Reporting on key Nebraska K-12 education issues on a daily basis from Susan Darst Williams, a writer who lives at the base of Mount Laundry, Nebraska. To subscribe to this blog's mailing list, and see a variety of other education features and information, visit the main education website, www.GoBigEd.com
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
YEAR-END ACADEMIC CONTESTS
PRODUCE LOTS OF WINNERS
Wow! A lot of Nebraska kids deserve kudos:
Jenna Lynn Taylor, a fifth-grader at Alice Buffeett Magnet Middle School in the Omaha Public Schools, won a statewide essay contest sponsored by American Mothers, Inc., for her essay, "What My Mother Means to Me," judged best of 110 entries.
Elkhorn High School's Math Quiz Bowl team won a contest against 60 teams from Iowa and Nebraska at Iowa Western Community College.
Elkhorn's team also won the statewide Economic Challenge held at the Champions Club in Lincoln, winning the most points in macroecnomics, microeconomics, international economics and the quiz bowl.
PRODUCE LOTS OF WINNERS
Wow! A lot of Nebraska kids deserve kudos:
Jenna Lynn Taylor, a fifth-grader at Alice Buffeett Magnet Middle School in the Omaha Public Schools, won a statewide essay contest sponsored by American Mothers, Inc., for her essay, "What My Mother Means to Me," judged best of 110 entries.
Elkhorn High School's Math Quiz Bowl team won a contest against 60 teams from Iowa and Nebraska at Iowa Western Community College.
Elkhorn's team also won the statewide Economic Challenge held at the Champions Club in Lincoln, winning the most points in macroecnomics, microeconomics, international economics and the quiz bowl.
(1) comments
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Is Building Bright Futures
Stacking the Stats
For Universal Preschool?
A friend has attended several data-seeking meetings of the new educational nonprofit serving metropolitan Omaha low-income children, Building Bright Futures, www.buildingbrightfutures.net. She is glad to be offered a chance to try to influence the way the early childhood grants are going to shaped, but is dismayed over the direction she believes things are going.
She supports Building Bright Future's efforts to attract significant additional funding for early childhood education in metropolitan Omaha for low-income children. But she opposes the social engineering aspects that are coming with that extra funding. What's scary is that once the Building Bright Futures program is in place funded by these private grants, the services -- good or bad -- will transform into "entitlements," and eventually the taxpayers will be expected to foot the bill.
It appears to be a regression back toward the standardized child care in the government nurseries of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and '60s, instead of what you’d expect in 2009: an array of richly-diverse choices, including lots of support for parents who choose to mostly rear their own children in their own homes.
Examples: Building Bright Futures is apparently going to suggest a radical reduction in the staff-to-child ratio that is permissible in early childhood settings. That step alone would drive most private-sector day-cares and preschools out of business.
The group also is set to require frequent mental-health "assessments" of preschool children that are likely to lead to lots of "interventions" in the form of prescriptions for drugs such as antidepressants. And the group will likely propose "free" health clinics, perhaps traveling nurses for preschools but full-fledged health clinics in schools.
This school-based health care push will add more costs and tasks to the schools’ already-overburdened "plate" and will contribute to the skyrocketing cost of Medicaid. The clinics will replace parents as the child’s perceived health-care advocate, dispense birth control behind parents' backs, and further build a wall of separation between children and the parents who are supposed to be responsible for their care and upbringing. In a way, it will be "enabling" child neglect.
However, overall, the source is hopeful that the right things will mostly happen if all points of view are explored and discussed in Building Bright Futures – and if the donors are given accurate information that provides a truthful picture of the early childhood world. As a professional in the child care field, she is very excited to know that heavy hitters – rich and powerful people – are interested in donating money to early childhood programs that can make a difference. She just hopes that difference will make things better for all kids, not worse for any.
But she called me with grave concerns over the way that the data on the status of early childhood education in Omaha is being put together. She believes it is being skewed on purpose to favor the taxpayer-funded, heavily-staffed, school-operated, big day-care centers and preschools, and to disparage the quality of smaller church-based and home-based day-care operations in order to drive them out of business.
This information will be presented to donors, state senators and other decision-makers and policy-shapers, but she is afraid the information will be distorted and skewed by the way it is being collected, and decisionmakers will be none the wiser.
She believes the result will deceptively suggest that heavily standardized child care curricula delivered in large, governmental settings is best for preschool children. But that is a bad and dangerous idea. The problem is that the people putting this curricula in place don’t know any other way. They are mostly trained as K-12 educators, and they will control the staff development, so that nobody in early childhood ed will know any other way than the standardized way.
Meanwhile, K-12 educators have a less than stellar track record with Omaha's at-risk student populations as it is. Remember that the vast majority of inner-city students in metro Omaha cannot read, write or do math at grade level, and our percentages of children of color who drop out before high-school graduation are among the highest in the nation. Now that record of failure will be spread to the previously-diverse early childhood world, and it's sad.
Diversity in child-care provision is what my friend supports: strong safeguards for parental choice and all kinds of settings, all kinds of providers, and all kinds of curricula are what she believes is best.
But if this young professional is correct, the Building Bright Futures program is going to kill off the affordable private-sector alternatives in early childhood ed by directing their grants toward the big, standardized nurseries. Then only rich parents will be able to afford private preschools. Middle-class parents will be forced to use the "free" government preschool option. Preschools that aren't dependent on grants will be able to provide better-quality programming. Consequently, the achievement gap between rich children, and everybody else, will be expanded instead of contracted.
While preschool educational outcomes might improve for the poorest of the poor – and research does affirm that quality early childhood education is great for that student population -- the "leveling" that will occur in these large, standardized programs will wind up giving middle class children lower quality preschool experiences that will make them worse off than they are now.
My source shared the Building Bright Futures report, "Key Messages From Early Childhood Providers Outreach Session" dated February 2009, to back up her concerns. The sessions were held in November 2008.
A look at the topics and the people whose opinions were being collected bolsters the notion that these data are being "spun" to make it look like government-provided, subsidized, accredited and standardized early childhood education for all children, rich and poor – commonly called "universal preschool" -- is best for kids, and therefore should be the goal.
As an example, my source pointed to the fact stated in the report that 62% of the participants in the data-collection meeting work in a day-care center rather than in a family day-care home. Of those who work in day-care centers, 64% work at a center that is licensed for more than 50 children. That’s a HUGE child-care setting – not at all what the research shows is best for young children. The best setting is the home, or a child-care operation which mimics the home, with a relatively small number of children, and caregivers who are able to give a lot of warmth, nurturance, support and love.
In large, impersonal centers with the litigation risk looming overhead at all times, staff may not even be able to hug a child. And in the long run, that lack of demonstrated affection in the young child's experience is extremely damaging and might be contributing to the wave of bad behavior in K-12 schools that we're seeing.
It's also sad to note that apparently no stay-at-home mothers and fathers were included in the survey, completely wiping out a huge set of "stakeholders" in how quality early childhood education is defined. There are tons of people who believe that kids are better off with just a few hours a week of preschool experience, spending most of their time at home or in a small child-care setting in a home. But those views aren't included in the survey results.
Another red flag: 61% of participants were using the same canned preschool curriculum guide, Creative Curriculum, which appears to be the "model" for standardized early childhood ed in metro Omaha. While it has a good mix of topics, from cooking to music to pre-literacy activities, it is heavily into the "child-centered" philosophy, also known as "discovery learning," which is prevalent in early primary school classrooms right now.
"Discovery learning," or "constructivism," is popular because the teachers' colleges promote it as "the way" and because working educators have been taught in staff development workshops that it is more "progressive" to merely "facilitate" learning rather than actively, explicitly, systematically and directly teaching the children facts, ideas and skills.
In a "discovery learning" preschool or school classroom, the adults "stay out of the children's way" and let the children guide themselves in "centers" doing activities, rather than actually teach the content to the children.
This kind of philosophy frowns on adults demonstrating, guiding and teaching any materials, or indeed, interacting very much with the children and giving them vocabulary words or explaining things to them. Instead, what is favored is the practice of just laying out the supplies for various activities and letting the kids have at it.
The grade-school equivalent is Whole Language – the notion that if you just expose children to text, they'll pick up reading and spelling on their own -- which has been demonstrated for decades to be a total failure compared to fast, easy, cheap phonics instruction. Another example is Whole Math, which minimizes computation, memorization and math facts in favor of more abstract problem-solving activities, estimating and receiving credit for wrong answers as long as the "process" used to arrive at them was creative, group projects and other "child-centered" math activities which, unfortunately, result in most children having substandard math skills compared to generations past.
But the participants in the Building Bright Futures meetings were not given any options to vote for traditional preschool literacy and math activities. So my friend believes the stage is being set for declaring discovery learning curricula as the high-quality "standard," most popular among early-childhood providers, and sadly, the tried-and-true methods that work will become unfamiliar and soon vanish.
Meanwhile, she pointed out from the statistics that a high percentage of the children served by the participants in the Building Bright Futures surveys were receiving child-care subsidies through Title XX of the Social Security Act and are on the Child and Adult Care Food Program because they are low-income.
That doesn't match the overall demographic of the Omaha metro area, but again, children of all demographics will be viewed the same as these low-income students. That spells overspending, waste, and poor quality, with an accent on the revenue stream rather than on meeting young children’s individual needs.
And here's proof of that: when asked what they would do if they were given additional funding, 44% said they would give staff a raise and another 14% said they would hire another adult. Only 3% said they would buy more toys and materials for the children. That’s pretty telling.
Also evidence that the big-government fix is in is that 79% thought it would be "very helpful" to have a nurse come in to do health checks (no mention, however, of who would pay for that, or what would be done with the nurse’s findings), and 81% favored "developmental" screenings twice per year – again, with no mention of whether young children deemed "at risk" of school failure by some kind of pop psychology standards are going to be identified as young as age 3 and put on psychotropic drugs and so forth.
Can you see the "government nannies" taking over parental autonomy? Now, everybody's for good health care for children. The problem comes when the government tries to substitute in the parent role. It only discredits parents even further in their children’s eyes, and makes people of all ages more dependent on the government.
In addition, 60% of the day-care personnel queried said it would be "extremely important" for them to have "help" with "goals" – translation: standardized programming. And 86% favored having a "coach" to "help" with the overall program – translation: a government overseer. That means they are willing to cave in to the standardizations proposed by BBF in exchange for the grant funding.
So that's the status of the push toward universal preschool in Omaha. But it's nothing new. This is going on all around the country. For more on how this is being done – and how it is being opposed in other states – visit www.EdWatch.org and go to the "National Stories" archive to see stories on "universal preschool," "Baby Ed and Early Childhood Ed" and related topics.
What would be a better course of action than what Building Bright Futures is doing?
I would rather see a volunteer corps of experienced mothers and fathers set up to mentor and advise young parents and empower them, and advise child-care providers on an optional basis, alongside the university and government, rather than funding a huge new behemoth of government services to replace what the family has done down through the centuries: care for children.
I was a member of the Junior League of Omaha, a group of professional volunteers, and I could sure see a "Senior League" being set up to pass parenting life skills on to the next generation.
Getting books into children's homes, teaching their parents to talk to them about anything and everything, and read to them 30 minutes a day, would all go a long way toward improving kindergarten readiness and strengthening the family -- and would be not only more effective for kids, but tons and tons cheaper.
Stacking the Stats
For Universal Preschool?
A friend has attended several data-seeking meetings of the new educational nonprofit serving metropolitan Omaha low-income children, Building Bright Futures, www.buildingbrightfutures.net. She is glad to be offered a chance to try to influence the way the early childhood grants are going to shaped, but is dismayed over the direction she believes things are going.
She supports Building Bright Future's efforts to attract significant additional funding for early childhood education in metropolitan Omaha for low-income children. But she opposes the social engineering aspects that are coming with that extra funding. What's scary is that once the Building Bright Futures program is in place funded by these private grants, the services -- good or bad -- will transform into "entitlements," and eventually the taxpayers will be expected to foot the bill.
It appears to be a regression back toward the standardized child care in the government nurseries of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and '60s, instead of what you’d expect in 2009: an array of richly-diverse choices, including lots of support for parents who choose to mostly rear their own children in their own homes.
Examples: Building Bright Futures is apparently going to suggest a radical reduction in the staff-to-child ratio that is permissible in early childhood settings. That step alone would drive most private-sector day-cares and preschools out of business.
The group also is set to require frequent mental-health "assessments" of preschool children that are likely to lead to lots of "interventions" in the form of prescriptions for drugs such as antidepressants. And the group will likely propose "free" health clinics, perhaps traveling nurses for preschools but full-fledged health clinics in schools.
This school-based health care push will add more costs and tasks to the schools’ already-overburdened "plate" and will contribute to the skyrocketing cost of Medicaid. The clinics will replace parents as the child’s perceived health-care advocate, dispense birth control behind parents' backs, and further build a wall of separation between children and the parents who are supposed to be responsible for their care and upbringing. In a way, it will be "enabling" child neglect.
However, overall, the source is hopeful that the right things will mostly happen if all points of view are explored and discussed in Building Bright Futures – and if the donors are given accurate information that provides a truthful picture of the early childhood world. As a professional in the child care field, she is very excited to know that heavy hitters – rich and powerful people – are interested in donating money to early childhood programs that can make a difference. She just hopes that difference will make things better for all kids, not worse for any.
But she called me with grave concerns over the way that the data on the status of early childhood education in Omaha is being put together. She believes it is being skewed on purpose to favor the taxpayer-funded, heavily-staffed, school-operated, big day-care centers and preschools, and to disparage the quality of smaller church-based and home-based day-care operations in order to drive them out of business.
This information will be presented to donors, state senators and other decision-makers and policy-shapers, but she is afraid the information will be distorted and skewed by the way it is being collected, and decisionmakers will be none the wiser.
She believes the result will deceptively suggest that heavily standardized child care curricula delivered in large, governmental settings is best for preschool children. But that is a bad and dangerous idea. The problem is that the people putting this curricula in place don’t know any other way. They are mostly trained as K-12 educators, and they will control the staff development, so that nobody in early childhood ed will know any other way than the standardized way.
Meanwhile, K-12 educators have a less than stellar track record with Omaha's at-risk student populations as it is. Remember that the vast majority of inner-city students in metro Omaha cannot read, write or do math at grade level, and our percentages of children of color who drop out before high-school graduation are among the highest in the nation. Now that record of failure will be spread to the previously-diverse early childhood world, and it's sad.
Diversity in child-care provision is what my friend supports: strong safeguards for parental choice and all kinds of settings, all kinds of providers, and all kinds of curricula are what she believes is best.
But if this young professional is correct, the Building Bright Futures program is going to kill off the affordable private-sector alternatives in early childhood ed by directing their grants toward the big, standardized nurseries. Then only rich parents will be able to afford private preschools. Middle-class parents will be forced to use the "free" government preschool option. Preschools that aren't dependent on grants will be able to provide better-quality programming. Consequently, the achievement gap between rich children, and everybody else, will be expanded instead of contracted.
While preschool educational outcomes might improve for the poorest of the poor – and research does affirm that quality early childhood education is great for that student population -- the "leveling" that will occur in these large, standardized programs will wind up giving middle class children lower quality preschool experiences that will make them worse off than they are now.
My source shared the Building Bright Futures report, "Key Messages From Early Childhood Providers Outreach Session" dated February 2009, to back up her concerns. The sessions were held in November 2008.
A look at the topics and the people whose opinions were being collected bolsters the notion that these data are being "spun" to make it look like government-provided, subsidized, accredited and standardized early childhood education for all children, rich and poor – commonly called "universal preschool" -- is best for kids, and therefore should be the goal.
As an example, my source pointed to the fact stated in the report that 62% of the participants in the data-collection meeting work in a day-care center rather than in a family day-care home. Of those who work in day-care centers, 64% work at a center that is licensed for more than 50 children. That’s a HUGE child-care setting – not at all what the research shows is best for young children. The best setting is the home, or a child-care operation which mimics the home, with a relatively small number of children, and caregivers who are able to give a lot of warmth, nurturance, support and love.
In large, impersonal centers with the litigation risk looming overhead at all times, staff may not even be able to hug a child. And in the long run, that lack of demonstrated affection in the young child's experience is extremely damaging and might be contributing to the wave of bad behavior in K-12 schools that we're seeing.
It's also sad to note that apparently no stay-at-home mothers and fathers were included in the survey, completely wiping out a huge set of "stakeholders" in how quality early childhood education is defined. There are tons of people who believe that kids are better off with just a few hours a week of preschool experience, spending most of their time at home or in a small child-care setting in a home. But those views aren't included in the survey results.
Another red flag: 61% of participants were using the same canned preschool curriculum guide, Creative Curriculum, which appears to be the "model" for standardized early childhood ed in metro Omaha. While it has a good mix of topics, from cooking to music to pre-literacy activities, it is heavily into the "child-centered" philosophy, also known as "discovery learning," which is prevalent in early primary school classrooms right now.
"Discovery learning," or "constructivism," is popular because the teachers' colleges promote it as "the way" and because working educators have been taught in staff development workshops that it is more "progressive" to merely "facilitate" learning rather than actively, explicitly, systematically and directly teaching the children facts, ideas and skills.
In a "discovery learning" preschool or school classroom, the adults "stay out of the children's way" and let the children guide themselves in "centers" doing activities, rather than actually teach the content to the children.
This kind of philosophy frowns on adults demonstrating, guiding and teaching any materials, or indeed, interacting very much with the children and giving them vocabulary words or explaining things to them. Instead, what is favored is the practice of just laying out the supplies for various activities and letting the kids have at it.
The grade-school equivalent is Whole Language – the notion that if you just expose children to text, they'll pick up reading and spelling on their own -- which has been demonstrated for decades to be a total failure compared to fast, easy, cheap phonics instruction. Another example is Whole Math, which minimizes computation, memorization and math facts in favor of more abstract problem-solving activities, estimating and receiving credit for wrong answers as long as the "process" used to arrive at them was creative, group projects and other "child-centered" math activities which, unfortunately, result in most children having substandard math skills compared to generations past.
But the participants in the Building Bright Futures meetings were not given any options to vote for traditional preschool literacy and math activities. So my friend believes the stage is being set for declaring discovery learning curricula as the high-quality "standard," most popular among early-childhood providers, and sadly, the tried-and-true methods that work will become unfamiliar and soon vanish.
Meanwhile, she pointed out from the statistics that a high percentage of the children served by the participants in the Building Bright Futures surveys were receiving child-care subsidies through Title XX of the Social Security Act and are on the Child and Adult Care Food Program because they are low-income.
That doesn't match the overall demographic of the Omaha metro area, but again, children of all demographics will be viewed the same as these low-income students. That spells overspending, waste, and poor quality, with an accent on the revenue stream rather than on meeting young children’s individual needs.
And here's proof of that: when asked what they would do if they were given additional funding, 44% said they would give staff a raise and another 14% said they would hire another adult. Only 3% said they would buy more toys and materials for the children. That’s pretty telling.
Also evidence that the big-government fix is in is that 79% thought it would be "very helpful" to have a nurse come in to do health checks (no mention, however, of who would pay for that, or what would be done with the nurse’s findings), and 81% favored "developmental" screenings twice per year – again, with no mention of whether young children deemed "at risk" of school failure by some kind of pop psychology standards are going to be identified as young as age 3 and put on psychotropic drugs and so forth.
Can you see the "government nannies" taking over parental autonomy? Now, everybody's for good health care for children. The problem comes when the government tries to substitute in the parent role. It only discredits parents even further in their children’s eyes, and makes people of all ages more dependent on the government.
In addition, 60% of the day-care personnel queried said it would be "extremely important" for them to have "help" with "goals" – translation: standardized programming. And 86% favored having a "coach" to "help" with the overall program – translation: a government overseer. That means they are willing to cave in to the standardizations proposed by BBF in exchange for the grant funding.
So that's the status of the push toward universal preschool in Omaha. But it's nothing new. This is going on all around the country. For more on how this is being done – and how it is being opposed in other states – visit www.EdWatch.org and go to the "National Stories" archive to see stories on "universal preschool," "Baby Ed and Early Childhood Ed" and related topics.
What would be a better course of action than what Building Bright Futures is doing?
I would rather see a volunteer corps of experienced mothers and fathers set up to mentor and advise young parents and empower them, and advise child-care providers on an optional basis, alongside the university and government, rather than funding a huge new behemoth of government services to replace what the family has done down through the centuries: care for children.
I was a member of the Junior League of Omaha, a group of professional volunteers, and I could sure see a "Senior League" being set up to pass parenting life skills on to the next generation.
Getting books into children's homes, teaching their parents to talk to them about anything and everything, and read to them 30 minutes a day, would all go a long way toward improving kindergarten readiness and strengthening the family -- and would be not only more effective for kids, but tons and tons cheaper.
Labels: Building Bright Futures, concerns about government displacement of parental autonomy, universal preschool in Nebraska
(1) comments
Thursday, April 09, 2009
BEST THING GOING IN NEBRASKA EDUCATION:
CHILDREN'S SCHOLARSHIP FUND DEADLINE APRIL 20
Three cheers for the Children's Scholarship Fund of Omaha, www.csfomaha.org. It grants partial tuition reimbursement to low-income families who want to send their children to private schools in Nebraska but cannot afford the tuition all on their own.
The K-8 scholarships are coming due again on April 20. The application form was printed on Page 2FP of last night's World-Herald. The fund will draw names out by lottery and inform recipients well in advance of the 2009-10 school year.
The fund is wisely structured so that each family has to pay a minimum of $500 of the tuition costs per year, per child, and must cover books and fees above and beyond tuition. That way, the tuition assistance is not a total "freebie" feeding an entitlement attitude, and keeps the parents involved and supportive, with "skin in the game."
For an idea of how liberal the guidelines are, a single parent with one child who makes up to $37,800 a year can qualify, and on up the sliding scale so that a household with six people making $76,680 can get help.
So it's family-friendly, it gives low-income parents the same school choice that high-income parents have, it signals to the children that their educations are important enough for their parents to make this financial sacrifice, and it's a great way for Nebraskans to donate to an educational fund that demonstrably helps needy kids and is very, very much appreciated and invested wisely.
You can write to the Children's Scholarship Fund at P.O. Box 4130, Omaha, NE 68104
CHILDREN'S SCHOLARSHIP FUND DEADLINE APRIL 20
Three cheers for the Children's Scholarship Fund of Omaha, www.csfomaha.org. It grants partial tuition reimbursement to low-income families who want to send their children to private schools in Nebraska but cannot afford the tuition all on their own.
The K-8 scholarships are coming due again on April 20. The application form was printed on Page 2FP of last night's World-Herald. The fund will draw names out by lottery and inform recipients well in advance of the 2009-10 school year.
The fund is wisely structured so that each family has to pay a minimum of $500 of the tuition costs per year, per child, and must cover books and fees above and beyond tuition. That way, the tuition assistance is not a total "freebie" feeding an entitlement attitude, and keeps the parents involved and supportive, with "skin in the game."
For an idea of how liberal the guidelines are, a single parent with one child who makes up to $37,800 a year can qualify, and on up the sliding scale so that a household with six people making $76,680 can get help.
So it's family-friendly, it gives low-income parents the same school choice that high-income parents have, it signals to the children that their educations are important enough for their parents to make this financial sacrifice, and it's a great way for Nebraskans to donate to an educational fund that demonstrably helps needy kids and is very, very much appreciated and invested wisely.
You can write to the Children's Scholarship Fund at P.O. Box 4130, Omaha, NE 68104
(1) comments
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
JOHN STOSSEL BLASTS UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL;
WHY WOULD NEBRASKA SNARE THE SANDBOX SET
IN THAT HORRENDOUS SPENDING SWAMP?
Here's a good article by commentator John Stossel, exposing the myths behind the left-wing push to provide government preschool for each and every child at taxpayer expense.
You can sure see Nebraska slipping slowly but surely into this new entitlement, with the Susie Buffett set-up grant, and various State Board of Education votes that are edging us toward "standards" for school-based, taxpayer-provided, pre-k programs for all.
It's bad enough that they're driving private-sector preschools out of business. On top of that, the universal preschool end-product is WORSE: the low-income kids that have gone to them (Head Start) don't do any better in school, there's not a shred of evidence that the middle- and high-income kids who WOULD go to them from now on would do any better, either -- more than likely, with the loss of competition, their preschool experiences would be far worse -- AND kids from these sorts of programs have been found to become overly aggressive, anxious, less-healthy "problem children" once they get into full-fledged school.
Ew! Ew! Ewwww! Let's all join the throng calling for the aerial overspraying of Prozac onto all preschools . . . just kidding.
The point is, if enough parents, taxpayers and policy leaders wake up to what a waste of time and money these Soviet-style government nurseries would be, maybe we can hopscotch around this one:
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2009/04/08/the_universal_pre-k_scam
(1) comments
WHY WOULD NEBRASKA SNARE THE SANDBOX SET
IN THAT HORRENDOUS SPENDING SWAMP?
Here's a good article by commentator John Stossel, exposing the myths behind the left-wing push to provide government preschool for each and every child at taxpayer expense.
You can sure see Nebraska slipping slowly but surely into this new entitlement, with the Susie Buffett set-up grant, and various State Board of Education votes that are edging us toward "standards" for school-based, taxpayer-provided, pre-k programs for all.
It's bad enough that they're driving private-sector preschools out of business. On top of that, the universal preschool end-product is WORSE: the low-income kids that have gone to them (Head Start) don't do any better in school, there's not a shred of evidence that the middle- and high-income kids who WOULD go to them from now on would do any better, either -- more than likely, with the loss of competition, their preschool experiences would be far worse -- AND kids from these sorts of programs have been found to become overly aggressive, anxious, less-healthy "problem children" once they get into full-fledged school.
Ew! Ew! Ewwww! Let's all join the throng calling for the aerial overspraying of Prozac onto all preschools . . . just kidding.
The point is, if enough parents, taxpayers and policy leaders wake up to what a waste of time and money these Soviet-style government nurseries would be, maybe we can hopscotch around this one:
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2009/04/08/the_universal_pre-k_scam
LEARNING COMMUNITY:
WHAT WERE WE THINKIN'?
Former welfare mom and now nationally-known political commentator Star Parker had a great two-liner that really crystallized what is wrong with the widespread socialization, systematization and standardization of our government schools.
From her website, www.urbancure.org:
Our politicians tell us now that we need to turn the whole country over to them because capitalism has supposedly failed and we need protection from exploitation by the wealthy.
Has anyone noticed that the only markets that have failed in America are the ones distorted with major government controls, regulations, subsidies, or taxpayer guarantees?
See what a dark well we are dropping our kids into, with the new Learning Community bureaucracy, controls, regulations, subsidies and guarantees we are putting in place? What we are doing is copying the Native American schools, which basically operate totally under federal controls and in the absence of parental involvement, for the most part. And what is the graduation rate and the average ACT score in Nebraska's Native American schools?
There's an old multicultural term to describe them: UFF DA!
Everything in my being says we are going to drive even the best of our schools closer to the atrocious performance and waste of the inner-city schools and the Native American schools, rather than improving them.
The only thing that would work is what has always worked in this country: free enterprise.
WHAT WERE WE THINKIN'?
Former welfare mom and now nationally-known political commentator Star Parker had a great two-liner that really crystallized what is wrong with the widespread socialization, systematization and standardization of our government schools.
From her website, www.urbancure.org:
Our politicians tell us now that we need to turn the whole country over to them because capitalism has supposedly failed and we need protection from exploitation by the wealthy.
Has anyone noticed that the only markets that have failed in America are the ones distorted with major government controls, regulations, subsidies, or taxpayer guarantees?
See what a dark well we are dropping our kids into, with the new Learning Community bureaucracy, controls, regulations, subsidies and guarantees we are putting in place? What we are doing is copying the Native American schools, which basically operate totally under federal controls and in the absence of parental involvement, for the most part. And what is the graduation rate and the average ACT score in Nebraska's Native American schools?
There's an old multicultural term to describe them: UFF DA!
Everything in my being says we are going to drive even the best of our schools closer to the atrocious performance and waste of the inner-city schools and the Native American schools, rather than improving them.
The only thing that would work is what has always worked in this country: free enterprise.
Labels: governmental control of education, Omaha Learning Community
(1) comments
Friday, April 03, 2009
POINTLESS REPORT CARDS
A SYMPTOM OF OVER-STANDARDIZED SCHOOLS
Sad to see the Omaha Public Schools and all other public districts in the Omaha metropolitan area have caved in to the micromanaging rigidity of standardized report cards. In effect, parents will be getting less useful information from report cards, and an even fuzzier picture of how well or how poorly their child is mastering classroom content compared to the students of yesteryear.
Report cards have entered the Brave New World of standardized schooling. Since school curriculum and assessments have been aligned to the nationally standardized education system, it follows that report cards would have to be standardized, too.
Instead of the familiar A-F grading system, or perhaps alongside it to placate parental fears in the early going of this transformation, the child's progress in school is benchmarked to the three levels of performance that are reported on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced "nape"). Those three levels are basic (below grade level), proficient (at grade level) and advanced (better than grade level).
You'll see slightly different wording in different districts, but essentially, they've aligned their report cards to the national standards-based educational paradigm. Some day soon, "the" nationally standardized test will be the NAEP, and the "grading" system will already be in place.
This is yet another sign that our schools are being transformed into "local education agencies" that are more or less local cookie-cutter franchises of a nationalized education system. The one professional privilege of being a teacher -- assigning a grade -- has been taken away, or rendered virtually meaningless. Parents will be duped into thinking their child is really doing outstanding work when the report card actually means that the child can meet the low-level, baseline, minimum standards set by the government.
It's all about the standards . . . and the standards are all about assuring a future workforce that has a certain level of minimum competencies, rather than giving students a strong motivation to be the best they can be in all academic subjects.
Read more about it in this column from my educational advice website:
http://www.showandtellforparents.com/wfdata/frame166-1022/pressrel17.asp
What can parents do? It doesn't seem likely that schools will get rid of standards-based education or bring back A-F grading systems since their funding and political systems are so firmly entrenched in the nationalization process.
So once again, if you want your child to be well-educated the way past generations have been, the answer is to homeschool your child or put him or her in private school if you can . . . and if you can't, then "after-school" your child with tutoring, enrichment experiences, and independent learning with good academic content such as making sure he or she has read the 100s of classic children's books that are no longer included in school curricula these days.
A SYMPTOM OF OVER-STANDARDIZED SCHOOLS
Sad to see the Omaha Public Schools and all other public districts in the Omaha metropolitan area have caved in to the micromanaging rigidity of standardized report cards. In effect, parents will be getting less useful information from report cards, and an even fuzzier picture of how well or how poorly their child is mastering classroom content compared to the students of yesteryear.
Report cards have entered the Brave New World of standardized schooling. Since school curriculum and assessments have been aligned to the nationally standardized education system, it follows that report cards would have to be standardized, too.
Instead of the familiar A-F grading system, or perhaps alongside it to placate parental fears in the early going of this transformation, the child's progress in school is benchmarked to the three levels of performance that are reported on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced "nape"). Those three levels are basic (below grade level), proficient (at grade level) and advanced (better than grade level).
You'll see slightly different wording in different districts, but essentially, they've aligned their report cards to the national standards-based educational paradigm. Some day soon, "the" nationally standardized test will be the NAEP, and the "grading" system will already be in place.
This is yet another sign that our schools are being transformed into "local education agencies" that are more or less local cookie-cutter franchises of a nationalized education system. The one professional privilege of being a teacher -- assigning a grade -- has been taken away, or rendered virtually meaningless. Parents will be duped into thinking their child is really doing outstanding work when the report card actually means that the child can meet the low-level, baseline, minimum standards set by the government.
It's all about the standards . . . and the standards are all about assuring a future workforce that has a certain level of minimum competencies, rather than giving students a strong motivation to be the best they can be in all academic subjects.
Read more about it in this column from my educational advice website:
http://www.showandtellforparents.com/wfdata/frame166-1022/pressrel17.asp
What can parents do? It doesn't seem likely that schools will get rid of standards-based education or bring back A-F grading systems since their funding and political systems are so firmly entrenched in the nationalization process.
So once again, if you want your child to be well-educated the way past generations have been, the answer is to homeschool your child or put him or her in private school if you can . . . and if you can't, then "after-school" your child with tutoring, enrichment experiences, and independent learning with good academic content such as making sure he or she has read the 100s of classic children's books that are no longer included in school curricula these days.
Labels: assessment and grading, NAEP's connection to curriculum, report cards, standardized schooling
(1) comments
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
GLIMPSE INTO THE ULTRA-LEFTIST MIND:
BERTRAND RUSSELL PREDICTED TODAY'S
WAVE OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
The atheistic, radical British philosopher, mathematician and author Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) predicted the creation of a sheep-like public through government policies which have left us with the epidemic of debilitating learning disabilities including autism, ADHD, behavior disorders and others.
Have you ever conceived of the idea that a government might WANT to promote conditions which make people dumber, not smarter? To give them the equivalent of a "chemical lobotomy" so that they will be less able to think deeply and gain wealth independently, and easier to command and control?
With as much as we now know about the mercury content in childhood vaccinations pointing strongly toward the spike in autism, it's pretty hard to refute Russell's preview. See the very end of this enlightening article on the link between mercury in vaccinations, and autism:
http://nationalwriterssyndicate.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=341
BERTRAND RUSSELL PREDICTED TODAY'S
WAVE OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
The atheistic, radical British philosopher, mathematician and author Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) predicted the creation of a sheep-like public through government policies which have left us with the epidemic of debilitating learning disabilities including autism, ADHD, behavior disorders and others.
Have you ever conceived of the idea that a government might WANT to promote conditions which make people dumber, not smarter? To give them the equivalent of a "chemical lobotomy" so that they will be less able to think deeply and gain wealth independently, and easier to command and control?
With as much as we now know about the mercury content in childhood vaccinations pointing strongly toward the spike in autism, it's pretty hard to refute Russell's preview. See the very end of this enlightening article on the link between mercury in vaccinations, and autism:
http://nationalwriterssyndicate.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=341
Labels: mercury autism chemical lobotomies learning disabilities Bertrand Russell
(0) comments
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
THREE CHEERS FOR ED ZORINSKY:
MY RECENT RANT ON WWW.STATEPAPER.COM
Come see and please comment:
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2009/03/16/49be72c4b3654
MY RECENT RANT ON WWW.STATEPAPER.COM
Come see and please comment:
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2009/03/16/49be72c4b3654
Labels: Ed Zorinsky, government spending cuts
(0) comments
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
ARE WE JUST THROWING
GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD
WITH ATTEMPTED SCHOOL REFORMS?
This well-thought-out piece from The American Thinker claims that the Obama educational "stimulus" money will be a colossal waste, and other massive school reform efforts are futile. See why:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/how_todays_failed_educational.html
GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD
WITH ATTEMPTED SCHOOL REFORMS?
This well-thought-out piece from The American Thinker claims that the Obama educational "stimulus" money will be a colossal waste, and other massive school reform efforts are futile. See why:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/how_todays_failed_educational.html
Labels: Obama education spending, parental involvement, school reform
(1) comments
Friday, March 20, 2009
FORMER STATE BOARD OF ED MEMBER
CALLS FOR REJECTING THE USE OF
FEDERAL STIMULUS MONEY FOR EDUCATION
Urgent need to contact state senators today:
Kathy Wilmot of Beaver City, Neb., warns that if the Unicameral decides to use some of the unexpected federal stimulus money for use in its regular state aid to education funding, it'll lead to a tremendous state tax increase in the future when the federal money has dried up.
The former member of the Nebraska State Board of Education agrees with Gov. Heineman that we would be creating new educational entitlements if we use the one-time federal money to pay for ongoing state education costs, and then would have to resort to increasing state taxes in the future to keep those things paid for when the federal stimulus funding has run out.
It's kind of like adding on a room to your house: after the one-time expense, there are ongoing expenses year after year, of heating it and cooling it and furnishing it and cleaning it . . . and the money to pay for those ongoing expenses has to come from somewhere.
She urges citizens to act NOW. Find your state senator's phone number and e-mail address at http://www.unicam.state.ne.us/
CALLS FOR REJECTING THE USE OF
FEDERAL STIMULUS MONEY FOR EDUCATION
Urgent need to contact state senators today:
Kathy Wilmot of Beaver City, Neb., warns that if the Unicameral decides to use some of the unexpected federal stimulus money for use in its regular state aid to education funding, it'll lead to a tremendous state tax increase in the future when the federal money has dried up.
The former member of the Nebraska State Board of Education agrees with Gov. Heineman that we would be creating new educational entitlements if we use the one-time federal money to pay for ongoing state education costs, and then would have to resort to increasing state taxes in the future to keep those things paid for when the federal stimulus funding has run out.
It's kind of like adding on a room to your house: after the one-time expense, there are ongoing expenses year after year, of heating it and cooling it and furnishing it and cleaning it . . . and the money to pay for those ongoing expenses has to come from somewhere.
She urges citizens to act NOW. Find your state senator's phone number and e-mail address at http://www.unicam.state.ne.us/
Labels: education, Unicameral
(1) comments
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Quality Control Idea:
Have Your Child Tested
With a Private School Entrance Exam
A smart thing for parents of children in public schools to do once a year is to visit a competing private school. Just do a little comparison shopping! Look at the schoolwork at your child's grade level, the art work on the walls, the conduct of the teachers and students . . . just get an idea of how your child's public school experience might be stacking up.
But here's an even smarter idea: have your child assessed by the local private school!
Private school entrance exams are being given this time of year. They're usually free, though you probably should pre-register in advance. The entrance exam for Grades 1-6 at Brownell Talbot is at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 21, for example. Parochial schools all are offering pre-admission assessments at about this time of year.
If your child does great, that tells you something. But if your child bombs. . . .
An even smarter, bigger idea would be to offer free assessments city-wide. That would give parents a true idea of where their child stands, and where there might be major gaps in the child's skills, understanding and progress that aren’t reflected under our current overstandardized system.
Since math curricula are ''aligned,'' or closely tailored, to the assessments that the kids are given in our public schools, all the scores tell us is that the student mastered that particular curriculum. But if that particular curriculum is dumbed-down, then the score is basically meaningless. A student who gets an 80% on a really challenging test may actually be doing significantly better than a student who gets a 100% on an easy one.
And that's what’s happening, bigtime. The math stats from standardized tests are really not that reflective of the students' real math knowledge and skills.
Wish we had someone on the ball in this arena the way they do in Spokane, Wash. My friend, education activist Laurie Rogers, and Debbie Knutson, who runs a tutoring business, are offering free math assessments for students in Grades 2-12 on March 21 in Spokane. Each test will take 30-45 minutes.
The assessment will be ''aligned'' with traditional math standards at the various grade levels and rigorous international math standards. These assessments will NOT be dumbed down. But the organizers are predicting that test results may expose the weaknesses of the math curriculum in the public schools, if a lot of kids do poorly who, in contrast, get A's at school.
The March timing is intended to give parents a head's up on how far behind their child may be and in what areas. That way, they can arrange for summertime tutoring – preferably outside of the school system, since its curricular choices are what have most likely hampered the child's progress.
See: www.educationnwresources.com
Have Your Child Tested
With a Private School Entrance Exam
A smart thing for parents of children in public schools to do once a year is to visit a competing private school. Just do a little comparison shopping! Look at the schoolwork at your child's grade level, the art work on the walls, the conduct of the teachers and students . . . just get an idea of how your child's public school experience might be stacking up.
But here's an even smarter idea: have your child assessed by the local private school!
Private school entrance exams are being given this time of year. They're usually free, though you probably should pre-register in advance. The entrance exam for Grades 1-6 at Brownell Talbot is at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 21, for example. Parochial schools all are offering pre-admission assessments at about this time of year.
If your child does great, that tells you something. But if your child bombs. . . .
An even smarter, bigger idea would be to offer free assessments city-wide. That would give parents a true idea of where their child stands, and where there might be major gaps in the child's skills, understanding and progress that aren’t reflected under our current overstandardized system.
Since math curricula are ''aligned,'' or closely tailored, to the assessments that the kids are given in our public schools, all the scores tell us is that the student mastered that particular curriculum. But if that particular curriculum is dumbed-down, then the score is basically meaningless. A student who gets an 80% on a really challenging test may actually be doing significantly better than a student who gets a 100% on an easy one.
And that's what’s happening, bigtime. The math stats from standardized tests are really not that reflective of the students' real math knowledge and skills.
Wish we had someone on the ball in this arena the way they do in Spokane, Wash. My friend, education activist Laurie Rogers, and Debbie Knutson, who runs a tutoring business, are offering free math assessments for students in Grades 2-12 on March 21 in Spokane. Each test will take 30-45 minutes.
The assessment will be ''aligned'' with traditional math standards at the various grade levels and rigorous international math standards. These assessments will NOT be dumbed down. But the organizers are predicting that test results may expose the weaknesses of the math curriculum in the public schools, if a lot of kids do poorly who, in contrast, get A's at school.
The March timing is intended to give parents a head's up on how far behind their child may be and in what areas. That way, they can arrange for summertime tutoring – preferably outside of the school system, since its curricular choices are what have most likely hampered the child's progress.
See: www.educationnwresources.com
Labels: free assessments, math curriculum, parental involvement
(4) comments
Thursday, March 05, 2009
MILLARD PILOTED OUTCOME-BASED EDUCATION
AND NOW WE'RE ALL PAYING FOR IT
A retired teacher from the Millard Public Schools contacted KFAB this morning to reveal consternation over an administrative order never to give a student a 0, D or F on any assigned project, no matter if the kid did absolutely nothing.
Why not? Because there is no such thing as "failure" with Outcome-Based Education. That's the educational philosophy that is now in place in Millard and all other public school districts in Nebraska and around the nation. When OBE became a controversial term, they renamed it "standards-based education," or "performance-based," but it's the same thing.
You are supposed to let a child who didn't try the first time on a test or assignment come back and try, try, try again, as many times as it takes, to pass a test or complete a paper or build a project or show up at group meetings for school. School has pretty much morphed from a traditional grading system with !-F into a "Pass/Fail" system, where an "A" signifies only that you met the outcome, and a "C" signifies that you met it, but barely, and it took a while.
Now imagine how that translates into the job world. Take a reporter: so you get all the facts wrong on your Page One story, misspell the mayor's name, and cause someone to commit suicide because you got the facts wrong?
Oh, well, that's OK: you can rewrite that story tomorrow, and fix most of your fact errors. And if you leave a few misspelled words in place, oh, well, you tried: it's the "process," not the "product," that matters, right?
Where on Earth did all of this come from?
In the “school restructuring” that took place about 15 years ago in the Clinton Administration (remember Goals 2000, the precursor to No Child Left Behind?), the Millard school system was one of the school districts around the nation to pilot Outcome-Based Education, the “no child shall fail” philosophy. The key change was that teaching reading mainly with phonics was banished, and instead, the Whole Language philosophy was instituted. Result: serious disabilities to kids' literacy, numeracy and thinking skills.
But Whole Language and Outcome-Based Education were such juicy fads, taught in federally-funded teacher inservices like crazy throughout the 1990s, and meant so many more school jobs for the unions, since so many more adults were needed to work in these deformed school systems to try to pick up the pieces that the social engineering created in ill-educated kids, that those destructive philosophies have now spread all over, and we are all seeing the destructive consequences.
I believe, but can't prove, that Westside was one of those districts that piloted the all-day kindergarten and special education "inclusion" components of this massive restructuring process, and the Omaha Public Schools tried out the "English Language Learners" component.
I think Papillion-LaVista tried out the School-to-Work / job training aspects, and the state as a whole was a model for the electronic portfolios that are now rearing their ugly heads around the country.
Other districts around the state and the country tried out other aspects of what I call "school deform" and then they were implemented with federal grants to local and state school systems over the past several years, until the "restructured" educational system that we have now took shape.
With OBE, we changed from a traditional school system with A-F grades to a standardized system in which there’s a pre-set, canned curriculum. It’s pretty much pass or fail – master it, or don’t. That’s why we have 40 “valedictorians” at graduation, since all you have to do to get an A any more is to show up breathing, pretty much, and we have high school graduates who read, write and figure on about a fourth-grade level, but still have those diplomas.
It's considered a better way to prepare kids for the job world, although of course it's foolish since it minimizes academics, individual effort, initiative and most of all, the 3 R's.
I was one of the parents who fought this in the Legislature along with then-State Sen. and later Auditor Kate Witek, but it was steamrollered from Washington, the educators didn’t understand and opposed us, and we lost. At one point, she had to be escorted from a public meeting by security personnel, it got so bad.
When Outcome-Based Education became controversial because of our opposition, they just changed the name to “standards-based education.” But it’s the same thing. Instead of “outcomes,” schools are still forced to teach to the “standards.” That’s what was up with all those “standards” that the State Board of Ed has put in place – all dumbed down and not helpful.
I don’t think our daughters missed a single math problem ‘til they got into high school, it was so easy. Our youngest was an average student at the private Christian school at which we started her, since they taught reading with phonics and no public school in Nebraska does. But now that we’ve moved her into public school, she is far and away the best reader in her class. And that public school is spending about three times as much per pupil as her private Christian school did.
The only hope for smart students is to read a lot of books on their own time, participate in complementary education activities after school and on weekends (see my new website, www.AfterSchoolTreats.com) and kind of home-school themselves as much as they can.
There are also AP and honors classes to look forward to in high school, but it’s a loooooong wait ‘til then.
What’s the answer? School choice with no strings attached – give each child who wants to attend a private school or be homeschooled a voucher for 50% of the state aid and local property tax funding that would otherwise go to the public school. If we did that, we'd encourage some educational entrepreneurship -- I'd be among those who'd open a school if I could have a reliable funding source of, say, $4,000 per pupil per year, and could supplement with grants and fund-raising pretty easily.
Then we’d save taxpayers countless millions of dollars, create some much-needed competition in Nebraska's K-12 educational world, give kids a chance at a better education, give teachers an opportunity to be paid what they're really worth if they can get out from under union seniority rules, and involve parents a lot more in their children’s educations since, like the rich – including President and Mrs. Obama – they’d have a choice in where their children would go to school and would be treated as a customer, not a clueless idiot.
I really don't see a down side to school choice, as long as there are no governmental strings attached that would distort the curriculum or assessment processes unduly. Think of it as like the G.I. Bill. And let's get it going!
AND NOW WE'RE ALL PAYING FOR IT
A retired teacher from the Millard Public Schools contacted KFAB this morning to reveal consternation over an administrative order never to give a student a 0, D or F on any assigned project, no matter if the kid did absolutely nothing.
Why not? Because there is no such thing as "failure" with Outcome-Based Education. That's the educational philosophy that is now in place in Millard and all other public school districts in Nebraska and around the nation. When OBE became a controversial term, they renamed it "standards-based education," or "performance-based," but it's the same thing.
You are supposed to let a child who didn't try the first time on a test or assignment come back and try, try, try again, as many times as it takes, to pass a test or complete a paper or build a project or show up at group meetings for school. School has pretty much morphed from a traditional grading system with !-F into a "Pass/Fail" system, where an "A" signifies only that you met the outcome, and a "C" signifies that you met it, but barely, and it took a while.
Now imagine how that translates into the job world. Take a reporter: so you get all the facts wrong on your Page One story, misspell the mayor's name, and cause someone to commit suicide because you got the facts wrong?
Oh, well, that's OK: you can rewrite that story tomorrow, and fix most of your fact errors. And if you leave a few misspelled words in place, oh, well, you tried: it's the "process," not the "product," that matters, right?
Where on Earth did all of this come from?
In the “school restructuring” that took place about 15 years ago in the Clinton Administration (remember Goals 2000, the precursor to No Child Left Behind?), the Millard school system was one of the school districts around the nation to pilot Outcome-Based Education, the “no child shall fail” philosophy. The key change was that teaching reading mainly with phonics was banished, and instead, the Whole Language philosophy was instituted. Result: serious disabilities to kids' literacy, numeracy and thinking skills.
But Whole Language and Outcome-Based Education were such juicy fads, taught in federally-funded teacher inservices like crazy throughout the 1990s, and meant so many more school jobs for the unions, since so many more adults were needed to work in these deformed school systems to try to pick up the pieces that the social engineering created in ill-educated kids, that those destructive philosophies have now spread all over, and we are all seeing the destructive consequences.
I believe, but can't prove, that Westside was one of those districts that piloted the all-day kindergarten and special education "inclusion" components of this massive restructuring process, and the Omaha Public Schools tried out the "English Language Learners" component.
I think Papillion-LaVista tried out the School-to-Work / job training aspects, and the state as a whole was a model for the electronic portfolios that are now rearing their ugly heads around the country.
Other districts around the state and the country tried out other aspects of what I call "school deform" and then they were implemented with federal grants to local and state school systems over the past several years, until the "restructured" educational system that we have now took shape.
With OBE, we changed from a traditional school system with A-F grades to a standardized system in which there’s a pre-set, canned curriculum. It’s pretty much pass or fail – master it, or don’t. That’s why we have 40 “valedictorians” at graduation, since all you have to do to get an A any more is to show up breathing, pretty much, and we have high school graduates who read, write and figure on about a fourth-grade level, but still have those diplomas.
It's considered a better way to prepare kids for the job world, although of course it's foolish since it minimizes academics, individual effort, initiative and most of all, the 3 R's.
I was one of the parents who fought this in the Legislature along with then-State Sen. and later Auditor Kate Witek, but it was steamrollered from Washington, the educators didn’t understand and opposed us, and we lost. At one point, she had to be escorted from a public meeting by security personnel, it got so bad.
When Outcome-Based Education became controversial because of our opposition, they just changed the name to “standards-based education.” But it’s the same thing. Instead of “outcomes,” schools are still forced to teach to the “standards.” That’s what was up with all those “standards” that the State Board of Ed has put in place – all dumbed down and not helpful.
I don’t think our daughters missed a single math problem ‘til they got into high school, it was so easy. Our youngest was an average student at the private Christian school at which we started her, since they taught reading with phonics and no public school in Nebraska does. But now that we’ve moved her into public school, she is far and away the best reader in her class. And that public school is spending about three times as much per pupil as her private Christian school did.
The only hope for smart students is to read a lot of books on their own time, participate in complementary education activities after school and on weekends (see my new website, www.AfterSchoolTreats.com) and kind of home-school themselves as much as they can.
There are also AP and honors classes to look forward to in high school, but it’s a loooooong wait ‘til then.
What’s the answer? School choice with no strings attached – give each child who wants to attend a private school or be homeschooled a voucher for 50% of the state aid and local property tax funding that would otherwise go to the public school. If we did that, we'd encourage some educational entrepreneurship -- I'd be among those who'd open a school if I could have a reliable funding source of, say, $4,000 per pupil per year, and could supplement with grants and fund-raising pretty easily.
Then we’d save taxpayers countless millions of dollars, create some much-needed competition in Nebraska's K-12 educational world, give kids a chance at a better education, give teachers an opportunity to be paid what they're really worth if they can get out from under union seniority rules, and involve parents a lot more in their children’s educations since, like the rich – including President and Mrs. Obama – they’d have a choice in where their children would go to school and would be treated as a customer, not a clueless idiot.
I really don't see a down side to school choice, as long as there are no governmental strings attached that would distort the curriculum or assessment processes unduly. Think of it as like the G.I. Bill. And let's get it going!
Labels: outcome-based education, school choice, why schooling has declined
(1) comments
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Another Piece of Evidence
That Scribbling and Doodling
Beat Taxpayer-Provided Preschool
Footnote to the rant I just posted against additional taxpayer-provided pre-k programs:
The first thing I noticed in the picture posted with this article below was the crummy way the person was holding the pencil. See? All wrong. You can't write very well or fast with that pencil grip. And when you can't form letters well or quickly, you can't RECOGNIZE them well or quickly when they appear before you in printed text. Hence: dyslexia . . . dysgraphia . . . attention deficit disorder / hyperactivity. . . .
The second thing I noticed, though, was the scientific proof that what seems to be "aimless" scribbling and doodling is a actually a clear benefit to thinking skills . . . concentration . . . attention . . . learning.
Once again, reality is debunking the notion that taxpayers need to be providing free pre-kindergarten programs for little kids in school. Noooooo, we don't. They'd be much, much better off scribbling and doodling and playing on their own, at home, for the most part, during early childhood.
And I believe the workaholic-style, programmed pre-k is contributing immensely to our problems with kids labeled as having "Attention Deficit Disorder / Hyperactivity."
So we're not only being asked to pay for still more "free" pre-k in our public schools that doesn't work and actually hampers the vast majority of the kids in their academic progress . . . but that taxpayer-provided free pre-k is actually setting up MORE kids to have LEARNING DISABILITIES!!!!!
In these taxpayer-provided "free" pre-k programs and early primary classrooms, kids are NOT being taught good pencil-handling and handwriting skills. They are NOT being encouraged to scribble and doodle when they are itty bitty, since those are so cheap and you don't need a college graduate supervising such "lowly" little-kid activities.
Therefore, by doing stuff that's far more expensive than is needed and actually distorts little kids' early academic experiences, we are wasting tax dollars, dumbing down learning, and socking ourselves with a giant attention problem.
Remember: we humans are multisensory. The non-handwriting, non-phonics crowd that has charge of our public school system is literally handicapping our kids by ignoring that fact.
Take a look:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882127,00.html
(2) comments
That Scribbling and Doodling
Beat Taxpayer-Provided Preschool
Footnote to the rant I just posted against additional taxpayer-provided pre-k programs:
The first thing I noticed in the picture posted with this article below was the crummy way the person was holding the pencil. See? All wrong. You can't write very well or fast with that pencil grip. And when you can't form letters well or quickly, you can't RECOGNIZE them well or quickly when they appear before you in printed text. Hence: dyslexia . . . dysgraphia . . . attention deficit disorder / hyperactivity. . . .
The second thing I noticed, though, was the scientific proof that what seems to be "aimless" scribbling and doodling is a actually a clear benefit to thinking skills . . . concentration . . . attention . . . learning.
Once again, reality is debunking the notion that taxpayers need to be providing free pre-kindergarten programs for little kids in school. Noooooo, we don't. They'd be much, much better off scribbling and doodling and playing on their own, at home, for the most part, during early childhood.
And I believe the workaholic-style, programmed pre-k is contributing immensely to our problems with kids labeled as having "Attention Deficit Disorder / Hyperactivity."
So we're not only being asked to pay for still more "free" pre-k in our public schools that doesn't work and actually hampers the vast majority of the kids in their academic progress . . . but that taxpayer-provided free pre-k is actually setting up MORE kids to have LEARNING DISABILITIES!!!!!
In these taxpayer-provided "free" pre-k programs and early primary classrooms, kids are NOT being taught good pencil-handling and handwriting skills. They are NOT being encouraged to scribble and doodle when they are itty bitty, since those are so cheap and you don't need a college graduate supervising such "lowly" little-kid activities.
Therefore, by doing stuff that's far more expensive than is needed and actually distorts little kids' early academic experiences, we are wasting tax dollars, dumbing down learning, and socking ourselves with a giant attention problem.
Remember: we humans are multisensory. The non-handwriting, non-phonics crowd that has charge of our public school system is literally handicapping our kids by ignoring that fact.
Take a look:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882127,00.html
Labels: multisensory education, school spending, school-based pre-k programs
MILLARD IS FOOLISH
TO EXPAND PRE-KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS
It's clear that the Millard Public Schools just had a "facilitator" in the house, manipulating a "strategic planning team" into "spontaneously" coming up with the hugely expensive, previously-decided "changes" that the big-spending ed bureaucracy has already said it wants.
Sigh. School management and tax allocation by deception, once again. And in these economic hard times. Is there no shame any more?
There's no other reason to foolishly plow still MORE money into ineffective, unwarranted early-childhood education "programs" that don't work and are, in fact, obviously dumbing down children's literacy skills at an alarming rate.
Millard would be much better off to encourage parents to get their kids scribbling and drawing in preschool, and listening to stories at home and at their child-care situations, than feather-bedding the school-based early childhood bureaucracy.
If you want to set kids up to hit the ground running when they get to the taxpayer-provided K-12 educations that are their birthright, you need to keep them OUT of the school-based early childhood bureaucracy -- and fight its expansion, because it's dumbing our kids down.
Instead, these school-based pre-k programs are job programs for educators, experiments in social engineering, amateur psychiatry, amateur medical diagnosis, and group dynamics, offering all kinds of hands-on play experiences and everything BUT what kids need to be better at reading, writing and arithmetic once they hit real school.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not for academic-style, workaholic, worksheet-driven preschool, either. And I can see that the 3% or so of the preschool population that really is in need of special education services can benefit from some preschool programming, to get them ready.
It's just that the vast majority of the kids do NOT need those preschool services, and the vast majority of children are ALREADY coming into our kindergartens knowing their ABC's, their colors, and their numbers to 10.
We're developing a huge bureaucracy to serve about 3% of the population, even though it acts to dumb down the other 97%, but to justify the expense, we're pretending that it's actually GOOD for kids.
It's clear that hands-on play is great for the preschool set. It's just that, in school settings, they tend to make it "mini-school" -- instead of the unstructured, creative, unpressured, unevaluated, unguided play that it needs to be.
And, from the pre-k programs I've seen, they minimize scribbling and coloring, I guess because those "products" don't look fancy enough for the adults. But the fact is, it's the PROCESS of scribbling and coloring that sets little kids up for good handwriting, with better eye-hand cooordination, fine-motor muscle strength and so forth. But I've yet to meet a school-based pre-k teacher who "gets it" about that. Sheesh! What are they TEACHING in ed schools today?!?
I was part of strategic planning efforts in two public school districts. In the words of an ancient scholar, it's a crock. Strategic planning is a propaganda device designed to get citizens to sign off on new spending that doesn't improve academic outcomes for K-12 students, but just grows the budget.
They were crazy about adding pre-k programs . . . until I asked "why?" Ask them where the evidence is that it makes kids succeed in school, and they gape at you. BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANY.
In fact, there's evidence to the contrary: that the more out-of-home "programs" small children attend, the WORSE they do academically in school, the WORSE they behave in school, and the WORSE they feel about themselves, on down the road!
You'll note that the 35 people on the Millard committee were "administrators, school board members, teachers, students and Millard-area residents," according to The World-Herald.
Right. Stacked! When I served on a similar committee in another district, early on in the process I asked everyone on that strategic planning team who was NOT making money from district operations to please raise a hand. Mine, and one other person's, were the only hands that went up in the room. Shortly thereafter, I quit, disappointed in the blatant nepotism.
The announcement by Millard that the district intended to add computers, try for a bond issue to add on to various schools, and expand early-childhood programs, was equally disappointing, epsecially in these financial times.
Note that our daughter is regarded as pretty much the best reader in the third grade of her public school right now. Well, guess what? She went to very little preschool -- a couple of mornings a week -- and half-day kindergarten in a Christian school. That's in stark contrast to a taxpayer-provided, in-school pre-k program with college graduates "teaching" her, and full-day kindergarten such as all the public schools think they need to have.
She also attended that school for a full day in first grade, until we were sure that she was reading well. In contrast to all the public schools we could find in the Omaha metropolitan area, that private school was smart enough to teach reading with phonics, and took time to show the kiddies how to hold their pencils correctly, how to form their letters right, and other basic skills of a decent primary education.
So she gets to the public school, where they spend well over twice as much per pupil per year, and the kids have had another half-year of school with that full-day kindergarten and many of them had taxpayer-provided preschool, too . . . and yet, mysteriously, few of her classmates in third grade are even close to her reading, writing and spelling skills.
Also, from what I've observed, many of them aren't even holding their pencils right and have funky-looking handwriting that produces text at a significantly slower rate than Maddy can write.
Sure, I know, these kids will be composing on a typewriter and not on paper. But it's still a disaster. Because they didn't learn handwriting correctly and they can't get their thoughts down on paper very fast, now that their brain plasticity is slowing down as they near age 10, their word attack skills are less, their vocabularies are smaller, their grasp of the spelling rules is less, and they are doomed to compose text at a far slower rate than a child who was taught to read and write with phonics.
Their brains literally are "stuck" at a pre-literate spot . . . and all of this happened at taxpayer expense . . . and Millard wants to throw even more money at taking our kids down in that awful direction!
What's to be done about this? Talk to teachers, administrators, school-board members, state senators, and every taxpayer you can find. Surely, once people "get it" about the damage that more spending and more pre-k in schools will do, the "strategic plan" will gain better strategy . . . and start giving kids the simple, inexpensive academic skills that they need.
TO EXPAND PRE-KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS
It's clear that the Millard Public Schools just had a "facilitator" in the house, manipulating a "strategic planning team" into "spontaneously" coming up with the hugely expensive, previously-decided "changes" that the big-spending ed bureaucracy has already said it wants.
Sigh. School management and tax allocation by deception, once again. And in these economic hard times. Is there no shame any more?
There's no other reason to foolishly plow still MORE money into ineffective, unwarranted early-childhood education "programs" that don't work and are, in fact, obviously dumbing down children's literacy skills at an alarming rate.
Millard would be much better off to encourage parents to get their kids scribbling and drawing in preschool, and listening to stories at home and at their child-care situations, than feather-bedding the school-based early childhood bureaucracy.
If you want to set kids up to hit the ground running when they get to the taxpayer-provided K-12 educations that are their birthright, you need to keep them OUT of the school-based early childhood bureaucracy -- and fight its expansion, because it's dumbing our kids down.
Instead, these school-based pre-k programs are job programs for educators, experiments in social engineering, amateur psychiatry, amateur medical diagnosis, and group dynamics, offering all kinds of hands-on play experiences and everything BUT what kids need to be better at reading, writing and arithmetic once they hit real school.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not for academic-style, workaholic, worksheet-driven preschool, either. And I can see that the 3% or so of the preschool population that really is in need of special education services can benefit from some preschool programming, to get them ready.
It's just that the vast majority of the kids do NOT need those preschool services, and the vast majority of children are ALREADY coming into our kindergartens knowing their ABC's, their colors, and their numbers to 10.
We're developing a huge bureaucracy to serve about 3% of the population, even though it acts to dumb down the other 97%, but to justify the expense, we're pretending that it's actually GOOD for kids.
It's clear that hands-on play is great for the preschool set. It's just that, in school settings, they tend to make it "mini-school" -- instead of the unstructured, creative, unpressured, unevaluated, unguided play that it needs to be.
And, from the pre-k programs I've seen, they minimize scribbling and coloring, I guess because those "products" don't look fancy enough for the adults. But the fact is, it's the PROCESS of scribbling and coloring that sets little kids up for good handwriting, with better eye-hand cooordination, fine-motor muscle strength and so forth. But I've yet to meet a school-based pre-k teacher who "gets it" about that. Sheesh! What are they TEACHING in ed schools today?!?
I was part of strategic planning efforts in two public school districts. In the words of an ancient scholar, it's a crock. Strategic planning is a propaganda device designed to get citizens to sign off on new spending that doesn't improve academic outcomes for K-12 students, but just grows the budget.
They were crazy about adding pre-k programs . . . until I asked "why?" Ask them where the evidence is that it makes kids succeed in school, and they gape at you. BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANY.
In fact, there's evidence to the contrary: that the more out-of-home "programs" small children attend, the WORSE they do academically in school, the WORSE they behave in school, and the WORSE they feel about themselves, on down the road!
You'll note that the 35 people on the Millard committee were "administrators, school board members, teachers, students and Millard-area residents," according to The World-Herald.
Right. Stacked! When I served on a similar committee in another district, early on in the process I asked everyone on that strategic planning team who was NOT making money from district operations to please raise a hand. Mine, and one other person's, were the only hands that went up in the room. Shortly thereafter, I quit, disappointed in the blatant nepotism.
The announcement by Millard that the district intended to add computers, try for a bond issue to add on to various schools, and expand early-childhood programs, was equally disappointing, epsecially in these financial times.
Note that our daughter is regarded as pretty much the best reader in the third grade of her public school right now. Well, guess what? She went to very little preschool -- a couple of mornings a week -- and half-day kindergarten in a Christian school. That's in stark contrast to a taxpayer-provided, in-school pre-k program with college graduates "teaching" her, and full-day kindergarten such as all the public schools think they need to have.
She also attended that school for a full day in first grade, until we were sure that she was reading well. In contrast to all the public schools we could find in the Omaha metropolitan area, that private school was smart enough to teach reading with phonics, and took time to show the kiddies how to hold their pencils correctly, how to form their letters right, and other basic skills of a decent primary education.
So she gets to the public school, where they spend well over twice as much per pupil per year, and the kids have had another half-year of school with that full-day kindergarten and many of them had taxpayer-provided preschool, too . . . and yet, mysteriously, few of her classmates in third grade are even close to her reading, writing and spelling skills.
Also, from what I've observed, many of them aren't even holding their pencils right and have funky-looking handwriting that produces text at a significantly slower rate than Maddy can write.
Sure, I know, these kids will be composing on a typewriter and not on paper. But it's still a disaster. Because they didn't learn handwriting correctly and they can't get their thoughts down on paper very fast, now that their brain plasticity is slowing down as they near age 10, their word attack skills are less, their vocabularies are smaller, their grasp of the spelling rules is less, and they are doomed to compose text at a far slower rate than a child who was taught to read and write with phonics.
Their brains literally are "stuck" at a pre-literate spot . . . and all of this happened at taxpayer expense . . . and Millard wants to throw even more money at taking our kids down in that awful direction!
What's to be done about this? Talk to teachers, administrators, school-board members, state senators, and every taxpayer you can find. Surely, once people "get it" about the damage that more spending and more pre-k in schools will do, the "strategic plan" will gain better strategy . . . and start giving kids the simple, inexpensive academic skills that they need.
Labels: Millard Public Schools, school spending, school-based pre-k programs
(1) comments
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Redirecting Educators Toward the 3 R’s
For English Language Learners
Thanks to Susan Smith of the Nebraska Advisory Group (nagsusansmith@yahoo.com), a strong opponent of illegal immigration, for supplying the disturbing agenda of an education conference coming up this weekend in Los Angeles. It’s listed below.
If we see this caliber of propaganda creeping in to teacher inservices and so forth in Nebraska, we need to nip it in the bud. Whoa!
No wonder there’s such an achievement gap between Hispanic students and Caucasians. There’s not a single practical, explicit skill being taught in this conference agenda to instruct teachers how to help Hispanic kids do better in school.
It might be worth it to forward this story to members of your local school board or ESU board to make it clear that any taxpayer-provided continuing education program for teachers in Nebraska must focus specifically on academic topics.
Our educational organizations frequently hire consultants and provide inservices at taxpayer expense but offer little or no taxpayer input as to the content. So let’s make sure they concentrate on making English Language Learners better at reading, writing, arithmetic and the other school subjects, and NOT cause school staff to get propagandized by despicable content such as this.
You can also email the San Diego-based sponsoring organization of this conference and communicate your outrage: info@associationofrazaeducators.org
Here’s the conference agenda:
Association of Raza Educators
Education Conference
"Rethinking Social Justice in Education:
Ser Pueblo, Hacer Pueblo, y Estar Con El Pueblo"
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Santee Education Complex
1921 S. Maple Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011(FREE PARKING!!!)
Keynote Speakers:
Omali Yeshitela, Chairman, African People's Socialist Party and Former Black PantherDonaldo Macedo, Professor, Univ. of Massachusetts, Co-author of Critical Literacy w/Paulo Freire
Sakeenah Shabazz, President, African Revolutionary Student Organization, Lincoln High School Student
Partial List of Workshops:
PANEL - Surviving the Neo-Colonial School District:
Black Listed Teachers Speak Out!
Amitis Motevalli, Former teacher at Locke H.S. Black listed for refusing police searches and organizing students
Karen Salazar, Former Jordan HS Teacher Black listed for teaching Malcolm X and student organizing
Marisol A lba, Celerity Charter Elm, Black listed for teaching a poem about Emmitt Till
Rethinking the “Line Between Us”:
Bringing History Alive in the Classroom
Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools magazine
The Politics of Education and Community Empowerment:
How To Struggle, How To Win
Aremi Lopez & Maria Ochoa
Association of Raza Educators, San Diego Chapter
Teaching through Lies:
Critical Ideological Literacy and Corporate Rap
Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco
Raising Political Consciousness through Education:
Effectively starting & sustaining an ARE Chapter
Juan Orozco, ARE Statewide Council
Mariana Ramierz, ARE Statewide Council
Miguel Zavala, ARE Statewide Council
A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and
Academic Achievement through the Evolution of Critically
Compassionate Intellectualism
Sean Arce, Tucson Unified School District
Augustine Romero, Tucson Unified School District
Hacer Pueblo in Higher Education
Edelina Burciaga, University of California, Irvine
Irene Vea, University of California, Irvine
Karina Cuamea, University of California, Irvine
Infusing Curriculum with Action and Critical Thinking Skills :
Chicano/ Latino Theatre at Evergreen Valley College
Lisa Edsall – Giglio
Evergreen Valley College, San Jose, CA
Film: Voices from War
Peter Dudar, Arlington West
Culturally Responsive Teaching:
The Raza Perspective
Javier San Román, Association of Mexican American Educators
A Revolutionary Pedagogy: Going Beyond the
Classroom and into Our Communities in Search of True
Liberation
Sakeenah Shabazz, A.R.S.O. African Revolutionary Student Organization
Jona than Flores, M.E.Ch.A_Lincoln High School
PANEL: 1948 to 2008: 60 years of Occupation,
Oppression and Ethnic cleansing in Palestine
Pouneh Behin & Suzie Abajian
Mujeres de Maiz: Harvesting Hope and Healing in Your
Community Through the Arts
Felicia Montes, Mujeres de Maiz
Mass Appeal: Creating Community Ciphers and
Fostering Youth Action in Our Classrooms
Tan Laurence, Joanna Alatorre, Elizabeth Silva, and Beverly Castillo
Watts Youth Collective
Deconstruction of the Colonized Mind Through Critical Media Literacy:
Ernesto Bustillos, Coordinator of the Raza Press and Media Association
Teatro For Your Pueblo:
Rosa Gonzales & Luís ‘xago’ Juárez, headRush
Association of Raza Educators, Oakland Chapter
Patricia Isasa's Fight for Social Justice:
Argentine Torture Survivor Speaks, excerpts from El Cerco
Patricia Isasa
RAZA SI PINTAS NO! EDUCATION, NOT INCARCERATION!
From the School Hall to Juvenile Hall, The Criminalization
of Raza Youth Under Colonial Education Institutions
Francisco Romero, Chicano Mexicano Prison Project
PANEL: Military-Education Industrial Complex
Marisela Guzman, Jefferson HS grad, Veteran, AFSC
Arlene Inouye, CAMS
Kiki Ochoa, ARE San Diego
Jonathan Flores, MEChA de Lincoln HS, Somos Raza, San Diego
The Struggle Within The Struggle, La Mujer
Magdalena Montrond & Jennifer Astudillo, Somos Raza Student Org. San Diego
Social Justice in Elementary Education
Carolina Valdez, Association of Raza Educator, Los Angeles Chapter
The Role of Public Education in our Society
Edin Barrientos & Danny Monterroso, Coalition for Educational Justice
A-G Electives as a Practice of Freedom:
Creating and Implementing A Chicana/o Latina/o
Studies Class and Program at your High School—An
Intimate Portrait of Raza Pedagogy in Pomona, Califas
Cati de los Rios, Pomona High School & The Eastside Café
Zapatismo: Creative Resistance and Lessons Learned
Olmeca, Artist in Rebellion from Los Angeles
For English Language Learners
Thanks to Susan Smith of the Nebraska Advisory Group (nagsusansmith@yahoo.com), a strong opponent of illegal immigration, for supplying the disturbing agenda of an education conference coming up this weekend in Los Angeles. It’s listed below.
If we see this caliber of propaganda creeping in to teacher inservices and so forth in Nebraska, we need to nip it in the bud. Whoa!
No wonder there’s such an achievement gap between Hispanic students and Caucasians. There’s not a single practical, explicit skill being taught in this conference agenda to instruct teachers how to help Hispanic kids do better in school.
It might be worth it to forward this story to members of your local school board or ESU board to make it clear that any taxpayer-provided continuing education program for teachers in Nebraska must focus specifically on academic topics.
Our educational organizations frequently hire consultants and provide inservices at taxpayer expense but offer little or no taxpayer input as to the content. So let’s make sure they concentrate on making English Language Learners better at reading, writing, arithmetic and the other school subjects, and NOT cause school staff to get propagandized by despicable content such as this.
You can also email the San Diego-based sponsoring organization of this conference and communicate your outrage: info@associationofrazaeducators.org
Here’s the conference agenda:
Association of Raza Educators
Education Conference
"Rethinking Social Justice in Education:
Ser Pueblo, Hacer Pueblo, y Estar Con El Pueblo"
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Santee Education Complex
1921 S. Maple Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011(FREE PARKING!!!)
Keynote Speakers:
Omali Yeshitela, Chairman, African People's Socialist Party and Former Black PantherDonaldo Macedo, Professor, Univ. of Massachusetts, Co-author of Critical Literacy w/Paulo Freire
Sakeenah Shabazz, President, African Revolutionary Student Organization, Lincoln High School Student
Partial List of Workshops:
PANEL - Surviving the Neo-Colonial School District:
Black Listed Teachers Speak Out!
Amitis Motevalli, Former teacher at Locke H.S. Black listed for refusing police searches and organizing students
Karen Salazar, Former Jordan HS Teacher Black listed for teaching Malcolm X and student organizing
Marisol A lba, Celerity Charter Elm, Black listed for teaching a poem about Emmitt Till
Rethinking the “Line Between Us”:
Bringing History Alive in the Classroom
Bill Bigelow, Rethinking Schools magazine
The Politics of Education and Community Empowerment:
How To Struggle, How To Win
Aremi Lopez & Maria Ochoa
Association of Raza Educators, San Diego Chapter
Teaching through Lies:
Critical Ideological Literacy and Corporate Rap
Patrick Camangian, University of San Francisco
Raising Political Consciousness through Education:
Effectively starting & sustaining an ARE Chapter
Juan Orozco, ARE Statewide Council
Mariana Ramierz, ARE Statewide Council
Miguel Zavala, ARE Statewide Council
A Barrio Pedagogy: Identity, Intellectualism, Activism, and
Academic Achievement through the Evolution of Critically
Compassionate Intellectualism
Sean Arce, Tucson Unified School District
Augustine Romero, Tucson Unified School District
Hacer Pueblo in Higher Education
Edelina Burciaga, University of California, Irvine
Irene Vea, University of California, Irvine
Karina Cuamea, University of California, Irvine
Infusing Curriculum with Action and Critical Thinking Skills :
Chicano/ Latino Theatre at Evergreen Valley College
Lisa Edsall – Giglio
Evergreen Valley College, San Jose, CA
Film: Voices from War
Peter Dudar, Arlington West
Culturally Responsive Teaching:
The Raza Perspective
Javier San Román, Association of Mexican American Educators
A Revolutionary Pedagogy: Going Beyond the
Classroom and into Our Communities in Search of True
Liberation
Sakeenah Shabazz, A.R.S.O. African Revolutionary Student Organization
Jona than Flores, M.E.Ch.A_Lincoln High School
PANEL: 1948 to 2008: 60 years of Occupation,
Oppression and Ethnic cleansing in Palestine
Pouneh Behin & Suzie Abajian
Mujeres de Maiz: Harvesting Hope and Healing in Your
Community Through the Arts
Felicia Montes, Mujeres de Maiz
Mass Appeal: Creating Community Ciphers and
Fostering Youth Action in Our Classrooms
Tan Laurence, Joanna Alatorre, Elizabeth Silva, and Beverly Castillo
Watts Youth Collective
Deconstruction of the Colonized Mind Through Critical Media Literacy:
Ernesto Bustillos, Coordinator of the Raza Press and Media Association
Teatro For Your Pueblo:
Rosa Gonzales & Luís ‘xago’ Juárez, headRush
Association of Raza Educators, Oakland Chapter
Patricia Isasa's Fight for Social Justice:
Argentine Torture Survivor Speaks, excerpts from El Cerco
Patricia Isasa
RAZA SI PINTAS NO! EDUCATION, NOT INCARCERATION!
From the School Hall to Juvenile Hall, The Criminalization
of Raza Youth Under Colonial Education Institutions
Francisco Romero, Chicano Mexicano Prison Project
PANEL: Military-Education Industrial Complex
Marisela Guzman, Jefferson HS grad, Veteran, AFSC
Arlene Inouye, CAMS
Kiki Ochoa, ARE San Diego
Jonathan Flores, MEChA de Lincoln HS, Somos Raza, San Diego
The Struggle Within The Struggle, La Mujer
Magdalena Montrond & Jennifer Astudillo, Somos Raza Student Org. San Diego
Social Justice in Elementary Education
Carolina Valdez, Association of Raza Educator, Los Angeles Chapter
The Role of Public Education in our Society
Edin Barrientos & Danny Monterroso, Coalition for Educational Justice
A-G Electives as a Practice of Freedom:
Creating and Implementing A Chicana/o Latina/o
Studies Class and Program at your High School—An
Intimate Portrait of Raza Pedagogy in Pomona, Califas
Cati de los Rios, Pomona High School & The Eastside Café
Zapatismo: Creative Resistance and Lessons Learned
Olmeca, Artist in Rebellion from Los Angeles
Labels: academics, English Language Learners, objectionable topics at teacher inservices
(1) comments
Monday, February 02, 2009
Top Ten Reasons
State Legislators
Really CAN Cut State Aid
Without Wrecking Schools
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2501
State Legislators
Really CAN Cut State Aid
Without Wrecking Schools
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2501
(1) comments
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Music Teacher's Dedication Challenges Nebraskans
To Do Something Nice for Native American Kids
It is so encouraging to hear about the generosity that is being showered on John Mangan. He's a music teacher at the Omaha Nation School on the tribe's reservation in Macy, Neb.
After a World-Herald story appeared late last fall, he has received donations of money -- as much as $1,400 from an Elkhorn-area couple, and instruments -- a flute, a clarinet, an alto sax, even a tuba -- from Nebraskans who just wanted to help Mangan out as he continues to use music, the universal language, to help the disadvantaged students create the songs of their life.
Want in? Contact John Mangan at the school, (402) 837-5622, or jmangan@esu1.org
(1) comments
To Do Something Nice for Native American Kids
It is so encouraging to hear about the generosity that is being showered on John Mangan. He's a music teacher at the Omaha Nation School on the tribe's reservation in Macy, Neb.
After a World-Herald story appeared late last fall, he has received donations of money -- as much as $1,400 from an Elkhorn-area couple, and instruments -- a flute, a clarinet, an alto sax, even a tuba -- from Nebraskans who just wanted to help Mangan out as he continues to use music, the universal language, to help the disadvantaged students create the songs of their life.
Want in? Contact John Mangan at the school, (402) 837-5622, or jmangan@esu1.org
Labels: donations, music education, Native Americans
Kudos for 83-Year-Old Mentor
For 3rd Graders at Elkhorn School
Wow! We love hearing about school volunteers like Margaret Andrews, 83, who has been coming in to tutor third graders at Manchester Elementary School, 174th and Blondo in Elkhorn, twice a week for the last two years.
She was named the mentor of the year by the Elkhorn Public Schools Foundation.
(1) comments
For 3rd Graders at Elkhorn School
Wow! We love hearing about school volunteers like Margaret Andrews, 83, who has been coming in to tutor third graders at Manchester Elementary School, 174th and Blondo in Elkhorn, twice a week for the last two years.
She was named the mentor of the year by the Elkhorn Public Schools Foundation.
Labels: Margaret Andrews, Mentors, volunteers
Omaha Parent Group Embezzlement
Part of Disturbing National Trend
The alleged embezzlement of $4,700 from the Parent-Teacher Organization at Florence Elementary School, 7902 N. 36th St., seems like a ton of money for a low-income area. But it's actually small potatoes compared to the alleged embezzlement of more than $800,000 from a Kearney public-school foundation (see GoBigEd.com earlier this week), and the overall rate of school embezzlements nationwide.
For an eye-opening glance at this problem, just google "school" and "embezzlement," or "PTO" and "embezzlement."
Uff da! Hundreds of citations.
Why is this happening? It used to be that PTO groups were led by the most credible, reliable, admirable people in any given community. And that may still be true, most places. It also used to be that the gym or school library were packed with parents on PTO meeting night. Not any more, for the mo9st part.
In most schools today, the number of people who are willing to regularly volunteer and provide those necessary checks and balances for fiduciary oversight, such as PTO funds, has dwindled. It is very tough to recruit officers at most schools. The more capable people, mostly mothers, are for the most part, working, at least part-time, or engaged in other volunteer activities.
Consequently, you get more people "on the edge" -- who aren't quite as experienced and stable as in yesteryear -- who aren't working and thus may have more time than money -- and may manipulate other parents and the school staff into thinking that they are highly efficient when in reality, they're crooked.
In a situation like that, the temptation to steal and cheat is more powerful because it looks like you're more likely to get away with it . . . since nobody's looking.
Just another reason that each and every parent ought to be doing something to volunteer at school, if for no other reason than to keep each other honest.
(2) comments
Part of Disturbing National Trend
The alleged embezzlement of $4,700 from the Parent-Teacher Organization at Florence Elementary School, 7902 N. 36th St., seems like a ton of money for a low-income area. But it's actually small potatoes compared to the alleged embezzlement of more than $800,000 from a Kearney public-school foundation (see GoBigEd.com earlier this week), and the overall rate of school embezzlements nationwide.
For an eye-opening glance at this problem, just google "school" and "embezzlement," or "PTO" and "embezzlement."
Uff da! Hundreds of citations.
Why is this happening? It used to be that PTO groups were led by the most credible, reliable, admirable people in any given community. And that may still be true, most places. It also used to be that the gym or school library were packed with parents on PTO meeting night. Not any more, for the mo9st part.
In most schools today, the number of people who are willing to regularly volunteer and provide those necessary checks and balances for fiduciary oversight, such as PTO funds, has dwindled. It is very tough to recruit officers at most schools. The more capable people, mostly mothers, are for the most part, working, at least part-time, or engaged in other volunteer activities.
Consequently, you get more people "on the edge" -- who aren't quite as experienced and stable as in yesteryear -- who aren't working and thus may have more time than money -- and may manipulate other parents and the school staff into thinking that they are highly efficient when in reality, they're crooked.
In a situation like that, the temptation to steal and cheat is more powerful because it looks like you're more likely to get away with it . . . since nobody's looking.
Just another reason that each and every parent ought to be doing something to volunteer at school, if for no other reason than to keep each other honest.
Labels: parental involvement, PTO, school embezzlement
Kudos to Papillion-LaVista Principal
For Letting Her Hair Down
Portal Elementary School principal Kathy Szczepaniak (my longtime friend!) followed through on a promise that left her with her hair dyed pink and green.
She challenged her Papillion-LaVista area pupils to collect at least 4,300 pounds of canned food for the hungry, and if they made the goal -- they beat it by nearly 300 pounds -- she would let them dye her hair at an all-school assembly.
It's a good lesson in goal-setting and motivation . . . and how "hair-raising" it can be to be a principal these days!
(1) comments
For Letting Her Hair Down
Portal Elementary School principal Kathy Szczepaniak (my longtime friend!) followed through on a promise that left her with her hair dyed pink and green.
She challenged her Papillion-LaVista area pupils to collect at least 4,300 pounds of canned food for the hungry, and if they made the goal -- they beat it by nearly 300 pounds -- she would let them dye her hair at an all-school assembly.
It's a good lesson in goal-setting and motivation . . . and how "hair-raising" it can be to be a principal these days!
Labels: goal-setting, Kathy Szczepaniak, principals
Gold Star Learning Idea:
Kid-Produced School Broadcast
Three cheers for the educators at Ashland Park-Robbins Elementary Schoool, 5050 S. 51st St., for putting together a daily closed-circuit TV broadcast produced by sixth-graders.
The production studio has been set up since 2003 in the school library. Students in teams of four take turns being "on air" talent, and working the controls, lights and teleprompter.
Content appears to be adult-created, rather than student-generated, to avoid slipping into nonproductive themes, no doubt. But that's OK; you can't have everything. Content includes a weather forecast, announcements, lunch menu, guest teachers, and the Pledge of Allegiance. There's a scrollover announcing birthdays of famous people and students at that school, and they're experimenting with more technology such as a "green screen" that will allow a student reporter to appear with different video backgrounds.
Kid-Produced School Broadcast
Three cheers for the educators at Ashland Park-Robbins Elementary Schoool, 5050 S. 51st St., for putting together a daily closed-circuit TV broadcast produced by sixth-graders.
The production studio has been set up since 2003 in the school library. Students in teams of four take turns being "on air" talent, and working the controls, lights and teleprompter.
Content appears to be adult-created, rather than student-generated, to avoid slipping into nonproductive themes, no doubt. But that's OK; you can't have everything. Content includes a weather forecast, announcements, lunch menu, guest teachers, and the Pledge of Allegiance. There's a scrollover announcing birthdays of famous people and students at that school, and they're experimenting with more technology such as a "green screen" that will allow a student reporter to appear with different video backgrounds.
(0) comments
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Kearney School Foundation Embezzlement Scandal
Highlights Need for Fiscal Oversight
The financial credibility of Nebraska educators sure took a big kick in the pants this week as a school foundation chief in Kearney pleaded no contest to felony theft and faces up to 20 years in prison for embezzling over a half-million dollars within three years.
The case of Angela Regenos should alert board members of Nebraska's several public school foundations to immediately order an outside audit of their books. And if any financial corruption is found, the people responsible should immediately be prosecuted or made to resign, and the money replaced.
School foundations are supposed to collect tax-deductible donations to use for education-related benefits that there are no tax revenues to support. Usually, foundations provide scholarships for student leaders and help with special projects such as performing arts centers and extras for athletics. They typically subsidize before- and after-school programs for low-income students whose parents can’t pay the full freight.
In Kearney, Mrs. Regenos admitted to embezzling $577,277 from 2005 to 2008, the three years for which the Nebraska statute of limitations permits her to be prosecuted. Kearney officials claim nearly $300,000 more was filched dating back to 2001.
The 46-year-old has told authorities that she forged signatures, altered bank records, gave misleading financial statements and incorrect information to accountants, and used the ill-gotten lucre to buy jewelry and other goods.
The district is suing her and has cashed in an insurance policy to recover $250,000.
Read more on:
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2009/01/13/496c6fced134d
And if you suspect a foundation or other ed-related nonprofit might be experiencing financial corruption because of a huge disparity between revenues received and services delivered, you can get a good start on looking in to your concerns on this website, which provides a peek at IRS Form 990’s for nonprofits:
www.guidestar.org
Highlights Need for Fiscal Oversight
The financial credibility of Nebraska educators sure took a big kick in the pants this week as a school foundation chief in Kearney pleaded no contest to felony theft and faces up to 20 years in prison for embezzling over a half-million dollars within three years.
The case of Angela Regenos should alert board members of Nebraska's several public school foundations to immediately order an outside audit of their books. And if any financial corruption is found, the people responsible should immediately be prosecuted or made to resign, and the money replaced.
School foundations are supposed to collect tax-deductible donations to use for education-related benefits that there are no tax revenues to support. Usually, foundations provide scholarships for student leaders and help with special projects such as performing arts centers and extras for athletics. They typically subsidize before- and after-school programs for low-income students whose parents can’t pay the full freight.
In Kearney, Mrs. Regenos admitted to embezzling $577,277 from 2005 to 2008, the three years for which the Nebraska statute of limitations permits her to be prosecuted. Kearney officials claim nearly $300,000 more was filched dating back to 2001.
The 46-year-old has told authorities that she forged signatures, altered bank records, gave misleading financial statements and incorrect information to accountants, and used the ill-gotten lucre to buy jewelry and other goods.
The district is suing her and has cashed in an insurance policy to recover $250,000.
Read more on:
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2009/01/13/496c6fced134d
And if you suspect a foundation or other ed-related nonprofit might be experiencing financial corruption because of a huge disparity between revenues received and services delivered, you can get a good start on looking in to your concerns on this website, which provides a peek at IRS Form 990’s for nonprofits:
www.guidestar.org
Labels: Angela Regenos, school embezzlement, school foundations
(1) comments
Friday, December 19, 2008
OUR ONLY HOPE:
TIE TAX RATES TO KIDS READING AT GRADE LEVEL
I volunteer once a week as a writing mentor in an Omaha-area school with 80% low-income students. These are fourth-graders. They are darling, and I love working with them. But . . . I have to tell the truth about their academic skills. They stink.
Almost none of them can write a single declarative sentence without making an error. Most of them have trouble getting more than a few words down on paper even if you give them 20 or 30 minutes. Their handwriting is atrocious and they don't even form their letters correctly on paper. So no wonder their reading skills stink: they literally don't know what to look for, when it comes to decoding. They read aloud slowly, in a monotone, stumbling and stuttering, like drones.
These kids obviously have not been taught proper language skills, and boy, does it show. Meanwhile, they have been in the government school system now for five years, at an average cost per year of over $8,000. So for $40,000 invested so far, we get . . . THIS?!?
Consequently, I'm not surprised to learn statistics such as the latest one that's shocking honest citizens everywhere: Arne Duncan of Chicago, the education "guru" that President-Elect Obama has selected to be U.S. education secretary, has presided over massive school failure just like I'm seeing, and is likely to spread that misery even deeper in U.S. schools.
In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001.
According to news reports, Duncan, whom Obama termed a "reformer," said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I'm also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country," Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.
Well, here's some REFORM we should try:
Let's adjust our local, state and federal tax rates to the percentage of students who read at grade level. The more students who can read at grade level, the more taxes the government schools will collect. The FEWER students who are made academically competent, the LESS money the government schools will get.
Doesn't that make perfect sense?
Hey -- you get what you pay for. Do you like what we're getting under education "systems" such as the one that Arne Duncan will no doubt try to spread out all over the land?
I sure don't. It's just one more reason to support the development of private schools, especially for low-income kids who need good curriculum and instruction the most of all.
TIE TAX RATES TO KIDS READING AT GRADE LEVEL
I volunteer once a week as a writing mentor in an Omaha-area school with 80% low-income students. These are fourth-graders. They are darling, and I love working with them. But . . . I have to tell the truth about their academic skills. They stink.
Almost none of them can write a single declarative sentence without making an error. Most of them have trouble getting more than a few words down on paper even if you give them 20 or 30 minutes. Their handwriting is atrocious and they don't even form their letters correctly on paper. So no wonder their reading skills stink: they literally don't know what to look for, when it comes to decoding. They read aloud slowly, in a monotone, stumbling and stuttering, like drones.
These kids obviously have not been taught proper language skills, and boy, does it show. Meanwhile, they have been in the government school system now for five years, at an average cost per year of over $8,000. So for $40,000 invested so far, we get . . . THIS?!?
Consequently, I'm not surprised to learn statistics such as the latest one that's shocking honest citizens everywhere: Arne Duncan of Chicago, the education "guru" that President-Elect Obama has selected to be U.S. education secretary, has presided over massive school failure just like I'm seeing, and is likely to spread that misery even deeper in U.S. schools.
In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001.
According to news reports, Duncan, whom Obama termed a "reformer," said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I'm also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country," Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.
Well, here's some REFORM we should try:
Let's adjust our local, state and federal tax rates to the percentage of students who read at grade level. The more students who can read at grade level, the more taxes the government schools will collect. The FEWER students who are made academically competent, the LESS money the government schools will get.
Doesn't that make perfect sense?
Hey -- you get what you pay for. Do you like what we're getting under education "systems" such as the one that Arne Duncan will no doubt try to spread out all over the land?
I sure don't. It's just one more reason to support the development of private schools, especially for low-income kids who need good curriculum and instruction the most of all.
Labels: Arne Duncan, reading at grade level, school tax reform
(1) comments
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Nebraska's Big Brain Drain:
Talk Talkey to the Young'Uns About It Over the Holidays
Here's a well-researched story from the Platte Institute for Economic Research on the fact that Nebraska ranks 10th in the nation in a negative category: the percentage of young, single, college-educated people who move away from the state.
Usually, it's job-related, but the impact is massive in areas such as law and engineering, where about half of the graduates take their well-educated brains and move away. About one-third are moving to bordering states, including Colorado.
The implications for Nebraska colleges and universities are vast, since it is their mission to use Nebraska tax dollars to develop future Nebraska leadership in business, the arts, academia and the professions.
The implications for Nebraska businesses are serious, since our future workforce is crucial to our future, period. And the implications for K-12 education are vast, since if our smartest graduates are moving away, how can our future teachers and students be the best that they can be?
As the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays approach, and families gather, the brain drain ought to be discussed among grandparents, parents and students interested in keeping the future as bright as possible in the Cornhusker State.
Kudos to the Nebraska-based think tank, the Platte Institute, for bringing this issue front and center:
www.platteinstitute.org/publications/graduations-reunions-remind-us-of-nebraskas-brain-drain-issue
(1) comments
Talk Talkey to the Young'Uns About It Over the Holidays
Here's a well-researched story from the Platte Institute for Economic Research on the fact that Nebraska ranks 10th in the nation in a negative category: the percentage of young, single, college-educated people who move away from the state.
Usually, it's job-related, but the impact is massive in areas such as law and engineering, where about half of the graduates take their well-educated brains and move away. About one-third are moving to bordering states, including Colorado.
The implications for Nebraska colleges and universities are vast, since it is their mission to use Nebraska tax dollars to develop future Nebraska leadership in business, the arts, academia and the professions.
The implications for Nebraska businesses are serious, since our future workforce is crucial to our future, period. And the implications for K-12 education are vast, since if our smartest graduates are moving away, how can our future teachers and students be the best that they can be?
As the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays approach, and families gather, the brain drain ought to be discussed among grandparents, parents and students interested in keeping the future as bright as possible in the Cornhusker State.
Kudos to the Nebraska-based think tank, the Platte Institute, for bringing this issue front and center:
www.platteinstitute.org/publications/graduations-reunions-remind-us-of-nebraskas-brain-drain-issue
ANTI-AMERICAN BIAS
CREEPING INTO KIDDIE SONGS
Used to be that in any school, even if the classroom teachers and curriculum had gone sour with leftist, anti-American content, at least the music department was still politically neutral, if not pro-American and at least not hostile to Christianity. And around Thanksgiving and Christmastime, at least there would usually be one or two songs about our heritage that would be fun and inspirational for the kids to sing.
Not any more. We're coming up on Thanksgiving, which is the typical time to cover why the pioneers came to this country and settled here in the first place. It's also a great time to cover Native American content as well. There are all kinds of great songs about these major themes.
But . . . the resident third-grader came home all frowny-faced yesterday and said that they sang this really boring, long song about how there USED to be buffalo roaming all over the Plains, but then . . . WE KILLED THEM ALL!!!!!
Heyyyyy! That doesn't sound like very much fun. That doesn't make it sound like Americans are very good environmentalists or animal lovers, either. And she's the sensitive type: the last thing she or any other child needs nowadays is to be focused on violence and killing . . . in music class!!!
Yes, I'm going to track down what she was talking about and see if I can get those lyrics and share them with you. In the meantime, here's the list of folk songs that I'm going to share with the music teacher, principal and school board, if I'm understanding what happened correctly. Took me two seconds to find this list on the Internet.
Here's the list of positive alternatives I hope the music teacher will choose from next time:
CHILDREN'S SONGS
A Tisket, A Tasket
All the Pretty Little Horses
Bought Me A Cat (the cat pleased me)
Bingo
Did You Ever See A Lassie
Eency, Weency Spider
Farmer in the Dell, The
Hickory, Dickory Dock
Hokey Pokey, The
Hush Little Baby (don’t say a word, papa’s ...)
Rockaby Baby (in the treetops, when the wind...)
If You’re Happy and You Know It
Looby Loo
Mary Had A Little Lamb
Muffin Man
Mulberry Bush
Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow
Oh! Dear! What Can the Matter Be?
Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone
Old John the Rabbit
Old MacDonald
Polly Wolly Doodle
Pop! Goes the Weasel
Ring Around the Rosies
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
There’s a Hole in the Bucket
This Little Light of Mine
This Old Man
Three Blind Mice
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Wheels on the Bus, The
FOLK SONGS
All Night, All Day
Amazing Grace
Aura Lee
Away in a Manger
Billy Boy
Camptown Races
Cindy
Clementine
Columbia, Gem of the Ocean
Cotton-Eyed Joe
Crawdad Song
Dixie
Down by the Riverside
Down in the Valley
Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill!
Erie Canal, The
Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd
Frog Went A-Courtin’, A
Go Down, Moses
Go Tell Aunt Rhody
Go Tell it on the Mountain
God of our Fathers
Goober Peas
Goodbye, Old Paint
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
Home on the Range
I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray
I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad
Jim Along, Josie
Blue Tail Fly, The
Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho
Kum Ba Yah
Liza Jane
Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Oh, Susanna
Old Chisholm Trail
Old Folks At Home (Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away)
Onward Christian Soldiers
Over the River and Through the Woods
Rock-A-My-Soul
Shenandoah
Shoo Fly
Shortnin’ Bread
Simple Gifts
Silent Night
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Susie, Little Susie
Sweet Betsy From Pike
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Water is Wide, The
We Gather Together
When the Saints Go Marching In
You Are My Sunshine
PATRIOTIC SONGS
America
America, the Beautiful
Battle Hymn of the Republic
God Bless America
Marines’ Hymn (From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli)
Star-Spangled Banner, The
Caissons Song
This Land is Your Land
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Yankee Doodle
You’re A Grand Old Flag
RECOMMENDED SONG LIST
1. A Tisket, A Tasket (a green and yellow basket)
2. All Night, All Day (angels watchin’ over me, my Lord)
3. All The Pretty Little Horses (Hushaby, don’t you cry, go to sleep little baby,when you wake, you shall have )
4. Amazing Grace (how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me)
5. America (my country ‘tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty)
6. America, the Beautiful (Oh beautiful for spacious skies)
7. Away in a Manger (no crib for a bed)
8. Battle Hymn of the Republic (glory, glory hallelujah, His truth is marching on)
9. Billy Boy (Oh where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy)
10. Bingo (there was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o)
11. Blue Tail Fly, The (Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, my master’s gone away)
12. Caissons Go Rolling Along, The (over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail, as those)
13. Camptown Races, The (camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah)
14. Cindy (Get along home, Cindy Cindy, I’ll marry you some day)
15. Clementine (Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine)
16. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean (when born by the red, white, and blue, thy banners make tyranny tremble)
17. Crawdad Song (You get a line, and I’ll get a pole honey)
18. Did You Ever See A Lassie? (a lassie, a lassie, did you ever see a lassie go this way and that)19. Dixie (I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton)
20. Down By the Riverside (and study war no more)
21. Down in the Valley (valley so low, hang your head over)
22. Eency, Weency Spider (went up the water spout)23. Farmer in the Dell, The (hi-ho the dairy-o, the farmer in the dell)
24. Frog Went Courtin’, A (he did ride, with sword and pistol by his side aha, ho-ho)
25. Go Down, Moses (way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh, let my people go)
26. Go Tell Aunt Rhody (the old gray goose is dead)
27. Go Tell it on the Mountain (over the hill and everywhere)
28. God Bless America (land that I love, stand beside her and guide her)
29. God of our Fathers (whose almighty hand)
30. Goober Peas (goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas)
31. Goodbye, Old Paint (I’m a-leaving Cheyenne)
32. He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands
33. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (so early in the morning)
34. Hickory Dickory Dock (the mouse ran up the clock)
35. Hokey Pokey, The (you put your right foot in, you put your right foot out)
36. Home on the Range (where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word)
37. Hush Little Baby (don’t say a word, papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird)
38. Rock-a-by Baby (in the treetops, when the wind blows the cradle will rock)
39. I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad (all the live long day)
40. If You’re Happy and You Know It (clap your hands)
41. Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho (and the walls came tumblin’ down)
42. Kum Ba Yah (my Lord, Kum Ba Yah)
43. Liza Jane (O Eliza, li’l Liza Jane, O Eliza, li’l Liza Jane)
44. Looby Loo (here we go looby loo, here we go looby light)
45. Marines Hymn (From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli)
46. Mary Had a Little Lamb (it’s fleece was white as snow)
47. Michael Row the Boat Ashore (hallelujah)
48. Muffin Man, The (oh do you know the muffin man)
49. Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow (do you or I or anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow)
50. Oh! Dear! What Can the Matter Be? (Johnny’s so long at the fair)
51. Oh, Susanna! (oh don’t you cry for me)
52. Oh, Where has My Little Dog Gone? (oh where, oh where can he be)
53. Old Chisholm Trail (well come along boys and listen to my tale, let me tell you ‘bout my troubles on the)
54. Old Folks at Home (Way down upon the Swannee River, far, far away)
55. Old MacDonald (had a farm, e-i-e-i-o)
56. Onward Christian Soldiers (marching as to war)
57. Over the River and Through the Woods (to grandmother’s house we go)
58. Polly Wolly Doodle (oh I went down south for to see my Sal, singin’ polly wolly doodle all the day)
59. Pop, Goes the Weasel! (all around the cobbler’s bench the monkey chased the weasel)
60. Ring Around the Rosies (pocket full of posies)
61. Rock-A My Soul (in the bosom of Abraham)
62. Row, Row, Row Your Boat (gently down the sea)
63. She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain (when she comes)
64. Shenandoah (oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, away, you rolling river)
65. Shoo Fly (don’t bother me, shoo-fly don’t bother me, shoo-fly don’t bother me for I belong to somebody)
66. Shortnin-Bread (mammy’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’)
67. Silent Night (holy night, all is calm, all is bright)
68. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (a long way from home)
69. Star-Spangled Banner, The (Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light)
70. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (comin’ for to carry me home)
71. Take Me Out to the Ballgame (buy me some peanuts and crackerjack, I don’t care if I ever get back)
72. There’s A Hole in the Bucket (dear Liza, dear Liza)
73. This Land is Your Land (this land is my land)
74. This Little Light of Mine (I’m gonna let it shine)
75. This Old Man (he played one, he played knick-knack on my drum)
76. Three Blind Mice (see how they run)
77. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (how I wonder what you are)
78. We Gather Together (to ask the Lord’s blessing)
79. Wheels on the Bus, The (go round and round)
80. When Johnny Comes Marching Home (again, hurrah, hurrah, we’ll give him a hearty welcome then, hurrah, hurrah)
81. When the Saints Go Marching In (oh how I want to be in that number)
82. Yankee Doodle (went to town riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap)
83. You are my Sunshine (my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray)
84. You’re A Grand Old Flag (you’re a high flying flag)
CREEPING INTO KIDDIE SONGS
Used to be that in any school, even if the classroom teachers and curriculum had gone sour with leftist, anti-American content, at least the music department was still politically neutral, if not pro-American and at least not hostile to Christianity. And around Thanksgiving and Christmastime, at least there would usually be one or two songs about our heritage that would be fun and inspirational for the kids to sing.
Not any more. We're coming up on Thanksgiving, which is the typical time to cover why the pioneers came to this country and settled here in the first place. It's also a great time to cover Native American content as well. There are all kinds of great songs about these major themes.
But . . . the resident third-grader came home all frowny-faced yesterday and said that they sang this really boring, long song about how there USED to be buffalo roaming all over the Plains, but then . . . WE KILLED THEM ALL!!!!!
Heyyyyy! That doesn't sound like very much fun. That doesn't make it sound like Americans are very good environmentalists or animal lovers, either. And she's the sensitive type: the last thing she or any other child needs nowadays is to be focused on violence and killing . . . in music class!!!
Yes, I'm going to track down what she was talking about and see if I can get those lyrics and share them with you. In the meantime, here's the list of folk songs that I'm going to share with the music teacher, principal and school board, if I'm understanding what happened correctly. Took me two seconds to find this list on the Internet.
Here's the list of positive alternatives I hope the music teacher will choose from next time:
CHILDREN'S SONGS
A Tisket, A Tasket
All the Pretty Little Horses
Bought Me A Cat (the cat pleased me)
Bingo
Did You Ever See A Lassie
Eency, Weency Spider
Farmer in the Dell, The
Hickory, Dickory Dock
Hokey Pokey, The
Hush Little Baby (don’t say a word, papa’s ...)
Rockaby Baby (in the treetops, when the wind...)
If You’re Happy and You Know It
Looby Loo
Mary Had A Little Lamb
Muffin Man
Mulberry Bush
Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow
Oh! Dear! What Can the Matter Be?
Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone
Old John the Rabbit
Old MacDonald
Polly Wolly Doodle
Pop! Goes the Weasel
Ring Around the Rosies
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
There’s a Hole in the Bucket
This Little Light of Mine
This Old Man
Three Blind Mice
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Wheels on the Bus, The
FOLK SONGS
All Night, All Day
Amazing Grace
Aura Lee
Away in a Manger
Billy Boy
Camptown Races
Cindy
Clementine
Columbia, Gem of the Ocean
Cotton-Eyed Joe
Crawdad Song
Dixie
Down by the Riverside
Down in the Valley
Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill!
Erie Canal, The
Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd
Frog Went A-Courtin’, A
Go Down, Moses
Go Tell Aunt Rhody
Go Tell it on the Mountain
God of our Fathers
Goober Peas
Goodbye, Old Paint
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands
Home on the Range
I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray
I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad
Jim Along, Josie
Blue Tail Fly, The
Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho
Kum Ba Yah
Liza Jane
Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Oh, Susanna
Old Chisholm Trail
Old Folks At Home (Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away)
Onward Christian Soldiers
Over the River and Through the Woods
Rock-A-My-Soul
Shenandoah
Shoo Fly
Shortnin’ Bread
Simple Gifts
Silent Night
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Susie, Little Susie
Sweet Betsy From Pike
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Water is Wide, The
We Gather Together
When the Saints Go Marching In
You Are My Sunshine
PATRIOTIC SONGS
America
America, the Beautiful
Battle Hymn of the Republic
God Bless America
Marines’ Hymn (From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli)
Star-Spangled Banner, The
Caissons Song
This Land is Your Land
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Yankee Doodle
You’re A Grand Old Flag
RECOMMENDED SONG LIST
1. A Tisket, A Tasket (a green and yellow basket)
2. All Night, All Day (angels watchin’ over me, my Lord)
3. All The Pretty Little Horses (Hushaby, don’t you cry, go to sleep little baby,when you wake, you shall have )
4. Amazing Grace (how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me)
5. America (my country ‘tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty)
6. America, the Beautiful (Oh beautiful for spacious skies)
7. Away in a Manger (no crib for a bed)
8. Battle Hymn of the Republic (glory, glory hallelujah, His truth is marching on)
9. Billy Boy (Oh where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy)
10. Bingo (there was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o)
11. Blue Tail Fly, The (Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care, my master’s gone away)
12. Caissons Go Rolling Along, The (over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail, as those)
13. Camptown Races, The (camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah)
14. Cindy (Get along home, Cindy Cindy, I’ll marry you some day)
15. Clementine (Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine)
16. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean (when born by the red, white, and blue, thy banners make tyranny tremble)
17. Crawdad Song (You get a line, and I’ll get a pole honey)
18. Did You Ever See A Lassie? (a lassie, a lassie, did you ever see a lassie go this way and that)19. Dixie (I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton)
20. Down By the Riverside (and study war no more)
21. Down in the Valley (valley so low, hang your head over)
22. Eency, Weency Spider (went up the water spout)23. Farmer in the Dell, The (hi-ho the dairy-o, the farmer in the dell)
24. Frog Went Courtin’, A (he did ride, with sword and pistol by his side aha, ho-ho)
25. Go Down, Moses (way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh, let my people go)
26. Go Tell Aunt Rhody (the old gray goose is dead)
27. Go Tell it on the Mountain (over the hill and everywhere)
28. God Bless America (land that I love, stand beside her and guide her)
29. God of our Fathers (whose almighty hand)
30. Goober Peas (goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas)
31. Goodbye, Old Paint (I’m a-leaving Cheyenne)
32. He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands
33. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (so early in the morning)
34. Hickory Dickory Dock (the mouse ran up the clock)
35. Hokey Pokey, The (you put your right foot in, you put your right foot out)
36. Home on the Range (where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word)
37. Hush Little Baby (don’t say a word, papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird)
38. Rock-a-by Baby (in the treetops, when the wind blows the cradle will rock)
39. I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad (all the live long day)
40. If You’re Happy and You Know It (clap your hands)
41. Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho (and the walls came tumblin’ down)
42. Kum Ba Yah (my Lord, Kum Ba Yah)
43. Liza Jane (O Eliza, li’l Liza Jane, O Eliza, li’l Liza Jane)
44. Looby Loo (here we go looby loo, here we go looby light)
45. Marines Hymn (From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli)
46. Mary Had a Little Lamb (it’s fleece was white as snow)
47. Michael Row the Boat Ashore (hallelujah)
48. Muffin Man, The (oh do you know the muffin man)
49. Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow (do you or I or anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow)
50. Oh! Dear! What Can the Matter Be? (Johnny’s so long at the fair)
51. Oh, Susanna! (oh don’t you cry for me)
52. Oh, Where has My Little Dog Gone? (oh where, oh where can he be)
53. Old Chisholm Trail (well come along boys and listen to my tale, let me tell you ‘bout my troubles on the)
54. Old Folks at Home (Way down upon the Swannee River, far, far away)
55. Old MacDonald (had a farm, e-i-e-i-o)
56. Onward Christian Soldiers (marching as to war)
57. Over the River and Through the Woods (to grandmother’s house we go)
58. Polly Wolly Doodle (oh I went down south for to see my Sal, singin’ polly wolly doodle all the day)
59. Pop, Goes the Weasel! (all around the cobbler’s bench the monkey chased the weasel)
60. Ring Around the Rosies (pocket full of posies)
61. Rock-A My Soul (in the bosom of Abraham)
62. Row, Row, Row Your Boat (gently down the sea)
63. She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain (when she comes)
64. Shenandoah (oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, away, you rolling river)
65. Shoo Fly (don’t bother me, shoo-fly don’t bother me, shoo-fly don’t bother me for I belong to somebody)
66. Shortnin-Bread (mammy’s little baby loves shortnin’ shortnin’)
67. Silent Night (holy night, all is calm, all is bright)
68. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (a long way from home)
69. Star-Spangled Banner, The (Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light)
70. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (comin’ for to carry me home)
71. Take Me Out to the Ballgame (buy me some peanuts and crackerjack, I don’t care if I ever get back)
72. There’s A Hole in the Bucket (dear Liza, dear Liza)
73. This Land is Your Land (this land is my land)
74. This Little Light of Mine (I’m gonna let it shine)
75. This Old Man (he played one, he played knick-knack on my drum)
76. Three Blind Mice (see how they run)
77. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (how I wonder what you are)
78. We Gather Together (to ask the Lord’s blessing)
79. Wheels on the Bus, The (go round and round)
80. When Johnny Comes Marching Home (again, hurrah, hurrah, we’ll give him a hearty welcome then, hurrah, hurrah)
81. When the Saints Go Marching In (oh how I want to be in that number)
82. Yankee Doodle (went to town riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap)
83. You are my Sunshine (my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray)
84. You’re A Grand Old Flag (you’re a high flying flag)
Labels: anti-American songs, environmentalism in school, song selection in schools
(2) comments