Welly wrote: 

Skills, information, and experience.  I like that, a triumvirate.  Great start.  How about the scope of these?  How broad a range of skills, information, and experience should one acquire?  Should they all be coextensive for everyone (e.g. should every man know how to shave with a straight razor)?

 meower wrote: 

OK, but what does it mean to "think critically?"  I have a fairly good idea of what you probably mean when you say that, but expand if you can.  Do you mean logical and analytical, like Sherlock Holmes?  Does critical thinking mean you can design a science experiment and suss out the potential confounding variables that could invalidate your results?  Does it mean you can write a movie review and draw analogies to novels you've read?

 aflanigan wrote: 

To me it is more than the academic knowledge accrued through school.
It is about being a well-rounded person, in your knowledge.
As Meower says, critical thinking is crucial and it is a skill, not a piece of information. So, to me, a good education includes skills, information and experience.

 aflanigan wrote: 
One who can think critically.  i think

Owld - let's hope we can drag the discussion into the proper place here.

A question came up in my discussion with Black321, and I believe it's a key question.  I'd like to get as many peeps who have chimed in over the last day or so to think about it and try to formulate a thoughtful answer.

What does it mean to be "well educated"?  I ask this in the context of presuming that the goal of our schools should be to educate students.  So, what does it mean to educate a student, and more importantly, what does it mean to do the job well? 

What are the characteristics of a "well educated" student?  (Is it someone who scores well on tests?  Is it someone with a high GPA?  Is it someone who goes on to excel in college?  Is it measured by post scholastic financial success?)

What are the characteristics of an effective school?

(from the Barack Obama thread where this interesting back and forth on education first began)

 musik_knut wrote: 
I can't tell you what's wrong in all respects. I can tell you that things are much more complex than it appears in the easily articulated opinions that many people have.

From my "front row seat" I can make these observations, based on my experiences in one district in one state:

Standardized testing is not education, it is a measure of the ability of students to memorize and regurgitate a given set of facts.

A_G is lucky, she teaches Grade 1 and can create a classroom that is open to inquiry, curiosity and exploration. She doesn't have to worry about FCAT testing. All of her lessons and classes address the state-wide standards, but the state-wide standards are not what her classes are about.

There is a tremendous diversity of background and ability in many public school classrooms that provides challenges for many teachers. With cutbacks, the resources for dealing with behavioural issues and learning issues (autism, etc. etc.) are much reduced. Now when little Colin, who has huge behavioural issues that go beyond sauciness and disobedience, starts kicking his teacher in the shins, all she can do is pick up the little 7 year-old and carry him to the office. There he will be spoken to and given a pep talk. The kid needs treatment, not a pep talk. But there aren't even the resources to assess his problems. So, he is back in the class in 20 minutes. The teacher has to soldier on(I saw the bruises on that teacher's shins more than once).

The teacher a bit further south of us who made the professional misjudgment of conducting a vote in her kindergarten class on whether a disruptive child should be asked to leave the class was rightly disciplined by her school district. However, the discipline was out of proportion and she was thrown under the bus by her principal who accepted no responsibility for the fact that nothing was ever done to investigate the child's disturbance which led to constant and violent disruption over seven months. He would be sent to the office for a pep talk and then sent back to the class, sometimes three and four times a day. How fair is that to the 19 or 20 other students who are also children of tax payers? How fair is that to the teacher, an experienced and respected (up to that point) professional with twelve years in the class room? (The child's father is a media-savy trial lawyer and perhaps the whole issue went way beyond where it perhaps should have gone.)

A_G's school is not an "A" school, so parents vote with their feet. They miss all the good stuff that is going on in the school, they do not see the competent teachers and the innovative classroom programming in a school seriously short on teaching materials and curriculum support. All the parents see is that it is not an "A" school, even if it is a good school. Enrollment continues to fall. So far there are only 30 registrations for September 2009 kindergarten. The first year we were here there were 5 kinder classes. Families are leaving the district and the state in search of employment.

Teacher moral is down because of these and similar issues, and because of pay issues. Bonuses for exceptional teaching have been canceled by budget cuts and annual salary increases under the terms of the contract have been suspended, perhaps indefinitely. Many of teachers are looking for second jobs, especially when their non-teaching spouse finds herself or himself suddenly unemployed.

It's true that you can't solve problems just by throwing money at them. All efforts at problem solving need to be carefully considered and artfully applied. Clearly there are too many instances where that is not done. It is also true that the problems will not be solved by taking more and more money away, and that is what is happening.

i am a big believer in public education. Without public schools and state supported post-secondary education it would have been much harder, if not impossible, for me to have achieved what I have. You might get tired of hearing this Obama-like comment, but public schools really are a beacon of hope and opportunity for many people. It is in everybody's best interest to nurture and encourage healthy public schools, IMHO. One way to do this is to start meaningful conversations with teachers, especially those that are teaching one's own children.

Just some thoughts of mine. I don't care to get into an ideologic pissing match about what is right and what is wrong.

musik_knut wrote:

The 'arguments' presented by teachers, their unions and the like, always miss the mark. We hear class sizes are too big; they were bigger in 1967.
Education in this country is awash in funding, how that funding is used is part of the larger problem
No, you don't need a bureauacracy if you set a national core curriculum. The curriculums would be managed by school administrators and districts. They're already in place.
I don't see why it proves more difficult than splitting a hair with a bullet on the question of testing teachers. They either know their subject matter, or they don't. Administering tests to them should not be akin to rocket science. Only teachers, their unions and their allies always make it seem so.
Test scores continue a free fall, funding continues to increase. There's a problem and a disconnect. I don't expect teachers, their unions and those who champion them, notably Democrats, to ask, why? They simply point out the need for even more monies.
It ain't working, it's broke...but we can fix it with more funding. Awake me when that happens. Someday some folks will come to see that money is not a panacea for what is not working.

 ——————————

Sorry, MK, but I'm not a teacher, I'm just a parent.  Save your diatribes for someone else.

If you think establishing national curriculum would not increase the size of the DOE then you are deluding yourself.   Who sets and amends the curriculum?  Who ensures that it is followed?  Like NCLB, any imposed educational system like this employs a carrot and stick approach; you get federal money provided you follow the curriculum, and if you don't there are sanctions  Either a new agency within or external to DOE would be created, or the size of an existing department in DOE would increase substantially to manage all this. Also, you have failed to address the other downsides to standardized curriculum that I raised.  Does that mean you don't mind diluting the quality of our educational system for the sake of uniformity?

By testing teachers, I assume this is meant to answer my question of how to judge teacher quality.  Perhaps you are unaware that teachers in most places have to pass competency tests to obtain a teaching position. As of 1999, for example, a majority of states (38) required teachers to pass a basic skills/general knowledge test such as Praxis I in order to obtain an initial license.  Twenty one states at that time also required teachers to pass subject matter specific tests (like the Praxis II series).  So your theory that schools suck and test scores are in "free fall" (more on that in a minute) because we don't test teachers is basically wrong.  If teacher competency testing were the answer, we'd have great schools now, and you'd have no grounds for complaint.

As for test scores being in "free fall", seriously, where do you get your data?  Most state test scores have shown steady increases since the introduction of standardized state testing.  Look at TAAS, MCAS, MEA, AIMS, SOL, TAKS, STAR, MEAP, etc. etc.  Pick any statewide administered standardized test and look at the scores.  They almost always show an increase from year to year.

People have been studying public schools, and ways to improve them, for over 200 years.  Often (as with privatization proponents in the Reagan WH like Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Clint Bolick) people scrutinizing public schooling have a product to sell, and to do that they need to declare a crisis (see THE PROPAGANDA OF A NATION AT RISK).  It's always fun to proclaim overheated alarmist rhetoric along the lines of our K-12 schools are fundamentally broken and our economical viability is doomed as a result, but such rhetoric typically has little connection to reality.

 dmax wrote:

 
If he is bright and bored why not try giving him some advanced maths to do (in his maths lessons)?  Would keep him from throwing quarters and give the school a bit of a hint.  Hope its OK anyway!

I thought I'd bump this topic with this news story:
Authors oppose 'toddler targets'

Leading authors have joined educationalists in a push to get the government to scrap its new literacy targets for England's toddlers.

'Aspirational milestones'
They also wanted them to be able to write their own names and begin to use simple sentences, sometimes with punctuation. But evidence suggests only 46% of five-year-olds can do the first, and some 30% the second. The campaigners want what they see as "compulsory learning requirements" to be changed to voluntary guidance. Ministers insist these aims are not "mandatory targets but aspirational milestones". However, the Early Years Framework does say providers have a duty to ensure that they comply with the learning and development requirements as well as the welfare requirements. In addition, they must have regard to the statutory guidance and provide good reasons for deviating from it. The campaigners claim key aspects of the framework have been criticised across the field and that even the government's own advisers have urged reconsideration. Their letter reads: "Parents should have the right to choose how their pre-school children are cared for and educated.