A very straight-forward way is available to quickly and effectively improve American public schools. It is not expensive, and may even be less expensive than existing standard efforts. It involves operation of three physically separate parallel schools in a District. Attendance at specific schools would not depend on academic ability or knowledge, but on each individual student's social compatibility. Absolutely no discrimination exists because each student has the choice available to attend any of them.
| Description |
| Flexibility |
| Student's Choices |
| Results |
Initially, every student would have unlimited choice of which school to attend. As long as a student reasonably followed generally acceptable social rules in his/her conduct, that choice would remain unlimited. However, if a student exhibits violent behavior, or regularly behaves disruptively, or regularly and openly flaunts the established rules of society and school, that choice would become restricted. No Principal or teacher would determine or control such a limitation; the student would. And, even if a student's behavior caused required attendance at a specific school, a number of ways are always available for him/her to earn enough respect to again have broader choice.
A central premise here is that there are some students that need to learn very basic inter-personal skills in order to eventually become part of adult society. Existing public school systems don't have very effective ways of dealing with such students, and they tend to represent danger and disruption for an educational environment. Once such students learn adequate behavior skills (and attitudes), such students could become welcome participants in any classroom. This essay is meant to offer a possibility in that direction.
Nearly all potential "solutions" for the terrible situation of the American public school system seem to be "top-down" concepts. A central bureaucracy decides the rules and conditions (and money) and then they try to impose that somewhat artificial environment on masses of students. Won't work! People, students, are a diverse lot! Rigid structures and rules will always fail. In addition, the whole concept of education is far more complicated than normally perceived. Rather than a teacher jamming thoughts into students' heads, it is crucially important to enable the many students to first be in a receptive condition for learning to occur. Rather than any authoritarian, top-down structure, this approach is more of a "grass roots" approach, where each individual student always has most of the control of what choices are available to him/her. For this reason alone, it seems like a viable possibility! Some of the students might even come to appreciate that element of choice, rather than having to entirely live within authoritarian decrees from some distant bureaucrat!
The American public school system faces an assortment of huge obstacles. Many students are apathetic. Some teachers are unmotivated or incompetent. Some schools include physically dangerous environments. All school administrators are limited by various discrimination laws in doing much about any of this. As a result, many parents have concerns for the safety and the education of their children. Many feel that their only valid choices are to send their kids to private school or to move to a house in a district or town known for adequate school system performance.
There IS another alternative! The public school system COULD respond appropriately to the diversity of school children WITHOUT discriminating against anyone! ALL students will be able to receive the best possible education for that student. The cost to accomplish this can be very reasonable --- it might even be LESS EXPENSIVE overall than existing system expenditures! Students would attend one of three physically separate, different schools, NOT dependent on educational achievement or ability or test results (which would be potentially discriminatory) but rather, dependent on a number of aspects of behavior. Students that generally do their homework and attend classes and behave reasonably would always have the choice to transfer to whichever school he/she chooses. Often, that might be the high-motivation school, that could accomplish the most educating, because there would be very few disruptions or incidents of violence there. Even students that had extremely low grades or test scores could attend that school, as long as their BQ (Behavior Quotient) was satisfactory (see below). Low-achieving students can often thrive in such a motivating environment, and mixtures of students of different achievement levels would probably be good for all of the students.
The intermediate-motivation school would have many "normal behavior" students. The third school would be where disruptive or violent or totally unmotivated students would attend class, and that school WOULD have metal detectors and extremely strict discipline. Each school year in a student's education would be treated separately, so a student in the trouble-makers' school who matured and discovered motivation, could begin to consistently do his/her homework and attend classes and behave in a civil manner, and he/she would be given the choice to attend one of the other two schools the following year. Motivated students, of all educational abilities, would have the opportunity to attend school in a motivated, vibrant, safe educational environment.
(There are no precise ways of describing these three school environments. I have chosen to use levels of motivation to describe them, but that would not always be the case. An extremely motivated, extremely intelligent, but extremely disruptive student could certainly wind up in the lo-mot school. Similarly, a well-behaved, possibly quiet, student with limited ability and minimal motivation could easily spend an entire education in the hi-mot school.)
Anyone who has interacted with the Public School system quickly sees the great diversity of motivations and abilities of students. Up to about thirty years ago, students were "tracked" into classes with other students with similar education and ability. This situation allowed teachers to teach at a rate fast enough to not bore the students but slow enough to allow most to grasp each subject area. Then, the Federal courts felt that minority school children were being effectively discriminated against by this system. The courts found that such children were commonly tracked together in the "lower tracks" due to poor performance on standardized IQ-type tests. When a teacher taught such a class, it was felt that possibly less effort would be expended in teaching them. Whether or not that was true, the conclusion was that such tests were biased TOWARD white children and AGAINST minorities who may be less proficient at taking tests. The net effect of all this was to make "tracking" illegal. All students were to be distributed equally and randomly to eliminate any "tracking" and school busing was added to eliminate inter-school differences. These added aspects were intended to accomplish an additional goal. By putting disadvantaged minority youth into the same classes with white, motivated, conscientious children, it was hoped that the disadvantaged youth would become motivated to match their white classmates.
Admirable goals, to be sure. They even sound pretty logical. In some individual cases, those goals were achieved. However, in general, the premise has led to an inferior modern public educational system. Various specific causes seem to be involved. Three seem to be particularly significant.
The premise being offered here is an alternate solution, which does not involve the environment described above but still complies to all laws. Each and every student would be in an intellectually and socially appropriate atmosphere for greatest opportunity for learning. There would result some variation of level between schools or classes, but ANY INDIVIDUAL STUDENT COULD ATTEND ANY OF THEM relatively irrespective of his or her native ability.
This new system is based on student/parent motivation rather than the student's test-based perceived ability. In the first couple grades, all students would attend similar classes. Specific additional new records would be maintained regarding each student to maintain a year-long cumulative motivation rating, or what I call Behavior Quotient. As a starting point for discussion, I would suggest something like the following:
Many of these matters could be automatically maintained by the school's existing computer system (attendance subjects). The others could easily be added to a school's current record-keeping system with very little new expense or administrative time or effort. As a student's education progresses, this cumulative year's total would be used to determine which of three (or more) different schools he/she would attend for the following year. Since a well-behaved, motivated student could accumulate over 200 plus points, even a few "mess ups" could still happen by "real" kids and still total the +100 necessary for entrance to the most-motivated school for the next year. Scores above zero would qualify for the moderately motivated school next year. Scores below zero would cause attendance at a school for unmotivated students.
Please note that the most passive, quiet, lowest-ability student would receive +90 for perfect attendance and another +90 for turning in all the required homework, so that student would easily have his/her choice of schools. Each student would have access to his/her current BQ score for that year, possibly on the report cards. If, late in a school year, a student was at +80 and really wanted to attend the highest motivation school the next year, he/she could volunteer to help several teachers or his/her parents could start attending PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences.
.An appeal system would exist for making adjustments for extenuating circumstances (in both directions) and for showing flexibility in borderline cases. Individuals or parents might even elect NOT to attend a higher motivation school if desired (possibly to participate in a stronger sports team or take a more comprehensive Shop class or for any other reason.)
A hyper-active student or one otherwise affected by medical or mental conditions would have the opportunity of appeal regarding a specific personal choice of school.
Since each year is treated separately, at any point any student could easily change behavior, attendance and/or homework patterns to qualify for a higher-motivated school for the following year. No one would be doomed to a "low track" forever. Even a student with poor study habits and low standardized testing scores could qualify for and belong in the highest-motivation school (although he/she may initially get poor grades as a result.) Such a student would be in an environment where improvement was likely, so even initial poor grades might quickly improve. In such a school environment, teachers could encourage students who were grasping the material quickly to help those students that might be having more difficulty, and the students would probably all grow from such experiences.
.Another important aspect of this system is the (publicized) length of the school day. If the low-motivation school day length is 6 hours, then the mid-mot day length should be 7 hours and the hi-mot day length should be 8 hours. Fore-knowledge of this will help students/parents to decide and determine their individual motivation levels. The longer day length will also allow the more motivated students more time to learn complex concepts, and to include additional elective classes.
Students intending to attend college should (reasonably) try to regularly be in the hi-mot school and not be in the less motivated schools for more than two or three years in the twelve years of school. Colleges might realistically not count classes in the low-mot school as contributing to high school graduation requirements.
Most people argue about who is to blame for causing such disruptive and dangerous behaviors, and they blame TV, movies, graphic news, lax parents, lack of role models, etc. Any or all of that might be true, but American society doesn't have any way of greatly improving any of those factors, even if they ARE valid. The ideas presented in this essay essentially concede that such students are going to exist because of the attitudes of modern American society. It just seems obvious to me to collect such disruptive (and often dangerous) students together in one place (a separate school) where intense discipline could be applied. After all, eventually, those students will be out in society, and if they never learn responsibility and consequences and discipline, they will be society's problems throughout their adulthood. If they are put in an environment that is essentially a Military School, they might learn acceptable social behaviors. They certainly do not have any incentive to learn such things in the modern environments of Public Schools. At the same time, the remaining students (and teachers) would be able to be in an environment where productive educational learning could flourish. Given the circumstances, it seems like an obvious direction to try.
I just wish to help in any way possible to improve a terrible situation, and I am surprised at the many "shallow" approaches that are commonly tried. The ones that show much effect tend to be incredibly expensive, in some cases being on the order of $40,000 per student per school year. For less than that, a school district could hire individual personal live-in tutors for each of the students! Such "demonstrations" will obviously show positive results, but they are impracticably expensive for large scale application. The approach of this essay uses existing schools, existing teachers, and existing materials and equipment, and it is certain to show spectacular improvements in test scores of the "peaceful" schools and possibly even in the "problem children" schools, too.
Traditionally, it would have been unimaginable if a school student would interrupt an instructor's lesson by standing up, walking over, and punching another student. The offending student would be seriously punished, and possibly expelled from that school. In modern American classrooms, students all know that the teachers are not allowed to strike or even touch them, because some teachers have been sent to jail for doing so. They also know that the school administration will only fill out some paperwork about the matter and send the student right back to the same classroom, essentially without punishment, and often, without even any reprimand. It is amazing. The instructor is often NOT in charge of the classroom. In America, in most Public School classrooms, at least 10 of the students believe that they can do absolutely anything they please, and the instructor is considered a minor part of the control dynamics. With peer pressures important for young kids, their various actions tend to encourage each other to more and more disruptive behavior, which often escalates to actual physical violence. And the instructor cannot even get involved to try to establish control, and becomes a bystander.
.The hi-mot school figures to be close to the ideal learning environment. Motivated students (of all social and racial groups), a physically safe environment (as a physically SEPARATE school), and motivated teachers who could actually expand the students intellectual envelopes, and involved parents, would combine for wonderful results. It seems likely that most of the students would graduate from this school and that most of them would go on to continue their education in college. Even the initially disadvantaged and initially slow students!
The mid-mot school figures to be similar to today's schools with some important differences. Again, a physically SEPARATE location should ensure a much safer environment than is common in large cities, since most of the trouble-makers would not be present. Such people would not be disruptive in the classroom so as to allow more productive teaching time as well. In addition, the teacher would know that these students have some, but limited, motivation which would allow adjustments in the teaching method to most benefit them. Considerably more educational growth would certainly occur in virtually all the students in this school than is generally the case in the current system.
The low-mot school would almost certainly require more aggressive efforts at discipline and maintaining order. If these commonly disruptive, irreverent, disrespectful students are to learn anything toward being productive participants of society, they must learn appropriate behavior and respect first. This school would have low tolerance on anti-social behavior. It might even have some aspects of the "boot camps" and Military schools that have arisen to deal with troublesome children. If and when some of these students learn such appropriate behavior and respect, (and most would probably see selfish value in doing so), they could likely quickly qualify for the mid-mot or hi-mot school for the next year. Until they learn how to properly co-exist with society, they would primarily have to deal with each other and with a strict school structure designed to handle their behavior patterns.
There would probably be other incentives for students to strive to learn socially acceptable patterns to qualify for the mid-mot or hi-mot schools. One would suspect that most girls would generally qualify for one of those schools, which would leave the low-mot school primarily for unruly boys. Since these boys would have few girls to "show off" for, they may choose to learn better behavior just to be in a school which has more girls. This motivation may not be very traditional, but if ANY method assists trouble-making boys learn better social behavior patterns and self-restraint, society will ultimately benefit.
( http://mb-soft.com/public/index.html )
C Johnson, Physicist, Physics Degree from Univ of Chicago
Ex-Teacher, Thornridge High School, Dolton, Illinois