If you feel that the federal and/or state governments should back out of the education picture entirely, since that doesn't seem to likely to happen, how do you feel the current situations in education should be handled?
For example:
What should be done the many, many requirements through NCLB that must be met and the severe lack of funding to support them?
What should be done to attract quality teachers?
Should "good" teachers be rewarded?
What qualifies as a good teacher?
What about school choice?
Should MCAS be a graduation requirement?
Please remember, the questions are asked in a manner which reflects the current situation. I know that some people will feel that the way to resolve all of it is for the feds and state officials to back out. That's about as likely as a snowballs chance in hell though, so, what can be done to fix things aside from that?
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The bits about the teachers I haven't figured out, because designing incentives to get the results you want is freaking difficult, and I don't have a good handle on what I consider to be quality and how to measure *that*, let alone one on how to provoke the behavior so described out of the folks you're trying to get it from.
I think it's pretty clear, though, that the current paradigm is bullshit, that NCLB needs to die, that the MCAS thing is crap, and that if you focus on tests you might (or might not) be able to produce children who test well, but that testing well means f*ck all in the world. Hell, I tested well and look how far that's gotten me! ROFL. Seriously, though, killing NCLB &cetera also helps bring things to a more local level, which I really do think is always for the best.
I'm curious if anyone else has a definition of a good teacher. I just keep coming up with the classic pornography answer...I know it when I see it. Which is, I suppose, why we've wound up with tests as performance measures...hard to quantify otherwise, and we do have a bit of a cultural obsession with quantifying.
Er, and I'm long-winded. Sorry about that. I am not looking forward to having to finally settle the question of what we'll be doing about school, though, so these sorts of things have been on my mind a lot lately.
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