Lowering the Bar

[MMiz]

If we are talking EMT school now, maybe they are responding to the trend to keep making instruction more baroque and expensive to demonstrate they are reacting to events (e.g., if someone chokes on a dung beetle, the next semester of EMT classes must all have a dung beetle unit in them). However, cutting the dung beetle unit out is not the same as having students crowd learning together which ought to be paced throughout the semester to support didactic and clinical as or before it goes on.

As in: Week One has pt assessment, so the students need to complete assignment #1 to support the class and clinical. So often the two get dissociated due to poor curricular planning and schedule hash ups.

The sixty-percent thing though makes it a certificate mill. IS that actually correct? No one gets under a 60%?

How about they ought to try making it so they students may turn in assignments anytime before or up to the due date for that assignment? Or prove why they couldn't make it on time (personal issues, illness).

The more I teach the more mickeymouse I see in curricula. I only teach day-long courses but I am consistently done early because my students are adults and usually capable of going faster (and needing to go faster) than the curriculum does. Their written tests and practicums are good, that's my litmus test.

Russ,

Today's youth are smarter than ever. My complaint is likely the same complaint teachers had a generation ago. Values change over time.

mycrofft,

You have my vote.

Chimpie,

You can improve graduation rates by hiring qualified educators, equipping teachers and students with the tools needed to be successful, and ensuring small classes. That, or we can just lower the bar.

As a comparison, just five years ago students that did not pass a class were provided intense remediation and were required to attend summer school. Today we check a box on the report card that says, "Passed with interventions." There are no interventions.

Now we don't even have to worry about checking the box. It will be literally impossible to fail a class in North Carolina.

 

[firetender]

Matt, smarter than ever, maybe.

As far as discernment goes, that's something that is not included in the curricula. Thinking and Following is what got us into the mess we're in.

Education today is blindly following protocol. The message our leaders give out is to do what you're told; that's how they got to be leaders.

We need many more molds broken.

I'm not sure that teachers even recognize this anymore.