Chapter 1 Why Educational Achievement Matters
Dylan William explains that in our day, education has become more important than it was 20 years ago. Dropouts earn less now, than 20 years ago. Education therefore has immense advantages and is shown to increase the lifespan of individuals. Colleagues at Columbia University have been gathering data to support the claim of an increased lifespan and also on the great benefit that education has on society. These benefits relate to an increased amount of tax being paid by the individual because of the increase in wage, a decrease in health care cost because they are healthier and also have employee health benefits, and also a reduced amount of criminal justice costs.
The advancing workplace puts a demand on the educational achievement of individuals to be better now, than yesterday. Wiliam quotes that countries like the United States shed about 2500 low skill jobs everyday. Jobs for those with lower achievement in numeracy or literacy are slowly disappearing because of technology or outsourced lower labour costs. Therefore educational achievement needs to catch up with the improvements of the workplace. Thus saying individuals who can develop new skills instead of perfecting one set of skills, will have a better chance of employment, because they reflect the changing skill level of the workplace. Wiliam quotes Seymour Papert, “The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn”.
Wiliam claims raising student achievement is a hard thing, and while many schools are trying different things and earning different results there are a few things that can act as a base line. William explains
1.Teach students something that engages them, instead of trying to engage them into a learning state.
2. Build staff-student relationships by having instructors teach the same students more than one year, but rather having the teacher follow the student in their highschool years.
3. The greatest impact on learning is the experience students have in a classroom and that is determined on the how of teaching rather than the what is being taught.
4. Teacher quality does matter!