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Improving Education

Bill Betzen — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:23:45 -0400

One of the major reasons students are bored in school is that they have not seen the connection between what is being covered in the classroom and what they will need in life to succeed and achieve their goals. There are two reasons for this disconnection: 1) students have no realistic goals and 2) when they do, the classroom content is not seen as matching those goals.

I am a middle school teacher and have seen the goal deficit in action. Due to that we started a project 4 years ago to focus our students onto their own futures. We set up a simple time-capsule, class reunion project at our inner city Dallas middle school. We bolted a 350-pound vault to the floor in our lobby under spotlights. When 7th graders enter they see it immediately and are told that they will be writing letters to themselves before they leave 8th grade. That letter is about their lives and their plans for the future. They will place the letter themselves into the vault where it will stay for a decade. In 10 years they will be invited back for a class reunion. At that reunion they retrieve their letters and are invited to give their recommendations for success to the then current 8th grade class. They are told to prepare for questions such as “Would you do anything differently if you were 13 again?”

Preliminary indications from this popular project are that 10th grade enrollment at both high schools our students attend has now gone up 11%. Not bad for a project that only required the 350-pound vault which was quickly donated by our local home improvement store. Other costs involved total about one dollar per student per year.

A survey of 400 students last year verified that the project is very popular with them. Teachers have liked it from the start. See www.studentmotivation.org for details including bar charts to illustrate, and student enrollment spreadsheets to document, our 56.2% 9th grade cohort district dropout rate, and the progress being made to get it below 50% for the first time in over a decade. It will take a few years, but we will do it and move toward a 60% graduation rate.

In November of 2014 we will have the first reunion as our class of 2005 returns to retrieve their letters from the vault. This will also provide valuable feedback for teachers who will be interested in how they can improve the content of their classes to be more useful for students in life after middle school. Ten years is a long time to wait, but once the reunions start it will be an annual event that may evolve to be our most priceless annual event. It appears the time surrounding Thanksgiving was a good time to plan for it. It also allows 8th graders to have a few months to think over this feedback from alumni before they write their own letters, and begin to think of what they may say in 10 years.

Improving Education

Jenifer Fox, Educator and Author, Your Child's Strengths — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:52:42 -0400

A week ago, on my tour around the country spreading the word about the Strengths Movement in schools, I had the good fortune to stop in Raleigh and address a group of concerned parents and teachers about the future of education in our country. I will return in the fall with the same message. It is really quite simple; the drop-out rate in this country is telling us something. We must learn to quiet the clamor of blame and stop arguing about band-aid solutions. We must take better time to diagnose before we rush to prescription. In the quiet observation you will be able to see that the drop-out epidemic is the single largest protest in the history of the United States. In a recent study by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Silent Epidemic) it was determined that the number one reason children are dropping out is because they are bored. Mass groups of talented youth with considerable strengths to add to society are saying, "we are not going to take it anymore".
We can blame teachers, administrators, parents, state and federal systems or we can stop blaming and start to realize that there is not a system that is "broken", there is simply a model that has passed its expiration date. The way to improve education is to make it more relevant and more current. There are many many, many ways to do this and none of them involve wasting time learning to take tests that disengage children's curiosity and love of learning.
A child born today will retire in the year 2070. We have no idea what the world will be like then. We only know that that they need to know what their learning strengths are. How to learn will be more important than what to learn.
Children will will thrive spending all our time focusing stop focusing on their weaknesses and take some more of it building on discovering what their strengths are.
When schools, parents and businesses join together in supporting and building on children's strengths we will build a future that advances our democracy. It isn't simply our economic advantage that is stake with an obsolete educational system, it is also our democracy.
When schools take seriously the role of building up every child's strengths, we will begin to move every child forward. When schools implement curriculum and standards that begin with the premise that each person has a unique contribution to make society we will empower our youth to discover that contribution. Once a child knows what makes him exceptional and how he can use that to improve his life and his world, then he can be engaged in meaningful and relevant learning.
Today, we place too much emphasis on what kids can't do. We expect them to be great at everything. Unfortunately, it is not good enough to shine in one area, children must shine in all areas or be considered a failure. And we make this demand on kids without any latitude when we insist that they all perform the same way.
We need our schools to find what is exceptional in each child, teaching each that these strengths can be used to create meaningful lives for themselves. We need to improve education with a focus on children's strengths rather than trying to standardize them to death. Many people need to know there is a difference between the words standards and standardization.
As the Strengths Movement spreads across the country and unites the businesses of the world and the schools around developing strengths, we will begin to see great improvement in education. Any politician who uses the concept of developing children's strengths will capture the attention of both the youth and their parents who are desperate for the anxieties of the obsolete educational system to stop ravaging their children.

Improving Education

Bob Robertson — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:53:25 -0400

The first thing to do is separate education from government control of any kind.

Anyone who examines private school options knows that they cost less, and produce better educated students, than public schools do. One year of a good private school, $5,000. One year of public school, $9,000.

Where is the state dumping half that money? Bureaucracy which educates no one.

Eliminating government intrusion into education, and not taking the taxes to pay for the bloated day-care in the first place, will free up large amounts of money for people to use building alternatives to the prison-camps we have now. Tutoring, part-time teaching, time-sharing between families, church-run schools, online curricula, even company schools for employees with children, Or how about corporate-sponsored academies by companies who need potential employees well schooled in specializations such as mathematics, engineering or chemistry?

Prior to forced public schooling, America had the best educated, most literate population in the world.

How can education be improved?

mmoriarity — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:08:45 -0400

A poll by The N&O and the Charlotte Observer identified education as one of the top concerns of voters this election season. Particularly under fire is Bush's No Child Left Behind Initiative, which places strong emphasis on end-of-grade testing. Candidates bring to the table a variety of proposals to improve education while maintaining emphasis on improved performance, job training and teacher accountability. What do you think would help improve our state and national education systems?

A poll by The N&O and the Charlotte Observer identified education as one of the top concerns of voters this election season. Particularly under fire…