If you could walk in a school and change how it's run

[zalinda]

what would you do? How would you keep kids engaged and wanting to learn. How would you prevent kids from dropping out? We all know the NCLB is a bunch of crap, but how would you keep track of the student's progress, and the effectiveness of the teacher?

zalinda

[Cleita]

1. As an old woman, I was taught pretty well, even though

it was the old fashioned 3 rs and we were graded from A to F on our report cards. I got homework every night from the first grade on. We were disciplined when we misbehaved or were disruptive in class.School was often boring and the desk seats were hard, but it seems we learned a lot more by the time we graduated from high school than kids are learning today.

[Gabi Hayes]

2. guess you forgot the key component, alongside which all your other 'standards' pale:

what a surprise

[NYC_SKP]

3. Different strategies for different age groups, but many things the same.

These aren't the old days, there is far too much to know, to learn, to expect the old teacher-centered models to work.

That said, some basics common to all need to be taught, beyond that we need to teach kids to be self-learners and discerning digesters of the information they find.

We need to stop expecting kids to be all be ready for identical information at the same age, stop sorting them by date of birth.

We need to remind them (and ourselves) that WHAT we're teaching/learning isn't nearly as important as WHY we're learning it.

And, finally, the WHY is common to us all, every one, and it isn't so we can get a job or survive, be rich or powerful.

All students, when you challenge them to think deeply, respond with similar desires:

They want self-actualizations, to be effective, to make a positive difference, to leave the world a better place.

Schools have to give them the tools and the opportunities to practice different ways to get there.

Pretty simple.

Watch this Ken Robinson piece: "Changing Education Paradigms" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

:patriot:

[Hugabear]

4. Proper funding would be a good start

Honestly, it's hard to do anything really creative or inventive with the funding that schools are getting now. Oh, I suppose many right-wingers think that teachers should be like the ones they portray in the movies, that all they really need to do is give an inspirational speech, find a way to "relate" to their students, and everything will be just peachy. Don't work that way. Schools gotta have proper funding.

[elleng]

5. Philosphy

from the work of renowned educators John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Haim Ginott

An example of progressive education: http://www.lowellschool.org/about-our-school/mission-philosophy/index.aspx

[KT2000]

6. Hold parent accountable

Posted this idea a couple days ago, but I really think that parents need to be held accountable for their children. They should be required to attend parent teacher night and have their picture taken with their child. It could go in a yearbook or something. They should have to write a paragraph describing what they think their responsibilities are for assuring their child's success at school.
Then the teacher will give the parents a paper that describes what the teacher expects from the parents.

Schools are not free daycare and they are not responsible for instilling character in the child but some parents thinks so. School teachers are not the employees of the parents and some need a crash course in learning their responsibilities.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Where do you get that? NO parents think the schools are resonsible for

instilling character in the child. Responsible parents do that themselves - irresponsible parents don't care. And there is no way to make an irresponsible parent take on that responsibility.

Teachers have to deal with what they get - which they cannot do when they are 1) working in overcrowded classrooms without the support of an assistant; 2) teaching to the test instead to teaching the student how to learn; or 3) forced to fudge numbers and push students ahead who are not ready, for fear of losing their position for being an 'unsuccessful teacher'.

Halve the class sizes. Double the number of teachers. Double their pay. Allow kids to fail if they can't get the material. Don't close down the school if a kid is unable to learn.

[KT2000]

10. Where do I get that?

The community where I live. The area has long lived on logging and mill work. That is gone now. The community leaders are always courting business to come to the area but the big problem is that the young people don't have the skills or the ambition to learn them. The area cannot supply employers with capable workers.
I have learned that there are many parents who do not want their kids to do better than they have. They do not encourage education and teach their kids a form of futility and resentment about lost jobs and only hope they will return.
I am sure there are many one industry towns that have the same problems.

What I am suggesting is changing a culture. Parents who "do not care" many times need to learn because they don't know anything different.

I agree with everything you said but I also believe that we need to be aware that "parents" and their ideas of parenting have changed over the years.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. I'd cut all class sizes by half, double the number of teachers and

librarians, and double their pay. And keeping track of the students' progress is not my job - that's the TEACHERS' job.

[Javaman]

12. +1000 plus give them the proper funding they require. :)

cheers!

[coalition_unwilling]

9. A bunch of different types of questions here, based on an unstated

context for why we would change the way a school is run.

The first thing I would do is outlaw all private primary and secondary schools. That's right, outlaw them. Everyone's kids go to public schools. No exceptions under any circumstances.

If the children of the rich and affluent had to attend public schools, you can bet a lot of good things would happen very quickly.

[REP]

11. Keep corporate interests out of textbooks, lunchrooms, etc

Stop heterogeneous skill-level classes. Studies keep showing homogeneous groups for all skill levels perform better.

Better reading curricula. No rote-reading.

Pay teachers enough that it attracts the best talent.

Expel all violent students.

That's just off the top of my head. There's more.

[zalinda]

13. Most of the answers are about the school politics

not on engaging the students. Suppose you could walk into a school that is failing, with a 29% drop out rate and a 50% graduation rate. What would you do to turn it around? You don't know if the teachers are adequate or not. All you know is that the school is failing it's children, and something has to be done. You've got 2 months to put together a plan to straighten out the mess.

The above is a real scenario. An acquaintance of mine will be walking into that school in September, and needs to find ideas that will help solve the problem.

zalinda