Re: If you can raise your voice to help...if you are a Massachusetts resident or educator speak up..
rosskolnikov
location: Far end of the Group W bench
listening to: The Tony Rice Unit
registered: 2005.05.24
posts: 1822
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As someone who works in the sciences, I fully agree. I've seen even during my 17 year working career a precipitous drop in American leadership in scientific areas. Top graduate students are just as often from somehwere else. That's fine so long as the US remains an attractive place for them to stay and ply their trade. However . . .Meanwhile, our excellent universities still churn out huge numbers of lawyers, who are not exactly engines of wealth creation. (Yes, I know they can be essential, but they don't bring wealth in, they merely protect it or move it around). Make cuts in ANY other area except for math and sciences. Here's my prescription:1. Cut administrator salaries 10%2. Increase teacher salarly pool, but only a little.3. Break the teachers' unions as was done with air traffic controllers. Allow principals to fire any teacher for cause, including low-performance. Shoot for turnover of the worst 5% in forced rankings every year. Be draconian about this, just as Exxon-Mobil is. 4. Eliminate teacher tenure for all levels below University Freshman. (Not all teacher's unions have this, anyway). Tenure is unnecessary as political protection for high school and under.5. Call out parents who don't have their children ready to learn. Have a secretary on the phone to any parent who's kids show up without proper rest, clothes, or food. 6. Expel as needed. If parents haven't installed proper discipline, send these kids to expanded alternative schools that focus solely on learning trades. Allow them a chance to try to earn their way back into standard track. The world needs competent, disciplined laborers, too. 7. Increase funding for the arts and keep funding for sports. These things (especially the arts) allow for development of other parts of kids' brains and offers them a much-needed release from the more staid work of basic subject learning. And these activites help break up the day and make it easier to stay focused in class. And they help develop much needed "soft" skills such as leadership, discipline, and sustained effort toward accomplishing something. 8. Not everone is a "star." Recognize those who truly achieve and make it mean something.
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.:RS:.
.:RS:.
R
rosskolnikov
(view)
As someone who works in the sciences, I fully agree. I've seen even during my 17 year working career a precipitous drop in American leadership in scientific areas. Top graduate students are just as often from somehwere else. That's fine so long as the US remains an attractive place for them to stay and ply their trade. However . . .Meanwhile, our excellent universities still churn out huge numbers of lawyers, who are not exactly engines of wealth creation. (Yes, I know they can be essential, but they don't bring wealth in, they merely protect it or move it around). Make cuts in ANY other area except for math and sciences. Here's my prescription:1. Cut administrator salaries 10%2. Increase teacher salarly pool, but only a little.3. Break the teachers' unions as was done with air traffic controllers. Allow principals to fire any teacher for cause, including low-performance. Shoot for turnover of the worst 5% in forced rankings every year. Be draconian about this, just as Exxon-Mobil is. 4. Eliminate teacher tenure for all levels below University Freshman. (Not all teacher's unions have this, anyway). Tenure is unnecessary as political protection for high school and under.5. Call out parents who don't have their children ready to learn. Have a secretary on the phone to any parent who's kids show up without proper rest, clothes, or food. 6. Expel as needed. If parents haven't installed proper discipline, send these kids to expanded alternative schools that focus solely on learning trades. Allow them a chance to try to earn their way back into standard track. The world needs competent, disciplined laborers, too. 7. Increase funding for the arts and keep funding for sports. These things (especially the arts) allow for development of other parts of kids' brains and offers them a much-needed release from the more staid work of basic subject learning. And these activites help break up the day and make it easier to stay focused in class. And they help develop much needed "soft" skills such as leadership, discipline, and sustained effort toward accomplishing something. 8. Not everone is a "star." Recognize those who truly achieve and make it mean something.
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.:RS:.
.:RS:.
