Here’s a video from GOOD and the University of Phoenix. Happy viewing!
(hat tip to Dennis Richards)
Video – Education in America
by Scott McLeod | Sep 30, 2010 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Learning and Teaching, Videos | 4 comments
1. Parental involvement is key!! More parents need to be educated and help their students. They need to push education as a priority in life. They need to limit their children’s time on TV and games and make sure that they are READING and doing their homework. We need to make sure kids are reading more outside of school.
2. Society needs to make math and science “cool”. It’s not. Financial jobs and lawyers are cool jobs in society. Yet, those two areas have caused major problems lately. We need to make math and science seem cool and get students interested in it. Be creative in teaching it. Job shadowing. Career exploration. Field Trips. Projects.
3. Get rid of, or at least modify standardized testing. Realize that it limits teachers’ abilities to be creative with their classrooms.
4. Expand school by using Web 2.0 tools with your students. We need to make sure every child has a computer with broadband internet access at home.
5. Teach students more problem solving and self-learning techniques and a little less content. A survey of colleges a year or so ago stated that high schools tried to cover too many topics and not enough depth of understanding.
6. Modify the school day to be more efficient. Less interruptions, less useless assemblies, less meetings, more collaboration and interdisciplinary projects.
7. Project Based Learning vs. lecture and do work. Student centered learning. Fun.
8. Give teachers smaller classes and more time to plan for those classes and collaborate with their colleagues.
9. Make sure the resources are available in the classroom. Too much money goes to ??? who knows where instead of to the classroom.
10. Partner with business and the community to support teachers, schools, and students.
Why SHOULD we expect schools in the U.S. to be #1 in the world in education? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty, in terms of having the lowest percentage of residents living beneath the poverty line, the U.S. is tied for 20th. That falls pretty closely in line with our various educational rankings.
I get why we would WANT to be #1, but realistically, schools are a microcosm of the society they serve, and American society is full of poverty, crime, and broken families. It would take a radical revolution in those areas, not just in schools, to dramatically change our academic standing in the world.
Interesting that the video is called Education in America and the first thing I see is a yellow school bus. So, it’s about Schooling in America. Schooling and education are not the same thing. Never have been, never will be. Maybe making that distinction would be a good place to start.
Or you could get some good ideas from north of the border. From this guy for example: http://www.joebower.org/
I would like to know how many of the countries listed above the US force all of the students to take standardized test. Many of them send them to trade schools before they are 15th. We should be looking at scores in 4th grade. This would be comparing apples to apples since all nations have them in school in that grade. Where do we rank then.