Thoughts While Mowing Part 2

While mowing yesterday my mind wandered – as it often does – and here are some of those thoughts.  Not too many answers but more questions….

  1. Is it possible to “quantify” a teacher’s impact on a student? Is there really a tool that can do this?  For every teacher?  Who has time to go through all of this data?
  2. Is it possible to “quantify” all of the other outside school factors that impact a student’s learning?  Think: nutrition, safety, sleep, family structure/support etc.  how would we change our education system with the data?
  3. What if every teacher in the state refused to give a standardized test?  What if we gave a standardized test every six weeks and got instant feedback?  Would this track student growth more efficiently?  
  4. What if every teacher assessed their students in an alternative way?  Portfolio, project, community outreach, etc.
  5. What would happen if we allowed teachers to teach, at max, four hours each day?  Then used those other hours to lesson plan?  No other required duties allowed.
  6. What if there was a law that banned scripted, test prep lessons?  Would teachers take more risks in the classroom?
  7. What if we changed school districts and matched them to county lines?  Does anything change?  If so is it so bad we regret it or after a few years does it work out?
  8. What if we only allowed people with masters degrees to be teachers?  Would this make a difference in the impact a teacher makes?
  9. What if school districts stopped funding athletics?  Athletics became a community club organization, similar to Europe.  Would this save any money?  Or would the loss of revenue from ticket sales make the difference?
  10. Why don’t teachers vote?  With early voting and mail-in ballots, what is so hard about this?  Would we vote if our name went into the mega-millions lottery?  Would this be a bad idea?

I don’t have too many answers here…just lots of questions – it seems to me that there are some things that teachers could do better.  There is also a lot of room for policy creators to improve.  Together – we will make a positive change!

Pardon any significant typos – this was done on my phone at my son’s soccer practice 🙂

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