We've run articles in the past about shortening the school week to 4 days. Today is an update from The Hill: Facing mounting challenges, schools embrace the 4-day week | The Hill 850 districts have made the move and more are considering Hundreds of U.S. school districts have sought to combat the teacher shortage and raise the quality of life for their students and faculty by making a big change: a four-day week. The trend of a four-day week has been rising among American companies and schools since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many finding benefits to having an extra day off. In schools, most students and teachers are getting Friday or Monday off while having … [Read more...]
What’s your ideal educational system?
This from an article at The Freedom Foundation - author is Jamie Lund. You can get more information about him on his Facebook Page We spend ten billion dollars each year to assure that citizens are educated. The recent public debate over charter schools highlighted some strong differences of opinion about what the ideal education system should look like. The diagram simplifies the discussion. A system of public education can have many or few who are permitted to offer education. Likewise, a system can have one or many acceptable learning outcomes. Our current system in Washington is nearly a monopoly on providers and fairly uniform on learning targets. It is indicated by the red … [Read more...]
Will Public Education Survive the Next Administration?
From an article at Save Maine Schools - author is Emily Talmage Donald Trump has called Common Core a “disaster.” The leaked DNC emails refer to the standards as a “political third rail.” At this point, however, the controversial standards may be more of a red herring than anything else. While the public remains largely in the dark, a massive upheaval of our public school system is well underway, and recent proposals from both major political parties indicate that the transformation will move full speed ahead regardless of who is elected president this fall. The new system is designed to expand the education market by allowing out-of-district providers – including online … [Read more...]
Statewide teacher bargaining is not the only rational answer to McCleary – Guest Article
A guest article by Liv Finne from her blog at The Washington Policy Center In this recent post at Smarter Government, former state Attorney General Rob McKenna said moving to statewide teacher bargaining is the only rational choice for answering the McCleary challenge. Rob says since McCleary requires the state to assume the full cost of teacher pay, the state should take over from local school districts the responsibility for bargaining teachers’ contracts. Rob and I agree on many education issues, but on this matter I must respectfully disagree. Statewide collective bargaining is not the only rational answer to McCleary. Rob has accepted the McCleary premise that the state … [Read more...]
School stops enforcing Obama’s trans bathroom policy after parents pulled kids out
From an article at LifeSiteNews ... HOWELL, Michigan, June 6, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- A Michigan school district has stopped the practice of allowing members of one biological sex to use the restrooms of the opposite sex after parents pulled their two sons out of elementary school over the issue. Last week, Matt Stewart's nine-year-old son told him, "There was a girl in the boys’ bathroom" with him and other male elementary kids. When Stewart called the school, the principal told him the Obama administration's federal guidance on transgender students forced them to allow transgender students in the bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers of their chosen gender, and not their … [Read more...]
Education in Crisis and the Threat of Privatization
From the Huffington Post .... (Diane Ravitch) It has become conventional wisdom that "education is in crisis." I have been asked about this question by many interviewers. They say something like: "Do you think American education is in crisis? What is the cause of the crisis?" And I answer, "Yes, there is a crisis, but it is not the one you have read about. The crisis in education today is an existential threat to the survival of public education. The threat comes from those who unfairly blame the school for social conditions, and then create a false narrative of failure. The real threat is privatization and the loss of a fundamental democratic institution." As we have … [Read more...]
The Parent Bill Of Rights For Education
From Exceptional Delaware ..... Since the Center for American Policy, Delaware Governor Jack Markell, and the President of the National PTA want to get 10,000 signatures on their Testing Bill of Rights within the next month, I think it is only fair parents who opt their children out of high-stakes assessments do the same. With that being said, this article needs 20,000 commenters, or official signatures, within the next month. We need to tell these corporate education reformers: NO MORE! If we get 50,000, even better. Our parental bill of rights regarding opt out or refusing the test bill of rights will be a work in progress, morphing and changing based on the need. We will make … [Read more...]
Colorado School District to Begin Distribution of Satanic Materials to Children
From an article at Breitbart .... After coming under fire from atheist groups for the distribution of free Bibles, the Delta County School District (DCSD) has approved the circulation of atheistic, secular and Satanic literature to middle and high school students. Several atheist organizations, including The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers (WCAF) and the Satanic Temple, applied to distribute their literature as a challenge to the school district’s “open forum” policy that allows any group to distribute non-curricular literature to students, as long as it conforms to policy guidelines. Kurt Clay, the Assistant Superintendent of the … [Read more...]
WHAT Students Read Matters More Than You Think
From an article at Intellectualtakeout.org .................. In today’s standards-based education system, the main focus is on teaching skills rather than content. There’s a prevalent idea that it matters less what students read just so long as they are reading. But according to E.D. Hirsch, professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, that’s bull. Some of you may know Hirsch through his famous advocacy of “cultural literacy”—the idea that some amount of “shared, canonical knowledge is inherently necessary to a literate democracy,” and that students in a particular culture should have common exposure to certain texts and concepts. But what you … [Read more...]
Bill would require cursive lessons in schools
From KREM2 OLYMPIA, Wash. -- It used to be a standard part of elementary school, but today cursive writing instruction is optional. A bill submitted in Olympia would make cursive mandatory in Washington schools. “Part of being an American is being able to read cursive writing,” said Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, the bill’s sponsor. Roach said if children are not taught cursive they can't read historic documents written in cursive. She also said she had a constituent complain that her grandchild wasn't able to read a note the grandmother had written in cursive. The bill has the backing of Republicans and Democrats. State Superintendent Randy Dorn said more attention needs to be paid to … [Read more...]