For the most part, our educational system is a debacle with massive amounts of money being misallocated by school districts. Our tax dollars are going down the tubes. During the 2002-03 school year $440 billion was used to fund public education for kids from prekindergarten through secondary school. Unfortunately because of the misappropriation of funds in order to benefit the adults instead of the students the effects of this have produced consequences including: illiteracy, high secondary school drop out rates in democratically-controlled areas of the United States, and in 2009 results of testing showed that ONLY 60 percent of high school students are proficient in basic science skills . These aforementioned examples show that it is imperative that we change the educational paradigm in the United States. One question worth posing is what exactly does the phrase "basic science skills" refer to today? How basic is "basic"? The fact that 40 percent of high school students are unable to pass the basic proficiency science test is highly disconcerting and unconscionable. This is further evidence that our public schools are failing, and the teachers' unions are failing to provide children with a good education.
The teachers union in Detroit will have nothing to do with compromising their benefits for the sake of either the school children or the city of Detroit. The unions greedy nature may force the closure of half of the public schools in Detroit. If the unions, democrats and President Obama actually cared about educating our kids properly they would not have been against the DC Opportunities Scholarship Program (a voucher program), and defunded it. The program was an instant hit, and according to the Dept. of Education it was working. This program in Washington D.C. was helping disadvantaged youths yet those (Democrats and unions) who claim to champion for kids quashed the program which was working. How dare those happy and successful kids siphon away money from unions (sarcasm).
Virginia Walden Ford is an advocate for school choice. As an adolescent her son William started struggling with academics and eventually started getting into trouble with the law. Then a generous next door neighbor's intervention changed the trajectory of her son's life when he offered to help pay for William to attend a local parochial school. In a matter of only months there was a major transformation: William went from being an angry kid to really enjoying the learning process. After 2 years he transferred to a charter school and graduated as Valedictorian. He enlisted in the Marines, served in Iraq, and is now working for a real estate company in the Washington D.C. area. After seeing how much a nurturing school enhanced her son's education in the 1990's Virginia became an outspoken advocate for the D.C. vouchers bill. Unfortunately the program was cancelled in 2009 but after the 2010 mid-term elections Ford is hopeful that with the help of Speaker of the House John Boehner the D.C. voucher program will breathe new life soon.
With all the issues in our educational system it is an absolute necessity that we change the educational paradigm in order to prevent a calamitous outcome for the United States.
Here are two videos on reforming our educational system. The first video is a trailer for the movie "Kids Aren't cars" and the second video is on changing educational paradigms.
RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms
Showing posts with label Teachers' unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teachers' unions. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Monday, October 11, 2010
Bucking the Party: Guggenheim Makes Plea for More Charter Schools With Waiting for Superman
David Guggenheim, the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, is bucking the Democratic Party when it comes to teachers' unions, and the educational system. Guggenheim is for charter schools and is making a plea for more charter schools with his new film, Waiting For Superman. He is also a member of Democrats for school choice. He has decided to put childrens' education first, before the welfare of the teachers' unions. This man should be commended for standing up for our kids' education and for not following lock step with the Democratic Party.
Here is a review of Waiting For Superman.
David Guggenheim, the man behind An Inconvenient Truth and Obama’s 2008 DNC bio-infomercial, has just released another film — this one a stabbing indictment of teachers’ unions and a plea for more charter schools, titled Waiting for Superman. Democrats for School Choice hosted an advance screening of the documentary, to which black clergy, New York City education chancellor Joel Klein, and National Review were invited. The school-choice cause evidently transcends traditional ideological boundaries.
Waiting for Superman intends to influence policy, yet its narrative follows not politicians, but five children. Bianca, Daisy, Emily, Anthony, and Francisco come from diverse locales — Harlem, L.A., Silicon Valley, D.C., and the Bronx — and are black, Hispanic, and white, but they share the same basic problem: Each is consigned by geography to an inadequate public school. Each wants a choice.
The stories — of Bianca, whose single black mother struggles to afford parochial school but misses the final payment that would let Bianca attend graduation, and of Anthony, who carries a picture of his dead, drug-using father as he seeks a spot at a rare charter boarding school that might keep him away from the streets, to name two — are heartbreaking. But the real message of the movie is revealed in the scenes of the adults who produce this heartbreak. Superman’s most memorable episode is the cartoon illustration of the “lemon dance,” in which school principals waltz their “lemons” (teachers who just can’t teach but can’t be fired) from school to school. The musical number would be hilarious if it weren’t so devastating. So, too, for the shots of the infamous “rubber rooms,” where middle-aged teachers sit in school kids’ chairs, playing cards or laying their heads on their desks to sleep, collecting full pay and pensions.
Guggenheim chooses one champion and one villainess. Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of D.C. schools, is energetic and assertive. She bluntly admits that D.C. students “are getting a crappy education right now,” she fires a couple hundred incompetent educators, institutes some incentive pay, and starts to turn D.C.’s schools around. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Rhee’s foil, is on the defensive. She seems most solicitous about the egos of teachers; a speech to her union culminates in the cry, “You are heroes!” In her interviews, Weingarten reminds us what good-hearted people teachers are, and condemns school-choice advocates for demonizing teachers. She has maintained this pattern off-screen as well. “It’s in vogue to bash teachers and unions rather than celebrate the work they do to help kids,” she said, responding to Superman. “That being said, I’m a big girl.”
CONTINUED
Here is a review of Waiting For Superman.
David Guggenheim, the man behind An Inconvenient Truth and Obama’s 2008 DNC bio-infomercial, has just released another film — this one a stabbing indictment of teachers’ unions and a plea for more charter schools, titled Waiting for Superman. Democrats for School Choice hosted an advance screening of the documentary, to which black clergy, New York City education chancellor Joel Klein, and National Review were invited. The school-choice cause evidently transcends traditional ideological boundaries.
Waiting for Superman intends to influence policy, yet its narrative follows not politicians, but five children. Bianca, Daisy, Emily, Anthony, and Francisco come from diverse locales — Harlem, L.A., Silicon Valley, D.C., and the Bronx — and are black, Hispanic, and white, but they share the same basic problem: Each is consigned by geography to an inadequate public school. Each wants a choice.
The stories — of Bianca, whose single black mother struggles to afford parochial school but misses the final payment that would let Bianca attend graduation, and of Anthony, who carries a picture of his dead, drug-using father as he seeks a spot at a rare charter boarding school that might keep him away from the streets, to name two — are heartbreaking. But the real message of the movie is revealed in the scenes of the adults who produce this heartbreak. Superman’s most memorable episode is the cartoon illustration of the “lemon dance,” in which school principals waltz their “lemons” (teachers who just can’t teach but can’t be fired) from school to school. The musical number would be hilarious if it weren’t so devastating. So, too, for the shots of the infamous “rubber rooms,” where middle-aged teachers sit in school kids’ chairs, playing cards or laying their heads on their desks to sleep, collecting full pay and pensions.
Guggenheim chooses one champion and one villainess. Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of D.C. schools, is energetic and assertive. She bluntly admits that D.C. students “are getting a crappy education right now,” she fires a couple hundred incompetent educators, institutes some incentive pay, and starts to turn D.C.’s schools around. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Rhee’s foil, is on the defensive. She seems most solicitous about the egos of teachers; a speech to her union culminates in the cry, “You are heroes!” In her interviews, Weingarten reminds us what good-hearted people teachers are, and condemns school-choice advocates for demonizing teachers. She has maintained this pattern off-screen as well. “It’s in vogue to bash teachers and unions rather than celebrate the work they do to help kids,” she said, responding to Superman. “That being said, I’m a big girl.”
CONTINUED
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
