Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How would you improve our educational system K-12

Get rid of the teachers union.
Get rid of the dept of education.
Allow open enrollment everywhere.
Establish a merit based pay system that rewards teachers on how well their students learn, and pay them well, if the students perform well.
Allow and encourage the removal from schools the kids that are unwilling to learn, are creating an unsafe environment or are an ongoing discipline problem.

Absolutely! Vivek said it would be his first act. Return the $ 80 Billion to the states for education. Lost me there. Stop taking it !

Absolutely

There should be no guaranteed right to go to school. Repeated bad behavior should result in an automatic ejection from public school. Send the problem home or to a juvenile detention center. Problem kids are consuming the teachers and creating excessive distractions in the classroom.

The kids need more interaction with their advisors. They are not making the most of the talents of these youngsters. I have a daughter in college never met once with her advisor while in high school. She did very well anyway, but I wonder what the potential could have been had she been driven a bit more. This is particularly true with average and below average kids. They need driven and challenged to perform to their potential. My son is a sophomore in high school and has yet to meet with his advisor. This whole situation lends itself to mediocrity. What the heck are these advisors doing anyway?????

School choice for starters. Ga just passed a law that will allow students zoned for the bottom 25% of public schools to receive a 6,500 a year to go towards home schooling or private school. It also allows intercounty transfers and also out of country transfers if zoned for these low performing schools. Of course I would like to see 100% across the board school choice, but this is a start. All at once it would be quite a shake up of the system. I assume Kemp will most certainly sign it but don't know if it will go into affect next school year or after.

Should save Ga some tax money, takes about 12k a year to educate a public school student here...and that number rises every year with less and less results. Now Ga is saying here is 6500 instead and use it as you see fit, just make up the rest if need be. The naysayers hate the fact that tax money may go to a private school, especially a parochial private school...typical libbies wanting to keep certain groups down and on the plantation.

What are your thoughts on a viable method of evaluating teacher performance? Everyone knows a good teacher when they see one, and they should be paid accordingly. I haven't thought of a good way to quantify this, however. Evidently, no one else has either.

It's been a democrat-matriarchy for over seventy five years. Figure how to change that and you're home free

Great start, I'd also add get rid of no child left behind and put kids that need assistance in separate classes (how it was when I went to school). Holding back the group for the slowest is not working.

As far as merit pay for teachers, that's a tough one. The teacher working in the nice side of the town with students that have supporting families are gonna have the better outcome. The teachers working in the trenches in the hood whos families don't bother to get their kid to school some days, fed, or halfway decently clothed, etc...how do you fault that teacher for that. It takes a community.

As far as paying students to take advanced classes, they get rewarded come college acceptance time.

I came up on the tail end of shop class. Typical wood work, gun racks, routing your name in a board. Bought a router table several years back and had a piece of wood catch and go slinging across the room...and I was like dang, some gave me one of these to use as 12yo? Good times. I remember a kid bringing his 3030 on the school bus to take to school so he knew exactly how to build his gunrack for it. Certainly couldn't do that now.

The DoE, we can thank Carter for that...and we've all seen what has happened since.

And some like you wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the ass.

Great idea to put you and ringman in charge of what's taught in schools.

Agree, I don't think you can legally dismantle the unions, pensions, employment contracts. I think the answer is to provide an easier path to school choice, a tax break for parents who do not utilize the public school option. Once there are more free market options for parents, the market will be in competition to up the student performance standards by itself. You will see more emphasis on the 3 Rs, less on Marxist and social agenda. I think industrial arts, practical job training should be totally separated from any school system. In places where it has been most successful...it has been a co effort of industry and educators.

Great post, I was obviously being sarcastic, but a real and comprehensive competency test to all teachers should be an absolute requirement.

Some small first steps: 1) if it wasn't in the curriculum in 1960, dump it (with some exceptions for technology, like PC familiarity, etc.) 2) mandatory school uniforms.

As has been said, eliminate grade inflation and toughen discipline.

Also add mandatory Phys. Ed. and "Outward Bound" type classes to counter our sedentary screen culture.

First, I'd find the good things and highlight them. That is much easier than folks would have you believe. You simply can't attract good teachers, admin and support staff into a career that just gets bashed. And you can't get students believe it's worthwhile either.

Then, I'd work on an educational focus and reduce the focus on staff protections like seniority and tenure. They all need to be accountable and productive all year, every year.

Educational focus needs to be relevant, including trades and vocations. Gifted students should be challenged, instead of being reigned in with the rest. The old "kill and drill" techniques worked, bring them back.

School choice is a tough one. It's important, but the vast majority of alternative/charter/home school simply don't perform well except in people's perspectives. They must also be held accountable educationally.

How we measure performance can also change. Get rid of the woke metrics that give everyone participation medals and reward higher levels of success, considering the potential of the individual students.

I would be uneasy having some of those teen idiots operating dangerous machines. Other's could get hurt.

How do you make them go to trade school when they wont even show up for regular school? Our local system just reported a truancy rate of 30%. So almost 1/3 of our students have missed more than the allowed days of school.

"In the 2022 school year, the state says 30% of my county's school students missed 15 or more days. The state calls anything over 15% unacceptable." I believe they are only allowed 5 unexcused absences a year.

How do you fix that?

It's the culture.

Teach, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Put a clock with 2 hands in each classroom. Highlight shop classes. No cell phones. Stop being babysitters and start educating. Stop the entire participation trophy my kid is the best bullcrap. There will always be people who design brooms and those that push them. Nothing wrong with either

When the student tells the teacher to [bleep] off, get slugged in the mouth. When the parents come to complain they get punched in the mouth

Just my thoughts

^^^This. Have a retired cousin who taught Voc Ed in the Dallas ISD. He said after Carter signed in the DoEd, the Dept started cutting Voc Ed funding until it was almost zero twenty years ago. He said in his experience, after V/E was phased out, the black kids had no where to go but into crime and drugs. The gummint had already hooked the black women by 1979 and they needed a way to keep the black men on the plantation. This was part of the plan

I think there should be better test of kids, 3-4 times over the 12 years (or longer).
before they start high school parents should know by testing what kids are adapt to do.
This is where trade schools and shop classes should put used to make a dual diploma.
If they are more mechanical, industrial, construction inclined, don't waste their time with foreign languages, art or biology.
Let them get their basic classes in the morning and vocational classes in the afternoon.
When they graduate, they will be prepared to go to work.