Lengthening Of US School Years / Higher Pay For Teachers...

[ChefChiTown]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed lengthening the school year and paying top teachers more as part of an effort to help U.S. students regain an edge in the competitive world economy.

The United States has one of the worst high school dropout rates in the industrialized world, and its students regularly rank far below those in other Western countries in reading and math scores.

Slightly more than half of the population has only a high school diploma. One out of every two American university students drops out before completing their post-secondary studies.

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I'm not sure if I agree with paying teachers based on their performance; well, technically their students' performances.

Some subjects are harder to learn than others (for the most part), so teachers who specialize in those subjects would be getting screwed. Also, the teachers don't have control of their students' natural ability to learn, which could put some teachers at a disadvantage if some of their students were slower learners.

As far as the longer school years...

That's not going to help anything. Students **** the amount of school they currently have to go to, so lengthening the number of days they have to be in school isn't going to fix anything. It's just going to increase the number of skipped classes.