Having schools conforming to educational standards may be important, but there is a difference between even a country-wide system that proposes (and tests, etc) educational standards, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, government's involvement in education. These two may be completely independent. Indeed, the former (standards) may exist without the latter (government-controlled education).
Sorry libertarianism may be popular on HN, but it's almost undoubtedly not the solution to our education problems.
I am all for standards, but never once brought up government controlled education or defended it. Please don't attribute an argument to me that I didn't make, which is exactly what the OP did by inferring that I defend liberal education policies.
There are massive problems in our education system, my mom's a teacher and tells me about them almost every time we talk, but they aren't problems that will be solved by the government stepping back and letting the locals take control. In fact, that'd make things much worse. Teachers are barely accountable for teaching and are pretty much glorified baby sitters for the most part (my mom says this). The kids who do well go to charter schools, or have parents who give them homework, or go to tutors, or go to private school. The kids who don't do well or perform below grade-level have single-parent families, probably living in poverty, and for the most part slip through the cracks in the "system."
I think the first step to the problem is stop throwing away money on things that don't work-- STAR, SAT9, etc standardized testing. The only people benefiting from this are the people who make/sell the tests. Teachers end up forming their curriculum around the tests and it becomes their singular goal to meet/exceed expectations which are based around the last years results. So what you lose are art, music, PE, auto-shop, computer lab classes-- anything that isn't specifically tested. So what happens? Kids hate school because all they're doing is memorizing a bunch of stuff that won't help them in life.
I think some steps in the right direction would be:
-make teachers more accountable for their students success and make tenure based on that
-bring back vocational schools or specialized school (people in the 70s who went to these types of schools could get jobs at Lockheed Martin and Boeing building planes)
-quit wasting time on standardized tests
-make school fun -- music, art, photography, PE, computer lab are the classes I remember looking forward to, it keeps you going to school instead of ditching. Possibly even use these classes as an incentive.
-get rid of GATE, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
-Teachers should be paid according to how well their students perform/improvements made. This way the best teachers would have an incentive to take on those students struggling instead of the way it currently is where the best teachers teach "honors classes" and have kids with parents who also help teach them while at home or hire tutors.
That's my two-cents and I'll get off my soapbox, but I still think standards are generally a good thing and do more good than harm.
Tests at a primary (elementary) school level are a waste of the teacher's and the students' time. This is not an argument for no govt. provision of education however. The biggest thing that I hear from teachers in NZ is that the Ministry of Ed is doing its best, through a variety of stupid policies regarding untested National Standards for primary school kids, to demote teachers from being education professionals to mere technicians. Teachers have survived for years educating a lot of people with freedom to adapt their delivery of education how they see fit. Now, however, under pressure from all sides to be "accountable" (not real accountability, but performance destroying, lip-service style accountability) teachers are being destroyed as independent professionals as the bureaucracy crushes and bows to political will.
The biggest problem with this political will is that applying pressure to the teachers is politically easy. They get all this holiday, they just play with kids all day "how easy is their job??? zomg" /sarcasm. The real problems with most bad kids start at home and are best addressed with some sort of intervention from the very beginning of the kids life from social workers monitoring the family home and environment and various other early stage policies designed to create and mentor the parents into raising a good child, not a drain on society. But supposedly, policies like this ,which are normally far more effective than simple standardised testing, are "socialism" and therefore bad.
I literally couldn't agree with you more, however my mom who has been a teacher for 30+ years, and is a great one by the way, has admitted many times that once a bad teacher gets tenure it's almost impossible to get rid of them unless they do something truly heinous. That to me is a shame because really it's just harming the kids. I was lucky to have for the most part good teachers growing up and I know that it makes all the difference in the world. My 3rd/4th grade teachers were amaazing compared to my 6th grade teacher. Even looking back I can remember science demos those teachers put on to get us excited to learn, whereas my 6th grade teacher was basically lazy and did the bare minimum.
Tests are a huge waste of time and effort, but they also hijack the curriculum also which is even worse!
-make teachers more accountable for their students success and make tenure based on that...-Teachers should be paid according to how well their students perform/improvements made.
If you throw out the tests, how do you know if students were successful or not, or whether they improved?
>how do you know if students were successful or not
Well, we'd first have to work out why they're there in the first place. Are we trying to maximize their income when they get jobs (in which case there are better metrics, but they'll take longer before you can use them)?. Are we trying to make them 'well rounded citizens' (define it, and then maybe you can test it)? Is it just tax-payer babysitting (school violence would be the only relevant metric than perhaps)?
You could just evaluate the teacher themselves, and as long as they seem to be competent and honest, you could just rely on their evaluations. A kind of 'web of trust' model for testing.
I agree there needs to be some metric, but the standardized testing creates more problems because like I said that goal begins to change the curriculum and become the all encompassing goal.
I'm not sure about the solution to the specific problem you've raised but I'm sure there are better informed people who can solve this. There has to be some solution where kids progress can effectively measure, but also doesn't have the tendency to completely overshadow the curriculum.
And, please, avoid ad hominem attacks.