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Romney, Bush, Obama, it doesn't matter. They all should keep their paws off education at the federal level. All it does is add to the bloated bureocracy and accomplish nothing. This is an individual states situation to fix or screw up.
Romney, Bush, Obama, it doesn't matter. They all should keep their paws off education at the federal level. All it does is add to the bloated bureocracy and accomplish nothing. This is an individual states situation to fix or screw up.
Amen.
It aggravates the hell out of me that the feds take money from each state's populace and then dangles it in front of state education "leaders" (snort) with ridiculous strings attached in order to get just a portion of it back.
If any of you saw the debate last night, I'd like to know what you thought about Romney's comments regarding ranking schools and allowing parents to decide where they would put their child. What bothered me about this was that by not saying he would help low achieving districts , it seems like he would ignore them; I may be thinking too much into it, but it's my honest opinion. What about you guys?
Why would you put your kid in a school in a low achieving district if you had a choice? The purpose of school choice is to make schools competitive so they will be better and attract students. The ones that refuse to compete will die out. The kid becomes a winner by being in a good school. Good teachers become winners and get paid more because the competitive schools will be competing to hire them. Have you ever seen the documentary "Waiting for Superman" made in 2010?
After he signs a "school choice" bill he needs to abolish the Department of Education which has only been in existence since 1979 and has not made student scores better or competitive globally. If it's an underperforming Department of the government that only throws a lot of paperwork at school districts, it needs to be demoted from Department status.
FWIW - I've looked around the internet for Romney's stance on this rating/grading system and I can't find anything about it. If anyone has a link, please feel free to share.
Why would you put your kid in a school in a low achieving district if you had a choice?
The parents who have access to reliable transportation and a parent at home in the mornings and afternoons to get a child to and from a good school would certainly not choose to put their kids in low-achieving public schools. (Many if not most of those parents live in decent-to-excellent school districts anyhow, and the ones who don't often don't by choice -- consider people who live in dense urban areas because they're convenient to work and then send their kids to private school.)
The parents who have to take public transit to work double shifts while the kids get themselves to school, or the people who live in really outlying rural areas -- those are the ones who might not have any choice but to put their kids in whatever school is closest, whether that school is OK or not.
He just wants a voucher system to further erode our public schools. I think that he pretty much says whatever he thinks the audience du jour wants to hear.
He just wants a voucher system to further erode our public schools. I think that he pretty much says whatever he thinks the audience du jour wants to hear.
Interesting, quoting from the site:
Quote:
Giving students trapped in bad schools a genuine alternative requires four things: (1) such alternatives must exist, (2) parents must receive clear information about the performance of their current school and of the alternatives, (3) students must be allowed to move to a new school, and (4) students must bring funding with them so that new schools can afford to serve them. Mitt’s reforms achieve each of these objectives:
KEY POINT - alternatives must exist.
This is one big problem with vouchers. You cannot build enough new schools and make them good schools in a timely fashion. Many of the current charter schools are just as bad as any of the public schools. Many of the good suburban schools won't have space for more struggling students *and* they may not really help because one of the reasons those schools are good is the wealth and education of the parents of their students. It's a conundrum.
Imo, what is needed is to somehow help those schools that already exist to become better. We would have to hire more teachers and reduce the class sizes in those schools. We would have to get services to the parents and families including good health services and food. We would have to actually commit to finding the best placement for individual students so that kids with behavioral problems did not disrupt the learning of kids who want to learn. We would have to have reasonable discipline in place and not put this all on the backs of the teachers. We might have to have more than one teacher in each classroom - one to handle discipline problems and the other to teach the material.
This is one big problem with vouchers. You cannot build enough new schools and make them good schools in a timely fashion. Many of the current charter schools are just as bad as any of the public schools. Many of the good suburban schools won't have space for more struggling students *and* they may not really help because one of the reasons those schools are good is the wealth and education of the parents of their students. It's a conundrum.
Imo, what is needed is to somehow help those schools that already exist to become better. We would have to hire more teachers and reduce the class sizes in those schools. We would have to get services to the parents and families including good health services and food. We would have to actually commit to finding the best placement for individual students so that kids with behavioral problems did not disrupt the learning of kids who want to learn. We would have to have reasonable discipline in place and not put this all on the backs of the teachers. We might have to have more than one teacher in each classroom - one to handle discipline problems and the other to teach the material.
These are very insightful suggestions. Our district has just rezoned after closing a high school. Our classes are now not only overcrowded, most of the students new to the school are hurt and angry and NOT interested in helping things get better.
When you get more than a critical mass of disruptive students in any classroom, trouble often ensues, even in a small class. When that class of disruptive students is overcrowded, teaching can grind to a halt. Combined with the new discipline plan/behavior matrix, the amount of disruption that the administration requires to be endured before a referral can be made is unreasonable. Over half the phone numbers that I have called are disconnected or no longer in service. Others reach a voice mailbox that has not been set up. I have two classes that are running like clockwork and two that are running like a runaway train. Even the students whose parents I have been able to reach are showing no improvement in conduct whatsoever.
Our school district does not have enough schools that have met growth to provide places for all the students who would be eligible for a transfer. And quite frankly, most of the parents are more interested in their children attending our school for personal reasons than they are in the poor quality of education that their children are receiving.
Why would you put your kid in a school in a low achieving district if you had a choice? The purpose of school choice is to make schools competitive so they will be better and attract students. The ones that refuse to compete will die out. The kid becomes a winner by being in a good school. Good teachers become winners and get paid more because the competitive schools will be competing to hire them. Have you ever seen the documentary "Waiting for Superman" made in 2010?
After he signs a "school choice" bill he needs to abolish the Department of Education which has only been in existence since 1979 and has not made student scores better or competitive globally. If it's an underperforming Department of the government that only throws a lot of paperwork at school districts, it needs to be demoted from Department status.
Of course, no one wants to put their kid in a crappy school. But what happens to the kids who are stuck in crappy schools?
What happens to the children from schools that "die out"?
I've seen the documentary, and it makes some valid points. However, there are flaws, such as the very fact that overall charter schools have not been shown to be better than regular public schools. There have been successes, yes, and we should try to learn lessons from those successes and adapt.
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