's easier to sue teacher into poverty for daring to destroy poor kid's future by giving him an A-.

Successful schools engage parents and communities to aim towards learning. They aren't MBA driven, they don't use TPS reports and blame-centric culture. The goal of child is to learn to learn, to remain inquisitive and to discover which means are most supportive. Meanwhile, lessons from education (as known by teachers) are applied to make learning effective based on proven methods.


Break this circle at any point, move anyone above another, and you end up with assembly line. Just keep cranking up the conveyor speed until people start breaking their hands trying to keep up, then blame them for harming corporate performance.

Of course, as said, capitalism doesn't reward learning or knowledge. It rewards lowest cost labor not harming corporate line. Any school system serving exclusively such markets cannot be improved, except by lowering cost.

A farmer sows seeds in his field. Only half of them germinate and half the remaining ones are eaten by vermin or die of disease before ripening.

Why?

Why does he not just plant the seeds that are going to sprout and not get eaten or die? It seems such a waste!

The government should only subsidize students that are going to be successful in terms of personal income later in their life. The rest -- the Bill Gateses, Steve Jobses, John Carmacks -- are obviously a waste since they never finished any kind of formal post-secondary education so they should be terminated at birth. Art and humanities are a total waste, no musician or actor will ever earn a living or make the world a better place, slash the programs an leave that crap exclusively to the idle rich. And don't get me started on the mimes, I have nothing to say there.

Except that top performers in primary education are all fully unionized, have no private sector input and/or are fully government controlled (aka communism).

Not all of them are in teacher's unions. Watch the documentaries I gave if you want sources.

Unions are red herring. It's easy to blame them, especially when union is stigmatized word.
[/quote]
I outlined very specific problems with unions that have very direct impacts on education quality. You didn't denounce any of them. Do you care to respond to them or continue down a sourceless path?

I outlined very specific problems with unions that have very direct impacts on education quality. You didn't denounce any of them. [/quote]

Name 3 teachers that went beyond and above line of duty. That worked overtime without asking for extra payment. Ask those that took extra effort to engage parents, to help their children.

Now name 3 cases where teachers have done less or even committed a crime.


Why do serial killers have three names? So they don't get mistaken in media.

Media determines your perception. If all you know about teachers is a handful of popular media cases, it's because that is what sells ads.

So unless you can compare numbers of good vs. bad, you might as well generalize that *all* teachers are corrupt.

Do you care to respond to them or continue down a sourceless path[/quote]

Sourceless path?

My history teacher. The most amazing person. The way he knew how to tell stories. It was decades ago, but he described the battle of Thermopylae more vividly than 300 did. And on weekends, he'd be leading mountaineering club. I wasn't part of it, but those that were spoke legendary stories of what all went on. And when grading, he'd open a dialog with you and in the end ask for class to vote on grade. He saw a kid not listening, walked to him and saw he was drawing a comic. He went out and organized a school-wide publishing of that comic.

He was unionized and (communist) party member. But that isn't a factor. He loved history and teaching, but even more, he loved to see kids learn. You cannot buy that, you cannot increase quotas. There is a finite number of such people. No policy will change that.

And you know what - that is what majority of good teachers are like.

I feel sorry that you instead prefer to judge entire profession based on a few media hyped stories that media uses for story-du-jour.

[quote name='Antheus' timestamp='1328302567' post='4909308']
Except that top performers in primary education are all fully unionized, have no private sector input and/or are fully government controlled (aka communism).

Not all of them are in teacher's unions. Watch the documentaries I gave if you want sources.

Unions are red herring. It's easy to blame them, especially when union is stigmatized word.
[/quote]
I outlined very specific problems with unions that have very direct impacts on education quality. You didn't denounce any of them. Do you care to respond to them or continue down a sourceless path?
[/quote]
Antheus is a troll. Don't even bother trying to show him statistics or surveys. He has made it very clear that his opinions can't be wrong even if they are...