Math Forum Discussions

Haim

Posts: 7,807
Registered: 12/6/04

Re: Option 2
Posted: Feb 25, 2012 8:59 PM

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Joe Niederberger posted:

> Interesting idea!

Thank you for saying so.

>What sorts of people do you envision filling the
>administrative ranks and the teaching ranks?
>What sorts of backgrounds and education?

Joe, you may have noticed that not a single idea I express is original to me. Every single aspect of my suggestions is based on something that does exist or has existed somewhere. I continue in this tradition.

DOSE schools should be managed like every other company in the world. That is what business schools are for. Management and administration should be done by people with training and experience in management. Management can certainly include people from the teaching ranks, after they have been properly trained, in an MBA program, eg.

You must know that private companies do this all the time. Companies like a GE, Intel, GM (when it was still a company), would pick scientists and engineers who wanted to go into managment, and send them for their MBA's. It would be a great relief to see a school system with professional management for a change.

As for finding teachers, that is the easy part. For example, part of what makes Stuyvesant High School what it is, is that much of its faculty hold academic degrees in their disciplines. Yes, Stuyvesant students learn math from math PhD's, chemistry from chemistry PhD's, etc. (I.e., Stuyvesant students have PhD teachers and use college textbooks; far more useful to think of Stuyvesant as a college instead of a high school.)

I think there are plenty of people out there with bachelors, masters, and PhD's in academic disciplines who could be recruited to teach in academic schools. But, you know the rule: No Ed School Types Need Apply.

This is probably unnecessary, but allow me a brief comment on what I mean by "academic discipline". Most people in this forum must know that the schools of education are like a parallel universe. For example, a person can get a degree in psychology from the psychology dept of the School of Arts and Sciences, or he could get something like an educational psychology degree from the dept of educational psychology in the School of Education.

Similarly, a person can get a math degree from the math dept of the School of Arts and Sciences, or he could get a degree in math education from the math dept of a School of Education. And so on.

So, a degree from a department of the School of Arts and Sciences is an academic degree. A degree from a department of the School of Education is not.

DOSE schools must be staffed by holders of academic degrees, exclusively.

The really interesting question is about the governance of the DOSE schools. Every institution has the equivalent of a Board of Directors. In principle, the DOPE schools are governed by their local Boards of Education, although these boards answer, to some extent, to the state departments of education. Like everything else about DOPE schools, their governance is messy.

So, the DOSE schools will be governed either directly by the Departments of Science Education (state or federal), or these departments create some kind of governing body. Who should populate the governing bodies?

Rule #1: No Ed School Types Need Apply.
Rule #2: See Rule #1.

Other than these two rules, I would like to see the governing body of the DOSE schools populated by university science faculty (possibly retired) with an interest in public education. We already know some of these people. Three names that come immediately to mind are Wayne Bishop, Richard Askey, and Ralph Raimi. I realize that these particular individuals may not want the job, but I'll bet they know some good candidates who do. (Despite his gadfly presence in Math-Teach, I would bet that Lou Talman would do a good job.)

Finally and, possibly, most importantly, the laws that bring the DOSE schools into existence (the "enabling" legislation) must be written with iron clad guarantees that the sole mission of the DOSE schools is an academic education, that their faculties must be exclusively people with academic degrees in the disciplines they teach, that governance is by university faculty (retired or not), and that under no circumstances are these schools to pollute their mission with social engineering.

I must stress this last point. It must be stipulated IN LAW that nothing that DOSE schools do can take into account race, sex, national origin, etc.

Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are most welcome. The one thing I do not want to explore in this thread is yet another scheme for reforming the existing DOPE schools. I think we are done with that.

Haim
Shovel ready? What shovel ready?

Message was edited by: Haim