On Education
Candidates were asked to provide their perspective and intention for education in Tennessee and the United States. One candidate, Art Rhodes of TN-3, said everything that was of basic importance to me at least as well as I could have. I recommend anyone in that district visit his site and learn more about his campaign. I had this to add:
I strongly believe that placement in every subject taught in a school should be entirely independent of age, and should instead be based exclusively on ability. If a nine year old can handle algebra, he should take it. If that same child can only read at a second-grade level, he should be taught reading with everyone else at that level. There is no excuse for a child being bored because the material does not push them hard enough, nor for a child being lost because they were promoted faster than they should have been. Students, like teachers, should be advanced based on their accomplishments, not based on time served.
The key word is feedback. It's true in engineering, but it's also true in any system: to reach a desired goal, incentive must be related to results quickly, accurately, and proportionally. Right now, there is no feedback, and that's the reason our schools are failing. Students and teachers are both rewarded with little regard to their performance. Performance must be accurately measured, and good performance quickly and appropriately rewarded. Otherwise we have no hope of a working system.
Teachers' incentive is, primarily, pay, benefits, and recognition. Students' incentive is a bit trickier; advancement can be based on performance, but even if that were perfectly accurate and instantaneous, you still have to make the students themselves care. To that end, I suggest this: you give them numbers, at least once a semester, preferably more often, indicating the expected life for someone with their academic performance upon entering the workforce. You show their average expected income, average expected lifespan, odds of getting into college, of going to jail, of certain careers, anything else that's going to matter to them. And you show them how the various paths they could take would affect those numbers, what happens if they graduate or not, go to college or not, have children before graduating. You make it real to them.
It's all about feedback. Without it, you have no hope of controlling the outcome.
I strongly believe that placement in every subject taught in a school should be entirely independent of age, and should instead be based exclusively on ability. If a nine year old can handle algebra, he should take it. If that same child can only read at a second-grade level, he should be taught reading with everyone else at that level. There is no excuse for a child being bored because the material does not push them hard enough, nor for a child being lost because they were promoted faster than they should have been. Students, like teachers, should be advanced based on their accomplishments, not based on time served.
The key word is feedback. It's true in engineering, but it's also true in any system: to reach a desired goal, incentive must be related to results quickly, accurately, and proportionally. Right now, there is no feedback, and that's the reason our schools are failing. Students and teachers are both rewarded with little regard to their performance. Performance must be accurately measured, and good performance quickly and appropriately rewarded. Otherwise we have no hope of a working system.
Teachers' incentive is, primarily, pay, benefits, and recognition. Students' incentive is a bit trickier; advancement can be based on performance, but even if that were perfectly accurate and instantaneous, you still have to make the students themselves care. To that end, I suggest this: you give them numbers, at least once a semester, preferably more often, indicating the expected life for someone with their academic performance upon entering the workforce. You show their average expected income, average expected lifespan, odds of getting into college, of going to jail, of certain careers, anything else that's going to matter to them. And you show them how the various paths they could take would affect those numbers, what happens if they graduate or not, go to college or not, have children before graduating. You make it real to them.
It's all about feedback. Without it, you have no hope of controlling the outcome.
posted by Stephen Collings at
8:06 AM
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