Reform Public Education

« on: February 03, 2004, 01:40:57 PM »

MarathonMan Offline

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THE EDUCATION CRISIS

Perhaps the greatest crisis facing America in the future is the deplorable state of education being delivered to our children. In decline now for decades, it seems only to continue deteriorating with the passage of time. Liberal sentiment simply mirrors the marching orders of the teachers unions, basically that public education is underfunded. Despite those contentions, public funding of our public schools continues to rise dramatically, with no end in site, nor any solution.

In discussing this with many Superintendents of various school districts in Ohio, none of them from the large urban districts, I have heard what amounts to a consensus on the most obvious alternative that needs to be explored and implemented nationwide. The large urban districts, such as Columbus, need to be broken up into numbers of smaller, more manageable sized districts. These Superintendents feel, for example, that Columbus specifically, could be broken up into perhaps five separate school districts. Their point is that the large urban districts nationwide are simply too large to be managed effectively, laden with too many layers of ineffective bureaucrats. Smaller, leaner districts are much more manageable.

This is of course but a single aspect of what’s wrong with our schools, but I think the overall subject of education reform might serve as a worthy area of focus for interested Columbus Townhall members. The Columbus Public Schools administration & Board are challenging to work with, especially if they see you as opponents, but there’s a great deal at stake. As our membership expands I would recommend forming a working group to focus on education reform, with a special emphasis on our sordid local situation. If doing so is of interest to anyone, please make that interest known with a reply.


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Reform Public Education

« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2004, 03:31:15 PM »

Peter

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I'm with you, Marathon Man. Perhaps this is a good first entry for our policy debate? If you get enough interest, make a proposal on the Policy Debate forum, and the members of Townhall will come to a conclusion regarding whether or not we should adopt this, and how we should go about fighting it.

Peter


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It's the spending, stupid!

Reform Public Education

« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2004, 11:35:03 PM »

Old Major

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Check this out. Pathetic WASHINGTON — Maryland school districts have announced that they will offer up to two service-learning hours to students who join teachers, administrators and parents at a rally Monday at the state capital in support of education funding.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110494,00.html


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Reform Public Education

« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2004, 11:37:54 PM »

Old Major

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Conservatives need to refer to this issue as a civil rights issue, and call it Equal Opportunity Education. Ted Kennedy's children shouldn't be the only ones getting a good education


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Reform Public Education

« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2004, 11:45:30 PM »

JohnO

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I grew weary of flunking kids in freshman calculus courses I taught at Ohio State. Many were bright kids, who generally showed up, but they were not ready to do the work, often in spite of having had calculus in high school. I did not blame the kids, but the system the sent them up to me to swat down. There are many deep problems with our educational system. My pet theme is that kids should not try to learn calculus until university. They are not ready for it. I think the brightest ones would be far better served if they were given a real linear algebra course in the senior year. Grind 'em up with eigen vectors! The virtue is they would aquire a little more mathematical sophisticaion before encountering a profoundly revolutionary set of ideas, and for many applications in the digital age linear algebra is more valuable than calculus anyway. But what the hell do I know? I don't have a teaching certificate!


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Reform Public Education

« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2004, 02:51:01 PM »

Peter

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Quote

Conservatives need to refer to this issue as a civil rights issue, and call it Equal Opportunity Education. Ted Kennedy's children shouldn't be the only ones getting a good education

I agree! I was highly impressed with that Wall Street Journal article you emailed to everyone about Virginia Walden-Ford's efforts to get vouchers passed in DC.

I think that getting something like this passed in Columbus would be a cakewalk if explained it in terms of civil rights.

I am going to make a posting about this in the policy debate forum RIGHT NOW (assuming that it hasn't already been done).

Snowflake, did you post that article to the website?

Peter


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It's the spending, stupid!

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