1. First week of school, children are taught manners, respect, ethics, and hygiene
2. No Drop-outs allowed thru mandatory education level
3. Free public school through Associates Degree
4. 1 year Military Service = 1 Year College tuition
5. Create Virtual College Campuses
6. Certify ALL teachers and set a Testing schedule to insure continued quality
7. Have Standards Tests that actually test what a student has learned and can't be taught to
8. If we implement all of these ideas, we will create an educational platform far beyond what we have today
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never shall be
Educate and inform the whole mass of people...they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of Liberty
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion
- Thomas Jefferson
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
- Martin Luther King Jr
* A landmark 1996 study published in the Harvard Educational Review by Brian Powell and Lala Carr Steelman found that for every $1000 spent per student above the national average, SAT scores increased by 15 points. Texas' spending per student, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, is more than $400 per student below the national average. Texas currently ranks 47th nationally in average SAT scores. http://www.investintexasschools.org/progress/statistics.php
The Houston Chronicle
Math scores level out in elementary school
The average fourth-grade math score was 240 on a 500-point scale. Viewed another way, 39 percent of the students tested were rated proficient or better in the subject. Both results were unchanged from the last round of testing in 2007. Black and Hispanic students, who historically trail white students in academic achievement, did not narrow the disparities. The black-white score gap in fourth-grade math remained 26 points, the Hispanic-white gap 21 points.
"We're losing ground to our international competitors every year," Driscoll, a former math teacher, said. "It's a situation that calls for dramatic improvement. Unfortunately there seems to be apathy across the country."
In fourth grade, students were expected to solve a problem such as 301 minus 75 (67 percent found the correct answer of 226). They were also asked to plot a set of three given points and fill in three others on a two-axis grid to create a rectangle. (Twenty-seven percent answered fully and correctly.)
The eighth-grade average score on the test rose to 283, from 281 in 2007. In 1996, the eighth-grade score had been 270.
Education
It is very hard to actually find a ranking of education by countries. You can find certain areas discussed, like the Chronicle article above, but I have been unable to find an overall view, yet.
Less than 2/3 of Texas children graduate High School. A Hispanic child is twice as likely as a Caucasian to drop out, blacks fell in between the two, but closer to the Caucasian rate. Among all the groups, males are more likely to drop-out and less likely to graduate than females.
In 1984, if an American transferred to a German university with a Bachelors Degree, not only would the German school not recognize the degree, but the American student would only be part way through their Junior year, a loss of about 1 1/2 years. That was in 1984, how much worse do you think it could be now? My sister went to a university in Houston and they used her 9th grade text book as the one for her college class, huge step forward.
Education is absolutely the most important thing after food and water for any Human Being. With knowledge you can control or affect the world around you. If you don't have knowledge and truth, you cannot make a proper, accurate decision in your life, except by pure accident. We need to insure that everyone has the proper and necessary information they need to survive and prosper on this planet, no matter what!
An educated people are rarely poor, tend to be healthier, experience higher levels of freedom, and have a better average standard of living. An educated people provide a skilled work force, generally experience less substance addition and abuse, and commit fewer crimes. With an educated people you have more security with less social problems, where is the bad side?
This is what I would like to see happen with education:
Every citizen, mentally capable, must get an Associates Degree or equivalent, no drop-outs allowed (mandatory education is paid for by the state). Every year of Military Service buys you a year of college education. We need programs to identify strengths and weaknesses and ways to address them should be utilized. Job trends and future employment needs are explained to the students whenever counselors try to guide them in their educational choices. And, we continue to increase our proficiency until we match or beat every other educational rank in the world!
I would like to see, in addition to academic education, life experiences, manners, respect, hygiene, and ethics education. I would like to see us teach our children, not just what, but why we "do it that way". I would demand that all teachers be qualified and periodically tested to insure they are always qualified. I would like to see restrictions placed on teachers, especially Higher Education, to keep them from influencing students political and religious choices, in either direction. I believe we should teach the truth, how to gather and process further information, and let the children decide for themselves what they believe.
A viable alternative to University environments might be to allow individual certified teachers to conduct virtual classes via the Internet or cable. We would design software to monitor student participation to insure that the student in question is the student doing the work, and, that they are actually attending class. The Teacher would charge a low fee per semester and try to generate enough students to achieve the desired pay scale. To generate those students, the Teacher would increase their own proficiency and teaching methods to draw students to their classes. Let's say that a Teacher charges $5 a person per semester, a ridiculously low fee, correct? But, this would allow any income level to attend a semester, that translates into a huge customer base, and this could be extended world-wide. In a world of 7 billion people, getting 1 million students would not be unusual, thus the Teacher would make $5 mil per semester, there are 3 semesters average per year. An additional benefit is from the savings in State money that would not be spent by the Universities. This money can now go to support the usual State funding of Pre-K - 12, and the new Assoc Degree education initiative.
By implementing this plan, we could even drop the cost of Health Care. If you decide to pursue a Medical Career, your school costs $5/semester, a major savings over the typical Student Loan. If you want to become a Doctor, a better route would be to join the US Military for 8 - 10 years and have all your school financed. This decreases a Doctors price because education costs are cheaper and no interest is owed to anyone.
I would like to stop the TAKS testing and design a new Test that cannot be taught to. We need random tests that actually evaluate what our children are learning and what they know. A test that cannot be passed by teaching Basic Skills, but students can be trained to pass regardless of actual academic knowledge, is an abuse of our system and does not render the data that we need to properly teach our children. It is time to revamp the entire process.
We have been told that any action we do repeatedly over time actually changes the way our brains process information. I firmly believe that the Standards Testing in America is not designed to access the performance of students, but instead is a program designed to alter the way our children process info and to make them more susceptible to propaganda and advertising.
Education is the key to everything, it must be a high priority, whatever the cost. It will serve our country with benefits that will far exceed the price we will have to pay to get it done. Forbid Indoctrination, promote Education!
Data
The National Center for Higher Education management Systems
http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=36&year=2006&level=nation&mode=data&state=0
Texas 64.1% Graduation Rate 2007
National Center for Education Statistics
Institute of Education Sciences
U.S. Department of Education
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009064.pdf
Dropping out of high school is related to a number of negative outcomes. For example, the
median income of persons ages 18 through 65 who had not completed high school was roughly $24,000 in 2007. By comparison, the median income of persons ages 18 through 65 who completed their education with a high school credential, including a General Educational Development (GED) certificate, was approximately $40,000. Among adults ages 25 and older, a lower percentage of dropouts are in the labor force compared with adults who earned a high school credential. Among adults in the labor force, a higher percentage of dropouts are unemployed compared with adults who earned a high school credential (U.S. Department of Labor 2007). Further, dropouts ages 25 or older reported being in worse health than adults who are not dropouts, regardless of income (Pleis and Lethbridge-Çejku 2006). Dropouts also make up disproportionately higher percentages of the nation’s prison and death row inmates.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/profile.asp
Student Characteristics
Number enrolled: 4,599,509
Percent in Title I schools: 64.6%
With Individualized Education Programs (IEP): 10.7%
Percent in limited-English proficiency programs: 10.9%
Percent eligible for free/reduced lunch: 47.3%
Racial/Ethnic Background
White: 35.7%
Black: 14.4%
Hispanic: 46.3%
Asian/Pacific Islander: 3.3%
American Indian/Alaskan Native: 0.3%
School/District Characteristics
Number of school districts: 1,033*
Number of schools: 8,856
Number of charter schools: 438
Per-pupil expenditures: $7,978
Pupil/teacher ratio: 14.8
Number of FTE teachers: 311,649
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