Based on my limited experience with teaching and tutoring, I have little doubt that teaching high school math is *very* difficult, but I think that it is not made easier by increasing knowledge and ability in higher math.  Also, people who enjoy the glorified arithmetic taught in high school, but are put off by more abstract reasoning are more likely to become math ed majors than math majors.  Since they require different skills, they will tend to attract different sorts of people.  Many of these math education majors might be good high school teachers in many ways, *but* they will be much less able to help very gifted students, and also much less able to design and implement more advanced tracks in HS math education.

This largely jibes with my experience as a high school student who was very good in math.  The teachers I had (with one exception) did not know very much beyond calculus I.

What bloody “phenomenon?” I honestly believe that computer science professor’s comment is a load of horse shit.

I do not see any validity in “rating” those fields against one another is such a manner.  To suggest that any one individual is less intelligent to another due to their choice in careers or according to what area of study they enjoy most is just asinine. How could you possibly fail at being an engineer and go to being a mathematic major when that individual must have failed the mathematics of engineering in the process? 

It seems to me that professor obviously doesn’t have much self-confidence in their own teaching abilities.  Teaching is much more difficult than “doing.”  Such comments lend more towards bitterness and the possibility of said professor suffering from “burn out.”

The debate of quality American higher education is   a separate debate to quality public education for our children and young adults.  However, I recognize that both systems of education may be in need of restructuring.

I wonder if this phenomenon has anything to do with the problem.

Yeah, that incredibly successful and charismatic teacher who tutored his students after hours and managed to push through an agenda in other schools sounds like a downright antisocial sociopath.  Ummm, wait.

I agree with lastcall that discipline, Parental involvement, and Inclusive classrooms & teachers are at the top of the NEEDs list.  However, in my opinion, It’s not so much a single need for “teaching to the lowest students” as there is a serious need for smaller classroom sizes to enable the instructor to meet the gambit of needs expressed by each student in the classroom appropriately. 

In addition to the improvement suggestions lastcall has made I would include the following:

I find it disturbing that America tends to place having babysitters for our youngest children ahead of the education of our young adults.  I want to see a societal system in place that allows for the care of younger children while also providing the best learning environment to our teens so that they may learn, develop, and grow into well educated, highly functioning adults.

We need a better system of education period. I am an advocate of developmentally appropriate educational practice.  We need to cultivate a better attitude toward education and to practice it as a nation, as a people valuing education.  How can we expect our children to take their education seriously if the parents do not?  If teachers and administrators and parents act like opposing factions in a cold war?  It’s all about the blame and what doesn’t work. What does work?  How can we make it work for everyone involved?

I believe one improvement would be a year round education system (ex. 6 weeks on, one week off ).  Another beneficial change would be smaller ratios of students to teachers (ex. 10-1).  The timing of our typical school day for our various aged children is also, flawed.  We need to send our younger students to school earlier and our teenagers to school later in the mornings.  Young children are at their best, early in the day, wherein teenage metabolisms lend toward later mornings (reaching into later afternoons).

We know the problems.  We have the solutions.  How can we convince our political powers that be and the average Mommas & Papas that the only way out of the poverty hole is high quality (but personally less convenient and much more costly) education? 

Poor systems of education and health care are the plagues of 21 century America.  They are the roots of our societal decline.

Problems.
1. discipline
2. Parental involvement
3. Inclusive classrooms & teachers teaching to the lowest students.

Discipline – I am amazed that schools spend so much time on curriculum and yet spend so little time on a cohesibe discipline plan. Parents rarely know that their child is in trouble until the child has been suspended or received some form of severe punishment.  This despite the fact that there are more lines of communication tahn ever before – ie. websites, email, phone, etc. Parents know instantly how there child is doing with grades thanks to online grades nowadays. However, there is no place for discipline.

Also, every teacher has their own discipline system generally because the school has no master plan. Every student starts every class with a clean slate despite their behavior in a prior class. Also, students have a hard time knowing what is expected of them as every classroom is different.

At the parochial school I worked at, students carried in their day planner a sheet that had a column for each day. The students were limited to two warnings per day before consequences kicked in. Now think about that. Currently in most schools, students generally receive about two warnings PER CLASS PERIOD. At this school, the discipline sheet was transferred from class to class. If they received 4 marks in a day – they were removed from class. Hypothetically, that is one warning from 4 different teachers. Now instead of students receiving essentially unlimited number of warnings, they know where they are when they step into each classroom.

The other benefit to this system was, parents could look at their students sheet each day and see how the child was behaving. They could see which classrooms their child behaved poorly in and they knew this before their child had received a major consequence. The school also used this system to determine who was eligible for different events based on their behavior. While it was not a GRADE, students were expected to receive fewer than 3 warnings per week at least half the time. Teachers were able to look at the students sheets and determine who was and was not eligible for events.

Typically public schools have very few consequences. Detentions are overused to the point that students don’t care. Also, detentions aren’t really a punishment anyway. The are simply a mandated study hall. When I was growing up detentions were painful because we were not allowed to do ANYTHING except sit at a desk silently for 45 minutes. We could not do homework. Now thye have to do homeowrk (which they would have to do anyway at home.) In reality a detention just gives the student more free time at home.

Parental involvement – My biggest frustration with many parents is they don’t care until the day report cards come out. Nevermind that your child’s grade has been posted online all semester. Nevermind that I called you and you never called me back. Once the report card comes out IT IS TOO LATE!!!

I think there should be some sort of fee that parents are exempt from if they volunteer a certain number of hours at school. I am not sure of the legalities of this but there has to be a way to get the parents involved in their child’s life. Maybe if a student has a certain GPA their parent has to come in for a parenting class. SOMETHING to get the students who need the help from their parents the most some help.

Inclusive classrooms and teaching to the lowest students – well again here I am stuck. I would like more tracking and more separation. Everyone is not good at everything I think it is time we acknowlege that again and allow the students that perform the best in each subject the opportunity to advance faster.

However, some things that we can do is involve special ed teachers in the general classroom more. Instead of sending the spec. ed. students down to the spec. ed room. Allow them in the general class but with the spec ed. teacher in the classroom as well. Maybe they are assisting the gen. ed teacher. Maybe they are observing the students work. I think we can more effectively help the students with learning disabilities function on the gen. ed. classroom, but we can’t just assume they can function there like everyone else. There has to be more and the teacher cannot do it alone or the whole class will receive essentially a spec. ed. lesson.

Well, there you go. I am not sure if I have actually solved anything but these are the first steps I would take to fix public schools. I can’t wait to see what other people think!

I must say, the link you have titled “Christian Madrass” is a rather extreme example.

Yes it is extreme, but unfortunately it is not uncommon.  There is a subset of parochial schools attached to fundamentalist churches from the right-wing and pentacostal persuasions.  It is my understanding that Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. parochial schools tend toward a more responsible curriculum.   

Teachers must now teach to the lowest common student. If I had a gifted son or daughter I would really have to consider sending them to a parochial school and here is why. Parochial schools do not have to offer special ed services.

MrsDoF confirms that the public school class cannot move much faster than the slowest student.  I bet public school apologists point to this difference as a major reason for the superior curriculum in mainline parochial schools, as if that worked in their defense.

Again, this is JUST my opinion. Obviously there are numerous exceptions. I am just speaking from my experience.

Sure – we understand that.  Still appreciate you sharing your experience, it helps the statistics and newspaper articles be a little more real.  Any thoughts on how to improve the public school experience?

I have worked as an aide in both private and public schools, and what I have observed is the attitude and skill of the classroom teacher counts very high as to whether the child gets quality education.

DOF’s link to the backstory of Escalante’s work in the classroom and lack of confidence of his co-workers speaks much about support of a skilled teacher.

One other notable difference between a public and parocial school is who the teachers teach to. With the trend in public education to be inclusive and many schools getting away from tracking students, the students that I see most affected our the higher gifted students. Teachers must now teach to the lowest common student. If I had a gifted son or daughter I would really have to consider sending them to a parochial school and here is why. Parochial schools do not have to offer special ed services. If you have a student that requires spec. ed services they probably will not be able to receive what they need in a parochial school. Now most parochila schools will offer accomodations to help those students who have an IEP that allows teachers to make modest accomodations, ie. having tests read, more time for tests, student allowed to have a spell checker with them at all times, etc. However, if they need a special resource teacher, that is generally supplied by the school district where that student s located.

Because the students, in my opinion, tend to be more advanced and because there are fewer students with IEPs in the parochial schools, I think the gifted students will get more out of the parochial school experience vs. the public school experience. (K-8) However, most public high schools have more to offer than most parochial high schools.

Again, this is JUST my opinion. Obviously there are numerous exceptions. I am just speaking from my experience.