As a retired high school math teacher who burned out after 37 years, I'm still very conscious of the lack of fairness that has pervaded public education. (Fairness in budgets, teacher training, and courses offered, testing, etc.) I still believe in education and teaching and I still believe it could be whole lot better than it is.
I once had a student who asked "Am I entitled to an education in the public schools?" (The student was asking in the fairness context of noticing that the special needs students were attended to a lot, and that the regular curriculum of the course was taking a hit so it probably wouldn't complete by the end of the school year. It didn't.) I responded "Under the law you are entitled to an education, but you're not necessarily entitled to a good one." I suggested that not being a special needs student required that she take more charge of her own education to fill the gaps I couldn't supply. I mentioned that regular students are put behind the special needs students when educational services are delivered. In most cases it comes down to money.
All that seemed really unfair then and it still does. I saw the tail wag the dog on budgets, staffing, student placement, etc.
So the bottom line for me is that fairness in education needs to be fully re-established. A strong look at priorities and entitlements needs to be made at the legislative levels to even the educational balance. There always should be programs for the gifted as well. Teachers should receive full feedback about their students after state mandated tests have been graded so that instruction can be improved--didn't happen in my district. Policies such as "No Child Left Behind" should be scrapped because they cause everyone to be left behind along with huge waste of scarce funds and reduced instruction time.
Last, schools should get over their nonsense about avoiding open source software solutions and the use of Linux in their computers. Boot up a computer with any free, long-term support distribution of Linux and you're allowing education to maximize with the students and teachers who use it along with a stable, trouble-free environment. Why is this computer environment so hard to implement? Is this a simple lesson our nation can't learn?
As a retired high school math teacher who burned out after 37 years, I'm still very conscious of the lack of fairness that has pervaded public education. (Fairness in budgets, teacher training, and courses offered, testing, etc.) I still believe in education and teaching and I still believe it could be whole lot better than it is.
I once had a student who asked "Am I entitled to an education in the public schools?" (The student was asking in the fairness context of noticing that the special needs students were attended to a lot, and that the regular curriculum of the course was taking a hit so it probably wouldn't complete by the end of the school year. It didn't.) I responded "Under the law you are entitled to an education, but you're not necessarily entitled to a good one." I suggested that not being a special needs student required that she take more charge of her own education to fill the gaps I couldn't supply. I mentioned that regular students are put behind the special needs students when educational services are delivered. In most cases it comes down to money.
All that seemed really unfair then and it still does. I saw the tail wag the dog on budgets, staffing, student placement, etc.
So the bottom line for me is that fairness in education needs to be fully re-established. A strong look at priorities and entitlements needs to be made at the legislative levels to even the educational balance. There always should be programs for the gifted as well. Teachers should receive full feedback about their students after state mandated tests have been graded so that instruction can be improved--didn't happen in my district. Policies such as "No Child Left Behind" should be scrapped because they cause everyone to be left behind along with huge waste of scarce funds and reduced instruction time.
Last, schools should get over their nonsense about avoiding open source software solutions and the use of Linux in their computers. Boot up a computer with any free, long-term support distribution of Linux and you're allowing education to maximize with the students and teachers who use it along with a stable, trouble-free environment. Why is this computer environment so hard to implement? Is this a simple lesson our nation can't learn?