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[dismalist]

This part of the board seemed to be intended for addressing one of the fundamental issues facing humankind: What reforms would better prepare students for college? Instead, parochial problems have been addressed. I hope its worth another try. With perhaps some provocation, but with completely serious intent, here goes:

1. The American High School is a joke. Stream students, with some ease in switching streams. Vocational, commercial, and academic streams seem to be in order.

2. AP classes in the academic stream could eliminate the need for the first year of a US college.

3. Vouchers for High Schools. Break the hold of unions on the nature of the High School. Let there be experimentation.

4. Vouchers for CC's and Colleges. Promotes equality of access. Schools can compete for students, as they do already. Let them make their reputations.

5. As a corollary of 4, abolish the "in-state vs. out-of state" distinction. All schools in the nation compete for all students in the nation.

6. Let the vouchers be available to study at foreign universities, to intensify competition and enhance diversity.

This ain't the half of it, but it's a beginning.

Much affection,

Dismalist

[litcrittr82]

I like this thread, and many of your suggestions.

My questions are about 'streaming':
At what age would children be placed into streams?
How would they be evaluated and fitted to streams (or would it be in part parental choice)?
What is required for switching streams?

The idea of streaming is provocative to me, at least, because I started classroom schooling very young, and had some rough times as a young child re. behavior, transitioning from Montessouri to the public elementary school system, etc.  I think I was weighed and measured when I was about 5, placed in a middle/standard academic track by second grade (I noticed when my friends and I were split for reading and math classes), and subsequently had to fight my way into honors and AP track courses in high school.  Eventually my attitude matured, I started outperforming the other students, tested well, and was admitted to highly selective colleges.  I shudder to think where I'd be now if I'd been educated in an environment with even more systematic tracking.  There's no way I'd have the opportunity to have an academic career if they judged me by my 5-year-old self.

[mended_drum]

AP courses in my field do not, I repeat, do not give the students the skills they need to move on to the next level.  The AP exam tests for a form of writing that is rarely assigned in my college, and AP classes are not required to include 80% of what we teach our freshmen.

Students who place out average significantly lower grades in the sophomore level course.

[dismalist]

I like this thread, and many of your suggestions.

My questions are about 'streaming':
At what age would children be placed into streams?
How would they be evaluated and fitted to streams (or would it be in part parental choice)?
What is required for switching streams?

The idea of streaming is provocative to me, at least, because I started classroom schooling very young, and had some rough times as a young child re. behavior, transitioning from Montessouri to the public elementary school system, etc.  I think I was weighed and measured when I was about 5, placed in a middle/standard academic track by second grade (I noticed when my friends and I were split for reading and math classes), and subsequently had to fight my way into honors and AP track courses in high school.  Eventually my attitude matured, I started outperforming the other students, tested well, and was admitted to highly selective colleges.  I shudder to think where I'd be now if I'd been educated in an environment with even more systematic tracking.  There's no way I'd have the opportunity to have an academic career if they judged me by my 5-year-old self.

Streaming is a toughy to get right: the trick is to avoid putting someone in the wrong stream and/or keeping someone in the wrong stream as the student changes. I wouldn't do it as early grade school. The first pass would be self (parental) selection, but some kind of performance standards would have to be developed. And there should be ways of getting into, say, the academic stream from the other streams.

[dismalist]

Well, it's been two days. The underwhelming response suggests nothing much is amiss, and everybody is happy. We must be living in the best of all education worlds. No room for improvement.

[pandora]

Dear Dismalist,

Well, I would say that the basic empirical facts of the fora are not on your side:  you may have noticed that this forum has the fewest topics and fewest posts of any on the fora (except the Q&A, which isn't really a place for discussion).  I think the reason for that is that the basic forum topic seems to be outside of our general professional expertise -- i.e., what sucks about high schools.  Perhaps I am being reductionist, but I haven't taught high school, and I haven't been IN high school for decades, so I don't feel I have a whole lot to say here.  And your list of proposals, while interesting, doesn't give people much to sink their teeth into.  So it's just going to be hard to get much momentum going here.

Fondly,
pandora

[dismalist]

Thanks for visiting, Pandora. High School is the entree into college, which is why it belongs here.  And I knew this is a marginal part of the board. Was just hoping to -- can't say revive, for there wasn't anything there, maybe "vive" it--'cause the subject is important.

[zharkov]

Well, it's been two days. The underwhelming response suggests nothing much is amiss, and everybody is happy. We must be living in the best of all education worlds. No room for improvement.

To be fair dismalist, your original post barely mentioned the problems you are trying to fix (high school is a joke) and listed your ideas for solutions.

If you could be more specific about what problems you are talking about, it might help.

That said, there are great high schools and lousy high schools.  Since half of my students are commuters, I can get a sense of area high schools, the good and the bad.

About tracking (streaming), we have vocational high schools where I live, so students who want to pursue that career path can do so.  (Don't other states have vokes?)  Most regular high schools track students, and the top and middles do OK-ish, the bottoms just get warehoused.

About 2/3 of all new jobs that are created in our economy require college level skills.  Most, even almost all, students require some postsecondary education.  It's either the college track or go to the voke and become an electrician, etc.  There isn't really a third option, but we haven't figured out how to deal with the "left behinds."

Funding is a major problem.  When based on property taxes, it creates inequities among communities.  But people want local control.

The current funding problem is health insurance costs, which eat up all or most of the budget increases. A national health system would fix that overnight.

My state has high stakes NCLB exams, and the lion's share of the state funding is for bringing up underperforming schools to the middle. The middle and better schools don't get much, but you have to allocate state funding somehow.

My pet fix is that all states have NCLB exams which are each state's college entrance exam.  Passing the NCLB exam means one is ready to go to the state college system.  (Dream on, Zhark!)

[yemaya]

My pet fix is that all states have NCLB exams which are each state's college entrance exam.  Passing the NCLB exam means one is ready to go to the state college system.  (Dream on, Zhark!)

For a university entrance exam to be feasible, I think that 2 things need to happen.  Firstly, any such entrance exams need to be designed by people with real credentials who have a clue in heck what it takes to be successful in college and not politicos and their puppets.  The memorize and regurgitate learning that the current NCLB exams have tended to foster do squat as far as suggesting students' abilities to write, make use of critical analysis, and so on.  Exam questions would also have to be designed in such a way so as to minimize class and race biases that are inherent in exams like the SATs.  (i.e. I don't think it's really possible to completely eliminate biases, but we should try.)

Dismalist, you too, have some interesting ideas, but there are some points that I'm curious about:

1. The American High School is a joke. Stream students, with some ease in switching streams. Vocational, commercial, and academic streams seem to be in order.

I agree with you on both points, but I wonder how you might deal with the predictable complaints by parents.  In a "my child is the smartest, most special snowflake out there" climate, streaming can be very difficult to do, politically.  I can recall that when I was in junior high in the late 1980s, we were divided into academic clusters according to academic ability.  A few years later, it was done away with because it "hurt students' self-esteem."  I think that the "self-esteem movement" has gone way over board, but remembering some of the teasing the kids in what was seen as the "dumb-dumb group" took, I do wonder if it's possible to track students in a diplomatic way while also handling parents who try to push their kids into tracks where they really don't belong.  After all - it's hardly good for students' self-confidence if they're in classes that are way over their heads.

2. AP classes in the academic stream could eliminate the need for the first year of a US college.

I agree with another poster that this is not necessarily appropriate for many disciplines.  Firstly, you have the issue where parents are pressing their kids who don't belong in AP classes into these classes and then the teacher has to dumb it down to fit the weaker students.  Hence, it ceases to be a meaningful AP class.  Secondly, not all teachers have the capacity to really teach at an AP/college  level.  At a bare minimum, I think that there would have to be some sort of stringent requirements on who can teach these classes.  Those teaching an AP should really have a subject Master's in the field in addition to teaching credentials.  For instance, someone with an MAT and 1-2 history survey courses in college has absolutely no business teaching what is really supposed to be a college level history course.  Ditto for biology, physics and any other number of disciplines.  Pedagogy is important, but unqualified teachers can do quite a bit of damage.  Unfortunately, this would raise issues for poorer school districts who may not have the academic climate or funds to attract qualified teachers. 

4. Vouchers for CC's and Colleges. Promotes equality of access. Schools can compete for students, as they do already. Let them make their reputations.

I do think that more needs to be done to make college financially excessible.  That said, I wonder if you see this possibly exacerbating the whole "students as customer/anything to get butts in seats" mentality that is becoming a problem in academia.

[dismalist]

Yes, yemaya, you point to a problem with streaming--the pushy parent/consumers. I've been a victim of the consumer mentality on the part of students and have complained about it in other threads. As long as an institution needs money to cover costs, the problem really can't be solved instantly, because an administrator will always find it in his/her interests to accommodate. If, however, schools could specialize, and develop reputations, the problem could be solved over time. It could become a badge of honor to have graduated from school x with a B average, e.g. This applies equally to high schools, CC's, and colleges. It's just that the barriers to competition have to be removed.

Of course one has to be careful what constitutes an adequate AP course. Colleges could make their own standards, as private ones do now.

[scheherazade]

Well, I did teach high school, so allow me to chime in.

1. The American High School is a joke. Stream students, with some ease in switching streams. Vocational, commercial, and academic streams seem to be in order.

There are major problems with streaming.  The biggest one is maturity development.  Boys mature later than girls, and a lot of the increase we are seeing in special ed programs is actually boys that act less mature than girls.  That's it.  That also accounts for a large number of children identified with ADD/ADHD.  By the time these boys get to about 16 years old, they are about ready to grow up a bit.  If you use streaming, however, it's too late for them.

Another problem is that the high school years have been identified as the major years where identity is developed.  If a kid doesn't even know who s/he is, how can they choose a stream?  What happens is that the "smart" kids are put into the academic stream, even though they may prefer vocational.  The "dumb" kids are put in vocational, even though they may have unidentified disabilities or simply be socioeconomically disadvantaged.  And the commercial fills up with the loud and kinesthetic kids who may be far better suited to either of the other two.  I think it's also fair to note that aptitude testing, which would be necessary in this scenario, has not been shown to be a good predicator of anything when given in the early years.

As an example, I'll use myself.  The schools had us take career aptitude tests in 8th grade.  I got lawyer and actress.  I am neither, and it's a damn good thing.  I'd be miserable as a lawyer, and I'd never make it as an actress.  I also had serious motivation and maturity issues in high school and early college.  Had I been streamed, it would have been disastrous.

2. AP classes in the academic stream could eliminate the need for the first year of a US college.

As MD notes, many colleges are not accepting APs for a significant amount of course work.  Additionally, not all successful college students are ready for AP in high school.

3. Vouchers for High Schools. Break the hold of unions on the nature of the High School. Let there be experimentation.

Firstly, the unions don't have as much of a hold as you think.  There are certain small areas of the country in which the unions are strong.  But for the vast majority of schools, the unions are so weak they can't negotiate a simple cost-of-living increase in wages.  I have worked in four schools districts and have friends in others, and I have never seen a union contract that governed the real "nature" of the high school.  They ensure wages, due process, benefits, hours worked, and sometimes class sizes.  Almost all the teachers I know worked more hours than required - the union certainly doesn't forbid or even discourage this.  Class size restrictions are for the benefit of the students - believe me, they aren't better off in classes of 40 kids.

The due process aspect is important, because one must realize that teachers are in a very precarious position without union protection.  It's a bit like academia, only even more petty, suspicious, political, and flighty.  I, personally, had to call on the union to protect me in a health accommodation at one school.  My request was eminently reasonable, and the AP stonewalled until the union rep set it straight.

Additionally, lack of experimentation in the schools is not the problem.  If anything, there is too much experimentation.  Every education fad that is dreamed up in someone's M.Ed thesis makes its rounds, usually to fail miserably.

4. Vouchers for CC's and Colleges. Promotes equality of access. Schools can compete for students, as they do already. Let them make their reputations.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I have to come down against vouchers.  On the one hand, I sympathize with anyone who has to have their kid in a failing school.  I truly do.  I've seen them from the inside, and they ain't pretty.

However, if you live in an area of a failing school and have school vouchers, what's going to happen?  Well, you could send your kid to Good Public School Next Door.  Except the GPSND only has space for so many kids.  You are not likely to get in, because lots of people are trying to escape the Bad Public School.  Those who can afford it continue to move into the Good School District, making it even more impossible to get into GPSND.  You also have Private School.  Private School, however, does not have to accept your kid.  They will take the best of the best and leave everyone else.  They will be flooded with applications, because of the vouchers, and your chances are slim.  Oh, and that voucher probably will not cover nearly enough of the tuition for you to afford it, anyway.  So now you have Bad Public School with a higher concentration of low-achieving kids and less money to deal with the problems.  Oh, and all the average kids are stuck there, too.  Odds are, so is your kid.  This is the reality of the situation.

We need to improve all the schools.  Competition simply will not fix the problem.

5. As a corollary of 4, abolish the "in-state vs. out-of state" distinction. All schools in the nation compete for all students in the nation.

And, what would that do?  I assume you're still talking about high schools?  What, you think a kid's family can pick up and move to a different state because the kid got into a great school there?  What about jobs and careers?  What happens when siblings don't get into the same schools?  And, if the families have that ability, they can already just go and move into the district and have the right to send their kids there.

If you're referring to higher education, well, don't we already have this?

6. Let the vouchers be available to study at foreign universities, to intensify competition and enhance diversity.

Same problems as in #4.  Plus, the voucher certainly won't cover room and board, so all this does is help the rich and some of the middle class, which is heavily white.  Not much diversity there.


I admire your desire to fix the system, but your suggestions just aren't going to fix a thing.  Public education, quite simply, has lost its way.  I recommend reading Left Back to get a good idea of what has happened to the system.  It fits with my experiences, certainly.

[dismalist]

I know streaming is difficult to implement, and yes, it's terrible to get caught in the wrong stream. That's why there must be movement allowed between streams. If I understand your point about the boy/girl disparity correctly, that could be solved by having, say 17 year old boys and 16 year old girls be in the same class. Non-synchronous streams for boys and girls, really!

A fad is not the same thing as diversity. A fad everybody participates in, and then moves on to the next fad. With more competition you will find some who won't participate, and then others will catch on and drop the fad. Thus, more diversity, not less.

Yes, Scheherezade, public education has lost its way. Apparently, burning the whole thing down and starting all over may help: This seems to have happened in the wake of Katrina in New Orleans, and charters who were allowed to step in in a big way seem to have had beneficial results. Though of course it's not conclusive (yet).

Most things I originally said apply equally to HS and College, and professional MA programs (but not research, i.e. not PhD programs). The reason I brought HS onto this board at all is because many of the complaints posters make in other threads about teaching in college or CC stem directly from the fact that HS education has real problems.

[scheherazade]

But after a certain point, you can't really move between streams.  There are prerequisites, and by sophomore year students are going to be rather stuck.

You propose asynchronous classes, which is fine, but then you're applying a broad stroke, which is the same problem we have now.  Not all boys will be less mature, and not all girls will be more mature.  Not only that, but then boys would be a year behind in school, and that's not going to work at all.

I wasn't aware we were equating fads and diversity.  When you say diversity, I think ethnic diversity.  If you're speaking of teaching methods or school structure, you'll have to be more specific.  Much of the experimentation in structure and methods have been hashed out at the charter school level, and most have not been a success.  At the least, most have not been more successful than a regular public school with similar demographics.

I don't propose "burning it down."  If there isn't a cogent plan in place for its rebuilding, you're in the same boat.  Much of the newfound success of the NO schools is because there are fewer students and some of the problem demographics have been broken up.  Even then, I don't see it lasting as NO rebuilds.

Anything that can be done by building from scratch can be done by restructuring and working with what we already have.  A scorched earth policy is reactionary and overboard.  I'm still curious as to what you see as the major problems in HS education.  You still haven't said.  if you can be more specific, I can probably point you to more specific things that have been done/can be done.

[dismalist]

S, if it takes boys longer to mature, let them be a year behind. It's actually not far fetched to have multiple sub-streams, and any student is part of one sometimes, and another at other times. I've seen it.

Sorry, I meant diversity of methods, you know, experiment, see what works best. Absolute central control of schooling prevents the very experimentation required to learn and propagate what works. If everybody were reasonably happy with HS it would be OK to demand more specificity from me. I guess most people are pretty happy about HS, and I don't mean that facetiously.

As I said, I put high school in here only because it seems to lead to problems in college instruction.

No, New Orleans was a "natural experiment"; I don't propose to flood US cities to see what the educational outcome would be!

[yemaya]

To add onto Dismalist's point, S, I've always wondered if the difference in maturity between boys and girls was a true developmental issue or a matter of socialization or both. 

S, if it takes boys longer to mature, let them be a year behind. It's actually not far fetched to have multiple sub-streams, and any student is part of one sometimes, and another at other times. I've seen it.

This sounds like a gender discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen.  It would be wonderful if we could stream students according to their maturity, but if and when a disproportionate number of boys get left behind, parents are going to sue.