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Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.
And yet the dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else. (In 1899, William T. Harris, the US commissioner of education, celebrated the fact that US schools had developed the "appearance of a machine," one that teaches the student "to behave in an orderly manner, to stay in his own place, and not get in the way of others.") We don't openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system—which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow set of skills—doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested. School administrators prepare curriculum standards and "pacing guides" that tell teachers what to teach each day. Legions of managers supervise everything that happens in the classroom; in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers.
...
That's why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn't a commodity that's delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students' own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
Good, long article on how education could be reinvented for the 21st century.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @01:55PM
Because 'no child left behind'.
The idea was to test them and see if they needed help and free them up to teach however they needed.
Instead it turned into 'teach to the common core test'. As you did not want your funding pulled. So everyone follows 'the program'.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Monday August 24 2015, @04:23PM
Instead it turned into 'teach to the common core test'.
Actually, it was "teach to the state test" and paying schools by test results long before Common Core came along - possibly even before NCLB. In theory, Common Core is supposed to be the solution to this: If you actually look at the common core standards for, say, mathematics [corestandards.org] they're anything but "teach to the test". Unfortunately, they been launched into a culture that has already become obsessed with measuring student performance to inappropriate precision, using tests that have been dumbed down for ease and consistency of marking, statistical reliability and legal defensibility, to produce simplistic figures for by-the-numbers management and teacher accountability. By the time the Common Core standards have been "interpreted" into test specs that fit the requirements of school and state management for a stick to beat teachers with, the point is usually lost.
Few of the controversies around Common Core have anything to do with the actual standards (which, at worst, are a bit over-ambitious) - all the over-testing and teacher accountability stuff were happening anyway. No standards are going to work if teachers still walk into the classroom and announce "OK, today we are learning CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.EE.A.2.A which will be Question 26 on the test".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @07:29PM
If you actually look at the common core standards for, say, mathematics they're anything but "teach to the test".
You must be joking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @08:02PM
I said what it was meant to be. Then stated what it turned into.
You could tell what you just said to all my friends who have kids in grade school.
One of my friends had to go in and get ahold of the teaching curriculum to decide what his kid was NOT learning. He did that after he asked his 7th grader what time is it on the watch he had sitting on the dash of his car and his hands were full of a carburetor and grease and the kid couldnt do it. He then quizzed the rest of his 4 kids. Not one could tell the fucking time. Simple fractional division? Nope. Simple multiplication without a calculator? Nope. But they could subdivide a problem all day long. Suddenly the kid went from A/B student to probably having tutoring. As the real test his parents asked he could not even begin on doing. Plus the follow 3 kids getting the same education.
School districts have a LOT of leeway in what they teach. They also do not want to get shut down being 'the under performing one'. So they figure out mostly the things on the test and teach ONLY that. They do not walk in and say 'CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.EE.A.2.A'. They find a similar problem to that one change it up a bit and make sure the kid can answer that. Add in a mix of resentment of the school board telling them how exactly to do their jobs with helicopter parents. You end up with the shitstorm mess of 'no child left behind'.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 24 2015, @05:03PM
The real idea of No Child Left Behind was this:
1. Make sure public schools are considered failures. The formulas are pretty much guaranteed to have significant numbers of failing public schools, and particularly penalize public schools that handle difficult cases like kids whose native language is not English and kids who have severe learning disorders.
2. Use the failing public schools to justify completely replacing them with privately run charter schools that don't have to follow the same rules as public schools, particularly (but not limited to) union contracts and restrictions on in-school religion.
3. Lay off the unionized public school teachers and let them compete with the recent college grads for those generous $28K-a-year teaching gigs at the charter schools.
4. Run off with what used to be the teachers' union pension fund, and pay charter school company CEOs big bucks from the taxpayer trough.
The system doesn't work because it was designed to not work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @08:32PM
The tests are constructed and administered by a privatized profit-driven entity.
The contents of any given test is "intellectual property", so, if a parent wants to see why his kid's score was different than expected by looking at the questions, no dice.
-- gewg_