Today we bring you a guest article by Nancy Churchill from Ferry County, WA. She offers some information and suggestions for those who are concerned about State Superintendent Chris Reykdal's all out effort to completely restructure sex education in Washington State. Mr. Reykdal's desire is to start teaching "gender identity" beginning in kindergarten. He supports the F.L.A.S.H. curriculum. Please give her article a read and share your thoughts with her and others. Do you know anyone who thinks that the local school board should have final control of the curriculum taught in your schools? The state OSPI is working to take the curriculum control for Sexual Health education … [Read more...]
America’s Education System – A bit of history
Understanding history helps us avoid the pitfalls of the past. The following story was originally run at Intellectual Takeout. The author is Daniel Lattier We offer it because it helps us understand how public education has moved from the local community needs and values to become focused on social/emotional; PBIS and a host of other government programs. Money is at the root and consolidation has allowed special interests to gain more control. By now you’ve most likely heard that America’s education system outspends all but a few countries in the world, while at the same time our students’ proficiency in reading and math has flatlined. What you probably haven’t heard … [Read more...]
Should the Education System Embrace ‘Subsidiarity’?
Intellectualtakeout.org has another interesting article...what say you? Reports of failure in public schools tend to be systemic. Stories of success tend to be localized. Is this a reason to promote subsidiarity in the public school system? Subsidiarity is a principle that calls for decision-making power and responsibility to be held at the lowest level as much as possible. Applied to schools, this would loosely mean that the district does not do or decide things for an individual school that the school can manage for itself, that the state does not unnecessarily interfere with districts, and that the federal government does not unnecessarily interfere with states. It’s … [Read more...]
The successor to No Child Left Behind has, it turns out, big problems of its own
By Valerie Strauss December 7, 2015 Follow @valeriestrauss The Washington Post U.S. lawmakers always have reasons for what they do, so there must be one for why they didn’t make public the 1,059-page rewrite of the 2002 No Child Left Behind until a few days before Congress began voting on the compromise legislation last week. Could it be that they didn’t want critics to take too close a look? The Every Student Succeeds Act is now expected to replace NCLB as the newest version of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, an overarching law that defines federal involvement in K-12 education. The House passed it last week and the Senate is expected to pass it this week, with … [Read more...]
Stotsky: Local School Districts Should Eliminate Common Core, Adopt Stronger Standards
May 30, 2014 | Shane Vander Hart Dr. Sandra Stotsky wrote an article at Breitbart that was blocked at Facebook for some strange reason. I wanted to highlight it here. She contends that local school boards need to take matters into their own hands and not depend on their states doing the right thing. Below are the steps she believes boards should take: Here are possible steps for local school boards to take, depending on what the legislature has passed: 1. Local school boards vote to eliminate Common Core’s standards in their school district. This is as far as Oklahoma needs to go. In other states, parents and others may need to petition their local school boards to do this. 2. … [Read more...]
WA Senate Bill 6109 – Levy transfer to the State
This is a re-post of an article that aims to show why the loss of local levy's for schools would be harmful. Take a read and let us know what you think. Five Drawbacks of Dammeier Senate Bill 6109... Robbing Peter to Pay Peter On April 15 2015, State Senator Bruce Dammeier introduced Senate Bill 6109 to the Washington Senate Ways and Means Committee. Senate Bill 6109 would transfer about one billion dollars in voter approved local school district levy funds to the State budget where it would presumably be used to meet the state legislature's obligation to pay for teacher salaries. Some call this a Levy Swap bill. Others call this a Levy Swipe bill because it uses local levy funds … [Read more...]
Students with Disabilities – The 2% Rule
Until this year school districts could use an “alternative” testing approach for students with disabilities. Districts were allowed to make the judgment themselves and were allowed to identify up to 2% of the student population. From an article in The Washington Post dated August 27, 2015: Effective Sept. 21, 2015, the official rule summary says: The Secretary amends the regulations governing title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (ESEA) (the “Title I regulations”), to no longer authorize a State to define modified academic achievement standards and develop alternate assessments based on those modified academic achievement standards for … [Read more...]