Chalkboard Project Response
Helping Public Schools to Improve Output
A lot is right with our schools and staffs, who are dedicated educators for the most part. They are caught in the crossfire of so many agendas of others (Feds, State, School Boards, vocal small factions, fundamentalists, disgruntled or apathetic parents) so that they cannot possible succeed, and hardly ever do they get the credit they deserve for the difficult job of working with children or young adults daily.
What influences the output of our education system?
• Good Genetics: Reading ability can be predicted by age 18 months. Every high school should have a daycare center on its grounds, so parenting high school students will finish school, and the others will get education in parenting, for the sake of the next generation.
• Good Home life and support: Home provides the motivation and correction, takes up the slack. Recreate smaller K-8 schools in the communities. Uniforms for K-7 students would be helpful to parents.
• System support for families themselves: Homeless, itinerant and underemployed families affect school attendance, and require special programs and separate reporting.
• Good Nutrition and daily Physical Education: The time is here to eject advertising, fast food, and coke machines from the campus. Limit sports to intramurals. Every child should have daily PE, which teachers could and should teach.
• Extracurricular experiences/opportunities: Field trips, outdoor school and enrichment of life is extremely valuable, tying school life to adult life expectations.
• Broad curriculum: Basic subjects and the arts, life skills and cultural information as well as sex and family life education. Students will need to choose a track in HS.
• Demands for and opportunities for excellence: Promotion system based on demonstrated ability or interest in special fields at high school level, tracking systems at elementary level that allow for summer school, skipping grades, more flexible assignment to levels, awards, as well as credits. Put more emphasis on student responsibility for learning at all levels.
• Funding Balance for general population and special needs students is needed, not reliant on gambling revenues or other erratic revenues. We should all pay for education of our next generation.
• Daily Schedules: Older students should arrive and depart on more flexible schedules, not driven by the Sports Department. Young children’s hours in school are also often too early. Although 90% of educators work best in the early morning, that is not true of the general population. Testing outcomes would improve if all testing were done after 10 a.m.
• Annual schedules: The summer break is too long for younger students. Six weeks in summer for vacation, with the remaining 6 weeks distributed around Labor Day, Winter Holiday and Spring Holiday would help tremendously. Resistance to changing the school year comes largely from the Sports Departments and Parents of Jocks, so major sports need to be assigned to one or another quarter state-wide, with attention to ending the school year in May or June to accommodate to those who continue in college or other systems.
How you will measure the “output” determines which parts of the “input” will get further attention. Reliance on national testing scores is useful at the group level only, not for many parent/teacher level decisions. National testing tends to simplify and homogenize the curriculum to the detriment of creativity and character. Uniqueness is decried. Don’t let national tests drive public education.
• National tests
• State tests
• Records of student involvement in specific programs
• Displays
• Programs, plays, demonstration, science and art and literary fairs
• Record of graduates at work
My Pet Peeve: If we REALLY want family support of schools, which is fundamental, we must return to the community based elementary school, K-8. Life used to center on that local school: holidays, celebrations, fundraising, discipline, and community life. People knew each other and watched over each other’s children. Busing wasn’t necessary. Parents knew the school staff, and the staff knew the families well. In our current mode, children must move from school to school at least three times, more if their home is moved. If enrollment changes, the district will redraw school boundaries, ripping up parental webs of community life without a thought to that effect. It would be better to move some buildings. Junior highs have not produced promised results, but instead they have gathered up the most insecure group of students, separated them further from their families and from the lower school where they could have given some service and felt better about it. The academically gifted can be challenged in other ways. Jr. Hi students are NOT ready for intimate extensive social life, no matter how much they beg for dances and parties. They are thus drawn into the teen scene too early, with disastrous results. It is no wonder than our public schools have lost the support of families. Parents are frustrated and angry. They don’t go to PTA meetings, show up at school for much, vote for the funds needed, or help with studies at home where their life is so hectic anyway.
RE-CREATE COMMUNITY CENTERED K THROUGH 8 SCHOOLS. A Factory system will not produce the educated human being we want. An integrated family based system will.
---------------------------------------------------
Comments & Questions? Email: womenbefriends@yahoo.com
A lot is right with our schools and staffs, who are dedicated educators for the most part. They are caught in the crossfire of so many agendas of others (Feds, State, School Boards, vocal small factions, fundamentalists, disgruntled or apathetic parents) so that they cannot possible succeed, and hardly ever do they get the credit they deserve for the difficult job of working with children or young adults daily.
What influences the output of our education system?
• Good Genetics: Reading ability can be predicted by age 18 months. Every high school should have a daycare center on its grounds, so parenting high school students will finish school, and the others will get education in parenting, for the sake of the next generation.
• Good Home life and support: Home provides the motivation and correction, takes up the slack. Recreate smaller K-8 schools in the communities. Uniforms for K-7 students would be helpful to parents.
• System support for families themselves: Homeless, itinerant and underemployed families affect school attendance, and require special programs and separate reporting.
• Good Nutrition and daily Physical Education: The time is here to eject advertising, fast food, and coke machines from the campus. Limit sports to intramurals. Every child should have daily PE, which teachers could and should teach.
• Extracurricular experiences/opportunities: Field trips, outdoor school and enrichment of life is extremely valuable, tying school life to adult life expectations.
• Broad curriculum: Basic subjects and the arts, life skills and cultural information as well as sex and family life education. Students will need to choose a track in HS.
• Demands for and opportunities for excellence: Promotion system based on demonstrated ability or interest in special fields at high school level, tracking systems at elementary level that allow for summer school, skipping grades, more flexible assignment to levels, awards, as well as credits. Put more emphasis on student responsibility for learning at all levels.
• Funding Balance for general population and special needs students is needed, not reliant on gambling revenues or other erratic revenues. We should all pay for education of our next generation.
• Daily Schedules: Older students should arrive and depart on more flexible schedules, not driven by the Sports Department. Young children’s hours in school are also often too early. Although 90% of educators work best in the early morning, that is not true of the general population. Testing outcomes would improve if all testing were done after 10 a.m.
• Annual schedules: The summer break is too long for younger students. Six weeks in summer for vacation, with the remaining 6 weeks distributed around Labor Day, Winter Holiday and Spring Holiday would help tremendously. Resistance to changing the school year comes largely from the Sports Departments and Parents of Jocks, so major sports need to be assigned to one or another quarter state-wide, with attention to ending the school year in May or June to accommodate to those who continue in college or other systems.
How you will measure the “output” determines which parts of the “input” will get further attention. Reliance on national testing scores is useful at the group level only, not for many parent/teacher level decisions. National testing tends to simplify and homogenize the curriculum to the detriment of creativity and character. Uniqueness is decried. Don’t let national tests drive public education.
• National tests
• State tests
• Records of student involvement in specific programs
• Displays
• Programs, plays, demonstration, science and art and literary fairs
• Record of graduates at work
My Pet Peeve: If we REALLY want family support of schools, which is fundamental, we must return to the community based elementary school, K-8. Life used to center on that local school: holidays, celebrations, fundraising, discipline, and community life. People knew each other and watched over each other’s children. Busing wasn’t necessary. Parents knew the school staff, and the staff knew the families well. In our current mode, children must move from school to school at least three times, more if their home is moved. If enrollment changes, the district will redraw school boundaries, ripping up parental webs of community life without a thought to that effect. It would be better to move some buildings. Junior highs have not produced promised results, but instead they have gathered up the most insecure group of students, separated them further from their families and from the lower school where they could have given some service and felt better about it. The academically gifted can be challenged in other ways. Jr. Hi students are NOT ready for intimate extensive social life, no matter how much they beg for dances and parties. They are thus drawn into the teen scene too early, with disastrous results. It is no wonder than our public schools have lost the support of families. Parents are frustrated and angry. They don’t go to PTA meetings, show up at school for much, vote for the funds needed, or help with studies at home where their life is so hectic anyway.
RE-CREATE COMMUNITY CENTERED K THROUGH 8 SCHOOLS. A Factory system will not produce the educated human being we want. An integrated family based system will.
---------------------------------------------------
Comments & Questions? Email: womenbefriends@yahoo.com
posted by MJS at 6:35 PM
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