Let them eat cupcakes. Plus why Michelle Rhee is lawyering up.

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73. When confronted with the question:

"How can kids be graduating from high school without the ability to read".

The answer seems to be: "We get these kids, and they haven't been taught the fundamentals in the earlier grades".

The obvious solution is to evaluate these children early on and identify the teachers that were unsuccessful at teaching those fundamentals. Once educators acknowledge that in some instances teachers aren't teaching; a system to evaluate those teachers had to emerge. When evaluating teachers is left up to teachers; they seem to want to evaluate teachers. That's not gonna work. There's no getting around the fact that if you want to evaluate a teacher; you have to test the students. They need to be tested before the teacher sees them and they need to be tested after the teacher taught them. This seems to be the notion that educators reject. Since everyone who works in any other industry can see the logic behind this; it's a little confusing that educators are fighting it so hard.

I don't think the solution is to fire teachers, but if they aren't teaching; they need to go through re-training. Often intelligent people make lousy teachers because they can't relate to students who have trouble learning. Frequent tests should be used to identify those students and they should get additional assistance. I don't know how you identify the students who aren't learning without testing them.

I also think we are operating on an obsolete model. Beginning with the fact that we have a summer vacation and short school days. At the time the system was created; it made sense to send kids home to perform their chores and help with the summer harvest (pre-air conditioning too, I expect). We haven't been living in an agrarian society for decades; isn't it time to adjust our education system to take that into account?

Kids are sent home to empty houses even in rural environments. It was a part of the overall education for children to come home and help; clean house, feed the chickens, milk the cows etc. The university doesn't close up shop at 3:30 in the afternoon; learning should take place all waking hours of the day. Learning needn't be a painful thing, so why don't we have school hours and activities that reflect the activities in the rest of the country?

I don't agree that the education system is as good now as its been mostly for that reason (parents aren't available after school or over the summer). School buildings are paid for by tax money and they should be a resource that is available to the local community - year round. I used to jog around the track in the evening (over the summer) at the local middle school; I would regularly hear what sounded like AC units starting up. If we're climate controlling a building; we should be using it.

Until we make fundamental nationwide changes that take societal evolution into account; it will continue to get worse.

As far as PhDs; I think we make too many. At the same time we don't make enough janitors, carpenters, masons, painters etc. We put too much emphasis on formal education and not enough on 'hip pocket training' (as we called it in the army) where we identify someone as not possessing some important piece of training; and they are taught that skill on the spot (frequently by their peers).

The one point that I've tried to make consistently in my discussions with educators is that I recognize that there are places that take advantage of some of the things I talk about. I understand that there are really good programs; that doesn't change the fact that there are really bad programs. We get good educators in here lambasting me because everything is working fine where they are at. It would make more sense to me if we were trying to spread those good programs around; it seems like the educators are defending the bad programs (that they have no knowledge about) instead.

A lot of it doesn't make sense to me, and I imagine it doesn't make sense to a lot of parents; that's why educators have reformers breathing down their necks. The old cliche': "if you aren't part of the solution, your part of the problem" seems to apply.