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1.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, Aug 1st, 2011 @ 6:28pm

   
   

   More effective teachers? This would be great if we could do it... but how do we do it? Kids in middle school and up can certainly tell if their teacher is good or bad, but I wouldn't trust them to answer honestly on an evaluation.
   
   For-profit schools? I don't like it (at least not as a replacement for our entire education system.) The government requires kids to go to school... what are you going to do when one company owns all the schools in the county (think rural areas) and then jacks up the price one year? Competition can't come in that quickly, and now you either have to pay what they ask, move, or stick your kid on a bus for a few hours every day.
   
   Smaller schools? Yes! I'm sure you save money in some areas by having one big school. On the other hand, with a smaller school, maybe you don't need that extra vice principal. And the kids don't have to be bussed so far.

    

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2.  

   

   Roland, Aug 1st, 2011 @ 6:55pm

   
   

   Feds out

   Education in the US started going downhill when the Feds stepped in. In 1980 it became Cabinet level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education. The slide accelerated when GWB started "No Child Left Behind", which used standardized testing as a proxy for quality. FAIL. Education should be a local matter, with less administration. Private schools could compete with the local option, but they can't compete with the Feds. Even Republicans can sometimes be right.

    

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3.  

   

   Michael Ho (profile), Aug 1st, 2011 @ 7:21pm

   
   

   Re:

   I vaguely remember an article that said more graduate-level education programs were studying "how to be an effective teacher" over churning out more and more educators with master's degrees... but it wasn't clear if there really was a good way to teach teachers to be effective.
   
   That was several years ago... and I'm pretty sure there's still no conclusion on how to teach teachers.
   
   But we should start somewhere -- and a scientific approach to developing better educational programs could bear fruit someday....

    

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4.  

   

   G Thompson (profile), Aug 1st, 2011 @ 7:38pm

   
   

   We need to raise the Light bulb

   Try this sometime.

   Put a group of students in a room with a light bulb hanging just out of their reach.
   Then watch what happens: after a while one will jump to touch it, and before you know it, everyone in the room will be leaping like Michael Jordan. They are testing their skill, stimulated by the challenge of reaching something beyond their normal grasp.
   Put the same students in a room where everything is easily in reach, and there will be no jumping, no competition, no challenges.
   - Carroll Campbell

   The problem with modern education is a low ceiling of expectations. We have built huge online and offline learning environments that show too much, need too much time to implement, require too much re-training and re-thinking for teachers, allowing no or little feedback, and in so doing teach too little. Sadly the students have stopped jumping.
   
   We need to find ways to raise the light bulb.
   
   Ultimately the goal of all Education institutions should be a medley of face-to-face, online and even some old and proven Pedagogical methods such as rote, that suit students needs and aspirations. Allowing them to challenge and reach for the light bulb forever.
   
   [Note: this is part of a 23page report I co-wrote back in 2003 on “Advanced Learning Technologies in Higher Learning” and is still very relevant today]

    

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5.  

   

   The Mighty Buzzard (profile), Aug 1st, 2011 @ 7:54pm

   
   

   A Good Start

   A good start would be to legislatively nullify all teachers' union bargaining power regarding termination of teachers. There are some truly colossally idiotic teachers out there that have no business infecting anyone else with their stupidity.
   
   Take my ninth grade English teacher, for example. He sent a student to the office one day for arguing with him during class. Which would have been fine if the student hadn't been trying to explain to him that bilingual did not, in fact, mean that you can't speak English.

    

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6.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, Aug 1st, 2011 @ 9:38pm

   
   

   I have a patent on all of these educational ideas and anyone who tries to use any of them gets sued.

    

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7.  

   

   Pixelation, Aug 1st, 2011 @ 10:25pm

   
   

   "But that just shifts the debate to arguing over what the best incentives for teachers are..."
   
   Hookers and cocaine. It works for politicians and rock bands.

    

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8.  

   

   James Stevens (profile), Aug 2nd, 2011 @ 12:32am

   
   

   This guy is on the right track...

   With all the knowledge we have at this point in human progress, it's pretty sad that our education system and our ways of measuring people are both archaic and inefficient, stifling even.
   
   With all the tools we have available with programmers we should be able to develop a better education system that is more fun to study in and better adjusted to each person individually. IMHO, customization is the name of the game... it's going to be all about how well you can customize your child's education in a way that works best for them. You set your child on a path to end up at a point that is most beneficial to their future as a contributing member of society. That's all you can really do as a good parent, is give your child the best shot. I think there's some way to apply a learning apparatus with these goals to public education.
   
   As you point out, Michael, it's hard to tell where the solutions will come from. But I can assure you, the solutions (as I expect there will be more than one way) won't come from Washington; it'll come from the minds of great visionaries like 19-year-old, Stanford PhD dropout Andrew Hsu, the dude who had 3 B.S.degrees at 16.

    

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9.  

   

   Nicedoggy, Aug 2nd, 2011 @ 3:33am

   
   

   Quote:

   Since 2007, a fad following Indian-style education blew through Japan. Many publications with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills”and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians” hit the bookstands expounding and explaining Indian math techniques, and Indian math drillbooks (in Japanese) can still be seen on sale even in neighborhood supermarket magazine stands alongside of fashion magazines.
   
   The new edu-craze is thought widely to have been sparked by insecurity caused by the huge slide in rankings in the recent OECD survey … namely, the fall in Japan’s math skills from first place in year 2000 to 10th place … behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

   
   Source: http://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/of-methods-philosophies/the-boom-in-indian-math-education/
   
   I don't think the problem really is with teachers, not all that is because of them there is a cultural factor too, if you get everything you want and there are no hardships why you will ever bother to do hard work?
   
   I have been noticing that most countries that have the best scores are countries developing or that recently became wealthy where real hardship is a reality and they have rigid on the extreme side of things educational systems that in the USA would be considered concentration camps.
   
   Maybe is not only the teachers but the environment that needs some rethinking.
   
   People think of children as little moving dolls that have no brains, but they do have brains and they can see their parents struggling and that can create the powerful motivation to learn to be able to do something about it, if that doesn't exist how do you recreate that?
   
   Should parents start to live beneath their means and start taking acting classes to enact hardship so their children create some sense of need for education?
   
   Or is just a crazy idea?

    

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