Education reform?
 

From here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2008110...after10thgrade

Should Kids Be Able to Graduate After 10th Grade?
By KATHLEEN KINGSBURY Kathleen Kingsbury
Fri Nov 7, 4:50 am ET

High school sophomores should be ready for college by age 16. That's the message from New Hampshire education officials, who announced plans Oct. 30 for a new rigorous state board of exams to be given to 10th graders. Students who pass will be prepared to move on to the state's community or technical colleges, skipping the last two years of high school.

Once implemented, the new battery of tests is expected to guarantee higher competency in core school subjects, lower dropout rates and free up millions of education dollars. Students may take the exams - which are modeled on existing AP or International Baccalaureate tests - as many times as they need to pass. Or those who want to go to a prestigious university may stay and finish the final two years, taking a second, more difficult set of exams senior year. "We want students who are ready to be able to move on to their higher education," says Lyonel Tracy, New Hampshire's Commissioner for Education. "And then we can focus even more attention on those kids who need more help to get there."


But can less schooling really lead to better-prepared students at an earlier age? Outside of the U.S., it's actually a far less radical notion than it sounds. Dozens of industrialized countries expect students to be college-ready by age 16, and those teenagers consistently outperform their American peers on international standardized tests.

With its new assessment system, New Hampshire is adopting a key recommendation of a blue-ribbon panel called the New Commission on Skills of the American Workforce. In 2006, the group issued a report called Tough Choices or Tough Times , a blueprint for how it believes the U.S. must dramatically overhaul education policies in order to maintain a globally competitive economy. "Forty years ago, the United States had the best educated workforce in the world," says William Brock, one of the commission's chairs and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor. "Now we're No. 10 and falling."


As more and more jobs head overseas, Brock and others on the commission can't stress enough how dire the need is for educational reform. "The nation is running out of time," he says.


New Hampshire's announcement comes as Utah and Massachusetts declared that they, too, plan to enact some of the commission's other proposals, such as universal Pre-K and better teacher pay and training. Still more states are expected to sign on in December. And the largest teacher union in the U.S., the National Education Association, is encouraging its affiliates to support such efforts.


Some reform advocates would like to see the report's testing proposals replace current No Child Left Behind legislation. "It makes accountability much more meaningful by stressing critical thinking and true mastery," says Tracy.


No date has been set for when New Hampshire will start administering the new set of exams, which have yet to be developed. But to achieve the goal of sending kids to college at 16, Tracy and his colleagues recognize preparation will have to start early. Nearly four years ago, New Hampshire began an initiative called Follow the Child. Starting practically from birth, educators are expected to chart children's educational progress year to year. In the future, this effort will be bolstered by formalized curricula that specify exactly what kids should know by the end of each grade level.


That should help minimize the need for review year to year. It will also bring New Hampshire's education framework much closer to what occurs in many high-performing European and Asian nations. "It's about defining what lessons students should master and then teaching to those points," says Marc Tucker, co-chair of the commission and president of the National Center for Education and the Economy in Washington. "Kids at every level will be taking tough courses and working hard."


Right now, Tucker argues, most American teenagers slide through high school, viewing it as a mandatory pit stop to hang out and socialize. Of those who do go to college, half attend community college. So Tucker's thinking is why not let them get started earlier? If that happened nationwide, he estimates the cost savings would add up to $60 billion a year. "All money that can be spent either on early childhood education or elsewhere," he says.


Critics of cutting high school short, however, worry that proposals such as New Hampshire's could exacerbate existing socioeconomic gaps. One key concern is whether test results, at age 16, are really valid enough to indicate if a child should go to university or instead head to a technical school - with the latter almost certainly guaranteeing lower future earning potential. "You know that the kids sent in that direction are going to be from low-income, less-educated families while wealthy parents won't permit it," says Iris Rotberg, a George Washington University education policy professor, who notes similar results in Europe and Asia. She predicts, in turn, that disparity will mean "an even more polarized higher education structure - and ultimately society - than we already have."


It's a charge that Tracy denies. "We're simply telling students it's okay to go at their own pace," he says. Especially if that pace is a little quicker than the status quo.



So by 16 kids will be testing to see if they will go to college or trade/tech school? Will the kids or the parents have any say in the matter? While I agree that we do need Education reform, I'm not sure this is what I want to see.

Very true...

However, I believe China is one of the countries that promotes that, and they produce more PHD's than the Unites States. But, it goes beyond that. Countries like China and Japan place a great deal of emphesis on HONOR. Children in those countries are brought up, from birth, with a set of standards that honor their family and ancestors. We do not have that, and the stresses in our schools have already been causing "student suicides". Pushing the students to learn more, faster, could increase that in our schools, even among non-minorities.

It isn't just China where more than one language is stressed. I know a lady from Hungary that speaks 7 languages fluently. English is stressed in other countries because of the number of countries that use English, not because it is used in the USA. In a large part, you can thank the UK (British Empire) for that.

Honor may have been losing ground there, but it is still stressed far more than it has ever been here.

And, with your statement on Religion... They don't have the market cornered on that one.

Children used to get a good education with only 8 grades. I received something in my email a few times about the curriculum taught in the 19th century when 8 grades were all that was required to get a high school diploma. I think some college graduates of today would have a difficult time passing the final exam. They taught basic courses such as reading, arithmetic and geography. There is too much nonsense taught in schools today. Children are not held accountable for their education as they were 100 years ago. Discipline was mandatory. Children were expected to learn and mind their manners. They were taught to be respectful of others. The major decline started in the 1960's. It escalated to the point we see today. Civics is no longer taught in our schools. It is no wonder that young adults have no idea of how our government is designed to work. I think that any government who wants to shorten the school time will have difficulty.

Theres times I think that teachers, due to their low pay, don't really push for their students to learn. Example? My wife's stepmom....She has been a teacher all her life and she hates kids and never once has she encouraged her grandkids, her own or step, to try and better themselves. I had a history/civics teacher that gave notes Monday-Thursday in a dead, monotone voice and then Friday you took a test. Dropped THAT class REAL quick, thank God I have always been a history nut and studied on my own. I met a principal, that according to many parents in Prescott (pop. 30,000), should never have been allowed around children. My second to youngest attended kindergarten there and this lady and I went round and round.

Also with parents concentrating on their professions....they don't have the time/energy to help their kids with school work.
So what kind of message are the kids REALLY getting?

"so what if I learn....just gonna end up in a job I hate and then come home, sit on the couch til dinner and then goto bed only to start it all over"

While living in Germany, many of my friends kids went to school throughout the year with 2 week breaks scattered through the year. By the time they got to their last year of jr high/middle school, it was REQUIRED THAT THEY SPEAK ENGLISH!!! As YankeeTurbo put it " English is stressed in other countries because of the number of countries that use English" Then they entered "high" school.....actually They had 2 choices. They could start courses that prepared them for university level schooling, or start going to more of a trade school.

As far as my own kids? Brandon (12th grade) and Jessica (graduated) were in Special Ed, but my wife and I pushed them to achieve more than the schools asked. Ryan (6th grade), Kayla (4th grade), Dakota (1st grade)and Tyler (kindergarten) are all above their peers in every subject. Tyler and Dakota have tested 1 grade higher, the reason being is because MOM AND DAD take an active part in their education. Too many parents think that the school should prepare their kids for life. My oldest sister didn't spend the time with her kids she should have (yes, she and I go round and round about this), or at least I think she didn't, and out of her 4.....only 1 has done anything with her life, she became a CNA.

So don't think the education system is all to blame.....parents need to shoulder it as well. Yes, they need to seriously look at overhauling the system, but every parent and educator needs to work together to make sure children actually understand what they are being taught.

Therein lies the problem! Parents are NOT being parents anymore. They pawn it off on the schools (government) while at the same time attacking the teachers for not doing their job. Teachers aren't ALLOWED to discipline children, and if they try they have some parent in there screaming to have them fired. You know it's never their kids fault that he's a little monster because that reflects badly on their parenting (or lack thereof).

Parents would rather be friends with their children than parents. My mother saw to it that my siblings and I knew the alphabet and could count to 100 before we started school. She was always there for us. She helped us with homework and listened to us. If you want to be a have children then you should learn how to be a parent. Unless you want to teach and discipline your children then don't contribute to the problem. Government education is not the answer. When parents were involved in their children's lives we didn't have gangs. We didn't have children committing violent crimes against one another. We didn't allow the government to dictate whether we could discipline our own children or not. We did what was right for our families. Fathers were the primary breadwinners and mothers took care of the children. Both parented. It is something that has worked for many centuries.

I can easily see something like this going badly if not handled just right. Look at what has happened thanks to the well intentioned but ill thought out no kid left behind program. Schools and teachers were pretty much forced to teach to the test and little else.

IMHO, the real reform needed is to make it so that when kids graduate high school they have an education equal to what an associates degree is today.