I agree with BHO on this...

[Okla-homey]

:D :pop:


More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation

Sun Sep 27, 3:29 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AP)– Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press

[Frozen Sooner]

Yeah, you and I have already figured out it's one of the area we agree. Most (not all) of the teachers I talk to are behind it as well, so long as there's a pay raise involved.

[StoopTroup]

Teachers are over paid...they need to prove their worth and help the President straighten all this out.

















;)

[Curly Bill]

The problem with our education system is not that we don't spend enough time in school. The problem is not even close to being PC enough to talk about, and so I won't.

[SicEmBaylor]

Yeah, you and I have already figured out it's one of the area we agree. Most (not all) of the teachers I talk to are behind it as well, so long as there's a pay raise involved.

They already get paid for work that most people have to do 5 days a week ALL year. They're already way the hell overpaid. Christ, I'm sick of hearing about how poorly paid our teachers are.

Look, if the teachers would de-unionize, allow performance based pay, and make it easy to fire teachers then I wouldn't mind paying them a bit more.
They also did this to themselves with that stupid and idiotic public campaign about smaller classroom sizes and how that was the key to better education. Bull****. I'd rather have a great capable and competent teacher teaching 50 kids than a ****ty one teaching 12.

The General Education degree is also a joke. A GE degree shouldn't qualify you to teach anything above an 8th grade level. The two best teachers I had in HS had degrees in the actual subjects they were teaching. Coaches shouldn't be teaching. It's frustrating going to school and knowing you're smarter than 3/4 of your teachers.

Which brings me to another point....I like watching sports. I love football. I swam competitively for 10 years including 4 years in HS. BUT, until we get serious about education we ought to cut everything but the absolute fundamentals. Everything except english, science, math, and the social sciences need to go. Once we're on a firmer educational footing we can start bringing back extras like sports, art, music, etc.

Or we can do what I'd really like to see happen and just totally eliminate the government's public indoctrination centers...err schools.

[StoopTroup]

:pop:

Zima anyone?

http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/zima.jpg

[Curly Bill]

They already get paid for work that most people have to do 5 days a week ALL year. They're already way the hell overpaid. Christ, I'm sick of hearing about how poorly paid our teachers are.

Look, if the teachers would de-unionize, allow performance based pay, and make it easy to fire teachers then I wouldn't mind paying them a bit more.
They also did this to themselves with that stupid and idiotic public campaign about smaller classroom sizes and how that was the key to better education. Bull****. I'd rather have a great capable and competent teacher teaching 50 kids than a ****ty one teaching 12.

The General Education degree is also a joke. A GE degree shouldn't qualify you to teach anything above an 8th grade level. The two best teachers I had in HS had degrees in the actual subjects they were teaching. Coaches shouldn't be teaching. It's frustrating going to school and knowing you're smarter than 3/4 of your teachers.

Which brings me to another point....I like watching sports. I love football. I swam competitively for 10 years including 4 years in HS. BUT, until we get serious about education we ought to cut everything but the absolute fundamentals. Everything except english, science, math, and the social sciences need to go. Once we're on a firmer educational footing we can start bringing back extras like sports, art, music, etc.

Or we can do what I'd really like to see happen and just totally eliminate the government's public indoctrination centers...err schools.

With all due respect, you seem fairly knowledgeable about politics, about education...not so much. :O

[StoopTroup]

Somebody got bad grade for arguing I bet. :D ;)

[SicEmBaylor]

With all due respect, you seem fairly knowledgeable about politics, about education...not so much. :O

There is a lot of extra-curricular crap going on in schools that do nothing to advance the education of the individual student and in most cases distract them from pure academics. Money is clearly not the answer. More money has never shown to produce results.

If the generation that put a man on the moon could be educated in spartan classrooms with only the most rudimentary tools of education, then why can't we educate today's kids in much the same way?

How does one become a better teacher by making $80,000 a year as opposed to $40,000? The argument is that it attracts better quality teachers who would otherwise opt into the private sector, but what method is there for determining who is and is not a quality teacher? Like I said before, I don't mind paying one high-quality teacher $80,000 a year if we can cut twice as many under-performing educators.

And then there's the administrative staff....:eyeroll:

[Curly Bill]

There is a lot of extra-curricular crap going on in schools that do nothing to advance the education of the individual student and in most cases distract them from pure academics. Money is clearly not the answer. More money has never shown to produce results.

If the generation that put a man on the moon could be educated in spartan classrooms with only the most rudimentary tools of education, then why can't we educate today's kids in much the same way?

How does one become a better teacher by making $80,000 a year as opposed to $40,000? The argument is that it attracts better quality teachers who would otherwise opt into the private sector, but what method is there for determining who is and is not a quality teacher? Like I said before, I don't mind paying one high-quality teacher $80,000 a year if we can cut twice as many under-performing educators.

And then there's the administrative staff....:eyeroll:

Because the law says we can't.

In fact it's some aspects of education law, that I don't care to get into, that is as much to blame as anything for our current less than stellar educational system.

[Half a Hundred]

The biggest problem we have in education is that summer vacation is too damn long. 180-ish days isn't bad, but when you have 12 weeks off of school, kids forget all sorts of stuff in that time period, so the first month of school is wasted on getting them back up to speed.

Worst of all, this reinforces socioeconomic imbalances, as the richer kids are likely engaging in educational experiences like travel and summer camp, while poorer kids are stuck in front of the electronic babysitter while their parents are working.

[Tulsa_Fireman]

Which brings me to another point....I like watching sports. I love football. I swam competitively for 10 years including 4 years in HS. BUT, until we get serious about education we ought to cut everything but the absolute fundamentals. Everything except english, science, math, and the social sciences need to go. Once we're on a firmer educational footing we can start bringing back extras like sports, art, music, etc.

Apparently our founding fathers didn't think art was an "extra". It's easily arguable that a rudimentary music education is a fundamental. Sports, or the extension of physical education, is an obvious essential to the growth and maturity of the student.

These are silly, off the rails comments, SicEm. Whether you've swam or loved football or played skin flute, doesn't matter.

[Frozen Sooner]

They already get paid for work that most people have to do 5 days a week ALL year. They're already way the hell overpaid. Christ, I'm sick of hearing about how poorly paid our teachers are.

Look, if the teachers would de-unionize, allow performance based pay, and make it easy to fire teachers then I wouldn't mind paying them a bit more.
They also did this to themselves with that stupid and idiotic public campaign about smaller classroom sizes and how that was the key to better education. Bull****. I'd rather have a great capable and competent teacher teaching 50 kids than a ****ty one teaching 12.

The General Education degree is also a joke. A GE degree shouldn't qualify you to teach anything above an 8th grade level. The two best teachers I had in HS had degrees in the actual subjects they were teaching. Coaches shouldn't be teaching. It's frustrating going to school and knowing you're smarter than 3/4 of your teachers.

Which brings me to another point....I like watching sports. I love football. I swam competitively for 10 years including 4 years in HS. BUT, until we get serious about education we ought to cut everything but the absolute fundamentals. Everything except english, science, math, and the social sciences need to go. Once we're on a firmer educational footing we can start bringing back extras like sports, art, music, etc.

Or we can do what I'd really like to see happen and just totally eliminate the government's public indoctrination centers...err schools.

SicEm, I'm going to make this as absolutely basic as I can for you.

You can't effectively cut someone's pay by arbitrarily extending their hours. Particularly not when hours and pay are collectively bargained. Even in non-unionized salaried jobs, if you work someone much past 40 hours every week when their original job requirement implied a 40 hour week they're going to demand a pay raise.

I'm not even going to get into normative statements about how much teachers should get paid or whether they get paid too much right now. I'm simply stating an economic truth: there is currently a shortage of teachers, particularly in math and science. If you extend work hours in that manner, you will have an even greater shortage of teachers.

Good God, man, I thought you were a capitalist. Only collectivists of the worst sort think that you can mandate more production without a change in one of the factors of production.

[StoopTroup]

He lives with Cops now. He's beginning to come of age.

[SicEmBaylor]

Good God, man, I thought you were a capitalist. Only collectivists of the worst sort think that you can mandate more production without a change in one of the factors of production.

They're public employees which changes a lot. The fact is, their pay should be performance based. If they don't like the hours/pay ratio then they're always welcome to find a better paying job.

I just do not believe that paying them more is going to do a damned thing to increase the quality of education -- you're going to have the same useless educators only they'll be highly paid useless educators.

I'd love to pay solid teachers more if you fired the ones who just aren't very good at teaching -- ESPECIALLY the idiotic assistant football coaches they have teaching history and civics in so many Oklahoma classrooms.

[SicEmBaylor]

He lives with Cops now. He's beginning to come of age.

Funny you should mention them.

I've know the cop roommate that owns the house for about 4 years. We met at Baylor through his girlfriend who also lives with us. Anyway, she graduated Baylor last year with an MBA but she decided to teach (I can't imagine way). She teaches at an inner-city Waco middle school school, and the **** she tells me every day just blows my mind. This school of hers made my time at Fort Gibson look like a scene from Leave it Beaver.

They routinely say things to her that, if said at my MS or HS, would have had us kicked out of school so fast our head would spin. The school is like 96% Hispanic and these kids routinely threaten her with violence, threaten to rape her, graphically detail their sex lives (yes they're in MS), they refuse to do any work, they won't behave, they come to school smelling like pot, etc. It's absolutely amazing.

She gave them this assignment one day whereby they were suppose to write down their goals for the semester and their goals in life. Most of these kids wrote on a 3rd-4th grade level and were barely coherent. Some of them were just down right sick and some were pretty funny. This one girl wrote that her goal for the semester was to, "get knocked up so I can start getting my government check." Another girl wrote that her life goal was to "Visit England because I think it's pretty and I'd like to learn the language." I kid you not.

[Leroy Lizard]

As usual, BHO has oversimplified the problem. We already have enough trouble attracting math and science teachers. Make them work 12 months out of the year and the number will dry up even more.

As far as evaluating teachers, how do you do it?

[StoopTroup]

However....for every student you think might never stand a chance...you'll find some that suddenly out of the blue astonish you. If teaches you. It's funny how that works. It gives you hope. It makes you stop...smile and suddenly the day that was hard to get up for maybe takes a turn for the better.

Kids are awesome.

One of my old neighbors worked an inner city school too. For 6 months she would come Home crying about work. It wasn't the kids as much as it was the system around her. She endured the battle hardened faculty she was surrounded by and eventually left for a better position. The funny thing her Husband and her felt that had they not endured all of that...they would have been giving up and that would have been a sad day...those kids wouldn't have had anyone that had ever gave a dam about them...or so it seemed. Even the Battle Hardened ones stayed and they continued to try after she was gone. She ended up realizing...she made it a better place for a small time in those kids lives.

You can't legislate that.

[Okla-homey]

You guys are waaaay overthinking this. I just want kids to be in skool longer during each day, and more months of the year, and therefore on the street less, whether they're learning anything or not.

For far too many poor kids, even a crappy public school is a better and safer environment then their so-called "homes" and the mean streets of their 'hoods.

[1890MilesToNorman]

I don't agree with him at all on this, my fondest memories as a kid were from summer break. Kids need time to be kids, lord knows they will work their butts off for 4 or 5 decades when they get out of school.

[tbl]

I don't know about the poor kids, but I know that I do NOT want my kids being in the public school system any more than is necessary. My oldest daughter is in kindergarten and I'm shocked at the crap she gets sent home with. Instead of learning how to read, she's getting a list of "sight words", all to pass some standardized test. What the flip is that all about? Let's don't worry about phonics or anything...

I'm also not a fan of my kids being raised and spending most of their time completely away from the supervision and moral direction of their parents. That's just me...

[Okla-homey]

I don't know about the poor kids, but I know that I do NOT want my kids being in the public school system any more than is necessary. My oldest daughter is in kindergarten and I'm shocked at the crap she gets sent home with. Instead of learning how to read, she's getting a list of "sight words", all to pass some standardized test. What the flip is that all about? Let's don't worry about phonics or anything...

I'm also not a fan of my kids being raised and spending most of their time completely away from the supervision and moral direction of their parents. That's just me...

You have a choice. Go private school. That's what we did, for precisely the reasons you cite.

[badger]

More learning days sound good on paper. However, there was many Oklahoma schools that are looking at ways to save money because of declining budgets from lack of state, local and federal funds.

I have never heard of Prue before, but I sure heard of 'em when they decided to make it four-day schooling. (http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090928_12_A1_Pruesc210813&archive=yes)

Even if they don't bump teacher pay with a longer school year, they will pay for other things outside their control, like utility costs and fuel costs to transport students.

Also, I agree that teachers are well-compensated compared to many other professions. However, I think they earn their summer vacations and alleged weekends off by taking work home with them - creating lesson plans, grading papers and tests, talking to angry parents that somehow find their unlisted phone numbers, staying accredited, finding an antidote for apple-left-on-the-desk-too-long poisoning, etc.

[SanJoaquinSooner]

No Child Left Behind is a central-planner, politburo-loving, bureaucrat's wet dream. The federal gov't is already over involved in education. Their policies lead schools to do things like purposely mis-placing students into classes they are bound to fail, solely for the purpose of gaining a higher ranking for the school.

The U.S. has probably 75 out of the best 100 universities in the world, and the feds don't micromanage them.

[My Opinion Matters]

You guys are waaaay overthinking this. I just want kids to be in skool longer during each day, and more months of the year, and therefore on the street less, whether they're learning anything or not.

For far too many poor kids, even a crappy public school is a better and safer environment then their so-called "homes" and the mean streets of their 'hoods.

...and this is precisely everything that is wrong with schools today.

[Tulsa_Fireman]

You have a choice. Go private school. That's what we did, for precisely the reasons you cite.

Or the alternative for poor public servants like myself.

Educate your children beyond the slope-headed madness they get in the public school. I will happily admit, my daughter goes to one of the better grade schools in Pratt Elementary here in Sand Springs. But even with that, what the teacher is teaching is obviously restricted by the slower learners in the classroom. To me, the answer is so simple, an idiot like me could even figure it out. Fill the gaps. Raise the bar. Expect more, teach more, and demand the best.

When you and your child are working together to set the pace and level of education, it doesn't matter what they're doing and how fast they're getting there in class. I wish I had a nickel for every time my daughter said, "But daddy, we're not working on that yet." "I don't care what you're working on in class. WE'RE working on this so when you DO get to it in class, you're already one step ahead of the game." To me, it's an amazingly simple concept.

It's MY job as a father to set the bar. The only time the school should do that is when a parent fails to do so, therefore establishing the "minimum standard". And there's no way in hell my Pootie Bear is getting the bare bones minimum when it comes to her education.

[badger]

After I left my elementary school for the high school, I heard that not only did our class do away with different levels of reading groups, but they also did away with letter grades.

The replacement, as can be expected, was a single reading group for the different tier reading groups in our grade. Replacing letter grades was different levels of mastery in subjects... in essence, a progress report on each of the subjects.

I could expect no less from a school district that gave into a mother's demands that her special education child never receive any grades lower than an A- in any subject, or that gave into student demands that every student that wasn't on the F-list in high school be allowed on the privileged list of students that could use study halls as recreation periods with less supervision.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

You have a choice. Go private school. That's what we did, for precisely the reasons you cite.

there is another alternative - home school. it's what we finally decided to do.

my oldest daughter was in public school here in washington and was doing pretty well in 2nd grade. then in 3rd grade, she got a craptastic teacher who decided to take the year off. we rarely got homework sent home, my wife and i were in the teacher's office for meetings where she would duck all of our questions about what they were supposed to be learning. the principal backed the teacher to the bone.

we got her aptitude tests back and she'd dropped from high 80's to the low 50's in one year. of course, by then it was too late to prove our point to the principle so we did our homework and got her into a really good teacher the next year. she struggled but finally caught up and was back in the low 80's the next year.

then 5th grade hit, we had a choice of 3 new teachers (all 1st year teachers) that no one knew anything about. the guy seemed nice. he sent out every week these "this is what we did emails" that were pretty impressive. all of the lies caught up to him in the 3rd 9 weeks when i became incredibly suspicious of my daughter's math work.

my daughter made a comment like 'well, we finally moved past least common denominator to least common multiple today". "what? you said you finished that 6 months ago." she got this guilty look on her face and apparently broke down that her teacher was panicking because they were so far behind. long story short - the teacher had been letting the kids bring in music and letting them listen to explicit lyrics during class, anything to be their friend which meant the inmates were running the assylum. we went to the principal who predictably shouted us down. he lied to the principal and tried to blame my daughter. i, uh, "informed" him that retaliation would be dealt with in the hallway.

we got some 5th grade text books that same day and started teaching her. she was so far behind it wasn't even funny, but we made up ground in thos last 8 or so weeks. she was the only kid in the entire class to pass any part of the WASL that is how badly he destroyed those kids.

it took 2 YEARS to get my daughter fully back on track with constant daily instruction. homeschooling isn't for everyone, but we made the decision that we weren't going to wait until a teacher explained to us that our kid was struggling anymore. we were going to know the day she turned in the lousy paper/homework assignment.

[yermom]

Or the alternative for poor public servants like myself.

Educate your children beyond the slope-headed madness they get in the public school. I will happily admit, my daughter goes to one of the better grade schools in Pratt Elementary here in Sand Springs. But even with that, what the teacher is teaching is obviously restricted by the slower learners in the classroom. To me, the answer is so simple, an idiot like me could even figure it out. Fill the gaps. Raise the bar. Expect more, teach more, and demand the best.

When you and your child are working together to set the pace and level of education, it doesn't matter what they're doing and how fast they're getting there in class. I wish I had a nickel for every time my daughter said, "But daddy, we're not working on that yet." "I don't care what you're working on in class. WE'RE working on this so when you DO get to it in class, you're already one step ahead of the game." To me, it's an amazingly simple concept.

It's MY job as a father to set the bar. The only time the school should do that is when a parent fails to do so, therefore establishing the "minimum standard". And there's no way in hell my Pootie Bear is getting the bare bones minimum when it comes to her education.

that's pretty much my idea. the school's job is to get the bare minimum into your kid, really. that's not really going to cut it once they get to college, or real life

i mean, i learned a lot in school, and took most of the advanced classes i could, i still feel like i wasted a lot of opportunities

[NormanPride]

Teachers have it rough. They're never right, and they have very little freedom on what to teach. Administration is where the real frustrations lie, and you can usually track a good school to good administration and cooperation between teachers and their superiors.

I think as far as pay goes, it's about right. You'd have to increase pay for a longer year, of course, and that would mean raising taxes. Football coaches get paid a ton because their hours are hell, and they work just about all year...

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

SicEm, I'm going to make this as absolutely basic as I can for you.

You can't effectively cut someone's pay by arbitrarily extending their hours. Particularly not when hours and pay are collectively bargained. Even in non-unionized salaried jobs, if you work someone much past 40 hours every week when their original job requirement implied a 40 hour week they're going to demand a pay raise.

I'm not even going to get into normative statements about how much teachers should get paid or whether they get paid too much right now. I'm simply stating an economic truth: there is currently a shortage of teachers, particularly in math and science. If you extend work hours in that manner, you will have an even greater shortage of teachers.

Good God, man, I thought you were a capitalist. Only collectivists of the worst sort think that you can mandate more production without a change in one of the factors of production.Looked to me that he's saying the teachers are mostly overpaid right now, considering all the vacation time they have. Not so much working more hours in a week, but cutting out most of the 3 month summer vacation, and perhaps part of Christmas break and spring break.

[Frozen Sooner]

REGARDLESS OF NORMATIVE STATEMENTS, when there's a shortage of people to fill positions, which there is, if you reduce the price you're willing to pay per unit of labor then suppliers of labor will supply fewer units.

Adding additional days to the school year without raising annual compensation reduces the price per unit of labor. When you increase a denominator without a proportional increase in the numerator then the value of the fraction expressed is less.

Since the education field is an effective monopsony, any reduction in price per labor unit is an effective price ceiling. I can post some graphs later if you need them to show how lowering a price ceiling when there's already a shortage will only exacerbate the shortage.

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

REGARDLESS OF NORMATIVE STATEMENTS, when there's a shortage of people to fill positions, which there is, if you reduce the price you're willing to pay per unit of labor then suppliers of labor will supply fewer units.

Adding additional days to the school year without raising annual compensation reduces the price per unit of labor. When you increase a denominator without a proportional increase in the numerator then the value of the fraction expressed is less.

Since the education field is an effective monopsony, any reduction in price per labor unit is an effective price ceiling. I can post some graphs later if you need them to show how lowering a price ceiling when there's already a shortage will only exacerbate the shortage.You are discussing Raising Taxes. Some of us are saying fuggitaboutit.

[sooneron]

I would be all for giving teachers decent pay out of the gate (that would attract some better ones), but as much as I like pay increases based upon performance, I don't know how you'd really base the perception of good performance.
Peers? Admin? Parents? (Hell no!), students? (riiight), and you can't base it on test scores, becasue then you are back to where we are now- teachers basically prepping kids to take a test for the better part of the semester.

[jdsooner]

StoopTroup;2717832]Teachers are over paid...they need to prove their worth and help the President straighten all this out. :mad:

My wife is a teacher and you don't know what you are talking about. She works late almost daily, buys snacks for her kids since most of them don't get breakfast, and deals with more social and discipline problems than you can imagine.

As hard as she works, she deserves twice as much as she gets!

[Frozen Sooner]

You are discussing Raising Taxes. Some of us are saying fuggitaboutit.

You are discussing breaking well-established laws of economics. Some of us are saying "good luck with that."

[badger]

Frozo man, we all know that there will be no extra money made available to fund these extra days from the federal government mandating the extra days.It's not about teacher pay, because I'm sure they'd get more money if it was available. Alas, any jobs like this won't ever get competitive pay because the source of the pay is from taxes.

If the school year requires more time in the classroom and there isn't more funding available to help school districts have the same standards per school day they now have, I can see certain things happening:

1- Teacher layoffs. We already see this when school district money is tight. Right or not, it happens.

2- Less school days per week. If the time in the classroom is based on time as opposed to days, you will see longer school days and shorter school weeks. Prue goes to 4-day? Hell, maybe school year-round will go to 3-day school or 2-day school if funding is tight!

3- Less school hours per day. If this is a day-based extension, schools will simply cut hours of instruction to make up the difference. So, President Obama wants students in class 300 days out of the year, eh? Well, he didn't say how long they had to stay, hahahaha!

4- District consolidation. Much like what is being proposed by the USPS, another government-funded program, there will be less physical buildings where school's held to cut back on maintenance, utilities, etc. The end result may be the loss of identity for some smaller towns.

5- Less extra gravy subjects. Programs like fine arts, social interest clubs and maybe even sports will have to go.

6- Crowded classes. One teacher per 30 students might seem ideal right now for a tight budget. One teacher per 50 students might be more realistic if they have to fund extra classroom time.

7- More cost burden on parents. Much like college, student may be expected to provide their own textbooks and study materials and perhaps even shoulder some other items like desks, chairs and lunch trays. If situations are really bad, parents may even be responsible for transportation to and from school for kids.

8- More meals to provide. If school days get longer, there may soon be a need for not just school lunches, but also breakfasts and dinners.

Just a few I can think of offhand. I just don't see this working.

[badger]

:mad:

My wife is a teacher and you don't know what you are talking about. She works late almost daily, buys snacks for her kids since most of them don't get breakfast, and deals with more social and discipline problems than you can imagine.

As hard as she works, she deserves twice as much as she gets!

I agree that teachers are not overpaid (I listed off the fun and actual reasons above). However, I am not convinced that they are underpaid, given the many benefits that go with the job. Many like to point out the weekends and summers off (which I've already said they deserve), but the best benefits are those that come from being unionized government employees - pensions, health and life insurance benefits, etc.

[Leroy Lizard]

Just to give some real substance to the debate: Step-1 teachers (first-year, BS degree) make on average $31,000 per year in Oklahoma.

With a doctoral degree, a Step-14 teacher (veteran) makes on average $39,000 per year.

http://www.teacher-world.com/teacher-salary/oklahoma.html



1- Teacher layoffs. We already see this when school district money is tight. Right or not, it happens.

If teachers are asked to teach year-round, this won't be a problem, as many teachers will simply quit. Not a problem? Well, who quits? Science and math teachers. Now is it a problem?


2- Less school days per week. If the time in the classroom is based on time as opposed to days, you will see longer school days and shorter school weeks. Prue goes to 4-day? Hell, maybe school year-round will go to 3-day school or 2-day school if funding is tight!

Teachers aren't stupid. They will realize that their weekly burden won't change much, but they will be asked to do it year-round instead of just 10 months. So they lose opportunity to do part-time work in the summer.


3- Less school hours per day. If this is a day-based extension, schools will simply cut hours of instruction to make up the difference. So, President Obama wants students in class 300 days out of the year, eh? Well, he didn't say how long they had to stay, hahahaha!

Again, this doesn't cut the teaching burden much and eliminates any chance of a teacher picking up spare change in the summer. Teachers won't go for it.


4- District consolidation. Much like what is being proposed by the USPS, another government-funded program, there will be less physical buildings where school's held to cut back on maintenance, utilities, etc. The end result may be the loss of identity for some smaller towns.

Sorry, but one of the biggest problems we have in education are oversized districts, which tend to be run very poorly. There is talk of breaking LA Unified because of this.


7- More cost burden on parents. Much like college, student may be expected to provide their own textbooks and study materials and perhaps even shoulder some other items like desks, chairs and lunch trays.

Illegal in most states.

[NormanPride]

Has anyone actually looked at other nations' school systems to see how they're run and funded? I've always said that if someone else is doing it better, we should take what they do and improve on it.

[Leroy Lizard]

The problems are everywhere. Oklahoma actually has it pretty good by comparison.

[tbl]

Home school FTW... I've been blessed to have job so my wife is able to stay home with our kids, and while I don't see how we could do it now considering the chaos that ensues every day (5 YO girl, 3 YO boy, 15 MO daughter), there's no doubt we're moving this direction once my youngest is a little closer to 3 or 4.

Home school kids consistently test off the charts better than public or private school kids, and they actually learn how to think instead of just what it takes to pass a test.

[Leroy Lizard]

Home schooling can go from one extreme to the other. They can be the best schooled kids in the community, but they can be completely uneducated because parents don't realize the burden when they first make the decision.

Homeschooling at higher grade levels is hard because few parents have the necessary expertise to teach art, history, trig, English, and so on.

It isn't much a solution to this problem.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

Home schooling can go from one extreme to the other. They can be the best schooled kids in the community, but they can be completely uneducated because parents don't realize the burden when they first make the decision.

Homeschooling at higher grade levels is hard because few parents have the necessary expertise to teach art, history, trig, English, and so on.

It isn't much a solution to this problem.

i think you are about a decade behind on homeschooling. washington has an obscene number of home schoolers (anywhere from 3 to 15% depending on the district), so the schools have opened co-ops to get the tax money back. as a matter of a fact, there are over 300 kids in the co-op in our town for a school the size of sapulpa. my daughter will get a diploma from the local school district and is able to take a ton of classes that no high school kid could dream of taking at lower age levels.

this year she is taking from the school: guitar, leadership (where every semester you are required to arrange your own speech to a civic organization, support a rally for a cause, etc), art, and geometry. the youngest takes choir, woodworking, a botany type class that is all field trips, and ping pong. i help when needed with math, but the teaching textbooks they use are pretty good although they believe in a totally different order of classes than i had when i was growing up.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

Has anyone actually looked at other nations' school systems to see how they're run and funded? I've always said that if someone else is doing it better, we should take what they do and improve on it.

no but i read "I am a japanese english teacher" religiously. i think the interesting point to be made there was that only the rich and/or cream of the crop made it past junior high.

[NormanPride]

Well that's just fine and dandy up there in Granolaland, but us hillbillies don't have those kinds of options.


Or do we?

[NormanPride]

no but i read "I am a japanese english teacher" religiously. i think the interesting point to be made there was that only the rich and/or cream of the crop made it past junior high.

Well, that obviously doesn't work and we won't pull from that. :)

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

Well that's just fine and dandy up there in Granolaland, but us hillbillies don't have those kinds of options.


Or do we?

oklahoma has no homeschooling rules whatsoever. i know there is a co-op of some kind in norman, because i was thinking of taking a job around there about 4 years ago.

granolaland's school system sucks. i about died when i found out that the largest high school in the state only had 15% go onto college (read votech/juco/college). geezus sapulpa was better than that and we were hillbillys.

[CobraKai]

no but i read "I am a japanese english teacher" religiously. i think the interesting point to be made there was that only the rich and/or cream of the crop made it past junior high.

That and "sharking."

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

Well, that obviously doesn't work and we won't pull from that. :)

yes, but when they talk about how our schools rank, that is one of the nations they always lord over us.

remember, when it comes to stats, the US is the land of report it all. so when you look at our infant mortality rate, it is our true infant mortality rate. other countries put caveats on it like *only counts babies that were carried to term and lived for 2 weeks after birth.

yet we compare our raw stats to their weighted results and are like "oh my god! we suck!".

if you took the top 2000 high school seniors from every country and tallied the results of their math and science we'd do pretty frickin good. where we get killed is when you take our bottom 2000 and compare it to the world's bottom 2000. because all 2000 of ours would be represented but the rest of the world would be a bunch of no-shows, because those kids didn't even make it to high school.

[CobraKai]

yes, but when they talk about how our schools rank, that is one of the nations they always lord over us.

remember, when it comes to stats, the US is the land of report it all. so when you look at our infant mortality rate, it is our true infant mortality rate. other countries put caveats on it like *only counts babies that were carried to term and lived for 2 weeks after birth.

yet we compare our raw stats to their weighted results and are like "oh my god! we suck!".

if you took the top 2000 high school seniors from every country and tallied the results of their math and science we'd do pretty frickin good. where we get killed is when you take our bottom 2000 and compare it to the world's bottom 2000. because all 2000 of ours would be represented but the rest of the world would be a bunch of no-shows, because those kids didn't even make it to high school.

Bingo. My kid's principal harps on daily about China and how the Chinese kids are so much better educated than ours and the test results prove it, etc, etc, etc. The difference is that the bottom 3/4 of the Chinese students are working in the fields or in a Nike factory assembling shoes. Ours are required to be in a classroom. If we cut the bottom 70% of students right off the bottom I would bet our students would look pretty good.

[Curly Bill]

Bingo. My kid's principal harps on daily about China and how the Chinese kids are so much better educated than ours and the test results prove it, etc, etc, etc. The difference is that the bottom 3/4 of the Chinese students are working in the fields or in a Nike factory assembling shoes. Ours are required to be in a classroom. If we cut the bottom 70% of students right off the bottom I would bet our students would look pretty good.

Bingo indeed!

[sooneron]

i think you are about a decade behind on homeschooling.

Whether he's a decade behind or not, it still matters as to whom is teaching the kids at home. I had 4 cousins that were homeschooled and all of them needed some sort of catch up when they either tried to enter college or the Norman Public Schools. One of them is turning 16, so this isn't so long ago. I'm not saying that all homeschool parents are idiots, but there are a LOT of idiots out there.

[Leroy Lizard]

i think you are about a decade behind on homeschooling. washington has an obscene number of home schoolers (anywhere from 3 to 15% depending on the district), so the schools have opened co-ops to get the tax money back. as a matter of a fact, there are over 300 kids in the co-op in our town for a school the size of sapulpa. my daughter will get a diploma from the local school district and is able to take a ton of classes that no high school kid could dream of taking at lower age levels.

this year she is taking from the school:

Then she isn't homeschooled.

[1890MilesToNorman]

The parents in your local community need to hash out what should be taught and not some dipwad in Washington.

Turn the friggin TV off and give your kids a book, read to your kids, go exploring with you kids. Teach them to socialize with other people and how to be respectful. Treat them with respect and demand respect in return. When they need discipline spank their behind. These values have worked for a few thousand years and have served us well.

Don't leave it to some damn bureaucrat.

[SicEmBaylor]

The parents in your local community need to hash out what should be taught and not some dipwad in Washington.

Turn the friggin TV off and give your kids a book, read to your kids, go exploring with you kids. Teach them to socialize with other people and how to be respectful. Treat them with respect and demand respect in return. When they need discipline spank their behind. These values have worked for a few thousand years and have served us well.

Don't leave it to some damn bureaucrat.

This. ^

[AggieTool]

Get God AND government out of schools and let the educators educate.

Fine parent(s) of delinquent children.

Bring back corporal punishment and ban Ritalin.

Dissolve the NEA.

There...is there anyone I didn't tick off with that?:D

[Half a Hundred]

I just want our education to be the best that is humanly possible - not to argue about numbers or anything like that, but constantly pursuing the better. Is that such a hard thing to ask?

I really think this shouldn't be a partisan issue - no matter which side of the aisle you sit on, don't you think every single American child should be guaranteed the highest quality, most up-to-date education that's possible in the entire world?

[1890MilesToNorman]

I really think this shouldn't be a partisan issue - no matter which side of the aisle you sit on, don't you think every single American child should be guaranteed the highest quality, most up-to-date education that's possible in the entire world?

Then do something about it, stop looking to the gubmint to solve the problem.

[Half a Hundred]

Then do something about it, stop looking to the gubmint to solve the problem.

I can only deal with myself and my own - at some point, we the people need a forum to advance these goals. That's what the government is supposedly for.

[Leroy Lizard]

I really think this shouldn't be a partisan issue - no matter which side of the aisle you sit on, don't you think every single American child should be guaranteed the highest quality, most up-to-date education that's possible in the entire world?

I don't.

I think all students should be guaranteed an adequate education. To guarantee them the "very best possible education" is a ridiculous statement that only sounds good on a bumper sticker.

And before you get all huffy, this has already been tested in courts, when the parents of a special ed student sued because their child's school didn't provide the very best educational aids available on the market. The ruling: Schools are only obligated to provide an adequate education, not the very best one possible.

Mr. Idealism, meet Mr. Reality.

Mr. Reality, please kick Mr. Idealism's teeth in.

[Sooner_Havok]

If you are not happy about the government option in education, then put your kids in private school.

If you can't afford private school for your kids, then work harder or get a better job.

[Half a Hundred]

I don't.

I think all students should be guaranteed an adequate education. To guarantee them the "very best possible education" is a ridiculous statement that only sounds good on a bumper sticker.

And before you get all huffy, this has already been tested in courts, when the parents of a special ed student sued because their child's school didn't provide the very best educational aids available on the market. The ruling: Schools are only obligated to provide an adequate education, not the very best one possible.

Mr. Idealism, meet Mr. Reality.

Mr. Reality, please kick Mr. Idealism's teeth in.

Mr. Defeatism, when did America start letting you get so much influence?

[Leroy Lizard]

Mr. Defeatism, when did America start letting you get so much influence?

When America realized your bumper sticker ravings were completely irrational.

Making outlandish goals like "We want to guarantee that every kid has the best possible education in the world" isn't going to solve our problems. It is nothing more than a bunch of pie-in-the-sky idealism that no one can possibly live up to, and therefore don't.

When your goals are too wild, it is too easy to quit.

[SCOUT]

I can only deal with myself and my own - at some point, we the people need a forum to advance these goals. That's what the government is supposedly for.

School boards and PTA's allow individuals like you and I to do quite a bit. There really is no better forum. Looking to the government for answers on how to educate our kids is looking past our own responsibility.

[Half a Hundred]

When America realized your bumper sticker ravings were completely irrational.

Making outlandish goals like "We want to guarantee that every kid has the best possible education in the world" isn't going to solve our problems. It is nothing more than a bunch of pie-in-the-sky idealism that no one can possibly live up to, and therefore don't.

When your goals are too wild, it is too easy to quit.

But it is a goal to strive for, isn't it? That's the point about defeatism - I'm sure the founding fathers were told that it was all pie-in-the-sky idealism as well.

And sorry, but I'm OK with being idealistic when it comes to kids. Lord knows they need someone to dream of a better future for them. There are way too many people in the world who think "education" is about beating into them how much life sucks, rather than giving them the tools to make their own lives and the lives of everyone around them the best that they possibly can be.


School boards and PTA's allow individuals like you and I to do quite a bit. There really is no better forum. Looking to the government for answers on how to educate our kids is looking past our own responsibility.

You're right - those are effective forms of local government.

[Okla-homey]

If you are not happy about the government option in education, then put your kids in private school.

If you can't afford private school for your kids, then work harder or get a better job.

In my experience, private school is generally affordable for most families in this country. And most schools provide need based scholarships for good kids whose parent(s) can't.

You'll hear folks blanch at the notion of paying for private school, but if those folks take an objective look at their situation and consider all the stuff they blow money on, a rearrangement of their priorities will generally net the cash they need to pay that private school tuition. Moreover, parochial schools generally provide deep tuition discounts for parishoners.

After all, parents (not the gubmint) have a personal responsibility of ensuring their children have the best education they can provide. And that's not mention how much safer a child is in private school. Just ask the last two presidents who had school age kids. Both sent their children to private school rather than the DC public school cesspools.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

Then she isn't homeschooled.

actually, yes she is. her class load at home is the following:

oklahoma history* (1/2 semester),
world history (1/2 semester),
grammar*,
literature,
history,
vocabulary*,
geometry

* means she doesn't get credit for these in high school because washington's diploma requirements don't credit them.

my point was that there are volunteer resources available for subjects that you don't feel comfortable teaching (upper math, chemistry, etc).

[Leroy Lizard]

So she is only partially homeschooled.


my point was that there are volunteer resources available for subjects that you don't feel comfortable teaching (upper math, chemistry, etc).

So how do you teach a child chemistry if you have no lab and you have no experience in chemistry?

[Leroy Lizard]

But it is a goal to strive for, isn't it? That's the point about defeatism - I'm sure the founding fathers were told that it was all pie-in-the-sky idealism as well.

Actually, I don't think they were.

If you want to wave a magic wand and make every child an uber-intellectual, you are entitled to your fantasy. You start breaking me financially to support your fantasy and that is where my support stops.


And sorry, but I'm OK with being idealistic when it comes to kids. Lord knows they need someone to dream of a better future for them.

No, they need people to WORK towards providing them a better future, not dream. Dreaming does nothing and requires little effort.

What kills me are the people with all the dreamy bumper stickers who also happen to be the laziest bastards on the planet. It's all talk and showmanship.


There are way too many people in the world who think "education" is about beating into them how much life sucks, rather than giving them the tools to make their own lives and the lives of everyone around them the best that they possibly can be.

Well, I won't disagree with you there.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

So she is only partially homeschooled. So how do you teach a child chemistry if you have no lab and you have no experience in chemistry?

yes, along with probably 1/2 of the homeschooled kids in the nation. what you are talking about is a concept called "unschooled" where they try to go it alone. at the co-op there are actually 2 different types of teachers -> parent volunteers and some paid teachers (mostly retirees that come back and teach 1 day a week).

the biggest problem in washington is math. they let a state superintendent implement some jacked up new math a decade ago and their math scores suck. from my own struggles with my oldest, the biggest issue is they don't emphasize at lower ages speed understanding of facts. when we started home schooling i could let my daughter practice a problem for 30 minutes, get it down so that she could just speed through the steps. having not seen the problem at all, i could blast through it in 1/2 the time she could get it written down.

this translated into 30 math problems that would take me 15 minutes to do, taking her 3 hours. this also translated into her losing concentration from fatigue and making silly mistakes because it took her so long. which further cycled me back to "you must do the simple math faster". grrr, the frustration i had those 2 years aged me. by the time i was at wits end, she had managed to speed up to the point that 30 problems took her 60+ minutes.

i remember that in 2nd and 3rd grade we used to have a board for who could get through facts the fastest with their time. the competition to get to the fast board was pretty intense, but the competition to be "fastest in class" was just cutthroat. i have emphasized this with my youngest and it has made a world of difference. she burns through her math (and the rest of school) so that she only has to spend about 2 hours doing all of her work.

[Leroy Lizard]

But it's new math. Therefore it's p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e.