Education

Deb blogged on Elephant In My Coffee Where should teacher's draw the line?

During this whole school year my daughter (12) has come home telling me stories about comments her humanities teacher has made. They range from "too bad you don't want to hear the truth" when she is Bush Bashing to "Bush says if you are against the war you are a traitor". Is it really a teacher's place to politicize the classroom, especially in Middle School?

Absolutely not!

I'd even be ok with "This is what I think." "What do you think?" (And be able to explain why, which she hasn't been able to do anytime my daughter questions her). Kind of chaps my hide.

Deb then blogged Letter to the Editor

This is what I sent to the El Paso Times:

After two years at a public middle school I am struggling with the decision to send my daughter back next school year. While she's had some good teachers and experiences I cringe at the underlying attitude of some of the staff, administration and district. She's been told in class, by a teacher, that President Bush is a liar and also that she should take every handout she can get because it's the only way she'll get anywhere as a Hispanic female in America. Next throw in the "zero (responsibility) policy" and campus rules that treat honor students like juvenile delinquents. Is this a recipe for success? Sounds more like a microwave dinner to me!

If you are in a position to do it, I would suggest Home Schooling.

Right after I read those two posts I ran across this:

Our education system must change

Today's schools function essentially the same as they did when the system was first designed fifty years ago. That is bad. Very, very bad. That school system was designed after the Austrian system and its goal was to produce an industrial workforce. Industry and technology are only tangentially related and the workforce our schools produce today is not equipped to handle a technologically based society.

There is also a huge issue with bureaucratic bloat. While the basic system is the same, every year has seen additional restrictions and requirements applied to our schools. Administrators are hamstrung compared to their power and authority a mere two decades ago. They work in an outdated system that they are increasingly unable to support, modify and even effectively administrate.

As administrations lose control they react with increasing stringency. Alternative schools, once a true alternative for youths pursuing vocational studies, have become defacto prisons for troublesome students. Overcrowded prisons, to boot. Zero tolerance policies are put in place to protect administrations from charges of racism and favoritism and to spare them the culpability of increasingly impossible decisions. In too many cases they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. The response is increasingly "Damn you too".

America spends over $10,000 per year per student to support public education. We are the world leader on spending money for school but we consistently fall at the bottom of the list for performance compared to other first world countries.

That is because we don't allow our teachers to maintain discipline in their classrooms.

The system MUST change.

Fortunately it is starting to. There are alternatives that are increasing in popularity and effect. Homeschooling was once thought to be the purview of religious extremists. In the past decade home education has increased from a few hundred thousand students to well over two percent of all K-12 students. As it has grown the stigma and prejudice against it has begun to crumble.

Alternative home education, or remote learning, has also grown. With advances in technology allowing any child with a computer to receive quality instruction this can only continue to advance. The cost savings alone for remote learning over institutional learning are phenomenal. A student can be supplied with a computer, cable, television, high speed internet access, programs and supplies for a small fraction of that $10,000 per year.

The next step needed is for the government to back off enough to allow private education to flourish. No Child Left Behind is an excellent start. Not only has this program exposed schools, districts and even entire states that have been cloaking their poor performance, it is also starting to wean some of them off of the federal teat. Several independent school districts have opted out of NCLB and federal funding. Utah has just passed legislation that will put them in direct violation of NCLB, effectively removing the entire state from federal scholastic monies. As systems fall out of the federal basket they become free from the huge amount of restrictions and regulations attached to those federal funds.

I hope the citizens of Utah will hold their school boards to the same level of performance that NCLB would have done.

States are beginning to support non-institutional learning methods. Georgia recently passed a law allowing homeschoolers as well as enrolled students to participate in online classes. Several states now give homeschoolers the same or similar resources as their enrolled counterparts.

Backlash against zero tolerance policy abuses is starting to force changes there. The Texas House of Representatives just signed a bill that will give administrators the ability to administrate in most cases of rules violations. The notable exception is the case of firearms. Those will still carry a mandatory expulsion due to federal laws. That bill is expected to be approved by the state Senate and then signed into law. Other states are looking on and learning from Texas' example.

Will the system change? Yes. It is inevitable. Industry leaders are now backing education reform. Bill Gates and his contemporaries have picked up the banner and are expending huge amounts of capital to educate legislators about education. The failure of our schools is clear and the fact that wholesale changes are needed is starting to become clear as well.

Change is coming but it won't be quick and it won't be painless. The current education system is supported by incredibly powerful lobbies and special interest groups. Teachers' unions have proven to be very successful at stymieing reform legislation and protecting the status quo. Niche industries that are effectively parasites to our present scholastic bureaucracy are working to protect themselves. Change itself in any form causes fear of uncertainty. Finally, the education system is simply so huge that effectively changing it will be a massive investment in time, money and resources.

Enough money and other resources are being provided; what they need is for every parent to demand what NCLB demands, that the school demonstrate improvement.

But change is coming. I just hope it comes soon enough to help my kids.