Skip to main content

They Had to Commission a Report for This???


The Oakland Tribune published an article today entitled "Study Finds State Schools in Big Trouble." I have one word for them: "Duh."

Among the problems listed were:

  • Not being able to fire tenured - but bad - teachers

  • An irrational system for distributing money

  • Missing data on students and resources

  • Too many mandates (including many unfunded mandates)

  • Excessive regulation

  • One size fits all solutions for a diverse group of schools

  • Extreme inequity

Solutions recommended:


  • Giving more autonomy to school sites

  • Less regulation in schools

  • More funding for schools

  • Recruiting and retaining good teachers

  • Giving educators more flexibility

Seriously, they paid people to figure this out? They could have asked me. Think of how much money would have been saved if they had just emailed me instead of commissioning a report that included researches from 32 universities and institutions. And every teacher I know would say the same thing. Duh.

Maybe it's not very eloquent, but there's actually no better way to say it. Your state tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen of California.

Now we'll see if they do anything about any of these recommendations. I am doubtful.

Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
Oops! I missed this post of yours! I'm sure it was the same study I mentioned a few days later.

Yes, absolutely, you're right EVERYONE who has been paying attention knew all this. The problem is that people who haven't been paying attention have now walked into the room as the proverbial grown-ups (where the current teachers/admins/parents/everyone-paying-attention proverbial children) and said, "what's this? it's a mess!" and they've brought in the "pediatrician" to explain very authoritatively that when children play, toys get scattered around.

Duh, as you point out.

But it's a weird necessary step in order to get the people who have been out of the loop but have political power to do the *right* thing instead of the wrong stuff over again.

Btw, I blogged a bit about this. (kitode.typepad.com)
12:14 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals.  This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle.  For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people.  It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them.  Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how
1 comment
Read more

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part Two

  Second very long part of the prison visit report.   After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk.    First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still
Post a Comment
Read more