Have you become concerned with our education system? Have you recently sat down with local teachers at coffee shops and discussed your local school district policies, efforts and educational system? Do you have children still in school? Well if you do or if you have then perhaps you have heard that the average attrition rate for new teachers is 50% in the first five years. This means that our new teachers spend years to get teaching credentials then go into teaching and quit their dreams within the first five years, if they last that long; but why? Ah ha and that is the $64 question then isnt it? Well many teachers do not believe that they went through all that education to become glorified babysitters of 20 to 30 kinds in the classroom, most of which are totally unruly. And when they have a parent teacher conference, Oh my Johnny would never do anything wrong he is a perfect child, so you must be a really bad teacher or a liar! Imagine getting that sort of response when you had parent meetings with some of your unruly students? A little tough to swallow isnt it? Worse the teachers complain about the constant testing they do on the children and how that takes away from teaching like the No Child Left Behind which brings me to my point on Accelerating Academic Achievement. If no child is left behind and you end up teaching to the middle, then you end up actually leaving a few behind and worse off no one is allowed to advance. We need to accelerate those who push to advance and concentrate on doing so while simultaneously bringing up the rear. If we dont, well, I just cannot imagine where our next generation of Super Star Scientists are coming from? Consider this in 2006. |
