The sad truth is that schools actually only have a minimal effect on the educational outcome for students, the dominant effect is the home environment and parental attitudes. I cared deeply about how well I did in exams when I was at school, and so do my children.
Politicians won't say this because they answer to voters and telling parents it's their fault wins no votes. It's the great fat elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. Forget incentives for children and bad teacher witch hunts. Better education for parents about how to meet their responsibilities is the way to go.
There are plenty of books on good parenting and how to raise happy and motivated kids. I know this because I have read several of them. In this, and other public forums we aren't beholden to political constraints. We can tell it like it is. There are no excuses.
>Better education for parents about how to meet their responsibilities is the way to go. //
I'd really love to have more autonomy, as a parent, in teaching my child. My preference would be for a mixture of homeschooling and regular school. That way, for example, I wouldn't be trying to jam a reasonable maths education in to the margins.
My ideals don't align with the school my child goes to, which is fine to some extent, excepting that they therefore think that I don't want to educate my children properly; ergo that I'm an irresponsible parent. With the budget they have I could do so much more.
I don't think those designing the curricula have a clue what they're educating the children for.
To get parents on side this needs to be addressed. Indeed does the assumption of long-term (4-18 in this country) structured education need to be challenged.
I agree. Although I think that the right combination of parenting and schooling can take a child much further than good parenting and bad schooling only. After all, the children spend lots of time at school.
By the way, care to share a list of the books on parenting you found more useful or interesting?
A few to start with. To be honest, even one good book is a great start.
Raising Happy Children - Jan Parker, Jan Stimpson, Dorothy Rowe
Playful Parenting - Lawrence J. Cohen
The Well-Trained Mind - Jessie Wise, Susan Wise Wise Bauer
I don't agree with everything they say, but they are pointed in the right direction. I don't home school our kids, but we do homework with them and I go out of my way to talk to them about anything they're interested in and look things up with them.
It does help that my mother was head teacher of a primary school and did an Open University degree in child psychology when I was a teenager.
We're engineers, right? When you've got a new piece of equipment or software or a new language to get to grips with we read the manuals and find out about best practices. It's the same with kids.
Huh? Value Added Modelling explicitly takes home environment into account, at least as much as is possible. (I.e., it usually controls for income, race, whether parents are married, and similar statistically available facts.)
The teacher discussed in this article was not a teacher of students with poor home environment. Home environment and past test results suggested her students should perform at the 97'th percentile. They actually scored considerably lower, at the 89'th.
What the the statistical chances that a particular group of students with those backgrounds would turn out to yield a performance at the 89th percentile? I've no idea, but say it's 1% for the sake of argument. That would mean that 1% of similar classes with averagely competent teachers would achieve that score, all other things being equal. That's many thousands of classes at the national level.
It's like the argument made in a UK court not long ago that someone must be guilty because the chances of the evidence being a coincidence were millions to one. Of course in a population of millions such a coincidence becomes almost inevitable.
I've no idea if this teacher was good or bad, but that's something that should be determined by expert, informed evaluation not mindless statistical witch hunt.
All metrics have errors. If we fire 99 bad teachers and 1 good one, we've improved education. The goal here is to improve education, not provide a permanent job for education grads.
I've no idea if this teacher was good or bad, but that's something that should be determined by expert, informed evaluation...
Why do you believe this method has an error rate lower than VAM? I agree the error rate is harder to characterize, but that isn't the same thing.
Politicians won't say this because they answer to voters and telling parents it's their fault wins no votes. It's the great fat elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about. Forget incentives for children and bad teacher witch hunts. Better education for parents about how to meet their responsibilities is the way to go.
There are plenty of books on good parenting and how to raise happy and motivated kids. I know this because I have read several of them. In this, and other public forums we aren't beholden to political constraints. We can tell it like it is. There are no excuses.