Posted on 07/14/2008 8:22:04 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.
Ms. Weingarten, 50, is running unopposed for the presidency of the national teachers union, whose delegates at an annual convention in Chicago are expected to elect her Monday. In a speech prepared for delivery after the vote, Ms. Weingarten criticizes No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature domestic initiative, which is defended staunchly by Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education.
Ms. Weingarten, saying the law “is too badly broken to be fixed,” lays out a “new vision of schools for the 21st century.”
“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten is expected to ask in the speech, a copy of which was provided by the union to The New York Times.
“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance,” the speech reads. “Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here’s the Stossell article on Ms. Weingarten....worth a read. This woman is a real fruit loop.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-2_22_06_JS.htm
Democrats, you can always count on them to turn anything into a jail.
Now all she needs to do is propose making the return of the children to their homes at night optional, left to the discretion of the teachers and administrators, and her utopian vision will be complete.
We all went to the Eastman dental dispensary and had our teeth cleaned and other necessary care...all free.
We were also given paper and pencils as needed.
Teachers were dedicated and it wasn't all about the money. Teachers are WAY overpaid with out of sight pensions.
Outsourced parenting!!
Just what the busy working parent[s] need[s]!!
You can still enjoy Christmas mornings, birthdays, Thanksgiving dinners, and all the joyful events of life with your children, but without any of the drudgery of actually rearing them!!
No longer will you have to concern yourself with making sure your children do their homework, arranging those annoying dental visits, or even feeding them!!
Just make sure you get them to the schoolhouse door on time every morning, and have a place for them to put down their heads after a vigorous game of Midnight Basketball, and all your parenting headaches will be taken away by our outsourced parenting professionals!!
Yes! Give them more responsibility considering they have done so well with what they already have! Then one day, they can bemoan anew why our children are not succeeding academically. They can say that too much is expected of them. And another generation of experiments are down the drain while the educators are retired and moved to a safe part of town.
Profound thought on many levels.
The hospitals, the courts, the schools, and the prisons are all part of the same institution of the state. This should be gradually swimming into focus with the help of Ms. Weingarten and other officers of the state.
The Teacher’s Unions have never been about the education of children, simply the forward movement of a socialist agenda.
I talked to a friend of mine who is an educational researcher. He said that NCLB is a noble idea that could work if done right. According to him it all comes down to whether or not the tests are anygood and many aren’t. Each state gets to set their own tests and some states do a much better job than others.
A bad test increases the chance of a decent school being labeled as failing and a bad school as passing. He also said a bad test could actually make education worse in some cases if students spend so much time being prepped for a test with little validity. An example he cited was a test that was too narrow in content. If a teacher, as many do with these sanctions, spends a good portion of their time teaching to a test that doesn’t test enough then the students will be shortchanged because they will lose out on useful information.
He said states have also been monkeying around with the figures whether it be by setting lower standards for passage or through statistical tricks. We need, at least in my view, to cut off those loopholes and set a national standard about what information a student should know and what skills they should have.
This list is for intellectual discussion of articles and issues related to public education (including charter schools) from the preschool to university level. Items more appropriately placed on the “Naughty Teacher” list, “Another reason to Homeschool” list, or of a general public-school-bashing nature will not be pinged.
If you would like to be on or off this list, please freepmail Amelia, Gabz, Shag377, or SoftballMominVa
My view also...of course, a lot of conservatives would consider that more federal involvement in education, and would oppose national standards...
Exactly - Georgia started a Pre-K program a few years ago with Lottery Money. The purpose was to help the kids who do not get any parenting at home learn their colors and numbers and letters, because, believe it or not, some study somewhere showed that kids who have parents who teach them the basics at home actually do better in school. Georgia educrats realized that the parents who don't want to parent could never be convinced to parent (after all - the single moms need more kids to up their welfare stipend and can't be bothered with actually parenting) - so they decided that government could parent the kids better. (Given some of the kids in our rural Title 1 school, I can almost become a liberal and believe that government could be a better parent in some situations.)
HOWEVER, I have noticed that alot of the kids who actually make it into the pre-k program (it is chosen by lottery because there are only a few spaces) are children who have both college-educated-parents at home, but the mom needs more personal time and really can't fool with the 4 year old - when can she fit her run in? Plus, she is tired of paying for the mother's morning out all five days of the week and the sitter for after the "mother's morning out" also adds to the cost. She could buy a new bike or workout clothes with that savings. At least in rural Georgia, the influential parents in town always "happen" to find a pre-k space funded by taxpayers.
Do you see the irony in the two types of parents I described who don't actually want to parent?
The Dental van comes to our schools several times a month for the students who have “Peachcare” - Georgia-taxpayer-funded healthcare. Some kids are able to get braces with Peachcare. I explained to my kids a couple of years ago that the reason they had to wait for braces was because I was busy paying for the Peachcare kids braces. I then had to tell them not to share that at school.
The sad part of this whole thing is that there are some parents that after they read this will think it's a good idea. As it is now, the school is the mother and the US Gov't is the day. And trust me, gov't agencies make piss poor parents.
I'm not sure where food stamps fit into this mix and why those families can't use them to buy nutritious foods in the summer (and fall, winter, & spring for that matter...)
I do know that I drove 30 miles in the middle of the day through semi-rural areas near here earlier this week and passed at least 3 of these programs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.