"Romney's view is to heavily encourage the private sector to increase admissions to private education."
I'd love have encouragement to choose where to educate my kids and since we homeschool it'd be awesome to get money for that or to send our kids to a Montessori school. We pay the same taxes and it'd be nice to reap some of the benefits in the education we choose. There's a catch though. I learned, through experience, that when people give you money they start to think they have a say in where and how you spend it. Since we are trying to escape from endless testing and negative judgements on our kids based on if their views and behavior lead to an effecient classroom, the government getting involved makes me nervous.
In our current system, NCLB brings higher standards but does not provide more professional development opportunities for the teachers. That is like giving kids with shitty teachers more negative consequences for scoring low and expecting they will magically get smarter. It has brought up test scores and has probably been enough of stinger to help some teachers up their game, but I think the main reason is that they are figuring out the tests and teaching directly to them and cutting out anything not seen as important such as art, science and social studies. This type of fear based motivating can only do so much and spreads the fear and stress of the teachers to the kids. If we "throw more money" at this problem schools are just going to do more of the same.
I think a major paradigm shift is needed. Lay off the conformity and systematic teaching. Kids are individuals, just like adults!! They learn in different ways, at different TIMES! If we could see the whole person and honor what they care about and are good at, while encouraging them in other skills at their own pace, we might start to see kids that are confident critical thinkers and retain the information they learn. This might mean that kids (GASP) don't learn to read and do more difficult arithematic in Kindergarten or even first grade. They might actually gain an appreciation and understanding first and then learn the skills! Just because we figured out that we can cram certain skills down kids throats at earlier ages doesn't mean that's the best method.
I agree with seven that everyone loves to blame "bad, lazy teachers", but when you're only a part of a broken system there is only so much you can do. Of course, some teachers are amazing and can makes a difference despite the cards stacked against them, but imagine what they could do in an environment that is condusive to everyone learning.
