@mrmhead Said
Do you know if it's open to anyone wanting to go?
Or are there limited spots for the students to compete for?
Their universities have admission standards like ours do. In fact, in some countries it is more stringent. My uncle, who taught US history overseas for a number of years, said that Germany has an exam that all secondary school students take before entering college, which they must pass to gain admission to their university system - otherwise they get put on a trade school track. Not sure if that is still in place there, but it is an example.
@mrmhead Said
With the Fed supporting only about 10% of the funding, there doesn't seem to be much that can be done at the national level, except for declaring rules and regs.
I'd be surprised if the following
hasn't been done at some level, but:
Conduct a study that covers public, charter and private schools to identify what works and what doesn't. Both from a financial and performance / results POV.
Closer examination of "high performing" schools to see what elements are implemented and how they are integrated - because I don't think cherry picking an idea from here and there, thrown together will automatically work.
Somehow we need to boost teacher salaries. I know a lot of people complain that (the perception is) they only work 3/4 of the year. Going to a full-year program will be more expensive due to the cost of running the facilities.
Continue to encourage / emphasize "Not everyone needs a 4 yr degree" - trades and skilled labor are starving for employees.
?? Nationally funded "trades" schools .... Maybe go k-10, then "T1 - T4" and get back into (fed supported) internships. And grades 11-12 would be "College prep" for the rest.
... I don't know - are kids still too immature at 10th grade (~16 y.o.)?
Do we do the same for the "arts"? (music, theater, visual arts...?)
Not necessarily the most cohesive plan, but that's why I'll put in place the Best, Brightest, Smartest people to head the divisions. Like my son - He's been in a school - he aught to know!!
The federal funding is only at 10%, but leaving the already financially strapped states with 90% of the bill is what causes the funding problem to begin with, as states, unlike the federal government, has to balance their budget every year since they cannot simply borrow more or, like Obama did at the start of the recession, print more money.
In other words, the federal government can give a little more than 10% to schools. Heck, just keeping their IDEA legislative promise of providing states with 40% of special education needs funding would go a long ways in helping school districts use their own money to spend elsewhere. The feds only provide 10% today.
Sanders and Biden already have proposals to do just that. Biden want to triple fed funding and both want fund higher teacher salaries to attract more quality and prevent turnover and shortages. Teachers may only work 75% of the year, but the fact of the matter is that there is projected to be a 500,000 teacher shortage in 6 years, so something has to be done.
I like the charter school philosophy of taking the district bureaucracy away and letting these schools run on their own, as, not only does that save a little, there simply isn’t an effective one size fits all approach across all schools, especially in large districts such as LAUSD, where demographics between schools vary greatly. Plus, this opens up to more experimentation in ways to bring up achievement in failing schools. A lot of these charter schools fail miserably as well, but at least in California, these schools are forced to close down (by withholding funding), so the system corrects itself. It’s getting better.
Private schools only achieve better due to the socio-economic background of its students, not due to having better teachers, because they don’t - teachers in private schools are undertrained and paid less.
Which is the bottom line really. No matter how you do it, whether it is funding of district schools, charter schools, or via private school vouchers, teachers and schools need to be paid better if we want to maintain a quality of education. While I am going ahead of myself here, as this will be another topic in this series in a few weeks, the federal government can do this by simply reprioritizing discretionary spending - more than 50% of it goes to the military in current pie charts.
@mrmhead Said
All that
for ZERO points?
What the f***?
(not that I care)
Did you write it out elsewhere and cut and paste it on here. I notice that happens when I write the summaries in this series. Initially I was writing them out on here, and getting 50 or so points, but then moved on to writing them out on my iPad Notes ahead of time, since they require a lot of research, and just cutting an pasting them here. Now I only get 0 or 1 point for all that hard work.