Tour de force explaining the negligence, ignorance, anti-intellectualism and dumbing down of voters heading for the voting booth today. Families and individuals pursuing their own interests in life are not paying sufficient attention to politics and electing good representatives to DC. Those who are more attuned to politics are referencing social media data subject to prevarication and misrepresentation. Proliferation of charter schools and homeschooling plus local education boards controled by elected citizens, not appointed experts produce regression to the mean education standards and poor curriculum and teaching practices adoption that ordinary citizens recognize as not up to standard for their children and communities. And politicians campaigning for office are providing not promises for improving the lot of the majority but pandering to emotional needs du jour of voters who view elections as beauty contests.
I regret the lack of school teaching by former women of middle class standing who emphasized kitchen table needs for skillful grads; teaching has devolved into a fairly safe haven for socially promoted students with a modicum of presence and knowledge to pass licensing tests and routine dispassionate yearly ratings to get satisfactory approval for lifetime credentials. Teacher colleges strive to maintain high attendance with lack of aligning coursework to classroom practices, little presentation of rigorous instruction of discipline content and societal needs and attention instead to licensing requirements and high GPA production.
It's also lamentable that classrooms are poorly stocked with up-to-date textbooks, supplies to aid student understanding of content, and are devoid of instruction to create more critical thinking of students at any level. Teachers buy their own supplementary texts and basic teaching supplies in urban classrooms. Students are given lists of supplies for parents to purchase regardless of home finances or resources because schools don't have enough money for various reasons. Teaching methods emphasize discipline meaning standardized seating rows, silence of pupils during class time, group instruction ignoring individualized needs of many with holes in their prior learning experiences. Alternate schools, vouchers, declining tax bases and poor supervision/leadership have reduced per pupil revenues hence expenditures.
Leadership of schools, disciplines, levels of instruction (primary, middle, secondary) has little initiative, incentive to improve (beyond standardized test results) and locality/community/business connection for accountability. Superintendents cater to whims of board members; principals shut parents and residents off from affecting school decision making and interaction whenever possible. Teachers don't living in their teaching communities or have so much homework that they don't participate in community activities for interaction. Inservice instruction is reduced to a principal reading prepared agenda items to assembled teachers instead of derived from expressed needs of teachers. Workshops are presented with hired experts and generated from distant supervisors who guess at teacher needs rather than visiting classrooms and talking to teachers. Innovations like schools-within-school, open classrooms, multiple teacher cooperative teaching and lesson planning, mastery learning, even the old individualized instruction are not allowed or not initiated by teachers. Regional standards are falling away as groups like Southern Association of Colleges and Schools(SACS) are no longer wanted. Local school board and individual school mission statements are ignored rather than stimulating working toward college prep and knowledgeable citizenship goals.
It's easier to evade accountability than insure and measure it--also cheaper. But our national survival is slipping away as America dumbs-down so individuals retain more of their income and independent living at the expense of a stronger nation for most citizens/students.
Your last paragraph is the perfect summary of your argument. Instead of public education being the foundation of an informed citizenry, it has been reduced to a political football being kicked around by a group of one-legged players.
Tour de force explaining the negligence, ignorance, anti-intellectualism and dumbing down of voters heading for the voting booth today. Families and individuals pursuing their own interests in life are not paying sufficient attention to politics and electing good representatives to DC. Those who are more attuned to politics are referencing social media data subject to prevarication and misrepresentation. Proliferation of charter schools and homeschooling plus local education boards controled by elected citizens, not appointed experts produce regression to the mean education standards and poor curriculum and teaching practices adoption that ordinary citizens recognize as not up to standard for their children and communities. And politicians campaigning for office are providing not promises for improving the lot of the majority but pandering to emotional needs du jour of voters who view elections as beauty contests.
I regret the lack of school teaching by former women of middle class standing who emphasized kitchen table needs for skillful grads; teaching has devolved into a fairly safe haven for socially promoted students with a modicum of presence and knowledge to pass licensing tests and routine dispassionate yearly ratings to get satisfactory approval for lifetime credentials. Teacher colleges strive to maintain high attendance with lack of aligning coursework to classroom practices, little presentation of rigorous instruction of discipline content and societal needs and attention instead to licensing requirements and high GPA production.
It's also lamentable that classrooms are poorly stocked with up-to-date textbooks, supplies to aid student understanding of content, and are devoid of instruction to create more critical thinking of students at any level. Teachers buy their own supplementary texts and basic teaching supplies in urban classrooms. Students are given lists of supplies for parents to purchase regardless of home finances or resources because schools don't have enough money for various reasons. Teaching methods emphasize discipline meaning standardized seating rows, silence of pupils during class time, group instruction ignoring individualized needs of many with holes in their prior learning experiences. Alternate schools, vouchers, declining tax bases and poor supervision/leadership have reduced per pupil revenues hence expenditures.
Leadership of schools, disciplines, levels of instruction (primary, middle, secondary) has little initiative, incentive to improve (beyond standardized test results) and locality/community/business connection for accountability. Superintendents cater to whims of board members; principals shut parents and residents off from affecting school decision making and interaction whenever possible. Teachers don't living in their teaching communities or have so much homework that they don't participate in community activities for interaction. Inservice instruction is reduced to a principal reading prepared agenda items to assembled teachers instead of derived from expressed needs of teachers. Workshops are presented with hired experts and generated from distant supervisors who guess at teacher needs rather than visiting classrooms and talking to teachers. Innovations like schools-within-school, open classrooms, multiple teacher cooperative teaching and lesson planning, mastery learning, even the old individualized instruction are not allowed or not initiated by teachers. Regional standards are falling away as groups like Southern Association of Colleges and Schools(SACS) are no longer wanted. Local school board and individual school mission statements are ignored rather than stimulating working toward college prep and knowledgeable citizenship goals.
It's easier to evade accountability than insure and measure it--also cheaper. But our national survival is slipping away as America dumbs-down so individuals retain more of their income and independent living at the expense of a stronger nation for most citizens/students.
Your last paragraph is the perfect summary of your argument. Instead of public education being the foundation of an informed citizenry, it has been reduced to a political football being kicked around by a group of one-legged players.