> What kind of Federal programs do you have in mind? Particularly ones > which will not raise taxes or add more bureaucracy?
Erik replied:
Merit-based awards to teachers; standards, training, and curriculum development for special-ed programs; devlopment of curricula and software for math, science, and programming classes including standardization on various types of free software (possibly writing or modifying to suit); perhaps some sort of "Voice of America"-driven specialized set of articles and discussions for teachers to choose from to help bring current events into the classroom; creation of forums and newsgroups for various educational disciplines, for students and teachers, to discuss their classes with others
That's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are some problems with those, but hopefully you see the general idea. There are surely some things that can benefit from economies of scale and diversity that can be better achieved at the Federal level. Some things are better done locally, too, but not everything.
Have you read much about "No Child Left Behind?" Info on it is available at http://www.nclb.gov/next/overview/index.html
It makes states create state-wide standards and test every student against those standards several times between grade 3 and grade 12. It also requires every public school in the country to generate a report card on how well it is doing, and that report must be broken down by ethnicity and economic background. So far, according to the teachers and administrators I've talked to, all it's doing is creating more paperwork and making students spend more time taking tests and less time actually learning.
I'm a supporter of standards. I'm in favor of teachers using more and different kinds of resources. But the problem isn't that these resources aren't available. It's that many teachers don't have time to utilize the resources they have. They spend 40 hours or more at work, plus hours each night grading homework and making lesson plans. Many teachers also have to attend "voluntary" additional meetings at school, sometimes on weekends. And in many states, in order to continue to be certified, teachers must also at the same time take graduate classes. And for "professional development," many teachers are required to serve on various other committees, taking up yet more time.
And these teachers also have lives. They have husbands and wives. They have kids of their own. They have inadequate time for the amount of work they are doing. That's why frex in Missouri, the average amount of time a teacher works in the field of education is five years. Five years. Given that some few teachers stay in the field for 30 or more years before retiring or quitting, how many teachers have to only work one or two or three years to bring the average down to five years?
The key is not to give the teachers more to do. The biggest key is to get parents more involved in the education and care of their kids. My wife sees parents all the time who don't discipline their kids, don't make their kids do their homework, or who only send their kids to school three or four days out of the week. Parental apathy is the number one problem that public schools face today, both in terms of parents who just don't care, and parents who think education is the responsibility of the school, and only the school.
More unfunded or underfunded federal mandates and state standards aren't going to do squat towards fixing that.
Reggie Bautista
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