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Originally Posted by itshotinvegas
There isn't "the" solution. I qualified this in my first post when I stated 'any discussion about funding". It's merely one example of inefficient spending.
I agree that there isn't any one solution, but what you're concerned about is way down the list IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by itshotinvegas
We should stop comparing the two countries because by and large, in the US, it's a local issue, and it's not really productive to compare national aveages.
There are a number of reasons not to directly compare countries and draw definite conclusions about what that means without considering the whole context. I'm simply providing the comparison to show that what you assume to be a big issue may not actually be one.
Saying it's a "local issue" highlights one of the problems the US faces. National averages work quite well here, because we have a fairly equitable system that doesn't lead to wildly different results. Large inequities lead to "local" problems, which can be a nice way of saying inner city problems, or low income problems, or minority neighborhood problems.
But this response has neatly dodged my question and supposition (changed "the" to "a" to reflect the point you raised):
"Why is it you're so sure that
a solution lies in merit-based pay? It seems to me that will do nothing more than make an existing problem worse - too much emphasis on standardized testing, and rewarding districts, schools, and teachers whose students achieve the best results on said tests."
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Originally Posted by CheckCheckFold
3. There will be a universal limit to # of students per class, can base this # on some simple studies.
I think most of your ideas have at least some (and often a lot of) merit. This one, not so much IMO.
I don't think there's much denying that with an unlimited budget, smaller class sizes are better. There's a lower limit, because there are benefits to students learning together and from each other, learning to interact and work together, etc. But because we don't have unlimited budgets, I think a lot of the time, too much is made of class size when there might be other places to spend money that would provide more of a benefit. And deciding on one ideal class size for everyone, everywhere, isn't a good or efficient way of doing things. Unless you mean a fairly high limit of 30 or more that no one would exceed, and then some classes would be smaller. But I would hope this wouldn't have much of an impact anyway, as it wouldn't change many actual class sizes.
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Originally Posted by Inso0
Yeah that was a cute little anti-religion tangent that completely ignores the blanket superiority of parochial schools, even those in otherwise incredibly shitty districts.
Let's assume for a second that you are correct about there being a "blanket superiority of parochial schools". Have you considered why that might be? Do these parochial schools have a mix of students from different cultures, socio-economic background, family stability, parent involvement, learning abilities, English language proficiency, as other schools? In my observation, schools with unique programming and high achievement rates never have the same composition of students, and that's the biggest reason for their differing results.