School Budgets School budgets should also be focused on content. When school boards (local and state) analyze their budgets, they need to start considering how much of the overall budget supports the actual teaching and learning of real subject content. For example, the largest department in my school is not English, math or science. Is that the case in your area too? How many people does your district employ that do not have direct interaction with students on a daily basis in a teaching capacity? Local Control
Tax-payers have a right to know remediation rates of their district's students in English, math and science when they enter colleges or universities. This is the best indicator or K-12 success in my opinion. It could shed some light on the effectiveness of certain K-12 curricula used in local districts if that information was included in the information provided.
Is the content taught in your school district college preparatory or not? Do student's grades in your district accurately reflect their understanding of the content knowledge expected at the next level?
Teacher Evaluations
There's alot of talk these days about teacher evaluations with little focus on who is conducting the evaluations. My evaluations are conducted by an administrator who has no familiarity with the subect I'm teaching. I imagine this is the case throughout the country. I wouldn't mind having my salary tied to my evaluation - if it was done by someone who knew mathematics. Otherwise, the evaluator is looking for things that might be beneficial in other areas, but not necessarily in mathematics. (See post on cognitive research)
How much time is spent during an administrator's ed school training on content area cognitive research?
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