Reply #24: I am defending the large break for it leads to the requirement of re-teaching what had been taught

[happyslug]

Remember the chief complaint of the long Summer Break has to do with what the Students forget over the summer. That forces teachers to re-teach a lot of what was taught at the end of the previous school year. That duplication of teaching is what I am defending. That duplication not only refresh what had been taught in the previous year, but also teachers any new students those same lessons. Thus the long summer vacation forces teachers to re-teach ALL the students, even students who had changed schools. In many cases such re-teaching is just that, but in some cases it permits students who came from outside the School to catch up with the students in the school he or she had moved into.

Thus duplication of teacher is what I am supporting, it comes out naturally out of the present system with a long summer vacation. It is what makes the present system works. if you get to far away from it, how do you integrate students from other schools?

This brings up an idea based on the teaching of W. Edward Deming. Deming taught a school of thought as to quality that was rejected by American Management in the 1950s and embraced by Japan in the same decade. Japan used Deming philosophy to replace the US as the top name in quality. It took a while, but by the 1970s Japan has passed America in terms of quality.

The key to the Deming method was defining quality. Deming taught your best quality can be no better then your worse input, thus adding quality at the top or even the middle can NEVER improve quality. You improve quality bu improving the worse input, i.e. the worse element of production.

In most schools that will be those students transferring in. Some will know what had been taught in that school the previous year, others will not. Thus such transfers will be the worse input AND THE BASIS THE REST OF THE CLASS MUST BE TAUGHT FROM. Thus the best solution is that any school a students is transferred to MUST obtain the records of that students, contact the student's former teachers directly about the student. Once that is done, then you have the base the class can be taught from. The incoming student is NOT discriminated against and you minimize duplication of teaching but just teaching what the class OR the incoming student had NOT been taught.

It is a solution for Grade School and even High Schools. Teachers will hate it, but if we force them to call the previous teacher of the students the teachers can work together to make sure the transferring student is not lost in the transfer.

For more on Deming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming