Tuesday, June 21, 2005

OUTSOURCE MORE TEACHING TO INDIA (Starting with grading)

Outsourcing hasn't gone far enough: the U.S. should start using Indian-based teachers. Smart, inexpensive, English-speaking Indians already help Americans with software design, computer support and tax preparation. Through satellites and the Internet workers in India can be connected, with mere millisecond delays, to Americans in need. Outsourcing jobs to India has saved Americans billions while actually increasing the quality and competitiveness of many of our industries. We should now apply outsourcing to education, the American industry most in need of improvement.

Like most teachers, I find grading to be the least interesting aspect of my job. I would gladly teach extra classes if I could in return be freed from the drudgery of grading. My employer, Smith College, should hire a few score smart Indians to grade for their faculty and in return Smith should expect its professors to spend more time in the classroom. High schools should similarly outsource their grading to Indians. Because U.S. teachers find grading so mind-numbingly boring, outsourcing grading would make teaching a far more attractive profession, thereby allowing high schools to recruit better teachers without necessarily having to increase salaries.

I suspect that Indians would do a far better job grading than U.S. teachers currently do. Because of their much lower average standard of living, earning a few dollars an hour grading American school assignments would be a fantastic job for many talented Indians. Indians would therefore bring an enthusiasm to grading that most American teachers, including myself, lack.

Indians, moreover, could do more than just grade papers. They could run entire classes. Online college courses such as those offered by the University of Phoenix show the possibility of teaching via the Internet, and teenagers' love of video games proves that students are capable of long-term thoughtful interactions with their computer. High schools and colleges should use the Internet to have some of their classes remotely taught. The teachers would have audio and video connections with their American students. It would be prohibitively expensive to hire one American teacher for every five students. But because wages in India are so much lower than in the U.S., schools could afford, say, 5:1 student: teacher ratios if they outsourced education.

Of course, teachers in India wouldn't be able to discipline their American students, so the outsourcing would only work for well-behaved students. But students with Indian teachers could benefit from large amounts of individual "face" time with their instructors. Low student / teacher ratios would also allow schools to offer a diversity of classes that they couldn't afford without using outsourcing.

High school math and science programs would greatly benefit from outsourcing. Because American adults with strong math and science skills have very good job prospects, it's difficult for high schools to attract strong teachers in these fields. But for wages far below what even high school food service workers make, very talented and technically proficient Indians would love to become teachers.

If Indians weren't permitted to teach entire classes, they could at least act as tutors or teaching assistants. Every high school math teacher, for example, could be given an Indian helper who would be available from 5-10 pm each night to help students with their homework. To prevent any child from being left behind, schools could give students in danger of failing two hours of individual tutoring time with an Indian teacher each weeknight. And at the other end of achievement gifted students could be assigned tutors who would facilitate their exploration of advanced topics.

Outsourcing wouldn't have to be limited to hiring Indians, and indeed foreign language classes could greatly benefit from outsourcing teaching to non-English speaking countries. For example, given the large number of poor people in the world who speak and write Spanish, there is no reason every American taking Spanish shouldn't have his own private instructor. Even earning just $2 an hour would be a fantastic life-changing wage for many Spanish speakers, yet at this low wage schools could afford to hire private teachers for each of their students.

Ironically, outsourcing education would make it easier for parents to home school their children. While staying at home, children could use the Internet to connect with teachers across the world. Parents, furthermore, would have many possible classes and teachers to choose from and so could insure that their children's education reflected their parental values.

Having U.S. students taught by foreigners would increase Americans' knowledge of other cultures. Rather than merely reading about other peoples, our students would get to talk with people throughout the world. Similarly, outsourcing education would allow many foreigners to interact directly with Americans and not base their judgments of us on how Americans are depicted in Hollywood movies.

Some of the best minds on the planet are trapped in poor countries, currently doomed to a miserable standard of living. But through educational outsourcing U.S. schools could directly tap these minds employing them to teach our children. Such outsourcing would not only lift many third world people out of poverty but also help the U.S. grow her 21st century knowledge economy.


Source






TESTING WORKS: SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

High-stakes achievement tests that determine if a child is promoted to the next grade or held back a year are becoming more commonplace, and a growing number of school systems have learned that the threat of retention can be a strong incentive. However, the practice's effect on kids who are held back is still in dispute.

For New York City fifth graders who took a key citywide test in April, it was the first time that their scores counted, and even better students felt the pressure. "There were points when he was not sleeping very well," Kathleen Gomez said of her fifth grade son, Diego, who spent months on test preparation even though he was in no danger of failing. "He had such a sense that every test they take is going to stay with them forever."

For New York kids who did not make the grade, letters will arrive over the next few days inviting them to summer school. The number of fifth graders who tested proficient in reading soared 19.5 percent on this year's citywide exam - the first in which members of their class had to pass to advance a grade. The number proficient in math climbed 15.2 percent, the school district said this month. A year earlier, 14,695 fifth graders failed one or both of the tests, but with promotion on the line that number dropped to 5,636.

Chicago also saw achievement test scores rise in the late 1990s after it began requiring children in the third, sixth and eighth grades to pass in order to advance. Scores also rose in Florida after it began requiring third graders to pass a reading test to advance a grade, and in Texas after it implemented a similar requirement for third and fifth graders. "When you have a tough retention policy, at every grade level, the children get better," said Paul Vallas, who was the schools chief in Chicago when it adopted high-stakes testing and who now leads the public schools in Philadelphia.

What remains in dispute is the long-term effect on the students who are held back. A report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research said that while Chicago's promotion rules led to better overall academic performance in some grades, they hurt the kids who were held back. Many of the children forced to repeat a grade fell further behind, dropped out or languished in special education classes, said University of Chicago researcher Melissa Roderick. Part of the problem, she said, was a lack of remedial help. "These kids were really, really, really far behind," Roderick said. "For the kids who are being left back, retention does not work."

New York City's third graders faced a promotion-retention exam for the first time last year, and of the 2,702 who failed and were held back for a full year, nearly 38 percent failed the test again this spring. "It's heartbreaking to look these kids who have been held back two times," said Jill Chaifetz, executive director of the nonprofit group Advocates for Children of New York. "They are older than everyone else. They are taller than everyone else. They feel like failures."

New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said school officials are still looking for the best ways to help those children. Klein said the answer isn't returning to automatic promotions but devoting more attention to children before they fail. "The level of our intervention is much more sophisticated now than it has ever been," he said.

In the past two years, the city has boosted aid to struggling students, including holding extra classes on Saturdays. The most recent tests showed that pass rates were higher among students who attended that extra day. Other help has come from "intervention" experts like Patrick Kutschke, a reading teacher at Public School 101 in East Harlem, who spends his time working with groups of five or six children who have trouble mastering basic skills. High stakes testing, Kutschke said, has certainly grabbed students' attention. "Some of them come in nauseated," he said. "They say, 'Mr. K, I really didn't sleep at all last night.' They know the test matters."

But, he said, he believes it will be classroom work, not testing pressure, that will raise their scores. "A lot of these kids were getting to third grade without the skills they needed to do well," he said. "Those are the kids we need to work on."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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