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States and School Districts Squeeze Their Budgets
Online education and Idaho Schools
Tennessee and the Race to the Top
Survey Shows Big Problems with Public Education Cuts
States and School Districts Squeeze Their Budgets
As the budgets get leaner the states and school districts are cutting everything they can to survive, including the American flag and bus service. Everything is fair game. Reginald Felton of the National School Board Association, said that the school districts are trying to identify the core education programs and make sure that they have enough money for them.
In the state of Washington they are thinking of cutting all bus service as the state tries to close a $2 billion gap. The Dakota Ridge High School in Littleton, Colorado is charging course fees for AP courses and chemistry. In New Jersey some districts are charging $200 to participate in an after-school club. In Columbus, Ohio teachers put up a picture of the American flag for students to say the Pledge of Allegiance to. When the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars local chapters heard that there were no flags they raised the money to buy flags for the district schools.
Online Education and Idaho Schools
After much discussion and preparation, Idaho is ready to become the first state to require that every high school student take at least two credits through an online course before they graduate. The Idaho state Board of Education gave their final approval for the requirement of online education. This is part of a larger measure of change in Idaho education which will also connect teacher merit pay to student performance and brings in laptops for high school students and teachers.
The plan has been discussed at public meetings throughout the state. People in favor of the proposal say that the state can save money through online education and students will be better prepared for college and the work place. Opponents of the measure say that it is being done mostly to replace teachers.
The plan will start with students who enter their freshman year in 2012. Legislators will look at the plan in January 2012.
Tennessee and the Race to the Top
Excitement was high in Tennessee when they were one of the first states to win a federal Race to the Top grant for $501 million. Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam declared that the state was the example of how school reform should be done.
But it didn’t take long for the mood to change. For example, Will Shelton, the principal of Blackman Middle School has to evaluate his teachers; all of them four times a year. He has to observe the strong teachers as well as the not so strong. And the teachers who teach classes for which there are no test scores, such as kindergarten to third-grade teachers and the art, music, and vocational teachers, have to pick another subject to be judged by. Math specialists can choose to be evaluated by English scores, and music teachers can be evaluated by the school’s writing scores. For example a 1st grade teacher’s teaching evaluation was done by the school’s fifth-grade writing scores.
Principals must have a pre-observation conference with each teacher (20 minutes), observe the teacher for a period (50 minutes), conduct a post conference meeting (20 minutes), and fill out a 19 variable rubric and create a score of 1 to 5. This procedure must be done four times a year for each faculty member. Worst of all, the teachers have lost their love of teaching and are becoming distrustful of the whole system. That was not the goal of school reform in Tennessee.
Survey Shows Big Problems with Public Education Cuts
The state of Texas has been forced by budget restrictions to cut $5.4 billion dollars from the public education budget. A survey of some 3,500 teachers and school employees registers the deep concern they have for their ability to their job. Linda Bridges, the president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers says the survey is important if only to document what is happening in the schools.
Teachers have been laid off and the class size of students has gone up, and there is low morale and bad feelings between the teachers who have to put in longer hours and the administrators who are being accused of bullying.
80% of the survey respondents indicated that they found the learning environment “worse or much worse,” and 70% said that the cuts had made the schools stressful places for teachers, students, and staff. Republican leaders who supported the budget cuts said that they did not believe that the schools would be affected.
