Obama Talks Education in his Weekly Address

Weekly Address: Congress Should Back Plan to Hire Teachers

President Obama's weekly address today talks about a plan to hire back teachers.  He states that the United States has lost over 300,000 education jobs in the past few years.  Looking at the current job market for teachers, I've noticed that the average job posting for a classroom teacher in Massachusetts receives over 100 applicants.  At the same time, the average class size continues to rise and currently there are schools with between 30-35 students per class.  With all of these licensed teachers searching desperately for jobs, the problem in our schools isn't one of resources or availability, it's a money issue.

It would be great it there was a way to get funding for education from somewhere other than state and local government.  While these institutions do the best they can in most places, they do not have enough money to run themselves AND provide for education.  Having the federal government give a little more to support education would not only create jobs (remember that 300,000 figure...) but also provide our children with a better education.

I do not know all the details to the plan the president mentioned in his video, but SOME plan is better than no plan. Romney-Ryan do not believe the federal government should be responsible for education in this country, believing it is a state/local issue.  I believe that Education should be one of the greatest priorities of the Federal government as it is an issue that affects our national standing in the world.

Let's get the education issue on the table this election season - its just as important to the economy as medicare and taxes.

-MB

State of the Race: Where Romney-Ryan and Obama-Biden stand on Education

This morning after learning of Romney's decision to have Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, I decided it was finally time to do a little perusing through the issues.  Of course the first issue on all websites is the economy and the tit-for-tat between the candidates and political pundits on this issue has been rather nauseating the past few months.  I decided to pick a lesser discussed topic and do some light reading on the candidates' websites: Education.

Let's start with Barack Obama (see Education Policy) as he has already had 3 years to implement some type of Education policy.

1. Making college more affordable: He's doubled Pell Grants, helped students deal with student loans and has "plans" to reform community colleges to provide a better pathway to jobs.
   
   - for the most part, as a recent college grad I like to hear these things, college is becoming more and more expensive and any relief or assistance is appreciated, however where is this money coming from when the government can't afford the programs they already have in place?
   
2. Reforming No Child Left Behind: President Obama allowed for states to create their own, more efficient and productive plans and apply for waivers from NCLB.
   
   -might be a good thing, might not, all depends on the state.  For instance, Massachusetts has always had good education, before NCLB, despite NCLB and it will continue to have a good education system after NCLB.  But the law wasn't passed for states like Massachusetts, it was passed to help students in states like Mississippi and Alabama whose scores in Science and Math are in need of much improvement.  Generating an alternative as opposed to just negating NCLB might have been a better course of action, but the jury is still out on this one
   
3. Supporting Teachers an Students: President Obama wants states to "Keep good teachers on the job and keep students in school until the graduate or turn 18"
   
   -sounds good to me, how are you going to do it?  I don't think there's a single politician out there who would say anything different from this as part of their education policy (except maybe Ron Paul who thinks the government shouldn't have an education policy).
   

Biden's similarities and differences: at this point, he no longer has his own website and it would probably be a copy&paste from the President's website effectively removing his opinions from record

Now for Governor Romney's proposals (see Education Policy) most of which are based on the successes of Massachusetts education during his term as governor.

1. Expand access to charter schools: Governor Romney believes that charter schools allow parents to choose so they're not forced to send their children to failing schools.
   
   -when I read this it sounds like turning education into a Free Market system.  If your public school is failing, then shut it down by creating charter schools and sending all of your students there.  Is this really fixing the problem in public schools or just brushing it under the rug?  What about the students who cannot get in to the charter school for whatever reason?  Are they left to attend the now half-empty and definitely not well supported public school?
   
2. Making college more affordable: Governor Romney proposed a scholarship that would give free tutition to the top 25% of students if they attended a state institution.
   
   -this policy (though I don't remember it being Romney's idea) has been quite a success in Massachusetts.  As a recipient of this scholarship, the $4,000 it saved me over four years was just one less thing I needed to worry about. (note: just found an article while writing this and it WAS a Romney proposal see Article)  I'm not sure how this could work on a national level, but finding ways to help students attend college is always a good thing, so long as the budget can afford it.
   
3. Empower Governors to reform their education systems: Governor Romney believes that each state should set its own regulations and education reform should not be a national priority.
   
   -That's great, if the governor has the resources and wherewithal to do so.  I believe part of his reasoning for wording the policy this way is because he can say "I was governor of Massachusetts and our education system worked great."  The problem I have with this was that Massachusetts had a great education system long before Romney became governor, and nothing he did during his term really impacted the system as a whole.
   

Ryan's similarities and differences: Congressman Ryan doesn't say too much that is at all different from Governor Romney's policies.  He is also in favor of charter schools and believes that education policy should come from state and local government, not the federal government.

Those are the basics of what is coming in with whomever is elected president. Please add your own opinions and information to help fill out this article.

-MB

TIME in school IS MONEY well spent

With all of the talk of shortening school days, moving from the traditional 5 day school week to a 4 day school week, even shortening school years to save money, one thing strikes me as odd: How can ANYONE in their right mind think that this is going to benefit students?

Consider this -

image - donmillereducation.com

• The average school day is about 6.5 hours long and  divided into anywhere from 4 to 7 blocks/periods.

• In some schools these blocks/periods rotate so that students who perform badly at a certain time of day have an equal opportunity to succeed in all of their classes, however, this means not every class meets every day

• Each class is either 60mins or 90mins in length (with some variation)

• Students generally take about 5 mins to get settled in each class and attention is typically lost for the final 5 mins of a class bringing the teachable total down to 50 or 80 mins

• This means in a school with 5 blocks per day, a student loses about 50mins of class time getting settled, that's 250mins (or just over 4 hours) per week.

If you shorten the school week to 4 days do you increase the productivity of students for the brief time they're there?  Most likely not.  While teachers might benefit from a long weekend every week giving them ample time to charge their batteries, get papers corrected and plan for their next lesson, students will be more likely to forget information and need to be retaught each Monday in order to prevent regression.  All teachers no that Monday mornings require them to be on their "A-game" as students will be lethargic from having two days off.  Now give those same students 3 days off and see what happens...

Understandably with budgets becoming increasingly difficult to balance, school districts are being asked to make hard decisions in order to preserve the quality of education for their students.  But making a decision that reduces the amount of time a student is in school consecutively sounds like a terrible plan.  If anything the school day should be longer (perhaps with a longer lunch period) so that students can have even more "teachable" time.  Low-income students would benefit from increased school time as their families wouldn't have to worry about spending as much on child-care and they would have less unstructured time which could get them into troubled environments.

The old adage "Time is Money" could never be more appropriate than speaking about educating the youth of America.  The problem we seem to be having is forgetting that time in schools, LEARNING, is money well spent on our future.

-MB