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Wednesday
March 2010
10
Community Blogs
Kim is 34 years old, married for 16 years with three kids that all attend West Allis/West Milwaukee Schools. She was born and raised in New Berlin, but spent most of her time as a child in West Allis with her grandpa. After getting married, she stayed in West Allis for three years, went away for four years, and returned to West Allis for the past 8 years. Her hope with this blog is to raise awareness of what is happening, the good and the bad, within the school district.
Obama's School Plans
What can I say? I am an Obama supporter, for now! However this school idea isn't getting much support with me!
I am all for the kids learning more, but not adding hours or days to the school year. Well, maybe the days added on. For example take away these "teacher inservice" days. Our district gives those every month. I don't remember getting off school that much. I have a friend who works in daycare and their continueing learning happens in the evenings or the weekends.
Is the answer really longer school days or school years? Maybe it is the quality of teaching that needs to improve. I am not really sure what the answer is, but not this.
According to the article on Yahoo, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school children in the United States spend more time in school than other countries that are more educated than us. The United State kids spend 1,146 hours a school year in school, where Japan is 1,005 and Singapore is only 903. These countries also have longer school years, 190-201 days where the United States has 180 days. The students from these countries are better educated than the students in the United States.
These longer school days and years will hit the taxpayers in the pocket as well. More days and hours means more money to pay the teachers and other bills. Some Charter schools in other parts of the country are already trying this approach. In Massachusetts it is costing $1,300 more per student. Other schools are part of a three year study to add 300 hours to the year.
There is also talk of changing the "no child left behind" act. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090924/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_obama_no_child This I hope does happen. Because of this policy, my youngest was advanced to each grade even though he was not ready to. He is one year behind academically. He is in the 6th grade, but his learning is in 5th grade. This started when he was in Kindergarten. I pushed to have him held back but was told no. The district doesn't hold any student back, due to the "No Child Left Behind Act". As sad as it may be, if they haven't learned what they needed to in first grade they shouldn't go to second grade. Each year they struggle. I do like that the law has provided my son with extra help, but the help he needed was another year in kindergarten. This law also pushes to improve test scores and schools are failing.
Do these two items work together? Does one need to happen for the other to improve? What do you think, do they need to change the school days, the years and the No Child Left Behind Act?
I haven't read or heard much about President Obama's school policies.
To be honest, I am really leery of federal government programming regarding instruction, testing, curriculum, standards, etc. imposed on individual districts. I understand, but could be wrong, that school districts could not opt out of "No Child Left Behind" without suffering signifiicant loss of aid. (Maybe a school board member or some other knowledgable person could inform us otherwise). The emphasis on the testing aspect of NCLB is not a good reflection of school/student progress. For instance, the issue is NOT that Columbus sailed in 1492, but WHY he sailed in 1492. The NCLB testing is a good measure of memorization, repetition, and is overly fact based. The ability to think, analyze, and problem solve doesn't show-up on tests. A competent local school board working with parents is the best guarantee for school performance.
Speaking of working with parents, simpletons who predictably pick on the easy target of teachers, should be aware that there was an Open House for Parents of NHHS recently. A relative of mine, who teaches there indicated that only 16 pairs of parents visited her room that night. If that isn't bad enough (at least those children are in HS), only 37 pairs of parents showed up for the Mitchell School kindergarten orientation. There are 99 children enrolled in Mitchell kindergarden classes. It's difficult for a teacher, or an administration to educate a child when less than 50% of parents actually care about their children's school performance.
Keeping a kid who isn't already doing their school work, in school longer, won't solve the problem.
I have heard about year round school with four three-week vacation breaks during the year. If there is a retention problem over the 12 week summer break, perhaps this scheduling would be more effective.
I would also like the WAWM School Board to review curriculum for its global content and 21st century preparation. God Bless the French teachers, but shouldn't kids be introduced to Asian languages as well; not to mention some basic financial instruction.
If stallis is suggesting chucking mandatory education until age 16 (not sure if that's the age or not) there are both benefits and costs.
No, i am just saying, that there are many kids not doing the work now, let alone adding more school hours to the day. Parents will see it as a chance to have someone else to babysit their kid a little longer.
Wow, Mortified finally has some good ideas that I support! Well done, lady.
I told the story earlier about how I spoke up during my kid's Open House night to object to 5th graders using calculators in math class. It's far more important for kids to be able to UNDERSTAND numerical relationships than to memorize what keys to press on their calculator to divide '1' by '4'. Mortified probably agrees with me, but she'll still call me a 'simpleton' because I dared to voice my opinion at the Open House in an attempt to get the teachers to teach what I think is important. By the way, that teacher responded during that Open House by saying that she doesn't allow calculators in her class. BRAVO!
Chinese was offered as an 'after-school' type of class recently on a trial basis two years ago, but I'm not sure if it's offered this year however. I agree with Mortified that unless you want to work in a restaurant kitchen or fast food joint for the rest of your life, there are much better languages to learn than traditional Spanish. Learning German and/or Chinese are excellent choices for those considering an engineering career.
This story about questionable spending habits by our local school district might be of interest to you. Most of the people involved in this are still working for the district.
http://www.frontpagemilwaukee.com/site/ArticleComment.aspx?id=17027&rpid=5644
Since this topic is Obama's influence on education, it's a good time to remind everybody of Obama's choice to be our nation's "Safe School Czar", Kevin Jennings. Here's what the GOP-schill #1-rated FOXNEWS network had to report about Kevin Jennings. Is this REALLY the type of 'Hope & Change' that 53% of voters wanted in our public schools when they elected President Obama? Jennings is operating in typical CYA fashion with the media as this article clearly points out.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/30/obamas-safe-schools-czar-admits-bad-handling-teen-sex-case/
Has anybody seen any member of the press ask President Obama about Kevin Jennings? I haven't. FOXNEWS wasn't wrong about ACORN. FOXNEWS wasn't wrong about Van Jones. FOXNEWS is the only network questioning Kevin Jennings, and they've got a track record of being right about things that the 'mainstream media' doesn't report about the Obama Administration.
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