Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
How about something a little less drastic:
1) Requiring all schools to spend a least 70% of the education budget on classroom activity.
2) Make the maximum class size twenty students
3) Test every student in the system at the end of the year with a standardized test.
4) Make these standardized tests comphresnsive and sophisticated enough so that in order to teach for the test, you will have to teach the subject.
5) You don't proceed past a certain grade level unless you achieve a certain score.
6) Stats on every teacher are compiled. Teachers that do a good job of teaching students (test scores are higher at the end of the year than they were at the beginning of the year) get bonuses.
7) No tenure ever. Teachers whose students get worse are fired.
8) Principles whose schools consistently teach students get bonuses. Principles whose schools consistenlty perform poorly get fired.
9) No public funds can be used for lobbying and membership in the teacher's union is voluntary.
Doesn't seem that complicated to me.
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I suspect that if you could actually come up with the funds to get class sizes down below 20, you'd be able to get many of the remaining points (though I don't think you'll completely revise the country's labor laws and the union certification process, but other than that...)
But after NCLB, with Bush putting his funding requests at about 60% of the amount he baked into law in NCLB, why should anyone trust a Republican funding plan? However well intentioned, NCLB has become the poster-child for unfunded mandates.
