What is the answer for public education? It is constantly being blasted from everyone with "the problem with education is...". Everyone seems to know what is wrong with today's schools, however there doesn't seem to be a clear direction that schools are moving toward. The reason educational reform is so difficult is that we do not all agree on the best approach.
Quite simply, education is immensely complex. There is somewhat of a bureaucratic mess surrounding it that makes progress or even simple changes near impossible.
There are three general schools of thought:
1. REFORM- the extreme of this philosophy believes that the school needs to be completely overhauled from the ground up and spare nothing in the process.
2. REBUILD- this philosophy is the middle ground. Believers in the rebuild approach realize there are problems with education but they know how hard change is. They also believe that there are some good things going on and believe the answer is to rebuild the existing structure that corrects errors, but not doing a complete overhaul.
3.REMAIN- The extreme of this philosophy is to do nothing. "It worked for my dad and his dad before him, and his dad before him ..." Even those in the "Remain" philosophy accept that there are problems in education, but contend that there have always been problems and will always be problems so any large efforts are wasteful because in the end the education in America is a success.
The goal of this site is to slowly work through some of these complexities to give a better understanding of America's educational state. Most individuals fall some where in the middle of this spectrum. By identifying where you are on this spectrum you can begin to see what you can do and what resources are available to help education.
TeacherAde is a service. Just as having a teachers aid in your classroom for service to the teacher and the student, this blog will be a service to teachers, parents, students, administrators, reformers, and those just interested in the state of education. Topics include the issues in education and responses to those issues. This is also a platform for resources. TeacherAde will highlight the best technology resources, companies/ endowment organizations, and services that help teachers.
Let me hear from you:
Where do fall on this spectrum? Why?
