Posted on 12/05/2010 4:46:07 AM PST by Jacquerie
Contrary to what is best for students, Florida Republicans are once again drawing battle lines over education reform. Gov.-elect Rick Scott fell into the trap last week by appointing an education transition team tilted against traditional public schools and in favor of private schools and tuition vouchers.
Scott's education transition team is packed with advocates for private school vouchers, charter schools and changes in teacher tenure. Scott's team includes Michelle Rhee, the controversial former Washington, D.C., school chancellor credited with ending teacher tenure there, and John Kirtley, a voucher advocate who has had repeated success in expanding the state's program for low-income students.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
What changes to public education does your teacher girlfriend recommend?
Right now there should be a State created complete virtual elementary and secondary school curriculum, available online to any registered student and their parents.
Likewise, there should be freeware software available to parents and experts to grow the curriculum in intelligent ways.
In online forums that are part of the system, registered parents can rate and discuss modules and their improvement. And parents can select the non-standard modules they want to provide for their own children, so modules would be rated for their popularity as well as quality.
Importantly, such a curriculum is not limited to being linear, but would have add on modules for depth. So, for example, if a student became interested in Gerald Ford, they could pursue right from the system into biographies of Ford.
The value of such as system in parallel with public, religious, private schools and home schooling, is important for several reasons.
1) It provides teachers with a rough guide they can flesh out with their own instruction.
2) It provides far more potential curriculum subjects than could ever be taught otherwise.
3) It is multimedia, so includes video, audio, and computer interactivity.
4) It is not dependent on the slowest student in a class, nor is it limiting to smarter students.
5) It is available wherever computers are available, so strongly helps transient students keep up their studies.
Changes to public education?
Just to name ONE...
#1 quit propogating liberal/social worldviews.. I am not suggesting that every teacher needs to be a Christian but it sure would help if they were and were not strangled by a bogus MIS-interpretation of “Separation of Church and State” .. I suggest a strong separation of SCHOOL and STATE !
FYI.. I have been a member of this alliance for many many years even BEFORE my kids were born..
http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm
I just understood the derivation of the “Poynter” in Poynter Institute (real owners of the St. Pete Times) - it is derived from the obligatory ‘pointy’ little heads of its members.
Why the odd spelling? Being UberLibs, a mere “Pointer Institute” would simply never do.
For those fortunate enough to not have been raised where the Times was on all too many street corners, that rag is more Commie than Pravda.
True happiness is reading a whine about how Thatcher is going to come to a horrid political end ‘cause he, and all those evil Pubbies, will destroy the Edumacators union and perks.
;-)
Rhee had certainly threatened the status quo, which is why both she AND Fenty got shown the door. But, she wasn’t getting much in the way of results, if by “results” we mean improvements in student performance. In fact, she has a lot in common with that other highly touted “school reformer”, Arne Duncan, who did all the things the “reformers” urged and got nowhere. Moreover, Rhee is not the squeaky clean heroine that some seem to think. There is a lot that doesn’t get much attention concerning her involvement with Sacramento’s mayor, Kevin Johnson, that would surprise most of those whose image of Rhee essentially comes from the Time cover story of a year or so back.
Conservatives understand that single-payer (socialized) medicine doesn’t work - in fact, it is a disaster and cannot be made to work. It can only be replaced. Nevertheless, conservatives irrationally think that somehow single-payer, socialized “education” just needs to have the right people in charge and all will be well. Socialist models fail every time they are tried. Government school can’t be reformed. The model is the mistake. The “education” reform that we need is the dismantling of the government school system.
No conservative should be advocating a “State” created curriculum or school. Moreover, we have experience with virtual charters in several states - Idaho being one. The achievement level for state virtual schools is even below achievement levels for traditional government schools.
Please.
The Saint Petersburg Times is so far left that it would be thrown out of the St. Petersburg in Russia today.
LOL....and so true....the St Petersburg in Russia would be burning the far-left St Pete Slimes
Amen!! Key emphasis on SEPARATION of School and State <— and FED
I live in Florida, and my girlfriend is a teacher in the public school system. The ones who were the most vocal against SB 6 were the teachers. As the article says, “Teacher pay would be based on students’ learning gains, even though there was not yet a proven system for measuring those gains.” That’s just one aspect of it. Another is, in the business world you can change the people under you; in the public school system you play the cards dealt you. If the parents are not involved in the students’ education, what chance for success does the teacher have?
To rush SB 6 would be tantamount to doing what we accuse liberals of always doing, acting out of feelings and not considering the unintended consequences.
Interesting points.
The only problem I see with most GOP plans to fix education is this plan to “Evaluate teachers based on student performance”. In Florida, this means the FCAT tests
This usually means more of our taxpayer monies spent, with more centralized government running our schools....we end up with more government and more government spending when we assess the student, school, and teacher
No wonder that Ted Kennedy went along with GW Bush on “No Child Left Behind”....it means more tax dollars spent and more government control of schools.....it is the wet dream of Socialists like Kennedy
You do not need an “assesment of schools” to give out vouchers to give to kids to get them out of weak schools. Their parents and kids are usually the best assesors of how bad a school is...without big governement spending or control
Smaller classrooms
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic
Discipline in the classroom
Teachers dressing like teachers which means RESPECTFUL
No one in the halls during classes unless they have a hall pass for a real reason
Quiet in the classroom
Raise hands to ask questions
Homework turned in in the morning
Teachers and Parents working together
Respectful dress of females. No skin showing.
Respectful dress of mailes. No hats, drooping pants.
No cell phones used in the classroom
Respect for one another
Work with those who want to learn
Seems simple enough doesn’t it?
It all boils down to sitting in the classroom even if that classroom is in a grassy lot...but, sitting listening to the teacher TEACH and then doing the work.
Hmmm, a bit off topic now, but I cannot think of a single Leftis dominated institution that isn't worse off for it. K-12, university, the courts, Congress, some churches, big cities, many states . . . most are on the brink of collapse of some sort.
Democrats Soil Institutions.
Yep and..democrats/liberals soil LOTS of things.
The country will come back around to common sense values but we have to get the parents back to knowing they are parents and behaving like such instead of being BFF’s to their kids. The kids have enough BFF’s what they need are responsible parents who say NO and Teachers who need to stop acting like BFF’s also. It doesn’t work.
Parents be parents
Teachers be teachers
Kids be kids but with discipline and guidance.
Leave it to the dem/libs and yes, the whole system will colapse (it’s just about there) and then we can begin anew.
you would think all that would be common sense... but unfortunately the looney left would call everything you mentioned too “extreme” and non-progressive
That is why it can only function in parallel to the other systems, and not as a State controlled system. Instead, picture the idea of an educational marketplace, where parents would create, rate, review and purchase, as it were, there curriculum they want their children to have.
The only real State input into this is creating the framework, and setting up the mandatory standards of what children must be taught so that they can successfully pass already existing mandatory government tests. Beyond that, it is as wide open as Wikipedia, but with competition to help insure quality.
Eventually, I can imagine half a dozen corporations selling curriculum, as well as lots of public domain curriculum, as well as individual modules created by private experts. I can also imagine some pretty heated disputes about what should be taught as fact. But the arguments will have no sway, compared to the parents choice.
Not a bit. If you were to create a curriculum for your children, and post it to this site, that would be your children’s curriculum, as well as if other parents saw what you did and liked it.
And there are some top notch home school educators as well. And they already swap lots of all sorts of knowledge. Imagine if what they did was available for many, many other home schoolers?
Just the opposite of union anything.
When the state gets to set the tests, the state controls what gets taught. Until the last 130 years the federal and state governments had virtually no role in controlling curriculum. When there was no government involvement - say 1800 - Americans were more literate than they are today.
Government destroys almost everything it touches outside of national defense. Why do we have this superstitious belief that “government” (politicians and bureaucrats)make things better? What evidence do we have for this? The EPA? Social Security? The Post Office? Energy policy?
Government has controlled public education since Jefferson. That being said, for a virtual curriculum market to exist, it has to be limited to just students, their parents, and experts to provide content. Not government bureaucrats, pedophiles, marketers, politicals, or other such scoundrels.
So I gave the wrong impression, that this would be a government project. In fact, the government input would be like that of market regulation, much like it is when a better government regulates home schooling, to insure that it is not misused to deny education, and achieves at least minimal standards—while not inhibiting its doing much better than that.
And yes, there are plenty of bad government stories from home schooling advocates. But also plenty of times when they worked with government to achieve a good educational and legal environment, that was at least tolerable.
It is important to mention the value of such a system, where today there is no system. Transient students, students who become ill for an extended time, students with other problems, can lose years of education because there is nothing for them outside what exists right now.
Add to that that education for most students is very dependent on their relationship with their teachers. Invariably there will be good teachers and good students with poor chemistry between them for nobody’s fault, that learning just doesn’t take place. For there to be some, any alternative, by which the student can learn the material is essential that an opportunity isn’t lost.
You haven’t the slightest idea what you are writing.
There was no government school system in Jefferson’s time. Did you ever hear of Horace Mann? If you have, did you ever wonder why HE is famous? Do you know when he lived? When was the first compulsory attendance law passed and where? Did it have anything to do with Mann? Did it have anything to do with creating a government school system? Who was Jabez Curry? When did he live and what was he known as? In what year did every state in the union finally have a compulsory attendance law? (Hint: it was less than 100 years ago) When did Jefferson die?
Apart from this historical matter, which isn’t all that important, why are you advocating educational statism? Are you a socialist or some sort?
As for regulating homeschooling, NO GOVERNMENT ANYWHERE OUGHT TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO REGULATE HOMESCHOOLERS AND IN MANY STATES THEY LACK THAT POWER. Moreover, every peer-reviewed study done has shown that government regulation of homeschooling DOES NOT improve academic outcomes.
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