I have to tell you, my education was lukewarm. No unifying method among teachers, very much a crapshoot. You only have to look at grade averages presented by different teachers who teach the same class to figure that out. Anecdotally, listen to students who loathe one teacher and love another.
I believe my quality of life would be higher (and look, I'm doing great. But some of that was luck) if my parents had been forced to direct their attention to a set of private school options, each with well outlined teaching methodology and core approach to educating students. The benefits I would have received from a school that needs to compete to continue to exist (read: excellent teachers and supplies) would likely help me pay back my parents whatever costs they accrued sending me there. Public school is the lazy parents alternative.
I'd rather be taxed on infrastructure. I want better public transportation and train lines run more places. I don't want my streets to explode (New York, Harvard Square) and have to be fixed afterwards because no one has thought about the 124 year old pipe laid beneath them. We're getting to a point where a lot of the infrastructure laid down during the industrial revolution is reaching the end of its lifecycle, but it's political suicide to advocate for things that voters can't touch or feel directly affects their lives.
If we must have public school, I want harsher controls on teachers and I want parents able to weigh in/sit in/remote desktop in to classrooms and see what teachers are doing. I had so many shitty teachers, and so many awesome ones, it was unbelievable when I stepped back to consider the divide. We need to eliminate tenure. We need to pay good teachers more, and we need to simply fire bad teachers. The teachers union needs to be heavily restructured. I'm all for unions, but the state of some of the larger ones resembles a crime organization more than an advocacy pool these days. I want to stop paying the corrupt Massachusetts police force to throw kids nickle and diming pot in jail and actually spend time in their community building ties.
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Re: ;-)
Date: 2008-09-16 03:49 pm (UTC)I believe my quality of life would be higher (and look, I'm doing great. But some of that was luck) if my parents had been forced to direct their attention to a set of private school options, each with well outlined teaching methodology and core approach to educating students. The benefits I would have received from a school that needs to compete to continue to exist (read: excellent teachers and supplies) would likely help me pay back my parents whatever costs they accrued sending me there. Public school is the lazy parents alternative.
I'd rather be taxed on infrastructure. I want better public transportation and train lines run more places. I don't want my streets to explode (New York, Harvard Square) and have to be fixed afterwards because no one has thought about the 124 year old pipe laid beneath them. We're getting to a point where a lot of the infrastructure laid down during the industrial revolution is reaching the end of its lifecycle, but it's political suicide to advocate for things that voters can't touch or feel directly affects their lives.
If we must have public school, I want harsher controls on teachers and I want parents able to weigh in/sit in/remote desktop in to classrooms and see what teachers are doing. I had so many shitty teachers, and so many awesome ones, it was unbelievable when I stepped back to consider the divide. We need to eliminate tenure. We need to pay good teachers more, and we need to simply fire bad teachers. The teachers union needs to be heavily restructured. I'm all for unions, but the state of some of the larger ones resembles a crime organization more than an advocacy pool these days. I want to stop paying the corrupt Massachusetts police force to throw kids nickle and diming pot in jail and actually spend time in their community building ties.