All governments at all levels are dealing with interesting financial times. However, Hawaii has taken an "interesting" approach to dealing with the strained finances. Instead of cutting art, music, extracurriculars or other means we have discussed previously, the state of Hawaii has decided to cut 17 instructional days over the next two years. These Furlough Fridays will save some money, but what about the impact on education? (Read the story here).

Can children be prepared properly with 17 fewer days of school? What about parents and their work schedules? These are only a couple of the hundreds of questions that come to mind, did any of these come to mind in the 50th state before this action was taken?

Cuts in education frustrate me, but this is taking it to a further extreme. At a time we are struggling to make sure each and every child is learning and prepared for their life, can cutting be a way to do this? Is it worth the cost of the single advanced bomber that would fund most of the cutting in education today? Are our priorities in the right place?

What do you think?

 Sometimes when you see titles such as the one that I have posted for this entry I know what you might be thinking, is this like new and improved products in the grocery store? They just rename so that we can have something new to purchase.

In the case of new standards for Ohio Schools, as seen here, it is slightly more important. What we have in this case is switch from having students cover a laundry list of items that cover a wide range of topics to covering fewer items, but in much more depth. 

This is something we need to all support if we want our students to become thinkers and learners and not merely test takers.

What do you think?

 In the wake of Columbine and other events in schools, many districts have instituted "zero tolerance" policies for weapons. However, the question has arisen lately, are we going a bit too far?

In Delaware, a 6-year old cub scout brings his favorite camping tool to school to eat his lunch. When asked for it by a teacher, he gives it up without complaint. His punishment? 45 day suspension which he is supposed to serve in a reform school. His mother is home schooling him instead of sending him to reform school while the decision is appealed.  (You can read about this here and here.)

So, what do you think, too far? Know I understand having policies to help protect children from violence in schools. Taking away kids plastic knifes they brought to spread jam on their bread, I can almost understand. Having parents take their children home because they brought a knife to school to cut a birthday cake, again almost can get that one. But come on now, does the punishment fit the crime here?

I will quote the six-year-old, ""I think it's very wrong. It's not fair at all,"

What do you think?

 You are going to hear a lot of contradictory discussions about the teaching profession in the coming weeks and months. On the one hand, you will hear about the impending teacher shortage, where thousands of teachers will be retiring in the near future leaving scads of positions vacate. 

On the other hand, you will hear about younger teachers finding it more and more difficult to find positions in some areas of education or the number of teachers who are being laid-off from their positions due to financial constraints and cutbacks brought on by the recent issues with the economy. See one story about this issue here from the LA Times.

This seeming contradiction is a warning cry for me, and I hope for all of us involved in education, which is in fact everyone. Here is the issue, more teachers who are near or at the retirement age are choosing to stay in the classrooms, pushing back their retirements. This is a great thing as many of these teachers are the best and we would benefit greatly from them staying in the classroom a few more years. The problem comes from the cutting of the younger teachers. We are eliminating the leadership core who in a few years would be responsible for the grooming of the next generation of teachers. When the retirements do commence say in 5 years,, we will not have a solid leadership core of experienced teachers for the rush of novice teachers to depend on.

A second problem comes from the recruitment of future teachers. If you hear stories over and over in the news, from your friends, or in your community about how difficult it will be to get a job, how likely are you to enter the teaching training programs, especially as a undergraduate? As these prospective teachers fail to the wayside, they will be replaced more and more by alternatively trained teachers and career changers. While both of these groups offer a great value to schools, I would not be in favor of these two groups becoming the dominant means of teacher preparation. The idea of teacher as a researching professional would be replaced with the teacher as a skilled technician who needs only to be exposed to the skills of the trade. Who will be the next generation of school leaders?

We need to make sure, no matter the situation we are in today, that we do not "eat the seeds" of the teaching profession. We need to make sure the future leaders are being groomed and grow within the profession and not rely only of alternative teacher preparation as the future leadership structure.

 Those of you who have read my materials are not surprised when I  start talking about funding for education with a bit of a leery eye.  All of the talk about money from the various stimulus packages going towards schools and educational projects,  I have continued to be a bit skeptical.

Well, today is going to be more of the same. As you see here in an AP story, there are a lot of people asking the same question, are stiimulus monies being used to help education or to plug state budget holes. I know of a lot of great stimulus ideas that were requested by various school districts that were not funded, all over the country, but you hear of the vast amounts of money coming to the states, where did it go? Well as stated in the article:

But as the bill made its way through Congress, lawmakers decided not to prohibit states from using the stabilization money to replace precious state aid for schools. They required states to maintain spending on K-12 schools and colleges but only at 2006 levels, which allowed most states to make significant cuts to education.

That flexibility "may be leading to a reduction in state support for public education," the inspector general said.

So, as long as states kept up the spending levels from 3 years ago, they could cut from the previous budget levels. This reminds me of the lottery in Florida when it came on line looking to supplement state funding for schools but ended up replacing more funding than supplementing.

Is this one time budget fix worth the actual costs to future generations? Especially when the school issues will still be with us next year?

What do you think?



hmm

 Here is an article about a school district near Columbus, Ohio that has taken a step that can be seen as radical and cancelled all extracurricular activities due to a failed levy vote. No football team, no band, nothing is occurring after schools, in fact the schools are locked up an hour after school gets out.

What do you think? Everyone seems to agree it is a shame, but are we going to fix the problem of school finance? We have some districts in this country whose budget for high school football is more than the budget in this district for all extracurricular activities. Is that fair?  

Should the districts with more money share with others?


This is certainly something that we need to discuss, because I fear this will not be the last district to face this choice.

Thoughts?

 It seems that the President's address to schools is causing quite an uproar partly political and partly educational. You can read the text of his statement here. What I wish we would spend more time discussing is the time missing in school. Each and every day, there is time wasted in school for a series of reasons beyond the control of teachers. It is in this vein that I hear some people having issue with the Presidential address. Teachers have more and more to cover, in less and less time. You have a school day which can consist of only 4 hours, how do you cover everything that needs to be covered?

We must work harder at finding more time for teachers. This does not mean simply adding to the school day or year. Instead, we need to make sure we all leave the teacher's time alone and use other times for events, even seemingly important ones.

 One of my sons has gym today and it made me think of something, why do the kids have so little gym class any more? Is there a correlation between this and the rise in Obesity?

When I was in school, I will try not to make it sound like that was in the stone age or something, we had gym class each and every day. In many schools today, they are lucky to have it once a week. I know there are a lot of valid reasons for this, time for academic study, etc. However, I do not think this is something we can just toss out as a given. I believe we as parents have to start looking to support more time for gym, for the health of our children.

As seen a press release today,  the September 11th Education Trust has announced a new series of resources for educating the public about 911. It is amazing material, I hope you will check it out.

 New reports are out on SAT performance, as can be seen here, and the results are causing a stir. Overall scores are down, and the gap is widening between some of the ethnic groups.

A few people are already using the results of these reports to call for another complete overhaul of the educational systems, as with NCLB. Granted, it has been since 2002 that NCLB has been underway and there are a number of issues related to it, but can we take a step back for a moment. Instead of calling for another change, can we take our processes and make them more effective? Can we close the widening gaps between have and have nots in education?

Can we make sure the money is spent on the kids and their education directly, and not to the various special interests? It is not a matter of money, there is a lot of money spent on education. it is a matter of getting the money into the right places and holding everyone accountable, students, faculty, staff, administrators, and parents.