How would you reform American education?
Off the top of my head, if I were to reform the American education system (assuming there were sufficient funds):
1. Make block scheduling universal, at least for high schoolers. That's more time in the day for a class, and an extra day to get homework done. Helps keep kids from being overloaded with homework form 8 different subjects on one night, and lets them focus on half of that.
2. Divide classes up by ability, especially for reading, math, and science in all grades. For large schools, there should be three levels - remedial, intermediate, and advanced. Not all students do well in a given subject. Dividing the classes up by level allows the kids who excel at a given subject to move forward and the kids that don't can go at the pace they need to go at to understand the material. Kids who do very well for their level one year can opt to move to the next level the next year. There would need to be some sort of setup so that kids moving up a level aren't too far behind when they enter the next level.
3. Barring any sort of learning disability, students should never officially move to the next grade until they are failing no academic subjects. No moving a kid onto the next grade just because he/she is "too old". If a student is "too old" for a grade, then that student has other issues that need to be dealt with and should be sent to an alternative school. But a student should be able to take the next grade level of course he/she has passed.
Arrangements should be made for courses that would need to be taken at another school (i.e. a student moves from the elementary school to a middle school but needs to take a class in the elementary school). Multiple failures of the same subject at the same grade level would indicate something else is wrong and additional evaluation and arrangements would need to be made (i.e. there might be some sort of unknown learning disability).
4. Move the start of class to later in the day, particularly for teens. Teens tend to have a natural sleep cycle that differs from what schools go by - they tend to naturally stay up later and get up later. If the students are too tired because they're up 3 hours earlier than they naturally would, then you're starting the day off with an additional disadvantage.
5. Increase parental involvement. There should be goals for the amount of parental participation in schools, whether it be attending school board meetings, volunteering, etc. Parents who care about their child's education are much more likely to have kids that do well at school.
6. Increase after school programs. Worried about kids getting into trouble after school? Give them something to do after school that interests them.
7. Very public budgeting. Any person should be able to get a full list of EXACTLY where the school spent money in an easy to read and understand format. You should be able to drill down in detail to the the box of pencils the school bought on April 5th. I'd like to see it easily accessible on the internet. This will help money to be budgeted properly and let parents raise questions like "Why are we only spending $X on books but spending $5X on the football team?".
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Re: How would you reform American education?
Originally Posted by Chaigidel
That's everyone student's dream isn't? Well, I think the current time frame is fine. Students aren't denied their 9 hours of sleep a day. they are denying that themselves.
ing stoned.
