The Bernoulli Effect

“Maybe if we increased the quality of the education professors, the ed school students would attract brighter students”

The brighter students realize that with starting salaries in the low 20’s range, a K-12 educational teaching position is not a desirable profession to enter. Therefore, those people pursuing an educational degree through college, (as opposed to those who become teachers as a second career from other fields) will continue to be the more marginally performing students, on average. But I would agree with you there is no doubt that teaching colleges can still do a better job of preparing their graduates. They should require higher standards in the student’s course work concerning their specific areas of specialization: English, History, Mathematics, Science, etc. Classes dealing with theories of education should be limited, and the emphasis should be placed on mastering the best techniques for effectively teaching reading, writing, arithmetic. etc. And teachers must learn how to establish and maintain discipline in their classroom.

This is the real heart of the current educational problem: a lack of discipline and motivation on the part of the students, and a concurrent reduction in the appreciation of the importance of learning. It does not really matter if the teacher explaining fractions to fifth or sixth graders is an expert in the calculus of differential equations. But it is very important that the students pay attention to the teacher, do the classroom work and homework assignments, and seek help from their parents if needed. Unfortunately there are too many of the students, even in middle school, who do not seem to know how to behave properly in class. They believe they can get away without showing respect for adults.

And a very unsettling truth is that much of the decline in the educational standards can be correlated with the increase in the black and Hispanic portion of enrollment. For some idiotic reasons, these “cultures” place a lower value on academic learning. We can see the complaints about the Houston HISD bond election over the lack of funding for schools in some locations. But what good will come about from constructing new schoolrooms if the students still are uninterested in opening a book? Reducing the standards for these students also “dumbs down” the requirements for white kids. This leads to the large number of students entering college who must be placed in remedial classes to learn the material they were supposed to absorb in high school.

Yes we need to expect more from the teacher college programs, but we also need to expect more from our students, and institute the measures which will drive us toward a better educational system overall.

It certainly is a matrix of interlocking problems. But I always go back to the example that Thaddeus Lott set way back in 1975: he took a poorly-performing elementary school in Acres Homes and had those students outperforming kids from far wealthier districts.

Many of those students doubtless came from shattered, dysfunctional families--but the proper curriculum combined with teachers who believed in that curriculum worked wonders.

It can be done, it just isn't. I blame the combined influence of the ed schools and the teachers' union--what a one-two punch they pack.

ChrisR assumes that career choice is all about money. I wouldn't want you as my kids' teacher if you were paid a million a day Chris! You can be my broker instead(!)

I'm thirty-nine and have started a degree this year in the hope of becoming a teacher. Not for money, but because the teachers my sons have are sometimes dull-witted, inarticulate and apathetic, often ill-educated, complacent and arrogant and nearly always verging on illiterate. (Of course I haven't met that fantastic teachers you know/are! But they/you are exceptions. I hope I am too!)

Chris, wherever your political leanings tilt, if you do nothing else please read Left Back by Dianne Ravitch.