The final question in last night’s presidential debate concerned education. The question mentioned the amount spent per student and the “disappointing” return and asked the candidates what should be done. YouTube has the debates broken out by question and the following segment provides the answers to the education question.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8SWPExIxTE]Perhaps the more unique segments included Senator Obama’s recognition that parents must take some responsibility for the performance of their children and Senator McCain suggested increased attention to Troops to Teachers. As someone involved in the preparation of teachers I cannot support programs that ignore certification requirements and examinations for some under some conditions. If we are concerned about the qualifications and qualities of our teachers, how does it make sense that we begin to look on teaching careers as a type of jobs program. I see these as separate challenges. If you did not hear the debate, I have linked this segment for your scrutiny.
I still talk about the Coleman study from the ’60s in my ed psych class. My take is that Coleman said two things – a) factors beyond the school account for the largest % of variability in student performance and b) teacher/school quality matters when you can control for the other factors. Various predictions might follow from this. Good teachers always matter (point b), but on average the performance of motivated and supported students with a mediocre teacher may be better than the performance of unmotivated and unsupported students with a good teacher. This is one of the challenges of assuming that school to school competition will fix things. Make your own decisions – the segment is 4 minutes long.
It is too bad that the economy tanked when it did. I wonder if education and energy would have received more attention if the pressure to address immediate economic problems did not take attention away from what are likely long term economic issues.
Four minutes out of 90.
