In a recent article, Washington Post educational reporter, Jay Mathews, recently cited Seven Ways in Which Politicians are Dumb About Schools. He has listened to and watched the political rhetoric and compiled his list of dumb thoughts based on his observations.
Here are what Mathews’ dubs as politicians’ dumb thoughts about schools:
- A good measure of school quality is average SAT scores.
- It is bad to have programs that encourage educators to teach to a test.
- It would be better if schools stopped promoting low-achieving students to the next grade.
- Lowering class size is always a good idea.
- It is education policy and not specific school success that matters.
- Schools need more money.
- Electing new leaders will help fix schools.
What do you reccommend that educators do with under achieving students? Not promoting them does sound like the thing to do. Yet this too poses a problem when a student is 2, 3 or more years older than his classmate. In my opinion, the schools are not the problem...the parents and society in general is what poses the problems in our schools. When parents become accountabble for their children, education will improve.