Top 10 Ten Things Our Schools Need to Change
10. A Preventative Health Measure
Obesity rates are on the rise, and everyone has heard the cries to make schools healthier places to learn. There is evidence that students’ academic performance and the development of healthy lifestyle habits can be enhanced by the implementation of enforced physical activity and the provision of nutritious food.
Students are kept active in gym class, even though it doesn’t teach anything intellectual. Research has shown that students benefit academically by engaging in physical work. Because schools should prioritize the well-being of their students’ minds and bodies, gym classes are on par with other academic subjects.
Motivating kids to exercise is just half the battle; ensuring they consume healthy foods is equally crucial. Because junk food is more affordable, most schools don’t provide students with healthier options. There is a correlation between eating nutritious food and having better grades, therefore spending money to improve school lunches would be a wise investment. On top of that, when kids eat better, they’re generally happier, which makes class go more smoothly.
9. Improved Instruction in Essential Life Skills
A person’s knowledge of history, mathematics, physics, and literature is likely to be extensive if they achieve high school graduation at the age of 18. Will kids be prepared for the responsibilities of maturity as a result of this? The majority just aren’t. Many people lack the necessary life skills, such as the ability to manage their money, their time effectively, eat healthily, and even interact socially. Take high school seniors as an example; how many of them have a firm grasp on the ins and outs of credit? Many young individuals have problems with their initial credit card, thus there aren’t enough of them. Indeed, credit card corporations are well-aware of their lack of knowledge and take advantage of them. Important life skills could be taught to pupils and end up being one of the most valuable things they learn.
One could argue that these lessons should be instilled in youngsters by their parents. True, but that doesn’t mean every parent can or will. Everyone would learn the fundamentals they need to survive in the real world if classes taught life lessons.
8. Reforming Tenure
The lives of many pupils are profoundly impacted by exceptional educators. Also, some educators stick around in your dreams even after you’ve grown up. Horrifying educators like these continue to abuse students for decades. They probably would have gotten fired from previous employment if they had behaved in such a manner. However, they are guaranteed employment due to their profession as educators.
Unqualified educators can have an impact on the public purse as well. Reassignment centers were available in New York City for educators who were facing allegations of wrongdoing. Just sitting around doing nothing was plenty for the 600 instructors spread out across 13 locations throughout the city.They might remain motionless for a long time—maybe even years. The anticipated cost of paying instructors to do nothing in 2012 was $22 million. There were allegations of sexual harassment against some of the instructors, yet they were all still paid.
Despite their closure, the reassessment centers reveal a deeper issue with the teachers’ unions. A terrible teacher has the power to drastically alter a student’s life trajectory, however removing them from the classroom is an extremely difficult task, which is terrible. While teacher unions have a significant role, weeding out incompetent members should not be difficult.
7. No Assignments Due on Holidays or Weekends
This may come across as patronizing students, but why should working people have a greater right to vacation time off than students do? In reality, a break is necessary for everyone. When individuals possess these, they tend to be more productive. Students would have more time for extracurricular activities and their work would not suffer as a result of having weekends off. You should instead set aside specific times to work and then use your leisure time to relax and rejuvenate.
6. Study Hall Is Required
Teachers’ desires to make the most of class time and assign homework outside of class are reasonable. Furthermore, research has shown that students’ academic performance improves when given an appropriate quantity of homework. While it’s true that homework is crucial, studies have shown that requiring pupils to study for a certain amount of time each day can have a far greater impact. Finding the drive to complete schoolwork at home is a challenge for kids. They could try to skip it, become distracted, or hurry through it.Students are more likely to do their assignments and do better on tests if they are required to attend study hall instead of a single lesson.
5. Eliminate Common Tests
Standardized testing is reasonable in principle. You can tell if a student has mastered the content by looking at their test scores. However, it has far too many issues. There is a bias in standardized testing that disproportionately affects low-income students, Black Americans, and Latinos. Some school boards even set quotas for certain racial groups because of how wide the disparity is. While 68% of white students and 82% of Asian students in Virginia were required to pass standardized math exams, 46% of Black kids were not. Due to the lack of a clear cause, researchers are still unsure of the reason for the gap. Standardized testing has biased origins, which should be noted as well. Nicholas Lemann, a professor at Columbia University, claims that standardized testing was instituted in the 1940s to exclude Jewish students from the elite Ivy League universities.
Companies developing the exams often lack expertise in the subject area of the educational institution they are evaluating, which is another issue. The exams are quite strict and don’t take anything into account.There is a common belief among Chicago Teachers’ Union members that “standardized testing programs often aim to judge students against measures that have little or nothing to do with what the classroom teacher has taught or is expected to teach.”
The cost of standardized testing is high as well; test-making and grading firms receive millions of dollars annually. There are far more effective instruments, like nutritious food, that might be purchased with that enormous sum of money. However, schools persist in employing this costly and prejudiced method to gauge each student’s value.
4. Salary Bonuses for Educators
The practice of giving workers a fair wage is important to capitalism. Bonuses are also given out in various fields when specific goals are met. However, this is not how instructors are compensated. In most cases, the salary of a good teacher and a bad teacher with the same amount of years of experience is equal. It’s not fair to students, competent instructors, or taxpayers. That is why merit pay has its proponents, among them President Obama. Teachers would receive a base salary plus bonuses for reaching specific goals under a merit pay system.
When it comes to merit pay, there are two major obstacles. First, there’s the worry that educators may skip out on actual instruction in favor of focusing on earning a bonus and manipulating their students.Unions are also staunchly opposed to the plan since it contradicts their principles of fair compensation. Still, research shows that children do better academically when given merit money, so it’s not all bad.
3. Compensation for Students
A major issue is the lack of motivation among students. Telling a fourteen-year-old that they need to do well on their math test in order to get into college and subsequently earn a decent job is a tough task. The human brain isn’t wired that way because there’s too much of a lag period between the effort required and the payoff. Alternatively, if students were to get bonuses for their efforts, they would have a more concrete and immediate incentive to finish the assignment. Students in struggling areas benefit from financial incentives, even if it’s just to show up to class and do their assignments. Grades improved, attendance went up, and the graduation rate went up in schools that paid their pupils.
2. High Schools to Begin Less Early
On average, high schools in the US start at 7:59 in the morning. In order to cut costs on busing—bus drivers often work two routes—schools begin that early. They begin by collecting and dropping off pupils from middle and high school, and then go on to elementary school.
School starts earlier to save money, but that’s not great for kids. The answer is biological. When adolescent circadian rhythms begin to change, typically around the age of fourteen, sleep-wake cycles begin to reverse. Even after eleven o’clock at night, their brains don’t start secreting the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. Additionally, for optimal performance, teenagers require approximately nine hours of sleep each night. They will be less productive pupils if you get them up early because it would disrupt their natural sleep cycle. After 8:30 in the morning, students’ overall performance improved, according to a study of 9000 schools. Because teenagers were so much more vigilant, they also discovered that fewer car accidents included them.
1. Education All Year
Routines in school aren’t very efficient. The first nine months of the school year are devoted to instruction, followed by a three-month break. And then in September, they are either made to remember everything that happened the prior year out of thin air or made to spend the first few weeks going over everything again.
Many cities had various educational calendars before the early 20th century, which is why we have summer breaks. So that textbook distribution and standardized testing could proceed more smoothly, the schedule was subsequently standardized nationwide. Students in urban areas used to spend roughly the same amount of time in class as modern students do, with shorter breaks spaced out throughout the year rather than all at once during summer holidays.Regular research has proven that year-round schooling would have far-reaching benefits. Less review and more continual practice for pupils. A change would be challenging because summer vacation is deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche.
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