Yes We Can! Long IslandSupporting Schools That Work for Our Children and Our Country
Nothing is more important to Long Islanders than good education for our children, and nothing is more important for our country’s future than preparing America’s children to compete in a global economy.
President Obama’s education agenda calls for greater reform and accountability, coupled with providing the resources needed for our children to succeed. Its goals span the age spectrum from getting children ready to enter kindergarten to reducing the high school dropout rate to making college affordable to all Americans.
On Long Island, we face a challenging balancing act: maintaining the excellence that made our schools national models while relieving the burdens of some of the highest property taxes in the country. The weakened economy makes achieving this balance critical.
Yes We Can! Long Island wants our schools to get the support they need so our children will succeed without subjecting homeowners to undue burdens.
that teachers have been putting in for the coaching job of the team on which their child is , treating it as a perk of the job, says a lot about how little regard that workforce has for the community it serves. Father coaching constitutes a conflict of interest involving the most powerful of instincts : PARENTAL. Schools, on the front lines of having to deal with those powerful instincts should understand this better than anyone. It is not enough to have a job with so much pay and time off, and so little accountability. They also must now be able to coach their child's team, and, thereby, be able to set it up for their child. WHERE DOES IT END ?
Education Standards Likely to See Toughening
Education Standards Likely to See Toughening
NY Times, Sam Dillon, April 15
President Obama and his team have alternated praise for the goals of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law with criticism of its weaknesses, all the while keeping their own plans for the law a bit of a mystery.
But clues are now emerging, and they suggest that the Obama administration will use a Congressional rewriting of the federal law later this year to toughen requirements on topics like teacher quality and academic standards and to intensify its focus on helping failing schools. The law’s testing requirements may evolve but will certainly not disappear. And the federal role in education policy, once a state and local matter, is likely to grow.
The administration appears to be preparing important fixes to what many see as some of the law’s most serious defects. But its emerging plans are a disappointment to some critics of the No Child Left Behind law, who hoped Mr. Obama’s campaign promises of change would mean a sharper break with the Bush-era law.
“Obama’s fundamental strategy is the same as George Bush’s: standardized tests, numbers-crunching; it’s the N.C.L.B. approach with lots of money attached,” Diane Ravitch, an education historian often critical of the education law, said in an interview.
In a recent blog Ms. Ravitch wrote, “Obama has given Bush a third term in education policy.”
The clues emerge from the fine print of the economic stimulus law that Mr. Obama signed in February, which channels billions of dollars to public education. The key education provisions in the stimulus take the form of four “assurances” that governors must sign to receive billions in emergency education aid.
In one, governors must pledge to improve the quality of standardized tests and raise standards. In another, they promise to enforce a requirement of the education law that their state’s most effective teachers will be assigned equitably to all students, rich and poor. A separate provision gives Education Secretary Arne Duncan control over $5 billion, which Mr. Duncan calls a “Race to the Top Fund,” to reward states that make good on their pledges.
“With these assurances and the Race to the Top Fund, we are laying the foundation for where we want to go with N.C.L.B. reauthorization,” Mr. Duncan said in an interview. “This will help us to get states lining up behind this agenda.”
One fix the administration is preparing focuses on failing schools.
The complete article:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/education/15educ.html?scp=2&sq=arne%20duncan&st=cse
Are we talking about education on Long Island, or education throughout the USA? Every region has its own problems. Here on L.I. the major problem is excessive cost; in some regions, sad to say, the major problem is religion; in others, it is community attitude; and in still others it is simply a badly run system. Sub college education is generally non-competitive, and generally in non- competitive situations the consumer never gets fair value.
Vicki,
Glad to see you participating on our website and hope you’ll be joining us at our Founding Convention next weekend.
I have also been a school principal on LI and remain active in education at the college level, consulting to districts (mathematics), and active in curriculum development nationally.
I am a cautious advocate of charter schools. There are several models where teacher unions conduct them. The argument that charters take money from public schools (a real concern) may or may not be appropriate. Public dollars would be educating the public’s children. The devil will, ultimately, be in the details.
Here’s a piece that may contribute to this discussion
Q: Name an issue where you’ve been willing to stand up against your party.
Obama: We had a roundtable about what we need to do with the schools. I’ve consistently said, we need to support charter schools. I think it is important to experiment, by looking at how we can reward excellence in the classroom.
Q: Have teacher’s unions been an impediment to that kind of reform?
Obama: They haven’t been thrilled with me talking about these kinds of issues. And my sister is a teacher, so I am a strong support of teachers, but I’m not going to be bound by just a certain way of talking about these things, in order for us to move forward on behalf of our kids. And I think a lot of teachers want to talk about how to continually improve performance. That’s not a conservative issue or liberal issue. If you’re a progressive, you’ve got to be worried about how the federal government is spending its revenue, because we don’t have enough money to spend on things like early childhood education that are so important.
Source: 2008 Politico pre-Potomac Primary interview Feb 11, 2008
having been on a school board in l.i. for nearly 15 years, i am very interested in the future of education on the island, including funding issues, diversity issues, union issues, costs, quality, etc. i think obama would have a better reaction re: charter schools if they didn’t take the money from public schools and were required to have equal mandates. anyone?
We need to know the details of how this is going to be done. From what we read in the papers it would appear that the bulk of the resources are going to things others than enhancing the education process.