Parents role in Education ?

Another article explaining the "race to the bottom" of today's education policies, this one in the USA and the effects of "No Child Left Behind".

A warning to college profs from a high school teacher

A good insight into the problems facing school teachers, even if you disagree with my view point.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/Pwghabw4N80?rel=0
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when i was younger i worked for a computer store.

this store install a 4 year learning program written by McGraw-Hill

in a junior high.

the slowest kid in the school went though the entire 4 years of material

in 9 months.

now these kids were allowed to do this program as much as they wanted

instead of the limited time a day that it was designed for.
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If you care about education then you must read this,

‘I have had enough’ – veteran teacher tells school board

Please, sit down with the CLASSROOM teachers and work with them. But above all, GO TO A CLASSROOM! Don’t choose a “favored, high scoring” school. Go to a struggling school and observe a classroom. Better yet, since you are supposed to be people of “service”, substitute in a classroom. Your eyes will be opened to how difficult it is to do this job on a daily basis.

by route learning is hard on both student and teacher, but computers in this role

have infinite patients and can be geared to see patterns in the child's learning,

and individualize the material presentation to each child, freeing the teacher to

help children with the problems they still do not get.
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Hi dancer, I have corrected a couple of typos for you.

"by rote learning" and "have infinite patience"

Computers in the classroom are simply audio visual teaching aids. It is far more effective to employ group learning and pairing with the buddy system, to deal with differentiation. At least that is what the teacher training course PGCE advocates.

Hi dancer, I have corrected a couple of typos for you.

"by rote learning" and "have infinite patience"

Computers in the classroom are simply audio visual teaching aids. It is far more effective to employ group learning and pairing with the buddy system, to deal with differentiation. At least that is what the teacher training course PGCE advocates.

I was under the impression that learning by rote was frowned upon these days. That kids these days do not learn the multiplication tables by endless repition, or history by a list of dates etc. etc.

How much time should teaching staff spend on underperforming students? and if they do spend time on these students are they not ignoring the best students by not having the time to push them to higher levels.

I ask this because a lot of school education resources were spent on one of my sons, to no effect. And the other was ignored because he is intelligent and didn't need help to meet the schools targets of exam passes.
The son where they spent lots of time and money on is Autistic, and is still effectively an eleven year old. The other son went to good universities, now MSc, but if he had been given an extra push should probably have gone to Oxbridge.

to use buddy's that are poorly matched is worse that no help at all.

when allowed to progress at their own pace the junior high i mentioned earlier

had the slowest student there go though 4 years of material in 9 months

the fastest were done in 3.

it is possible with computer aided learning to push all the kids all the time.

and to push then in a manner that is best suited to get results for each child.

teaching to the group slows down everybody not just the bright ones.


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teaching to the group slows down everybody not just the bright ones.

teaching to the group slows down everybody not just the bright ones.

Sorry Dancer you are quite wrong.

Firstly, a trained teacher will deal with the differentiation by planning in advance of the lesson. They will often pair the brightest pupils with the ones that are struggling. The clever ones will feel valued in the teacher allowing them to help their classmates, and the struggling ones can often learn better by a peer showing them, rather than a formal instruction by the teacher.

Secondly, all teachers will have prepared extra work before hand, and often at a higher level than the average of the class. So the brightest can be stretched when they complete the easier tasks.

Computer aided learning, or self tuition sometimes has it's place, but usually in FE. For example, when I took the ECDL the College I was at had self learning, you worked your way through the course work at your own pace asking for help when necessary. It works with adults, probably not with 10 year olds. Go and talk to a fully trained teacher and ask them how they deal with a class of different abilities.

i had the same thing happen 15 years before with the caveat that the excuse of

bureaucracy and testing were not valid.

and being paired badly with several bad students i was driven to conniptions

trying to explain the simplest things to slower student wasting much of my time to

little effect.

and while i had a few good teachers they were handicapped by class size and could

only do so much.
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teaching to the group slows down everybody not just the bright ones.

Sorry Dancer you are quite wrong.

Better the pass rate the more $ for the school.

Ofsted has been criticised as 'not fit for purpose' by the House of Commons Education Select Committee. The committee also highlighted their concern about "the complex set of objectives and sectors that Ofsted now spans and its capacity to fulfil its core mission". Other criticism has come from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) which said "Ofsted is over-reliant on number crunching, using test data which are fundamentally unsound" and added that the organisation was "ripe for overhaul".

teaching to the group slows down everybody not just the bright ones.

Sorry Dancer you are quite wrong.

I think I've seen you post about tracks in the UK schools. There are no tracks in USA schools. The morons sit in the same class as the gifted. The class is taught with the aim of getting the most passing scores on the standardized test. Better the pass rate the more $ for the school.

We are of a different generation.