Schools teach to the standards. The test is on the standards. They measure how well the students learned the material. That's what a public school district does. Provides a free public education.

The standards also include science and PE. If there are a need for other subjects, standards will be developed for them as well. We cannot have indidual students, parents or teachers deciding that they know better than the district as what is to be taught.

If everyone was meeting the standards, we could have a discussion on changing the process. We are not there yet. We need to focus on the kids not making it and bring them along.

There are lots of things that are not taught in depth at the public schools. They are left to the parents. So there are lots of sports teams, art classes, dance classes, and others that are available for those interested. In high school there are the variety of classes for those who meet the standards. Those who don't get to keep taking the classes over again.

The high school exit exam is the proof that we have a problem. How can kids pass their math and english classes and yet fail the test? Yet it happens a lot. We are doing something wrong.

Tim, what do you think?

I think it takes considerably more than just the standards to have world class schools and highly educated kids.

I think that music and arts help kids learn and be proficient in more standard subjects. I think that drama and theatre education helps kids be more confident and better public speakers. I think the sciences and debate teach kids to be more critical thinkers. I think computer labs help prepare kids for the future, including the most basic jobs of the future, which will require mastery of technology.

I agree with Greg we are indeed doing something wrong. I'm not sure I agree on what that is, but our schools are not capturing kids' imaginations and sponge-like reflexes early enough to create life long learners.

And they need to start.

Thanks for asking.

Tim

Well, well... I agree with both of you. We DO need some method of gauging classroom performance and we DO need to make education more relevant to students. But first consider whether the failure in public education doesn't stem partly from what we're trying to accomplish at HS graduation time. It seems that we've turned our education system into a one size fits all college-feeding mill, where the focus is on forcing a wide range of talents and learning-types into the same pipeline. That pipeline exits at the doorstep of the college system, which more and more is beginning to look and feel like an extension of K-12 rather than the place where minds are honed for the real world.

Could it be we've fostered an education system that is so caught up in volume that it has started to ignore quality? Perhaps our higher education system has bought into this obsession with volume, and, in its need for more and more bodies, has enabled the K-12 system to channel more and more unqualified and underachieving minds into our colleges?

The real question may be DOES EVERYONE NEED TO BE ON A COLLEGE TRACK AND, IF NOT, HOW CAN THE SYSTEM CHANGE? Perhaps by simply tightening its entrance requirements the higher education system could become the definitive gauge for the performance of our K-12 classrooms. After all, would you send your child to a school whose graduates can't get accepted into college?

Obviously this sort of reasoning gives rise to the issues inherent with an K-12 education system that offers a college track, a career track and an alternative track for those best suited to either and I don't deny those issues are problematic. It'll just take better minds than ours to remedy those problems.

In any event, Greg & Tim, your posts clearly recognize the need to come up with creative long term solutions to problems that have been addressed by poorly thought out, short term fixes for too long.

GS,

I am not convinced that these schools are college producing mills either. I don't think everyone is on a college track, perhaps more GATE and AP students are on that track, but I don't think the schools generally consider all kids college bound.

There does not seem to be any plans for the non-gate/non-AP kids, and where they may be headed.

You're right! In a nutshell, that was the point of all the extra verbage in my last post: "There does not seem to be any plans for the non-gate/non-AP kids, and where they may be headed." Instead those kids seem to be carried along by the weight of the teaching methods we already have in place, which is focused much more on preparing the most kids for college entrance and relatively little on developing each kid's inner talents and skills...resources that can make he/she a productive member of the community.