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Gail .
  • Gail .
  • Myrtle Beach, SC
  • United States

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Improve k-12 educations

I hear a lot of arguments about ending or promoting standardized testing - how they are good / bad for students. But I have never heard someone propose the simple idea of putting cameras in the classroom, and broadcasting the class on the Internet. Then permit parents to leave feedback and move their student into a different teacher's class if the parent thinks it best for the child.

If everyone wanted a specific teacher, then that teacher has it right and the unchosen teachers need to be replaced or re-educated about educating (perhaps by demoting them to teachers' aides to the good teachers)

this would accomplish many things.
1) The teacher, being knowingly observed, will be less complacent
2) Students who do better at home could learn on-line, using email to ask question.
3) Adults who need basic skills could get a basic education for free from home. (Record the class on You-Tube like videos)
4) Bad teachers who don't know that they are bad teachers will be given the feedback they desperately need (and can't be assessed by a principal in a one-class a semester or a year observance)

Let the market decide who is a good teacher and who isn't. They will prove a better indicator than tests. (Need to get past union objections for this, and that's another story.)

What do you think?

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  • Zared Schwartz

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    Oct 1 2012: The application of technology is essiential to the educational system. However, changing the dynamics of the system is far more pratical for sucess of the system than application of technology in the system. We need to standarize a system to rate teachers in a unbias matter, introduce langauges to students at lower grades (possibly at elementary school), focus on sciences, social studies, and the arts, and increase collaboration by creating better incentives for social interaction. Moreover, it should take more training to be a teacher with a direct relationship to pay to comprensate the training.

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