The Sedgwick County legislative deligation gets grief — often from this editorial board — for not having more clout in Topeka. “You need to be more like Johnson County,” is the common refrain. But Kenneth Daniel, publisher of the Topeka-based Web-site www.ksmallbiz.com, argues the opposite in a recent commentary:
“Even though Johnson County has about 18 percent of the senators and 18 percent of the representatives, their clout pales compared to Sedgwick County, which has virtually the same number in each house. My spin is that the Wichita area legislators are mostly looking out for Kansas, while many or even most Johnson County legislators are mostly looking out for their local interests, no matter how it hurts other areas.”
Perhaps. But it would be nice if Sedgwick County lawmakers would be a bit more parochial.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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142 Comments
Everybody likes to kiss JoCo butt like they are something special. They call themselves an economic powerhouse.
But I read that there were 6,500 jobs created last year and 4,000 of those were in Wichita, meaning only 2,500 were left created in the entire state, including JoCo.
Joe – since JoCo is in many ways a bedroom for the ‘real’ Kansas City the stats you quote cannot really be used. I’d be curious to know how many jobs have been created in the KC SMSA as compared to the Wichita SMSA.
About 2000 for KC.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/14555995.htm
What is remarkable is that the unemployment rate is pretty low everywhere in the USA. Shows a good economy, but we wouldn’t know it with the negative news in media.
When comparing Wichita to KC, I do get that Wichita is half the size of KC, and KC has more to offer, but Wichita is growing at a good rate. :)
Joe, would you please cite your statistics’ source? I would like to try to analyze some of the data.
Also, if Wichita’s large job growth last year is related to aviation’s rebound, then you have to take a longer view: e.g. how many jobs were there last year, compared to 2000, i.e. before we LOST thousands of aviation jobs?
Also, how much do the new jobs pay? If new jobs pay less than old jobs, this can have negative implications for a community.
Do you have any data on locally-owned new-business startups and closures in Sedgwick and JoCo last year? These are useful metrics.
As I spend more time in JoCo, I am amazed at the cornucopia of locally-owned retail outlets and restaurants there.
The chains are in JoCo to be sure–every one you can find here, plus some really neat ones not found here, for instance Nordstrom, Costco and Whole Foods Markets ( whose deli we WISH Picadilly had, fresh produce that Wichitans don’t know exists, fish that doesn’t smell or taste “fishy” because it is truly fresh, more cheeses than you’ve ever heard of). Then too, it’s just a short ride up to Cabela’s and Nebraska Furniture Mart, not to overlook KC-MO’s Country Club Plaza.
Cabela’s … well, I guess we always have Gander Mountain!
BTW, the AMC-30-plex in Olathe will be showing “An Inconvenient Truth” starting June 16. I have heard that Bill Warren will show it at the “Premier Palace”, date not known. Let’s all go see it.
Gander Mountain actually has some really nice fishing and hunting gear. (”Do you have any Loomis fly rods?”"Yes, they’re over here.”) But it ain’t Cabela’s, which isn’t just a humongous store, it’s an edutainment center.
http://wichita.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/2006/05/15/daily31.html
What KC has, Wichita will eventually get, so I’m not worry about KC or that it is anything special. Because Wichita always gets what KC has. Even down to KC’s uniquely owned “Strouds”
When I was in Atlanta, they had stores that KC can only dream of, like Magnolia and Ikea.
KC is very much a small city compared to the rest of the nation and Wichita isn’t all that far behind KC. You have to remember that Wichita is a lot younger city than KC and many other cities, in it’s own right, has hold its own and grown quite well throughout its history.
I never use KC as a candle of hope or a place that is wonderful. Nebraska Furniture Mart isn’t anything and the Plaza isn’t much but an outdoor mall with most shops being useless or repetative. I’m not impressed.
Joe, have you tried McCormick and Schmick on the Plaza for seafood? It’s really good.
The Eagle is never happy.
well, KC has 2 professional sports teams which Wichita doesn’t… oh wait they really haven’t been professional for several years…… Overall I love KC, but its more of a visit then live town for me
If Wichita tried to get a Cabellas all you anti-everything posters would be on here bitching about it.
Kansas City in my mind a city that is not a visiting city or a living city. It is a city that I don’t care about. They have 2 (sucky) sports teams and 1 good one. Wichita has better cultural attractions but no one knows about them.
Wichita could never GET a Cabela’s. A couple years ago, in order to get a STAR bond, developers talked about landing a Bass Pro Shop.
That was totally unrealistic because Cabela’s had recently opened, and OKC had just cut a deal to subsidize a Bass Pro.
These aren’t Wal-Marts. They’re really expensive to build, and to keep humongous inventories of stuff, so they require a minimum-size customer count. Wichita doesn’t have it. Not even close. For example, OKC was deemed to be “risky” if BP had to shoulder the entire cost, because a BP Shop was being built in Tulsa, but OKC put up the construction money, with a low-interest long-term payback, with payment forgiveness if the store goes belly up. OKC MSA has twice as many people as Wichita MSA.
That’s why Wichita got a Gander Mountain, along with towns like Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (pop. 17,000), and Corsicana, Texas (24,000).
As Joe pointed out KC isn’t a world-class city like Atlanta. It won’t be until KC figures out how to build a major research university like Georgia Tech or Emory.
Wichita’s problem is being stuck in the “Bermuda Triangle” anchored by KC, OKC and Tulsa. Most of Wichita’s population growth is comprised of annexation (city), adding new counties to the MSA, Latino influx, and urban migration by young people from the failing surrounding farmbelt.
Atlanta has become world-class starting with the Jimmy Carter presidency and Andrew Young’s mayoralty in the 70’s. Interracial relations have greatly improved–in 2000 24-year-old+ Atlanta MSA blacks had a 22% bachelor’s degree rate, versus 8% for Wichita and 25% for Wichita whites.People are welcomed from all over the world, and the North.
OKC, Tulsa and KC attract a lot of managers and professionals from across the country. Wichita doesn’t. It would be nice if there was a model for successful insularity, but that’s a pipedream.
Wichita’s small-town leaders don’t know how to create products to sell to the outside world. They’d love to be able to simple-mindedly convince outside companies to set up industrial plants, call centers and the like, which would generate an inflow of payroll dollars, but Wichita doesn’t have much to offer. Furthermore the only potential sugar daddies pit struggling cities against each other in subsidization demands, which effectively generates lower net-wages for workers, who have to pay the subsidies in their taxes (along with their co-citizens). This has been called a race to the bottom–how low will you go? just how desperate for payroll dollars are you?
This is a losing construct, but it’s the only idea Wichita’s leaders can come up with. If there’s a silver lining in this cloud, it is probably jobs in Oklahoma that are going to open up with the resurgent oil economy. So, Wichitans will be able to land some of these “South of the Border” jobs.
KC is too small to spend championship-caliber money in major league sports. But the teams have some good games, and their athletes are two-levels more skilled than Wichita’s minor leaguers.
I’m not sure what cultural attractions are better in Wichita. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a world-class museum. You really should see it. It has the third-largest Henry Moore sculpture exhibit on the planet. Ancient near-eastern sculptures that date to 3500 B.C. Paintings by Rembrandt, Michelangelo, most of the French Impressionists, and leading 17th-20th century American artists. It has amazing ancient South and Southeast Asian temple-artificat galleries. It has 34,000 art objects vs. Wichita Art Museum’s 6000. Nelson-Atkins also has a far larger research library than WAM.
Exploration Place and Science City are pretty much even. Neither was executed as well as it could have been. But at least you can see IMAX films at SC, plus more at the zoo. BTW, KC Zoo’s budget is three times larger than Sedgwick’s.
KC has better symphony orchestra, opera and ballet offerings than Wichita. Lots more live jazz, due to a heritage that started with Louis Armstrong’s visits there. Every Jazz legend has done multiple gigs in KC. KC has the American Jazz Museum and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
But don’t believe me. Get an AAA Kansas-Missouri-Oklahoma tourbook. Look at the four-color layout for KC, versus the text-only presentation for Wichita.
If your cultural preference is the cowboy heritage, you won’t find it at Cowtown. Go to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in OKC. That’s world-class. Go there too if you want to hear live C&W music, see a professional rodeo, or attend a horse show.
Heartlander, do you like living in Wichita? Your post there seems to point out everything that Wichita isn’t and/or can’t be. If you live here, why do you choose to stay? Just curious.
Sadly, heartlander is correct. Wichita remains in a slow-(or no)-growth mode while in the ‘triangle’. Perhaps if we had rail transportation we could take advantage of this central location but we don’t have that.
I’m just trying to get people to think about what is going on. There are no magical solutions to improve Wichita’s economy. For instance, if you build a casino, there are so many in Oklahoma and Missouri that you can immediately dispel any notion that a casino here will attract patrons from distant locations. So it will only have a local effect. Suppose that it has an effect of discouraging would-be local gamblers from taking their money elsewhere to gamble. If so it will still drain some money from Wichita to Topeka, and if it has outside investors, they will take their proceeds elsewhere. Secondly, it will create a problem of encouraging gambling addicts to pauperize themselves, and creating a burden on the rest of us. It encourages get-something-for-nothing magical thinking. Great.
Finally, it’s resurrecting and old wheel. Wichita started out as a gambling (and other entertainment) center in the 1870’s. It wasn’t a sustainable model. This is something we see in the new arena as well. The Kansas Coliseum didn’t invigorate Wichita’s economy, as a recent KU study of Wichita per capita income change over the past 30 years demonstrated. The study showed that in the 1970’s average Wichita per capita income was equal to the national level. Ever since, it hasn’t kept up, and the gap has been widening.
Just because bad ideas didn’t work in the past doesn’t mean they are going to work in the future.
I don’t object to an arena if a community has surplus discretionary income. But if it is on the poorer side, then an arena incurs opportunity costs, preventing a community from pursuing strategies that offer high-yield economic-growth returns. Such as education and research-resource development. Suppose that a nanotechnology research center was built, combined with nano-Vo Tech programs. Now you are talking about tapping into an emerging phenomenon with a very high anticipated growth rate. Somebody mentioned earlier composites. That might be useful. Wichita has an experience base with composites. So you expand on that by funding WSU’s research at say, $20 million a year, lure some top-notch researchers with grants, endowed chairs and state-of-the-art labs. Set up a venture seed fund to sponsor new start-ups. Let the new, and current faculty figure out new products to build, and hire the Vo-Tech composite-program grads to manufacture them.
I think nano’s growth potential is much higher than composites, long term, but composites would be a worthwhile experimental start. If we can raise $70 million annually for an arena, short-term, why not raise the same amount annually for decades to generate 21st century productivity and prosperity for Wichita?
People here think aviation has been great for Wichita. But it paid well because the federal government infused billions of dollars to make it work initially. Then WWII decimated Europe and Japan’s aviation industries. So the U.S. had the civil aircraft market almost all to itself. Then too, pressure was put on Japan and Germany to focus on building things like cars and other consumer goods, and stay away from aircraft, because the latter ability could be used for weapons applications. At the same time, our government wanted to maintain widely-dispersed warplane-manufacturing ability–just in case it was needed–so deals were cut with defense companies to keep Beech and Cessna alive.
But the world has changed. Aircraft component manufacturing has been outsourced to numerous countries. Brazil builds planes. China will build civil aircraft within 15-20 years. They have already built the Vo-Tech and university engineering schools to give them incipient capability, and they are already manufacturing aircraft components. China is going to be a leading civil aircraft purchaser. So China cut deals with American manufacturers and Airbus to build joint-venture plants there. But then, unless trade-barriers are erected, China will ultimately sell planes not just domestically, but internationally.
This won’t affect today’s Wichita’s aviation workers, but it will affect their children and grandchildren, who aren’t going to find aviation jobs here, or jobs supported by circulating aviation payroll dollars. Aviation won’t be Wichita’s linchpin by 2040. It may not even be here at all.
Therefore you can do one of two things: You can say, “2040 is far in the future. Let’s just let things ride and cross that bridge when we come to it.” Or, you can say, “Let’s CREATE A NEW FUTURE VISION. Change is going to happen. Let’s prepare for it.”
Why the latter? Because it will take more than a decade to develop a modern educational and research system, and another decade to get it up to full speed–after you generate the necessary public support, which takes time too. Research Triangle Park was a vision of the 60’s. It didn’t attain positive net-investment-return until the 80’s. Today it’s still expanding, and bearing record harvests. You see similar patterns in Seattle, Austin, Silicon Valley, San Diego and Boulder.
Hardscrabble Kentucky is developing a major university research initiative. Lexington is recruiting scientists and engineers from America’s top research universities, and giving them research seed grants, expecting them to transition to other sources of funding, such as federal and private grants and contracts.
Twelve years ago I devised a novel home-education program. It threw out the industrial age notion of giving kids five 50 minutes classes, and instead used 3-hour subject-study. It was effective. The Gates Foundation is working with 7% of the nation’s high schools. Their program uses fewer, longer classes. This is what is required to achieve high-proficiency. Kansas City, Kansas is trying this, and it is working.
Actually, the 5-class regimen is good at identifying and rewarding multitaskers, so it isn’t entirely wrong, because a lot of jobs require multitasking routines. But some kids’, actually many kids’, do better with prolonged-focus and deep-understanding activities. Kids who have natural mechanical skills need time to work on projects, learning how mechanical things work. Some of them think about things they would LOVE TO BUILD someday.
I didn’t develop a two-subject, long-class mode on a lark. It was based on ancient principles: from masonry to mathematics to music, mastery requires prolonged daily study and effort. Furthermore, specialized knowledge is extremely valuable. Moreover, teaching children self-correction habits in their work is absolutely essential. It’s a matter of instilling a desire in them to do their work well. The widespread lack of this attribute drives managers who hire today’s “whatever”-attitude young people up the wall.
This is why I said in an earlier blog that we need to systematically redesign education. Our best teachers know that they could do a great job in a different system. The older ones have too much invested to quit, but the younger ones say, “I don’t need this. I’m outta here.” Most kids are indifferent about school. These things are tragic.
Am I unhappy with Wichita? Yes. There is a lot of potential here, and it’s being wasted wasted by some adults who really aren’t thinking about investing in their children’s and grandchildren’s futures, or in their community that in 30 years will reflect decisions that are made today.
The concept of tragedy was invented by the ancient Greeks. It wasn’t mere calamity, it was an AVOIDABLE calamity that occurred because humans made unwise decisions, usually a series of them.
Thanks for clarifying, heartlander. I searched on some of the Gates Foundation stuff and found the following sites which have concepts that interest me (a teacher) very much:
http://www.edvisions.coop/http://www.mncs.k12.mn.us/http://www.edvisions.com/html/gates-edvisions.html
A school here that would endeavor to try these models would be very interesting to me.
Jeff, me too.
I remember being put into an experimental 4th-6th grade class. My teacher was a world-class glider pilot. At the end of 4th grade, he told me I would be placed in a new experimental 5th grade class. I asked him, “Can’t I be in your class?” He said, “I wish I could, but this is what the school athorities have decided.”.
I was being used as a public-ed guinea pig. I wanted what later came to be known as looping. I realized at age 10, that students can’t find teachers that connect with them by externally-imposed ideas. Real education is about people finding people to connect with. The “system” cares little about what lowly teachers think, and nothing about what leven lowlier students think. This is why IT IS FAILING.
Heartlander: I just read your various postings on this thread and find them interesting and thought provoking. Your ideas should be read and debated by teachers at all levels here in Kansas schools.
Frankly I don’t agree with all you say but I am interested in your general thesis lines.
One area I question is the length of classes and/or number of classes per day. Should classes be some 90 minutes long as you suggested or should they be about 50 minutes long as I generally prefer?
Many students today are super fidgity with fairly short attention spans. In those cases, I think students need a water/restroom break about every 50 minutes even if they are double blocked and therefore return to the same class.
On the other hand, with bright diligent students, particularly in lab type classes, longer classes are fine and do promote learning with more minutes actually in the classroom.
In my case, I am a graduate engineer from K-State so not a professional teacher. If I could start over, I would start in the teaching profession because this profession desperately needs new thinking and dedication from young teachers. Our U.S. education system must be turned around before our students are swiftly bypassed by high achievers from other cultures particularly from Asian countries.
Heartlander: Also appreciated your thoughts on Johnson County (where I formerly lived for many years) and your analysis of the air industry. Regarding the air industry, I have often wondered what will happen to the industry when oil supplies begin to grow scarce with increased usuage by China, India and other formerly third world countries?
I disagree with you that Wichita is slow at growing or the Oklahoma economy is better. It’s the reverse.
Wichita has grown over 100,000 people in the last 15 years and experience awesome growth and low unemployment.
Tulsa has been sheading jobs, lost carriers at its airport, lot industry, and recently, their mall that was the size of Towne East just shut down. They are struggling.
OKC is doing ok, but not expanding or growing very much.
The Oil industry may be coming back, but it is very cautious, because many people got burned and lost their ass on it and they won’t make the same mistake.
KC grows ok, but Wichita grows a little faster rate. Omaha is probably the only city in the area that really has its $hit together. That’s because they are pro-business and provide lots of incentatives.
Joe, I used to live in Tulsa. I’ve been there twice in the last year. There’s a lot more new housing construction going on there, than here. Shutting down ugly 1960’s malls isn’t a sign of economic collapse, particularly when you look at strong west-side growth (Broken Arrow) and south-end (Jenks) growth with new retail venues in both places: things like shopping centers are just being dispersed.
As to population “growth”, annexation of already-populated surrounding suburbs by the city or adding counties to the MSA is not population growth, it is creative accounting. Is there actual population growth occurring? Of course. We see new housing construction here, albeit so far less than in the 1990’s. With a continuing deterioration of the southern Kansas farm belt, where are its young people going to go, if not here? Schools are seeing more Hispanic students every year. On the other hand, there is egress as well, including some very talented people who have been assets to this community, because are willing to give more than they get.
I know what you are saying. Many of my friends left Wichita to seek jobs in other places. But they are going to places like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Minneapolis, New York City, and Boston.
I don’t know anybody that is going to Tulsa, OKC, or KC.
The Wichita MSA doesn’t include Reno county and adding Cowley isn’t a large population jump at all. When I say 100,000 people, I’m talking about Wichita proper, not MSA.
When I first moved to Wichita as a child in the late 80’s, Wichita only had a population of 250,000. Now it is 380,000 and with projected growth will reach 500,000 by 2020. That is growth!
About Tulsa. Did you know they are building a downtown arena? White elephant for them right?
JWink, many kids’ fidgetyness is due to their “not getting” what teachers are teaching in an industrial age mass-education-modus classroom.
Part of a solution is finding ways to give them individual attention. Whether this means bringining in retirees, hiring more teachers, partnering successful older students with younger struggling ones, in class, as well as outside of class, or other approaches, we need to connect people.
Part of a solution is stopping the counterproductive imposition of a standardized curriculum on all kids, but instead finding out what kids’ best talents are, and cultivating these talents. I remember in history class, I used to draw things. I remember, because I was caught. It was mortifying at first. But fortunately I had a great short-term-memory “voice recorder”, so when the teacher challenged me with questions about what he had said in lecture, I gave him satisfactory responses to several questions in a row, and then he asked me a question about something he hadn’t said, and I didn’t know the answer, so he concluded I was listening to him, and he walked away and let me draw. Too bad they didn’t transfer me to an art class (there are three painters in my family), because that information that I could regurgitate to my teacher’s satisfaction didn’t go into term memory, because the subject matter wasn’t interesting to me. I later learned to LOVE history, but at the time my mind wasn’t ready for it.)
Moreover, I remember goofing around in class with friends, but if the subject matter gripped me, I concentrated and told them to cool it.
I just think our best teachers would be very happy, and far more students would be happy–and productive–if we learned to identify special gifts and interests in both teachers and students, connect them, give them better resources than we do now, and let them fly.
Joe, Tulsa’s arena is a different situation because they don’t have any, except for the one at Oral Roberts University, which can’t be used for things that don’t pass a “family values” test. (Many years ago Kenny Rogers played, and girls threw their underwear at him. Not allowed to come back!)
There were relatively inexpensive ways to deal with the handicapped-patron matter at the Coliseum, including reserving seating up front, using strapping young men to help the disabled to their seats, and out, etc. But if somebody has an agenda, they’re not interested in finding inexpensive solutions to specified problems.
Again, I’m not anti-arena, I’m in favor of making wise strategic investments, given multiple choices. The sad thing is, if we built new kinds of schools and research facilities, and created a vibrant 21st century economy, there’d be plenty of construction projects, big and small, for a long, long time, whereas the arena is going to be a one-ride pony.
Joe – the growth of Wichita is primarily due to annexation of adjacent neighborhoods. If you look at ‘organic’ growth the numbers are much smaller. Perhaps a better set of numbers would be Sedgwick County since its borders do not change.
PS. I didn’t say Wichitans are moving to Tulsa and OKC–YET. But if oil stays above $60/barrel for the next two years, Oklahoma’s economy is going to be very strong, and you’ll see a lot of Wichitans move across the border, so that they can get good jobs–and also remain close to their kinfolk. A lot of Kansans don’t want to move a half-continent from home.
Nah! I doubt it heartlander. People are striking the other gold. That’s ethanol. Government mandated, politically popular, government subsidized, less taxes and regulations. Yeah! You are going to see ethanol being the large industy. Oil is about dry around these parts including Oklahoma.
Ben. You are wrong. Wichita annexes farmland and sparsly populated areas. Wichita also cannot annex all that much since it is surrounded by parasitic suburbs. You have Haysville, Park City, Derby, Andover, Bel Aire, Maize, Goddard, Valley Center… Where else can Wichita annex around?
Lets see now … how about all that area that is now West Wichita – Hidden Lakes, The Dell, etc?
452,869 (2000)ยท 403,662 (1990)
Sedgwich County – about 50,000 growth 1990-2000. A bit less than 100,000 I’d say.
Yeah! That was all super developed and Wichita just annex it.
It doesn’t work that way.
I said 15 years, you are only showing 10 years.
Also! How many people moved to Bulter County? Most people who live there work in Wichita.
Bulter County has experience a 17% population growth. The Wichita MSA has experience almost 13% population growth. That’s good growth. Well above the national average.
Population, 2004 estimate 463,802
About 60,000 in 14 years. Still a bit less than 100,000
Ok! You win Ben.
Great debate! We now have useful information.
Heartlander,I know Kansas City is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Maybe there is a 4 page layout in AAA because Kansas City is a major metropolis. I have been to Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and it was neat. I just love it when all the anti-Wichita people keep on saying Wichita has nothing and Kansas City has everything. Wichita could have been close to Kansas City if we weren’t so negative minded for the past 50 years. Instead of trying to become a major airmail route Wichita should have tried to attract a terminal. IF you think Wichita is so bad then why do you still live here.
Keith! The question would be…What was the best thing BEFORE slice bread?
;)
It is clearly obvious to me that individuals such as heartlander really don’t see the “big picture”. The key to long term economic growth is the education of our youth. Heartlander makes disparaging comments about “lowly teachers” and their lack of knowledge about making the educational system better. Who would know better about what the system needs? Perhaps maybe we need to hire a consulting firm that is backed by RW money? Why not bring in “Ed. Trust” (run conveniently by the Republican National Party) to tell us how bad the system is run? Here’s an idea, let’s take those tax dollars and give it to private companies and religious schools because they seem to run schools more efficiently (even though they only educate select students). The JOCO lawmakers have it right. They understand the importance of education funding to their economic growth and development. What does the majority of the Sedgwick County delegation do? They play politics……….RW conservative politics. The likes of Peterson, Donovan and Wagle in the Senate are a disgrace to our region. Our lower House members are little better. Huey, Decastro, Goico, Kelsey, Huebert, McCleland, Brunk and Landwehr are especially anti-education. They crow on and on about how their constituents will not stand for more tax dollars being invested in the educational system. In reality, they vote at the direction of their masters, the people who fund their campaigns. Who might those people and organizations be? Look it up at: http://www.accesskansas.org/ethics/One final note, the most venomous of the Sedgwick County delegation is surely Brenda Landwehr. Have you seen her in action? In the spring of 2005, at a Saturday forum at the extension office, I watched Landwehr in her usual form: a liar and bully. After the forum, I also watched her direct her husband (David) to “take on” a citizen who asked a question she didn’t like during the forum. The discussion was escalated into an argument that nearly became physical had it not been for a timely intervention. We have all heard of Landwehr’s profane tirade toward moderate JoAnn Pottorff on the floor a few weeks ago. I have also seen Landwehr physically intimidate two other female members of the delegation when their votes weren’t the way Landwehr wanted. What a nice NAZI storm trooper we have leading the Sedgwick County delegation. She sure is trying to get the 99 million dollars into Wichita Schools that the Legislative Post Audit Study says it needs. Think about it, maybe the JOCO legislators have figured out that their future is more important than being a party hack and a bully unlike the SGCO group.
Apophis–GREAT POST!!! Worth the read!
Thanks apophis – I would add that the legislative delegation has done absolutely NOTHING to help post-secondary. When I tried to raise that in 1994 Les Donovan had his Godarchy minions claim that I was “running on the gay-rights agenda because I was a closet gay” – which came as a big surprise to my multi-decade wife and my son.
My proposal was to bring together the 4 area community colleges, Vo-Tech, and WSU to provide the “just-below-college-level” education we need for workforce development. I also pushed for continuing education/training of our workforce. Obviously these matters are unimportant around here.
“We dont need no stinkin’ education in kansas”.
It shows.
Less Donovan and his merry band of dominionists?
Isnt this the same Less who stuffed his pockets with gambling money and then led the delegation to bully your local leaders to not allow a vote on gambling? Less “I heart gambling money but not gambling” Donovan?
That one?
Yep – same ol’ Les.
Let’s see, an honest, well educated and well respected scientist, someone who cares about water issues, a long-married monogamist, a christian, a father, and a proponent of education?
Heheh. Of course Ben. You are NOT the kind of person they would want in office down there!
I would like to make a statement in regards to JoCo. I know some of you kiss its butt like they are something special, but lets really call it for what it is.
Johnson County is one of the most white counties in the nation. With a population of over 90% white and less than 3% Black or any other minority group. It is in the poster child of “White Flight”.
Must be nice not to have minorities or poor people to deal with like every city in America has to. So is Johnson County a by product of success or “White Flight”.
Joe, I don’t think I ever intimated that I or anyone from Sedgwick County ever “kisses the butts” of the JOCO legislators. I just said that basically the had their act together, especially in comparison to the Bozo Sect of the Sedgwick county legislative delegation. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that JOCO itself is basically lilly-white. That really isn’t the issue in regard to legislating the proper funding for public education. Remember, public education is everyone’s investment in the future. I see no point in making the entire JOCO thing into a race issue. You can’t change these citizen’s minds about their desire to “flee” the inner city schools and these schools inherent difficulties. True, poverty is the base of most problems in this world. Playing the race card just doesn’t really help matters though. Let’s get back to the central focus of the matter, the Sedgwick County legislators are for a large part impotent to band together to do what is really right for our area. Why is this? Again, look at who is funding Wagle, Landwehr and their cabal.
Apophis, I’m sorry that you haven’t read many of my posts, so stated, The key to long term economic growth is the education of our youth.” Thank you for repeating EXACTLY what I said. Except this is what you said,”
“It is clearly obvious to me that individuals such as heartlander really don’t see the “big picture”. The key to long term economic growth is the education of our youth.
If you read more of my posts, you wouldn’t have made a completely erroneous statement about me.
As to lowly teachers, I also mentioned even-lowlier students. Most people probably understood that what I was saying was that the education system’s ARCHITECTS don’t give a whit about what teachers or students think, which is why we have NCLB, teachers teaching TESTS, rather than teachers teaching STUDENTS. Teachers are lowly in that they don’t have power to CHANGE THE SYSTEM. That’s what New York Teacher of the Year John Gatto was forced to concede, as has every good teacher.
I am NOT AGAINST TEACHERS. I tried to convince my oldest son to become a teacher, because he was really smart, he was easy going and his fellow students liked him, and he successfully tutored in high school. He rejected it, because although academically successful, he didn’t like the industrial-age-designed INSTITUTION of school.
I have a home-schooled son who has tutored minority students in calculus and physics in college, and is going to a school in Africa to teach the children of AIDS mothers.
My wife and I have both held university teaching appointments. The single-most influential person in my life, outside family, was my 4th grade teacher. The second-most influential is a Wichita teacher.
So, keep reading these blogs, and you’ll understand “where I’m coming from”, and ultimately realize that you misjudged me.
I also said, many weeks ago that if JoCo citizens want to impose upon themselves a special tax to provide their children an education that Wichita citizens, and other Kansas citizens do not want to burden themselves with, it’s JoCo citizens right to do this. It is other counties’ citizens right to do this, or not do this. It is not other counties’ legislators’ right to prohibit this. You apparently missed one of our bloggers’ posts about a bucket of crabs, and there being no need to cover the bucket, because when one crab tries to escape, the others grab it, and hold it back.
Keith, there are strong forces pushing me to take the path of least resistance and move to JoCo. I am trying to find reasons to take the road less traveled, and stay and contribute to this community. Why am I conflicted? Because JoCo already knows what to do. Wichita doesn’t. My question to myself is, Can Wichita LEARN? Can I make contributions here? Actually, I think am doing so, in small ways. Very small ways. But maybe that’s worth doing.
WE Blog is a work in progress. It could be strongly improved by retaining old threads, and creating a software program to enable newcomers to link to old posters’ statements within the old threads. So, somebody like Apophis could key-in “Heartlander”, “DarwinsDisciple”, “JR”, “JWink”, “Joe Williams”, “Kansas Farm Girl”, “Ian Santiago” et al, and read the threads that they made statements in, and gain understanding.
Sorry heartlander, I do not spend my life in cyber-world, scrolling back through all of your blog entries, nor do I have any desire to do so. I could care less about the positions you claim to take. What I perceive is this: you are anti-PUBLIC Education. Try to make claims to the contrary, it matters not to me. Why do you home school your child? Do you think that the “university teaching appointments” both you and your wife have had make you qualified to educate your children at home? I thought this thread was about the political influences of the JOCO legislators and the fact that they fight for the education funding their constituents need? Lastly heartlander, a blog is not a place where you truly make a name for yourself or “gain understanding”. That is done in the real world by becoming involved in the pressing issues of the day. Are you involved in the real world or do you just boast of your superiority in cyberspace?
Apophis, you repeat what I’ve said in the past, and then say I’m anti-public education. As most of the blogging regulars know, I strongly avoid name calling, but you’re an ignoramus.
As for home-schooling, are your kids teaching minority kids, or serving OTHER people in Africa? I’ve taught black and Latino kids. Long before you did, I am sure (let’s try mid 1970’s. I’m not going to get into a fight with you because I believe in fairness. It would be unfair for me to disassemble what Dick Cavett called a “quarter wit”.
As far as teaching qualification goes, my particular qualification is teaching serious students for college/university readiness. You may not don’t know anything about this. It’s not just getting them in, it’s enabling them to tackle the challenges once they get there.
You may good at preparing kids for the blue-collar economy that is being outsourced to the Third World, which may mean you could be a an expert in obsolete knowledge.
Apophis is the Greek name of the Ancient Egyptian god Apep, “the Destroyer”, who dwells in the eternal darkness of the Duat (underworld) and tries to destroy the Sun during its nightly passage. Sorry you are in darkness. Perhaps you would do better to get into the light.
I am not going to dress you down any more, because that would degrade the WE Blogs. People who read the blogs know what I stand for. I’ve gotten kudos–and reasonable criticisms–from a lot of posters. If you want, I can teach you math and science. I can teach you about the history of public education going back to Johann Pestalozzi, whose ideas permeate public education. He developed his theses working in ORPHANAGES.
Ignore what I say. But don’t make false statements about me in ignorance. Go towww.johntaylorgatto.com
Then go towww.ditd.org
Then go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationwebsitewww.gatesfoundation.org
I spent 17 years in public education, and observed what was happening. I saw the false logic and fraud. Do you have any objection to giving kids 2 hours of daily math instruction, and textbooks and online resources that empower them to study math at home? Do you think you are an “authority” in the subject you teach?
Not in “teaching methods” but in subject matter? What subject(s) do you teach? Are you aware that Kansas high school teachers only take survey courses, not specialized courses taken by liberal arts and science degree students? Do you know what a survey course is? Do you have any idea?Probably every blogger here has taken university survey courses. One their own, they are instructive, but LIMITING.
One blogger stated that he is a KSU-educated engineer. He should be teaching math to some of our children. He doesn’t have a teaching certificate, but he knows more math than 99% of Kansas “mathematics” teachers.
I have talked previously about INVESTING IN CHILDREN. If you are an outstanding public school teacher, I think you should be paid $100,000 a year. Why? Because you are going to be having an impact on a thousand (elementary) to more than ten thousand (hs) children.
I don’t want to be your enemy. Let me teach you some things, and you can teach me some things.
Finally, posters choose their WEB nicknames for reasons. On my mother’s side, my family heritage is in farming and dairy: Iowa, Southern Illinois, and rural Northern California. This is why I consider myself a heartlander. Why did you choose your moniker? The destroyer-god or a lifeless asteroid?
Souther Illinois … near “Carbonhole”?
You’re not going to result in name calling? Was there another point in calling me an IGNORAMUS then?
You sure spend a lot of time trying to demean me. Is there a purpose for this? Do you think you are an expert on public education or something?
Do you really think there is a deep, dark reason I chose the web name I use? Get a real life heartlander.
How didya FIND the moniker APOPHIS? You get a life.
Does it real matter why I chose this name or why? Not in the real world.
I think heartlander is showing his true, RW fundamentalist colors now. Who could have predicted?
It isn’t my fault if you revealed your agenda. You didn’t invent your name, you chose a moniker based on something that already existed.
“Let’s follow the god of darkness.”
I don’t think most posters here will agree to this proposition. This isn’t why we are communicating here.
Oh, now heartlander what exactly is my “agenda”?
Are you really naive enough to think that I “follow the god of darkness” solely because I chose a name from Egyptian mythology?
Finally, long-term participants know what I have previously stated. If you want to copycat my statements, and support me, but denounce me at the same time, most of the people here will realize you are either ignorant or shitzophrenic.
From here on out, I will only respond to your substantive ideas, not your false characterizations. And I am not going to make any chararcterizations about you. In my initial post, I should have said, “Thanks Apophis for re-posting my already-posted ideas.” It’s my fault, really, for trying to respond to your false characterization of me as anti-public education. Anti-public industrial-economy education is correct. But public education can be DIFFERENT. maybe you just don’t get it yet. But if you are open-minded, and capable of changing you will, in time.
I smell someone who wants to push the “vouchers” and “charter schools” agenda!
I get PUBLIC education heartlander, it is obvious that you do NOT.
Please feel free to ignore me, if you and your fundamentalist ego can allow that.
Apophis, you don’t have to worry about vouchers and charter schools. By the time they come to Kansas, you’ll be retired. And BTW charter schools ARE public schools. Like the quashed WSU-proposed math and science academy that I still endorse. If someone proposes charter humanities, art, and craftsmanship academies, I support them as heartily. I’m just in favor of identifying kids GIFTS, and cultivating these gifts. Do you oppose not me, but my ideas?
I want you to get to a point where you agree with some of what I say (hopefully most of it, but if not that’s okay in a democracy), and disagree with some of what I say. I’ve done a lot of long, serious study. When I was young, I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know if my viewpoints were right, and I really didn’t want to lead people down bad roads. But age brings wisdom to people who have open minds.
BTW, what’s your specialty? Let me ask you this: if you have some kids who really connect with you, wouldn’t you LOVE to have 3-4 hours a day with them? And if they feel reciprocally, wouldn’t that be really satisfying for you and them to teach them?
As a well-above-average taxpayer, I’m quite willing to financially support GREAT teaching of other people’s kids, public or private. I have everything I need. It’s the NEXT generation that counts.
BTW, Charter schools are not actually public. They just siphon off tax dollars. Call it what you want, but it isn’t public school with all of the inherent problems that go with it.
Why this interest in my specialty? What is that all about?
I am above all a parent and a taxpayer. Instead of spouting rhetoric on a blog, why not get involved in the real battle? Spend some your time getting people elected to the legislature who will do their constitutionally mandated job, properly fund public education. Have you once gone to Topeka during the session to lobby legislators or do you just talk the talk?
Apophis, charter schools ARE public, at least I think they are. They are paid for by taxpayers. They are overseen either by district or state superintendents and BOEs.
If you say they are not actually public, please define WHY you think they are not public? If you say, the four Edison schools here were not public, because they were manged by a private corporation, the same is true for East High’s International Baccalaureate program (the International Baccalaureate Organization of North America is a 501(c)(3) private corporation). Edison schools came here because the USD 509 BOE, under advisement from the Superintende, granted Edison Schools a services contract. The contract was terminated because the USD 259 BOE decided to terminate it and return the four schools to standard operation. This model of “charter” schools is NOT what most charter schools are. Most are based on principal-teacher-parent teamwork not involving any private operations contractor.
As far as charter schools often being able to be freed of teachers union collective bargaining agreements, this does not make them non-public.
I can’t tell what you think it is about charter schools that makes them “not actually public” and so I would like for you to define the reasons for your finding. If it is based on the Edison experiment, that’s fine. I never supported Edison. Edison’s founder’s only prior “public education” experience was installing TV’s in school classrooms for “free”, the “free” catch being they had to start each day making kids watch commercials. To me, that was sick.
I can go to Topeka. Give me some legislators’ names, and we can go together. I went to the Wichita “Visioneering” conference and spoke up about education. My statements about the critical nature of education of young people fell on deaf ears. I didn’t do this to achieve this result. I had hoped the committee’s leaders might understand. But they couldn’t grasp what I was saying. After the conference the chair cane up to me and asked, “Can you donate a million dollars?”
I haven’t yet gone to Topeka. Doesn’t mean I won’t. So who would you recommend I talk with>
I asked what specialty your subject-expertise is in, in order to help you figure out how to take your knowledge, and translate it more effectively to students. If you are a great teacher, you need much more time with them. If you don’t think you need much more time with them, then you are not a great teacher. Do you see, I’m not accusing you of anything. YOU have to decide whether you want more time with your students, or not. Let’s hypothetically ask, Are you a humanities or social studies teacher? Do you give your students a weekly 3-page paper to write? If not, why not? Do you use computerized tests, provided by an education software company? If so, why are you not composing your own tests? If you are composing your own tests, that’s a really good start. Hopefully you are not using multiple-choice (including True/False two-choice), fill-in-the-blank and/or one-sentence answer tests. If these are what are used, kids are being “dumbed down”.
You didn’t respond to my question about survey courses. That’s okay, for now. How many Blue Book expository-response tests have you taken?
Now, please understand, if you decline to answer these questions, then you discredit yourself. It’s not me, it’s YOU.
Get it in your head, Charter schools may be funded by public tax dollars, but they are not public schools. They are SELECTIVE about who they admit. That is sin #1. the fact that these charter schools are”freed from teachers union collective bargaining agreements” is sin #2. It isn’t rocket science figuring this one out. This is a union town, there is not bias towards teacher’s unions.
Whys do you think your comments about education fell on deaf years at the Visoneering sessions? I would surmise it was because you are out in left field. You keep coming back to these “survey” courses. Who gives a rat’s ass? Does this make our high school teachers unqualified to teach their content areas? You also make the assumption that I am a professional educator. Maybe I am, maybe not. If I am, I would sure realize that there are many more assessment tools available other than multiple choice and true/false tests. Believe it or not, a majority of today’s educators tend to expose their students to activities and alternative assessments that are considered higher order thinking on Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is disingenuous to lump all educational experiences into an “average” categories.
Your lame attempts to again try to discredit me go awry:
“Now, please understand, if you decline to answer these questions, then you discredit yourself. It’s not me, it’s YOU.”
Now even your buddies in this blog have to admit this is just LAME.
PS……….YES, i have taken many “Bluebook” exams in my day. I agree that if you can write about it, you probably know the content better. It’s too bad you don’t understand the constraints of the modern classroom. This method of assessment isn’t always possible.
Apophis, those constraints of the modern classroom are there because we as a society aren’t truly willing to invest in education. In this country we tend to view education as a cost, rather than an investment.
And I (a teacher, BTW, since you said you haven’t been reading the blogs for long) think that the notion of true performance oriented project based learning is one that needs further exploration and implementation – not only is it actually better for the students in developing their critical thinking and decision making abilities, but most kids actually have more fun with the material if they’re anywhere from semi-serious to serious about their schoolwork. Plus, how do we work in the real world? Does the best and most innovative and creative work come from people slogging away alone in their cubicles doing the workplace equivalent of “bubble tests” or when teams of co-workers get together and hammer their way through a tough project? And yes I’m fully aware that we have to be sure that students individually know what they need to know, but would you rather have a student engaged or bored?
As for the whole voucher/charter thing, yes there are legitimate concerns about how such programs should be implemented. However, the bottom line simple: raise student achievement – not only in standardized testing, but in their ability to think, reason, analyze, and synthesize ideas. I fear the current road we are traveling down might make us pretty good test takers, but at the cost of our creative and innovative spirit that has served us so well for over two centuries. We need to once again as a nation intellectually get mean, lean, and tough!
I don’t have any “buddies”. There are people who agree with some of what I say, and disagree with other parts. What stands out is when they say, “I haven’t thought about this before.” You’re the first person to copycat my previous statements as your own–after the fact–but denounce me at the same time.
I understand the constraints of the outdated classroom that you call “modern”. I went through it long before you did. Were you in school in the 1950’s and ’60’s? My grandmother, great aunt and great uncle were public school teachers before the Second World War. I was a university teacher, because I was the product of progress.
You are apparently way behind the leading edge. You want to think you are smart, but you’re in an obsolete system, and you have no idea how to transform it. That’s too bad for the kids you think you are teaching. In Wichita, the average ACT score for public-school kids who want to go to 4-year college is 19. Do you have any idea what this abysmal score means? Explain, quantitatively, what this score means. If you don’t know, it means you are really an ignoramus. A 19 average for ALL graduates isn’t necessarily bad. BUt a 19 for kid who want to go to 4-year colleges means: “You have to take a lot of hs remediation in college.” You’re not a quantitative guy, are you? You never “got” math.
Maybe you should understand that the public education system here didn’t want you to Understnd math. In college, did you ever take a Blue Book exam in math or science? If you say “Yes,” name the courses.
Jeff, excellent comments. I was taught algebra I and geometry in 9th-10th grade. I’m teaching it in 6th-7th grade now. The world has changed. I didn’t ask for it to be changed, that’s just the way it is.
Apophis, you are confusing PUBLIC education with PUBLIC EDUCATION THAT YOU DON’T LIKE. Sorry, but those are two different things. I guess you need to STUDY MORE to realize the distinction.
I don’t like public education as it CURRENTLY IS FORMULATED. It is based on private capitalists who want to have a semi-educated, tractable workforce. Preferably CHEAP TO HIRE. A disposable “human resource”. Jeff wants something different. I want something different. You apparently want more of the same. I am sorry that your “god of darkness” “lifeless meteror” wants more of the same.
If you want something DIFFERENT, tell us what you have lobbied for in Topeka. Go ahead, don’t be afraid to talk about what you have challenged in the state capitol, and what you have accomplished, since you believe that lobbying Topeka is the only way to effect change.
Apophossis, mobody here is against lobbying legislators in Topeka. So what have you accomplished?
You tried to frame my work in terms of lobbying Topeka. I don’t work in that realm. It seems important to YOU. So what have you done in that realm. Answer this question, or discredit YOURSELF.
Sorry I am a bad typist
Apparently heartlander, you think spewing your opinion makes it right. That sounds like the typical fudamentalist/cult way of doing business. Tell the lies often enough, eventually you start believing them as truths.
Who are you to accuse me of “copycatting” your previous comments? Get a life. You are a smug, arrogant fudamentalist. I suppose in this country this is YOUR right, but that does not make your beliefs correct. I know far more about the educational system in this country than you could ever hope to learn. Just because you claim to have been a “professor” at the post-secondary level doesn’t mean you WERE or that your opinions are any where near the target.
I think I have touched a nerve to solict this much response from you. What’s wrong, can’t you take the heat? To me, you have zero credibility.
Go ahead and give me your best shot at further belittlement. I am constantly looking for new sources of entertainment, especially when it involves taking down another of you whack-job fundamentalists.
As usual, a fundie veers from the true subject of the thread and makes ad hominem attacks!
The only way SG County can get their fair-share of education dollars is to stop horsing around with partisan politics and unify like the JOCO legislators. How do we get his done? Simple, we either lobby during the session and if they vote against our area’s interests we vote them out of office. What part of this process don’t you understand heartlander? Going off on another of your charter school/vouchers tangents isn’t the solution to the problem.
Please do enlighten us heartlander!
Fair share of education? The stuggle is between urban and rural school districts. Not that legislators in a particular county is not unified, because they generally are.
Even JoCo couldn’t get what they want, and they are supposely powerful?
At least JoCo and SG doesn’t bring revolving lawsuits about government school funding. Which I’m afraid is going to keep on happening, year after year, because it seems to be a successful tatic for rural and small school districts.
Also! It isn’t about more money = better education. “Stupid in America” showed that one. It is that public schools are nothing more than government ran day care centers. Parents seem not involve with their childrens education.
Government schools are ok, but they are not the best. I’m not going to worry about government school funding, because I’ll be sending my children to private schools.
Citing John Stossel’s ludicrous piece just shows your true colors more and more.
Why would you send your kids to private schools, I thought “home-schooling” was the way to go?
Does Sedgwick County need more money for publicly education? Absolutely. Is a “fair share” of the increased funding ENOUGH? I don’t think so.
Educating children for a postindustrial economy is a going to be a lot more expensive than most people comprehend. We’ve been treating education as an overhead cost. So, inflation occurs, and per-pupil education costs rise.
But we need to be thinking of education as a strategic capital investment, in America’s children, in our communities, state and nation. If we do this, then the sums required bear no relationship to those based on a societal overhead cost construct.
Wichitans as a group, don’t seem to me to get this. For example, the most expensive private school in Wichita has ca. $10,000 tuition. In Dallas, Denver and Albuquerque it’s $16,000. On the coasts it’s $24,000. Are parents elsewhere throwing their money away? I don’t think so. They’re pretty smart, given that they earn enough money to pay these large sums. Moreover, the older top-caliber privates have amassed large endowments through alumni donations, which reflects their former students’ success, as well as their conviction of obligation to their alma maters.
Before home schooling, our kids went to Episcopal schools, after a brief enrollment of the oldest in a public school that placed him in a non-gifted class (the gifted class was “full”), where he was given assignments in things he had already mastered.
Did I take them home over religious objections? Not at all. I had a fourth grader whose teacher’s “math” teaching was totally frustrating him. It was frustrating to me because the homework assignments were a chaotic hodgpodge which included word problems that required a knowledge of algebra to solve. In 4th grade? He said he hated math. He refused to do his homework. He actually cried about it. So I decided to make a career change and perform an experiment.
I performed diagnostic evaluations. Addition and subtraction were okay. Multiplication not good, long-division skills non-existent. So I taught him multiplication using manipulatives, and as a serial summing operation. Division similarly, albeit the converse of multiplication. At first I had to solve problems, and he would exactly replicate my work, but refused to even try doing problems of the same types with values changed. But he soon got it. Within 3 months he looked forward to math each morning and decided he wanted to spend 3 hours on it.
By age 14 he was using a college algebra book. He began calculus at age 16. He scored a 730 on the SAT and an 800 on the College Board Math Level 2C Achievement Test and earned A’s in math in college, as well as physics, his major.
My other child excelled in math and science as well.
Actually, I was inspired to try home-schooling because a cousin home-schooled three kids, the oldest of whom earned a Ph.D. in computer science, and is now a university tenure-track asst prof. His younger daughter was admitted to a top-ten law school but decided to do other things.
You may have not ever heard of high-level academics home-education, but it exists. Every Ivy League university has growing numbers of home-schooled kids.
I am a fundamentalist, but not the kind you think. I am an adherent of giving talented kids a rigorous academic education, which is as challenging as they want it to be. My kids read the Bible. Also the Qu’ran. Greek mythology and philosophy. There aren’t too many 17 year olds who read Plato’s “Republic”, but one of my kids did.
We did a lot of discovery learning, in places like Mexico, Canada, Alaska, Europe and the South Pacific. They learned about volcanos by seeing Mauna Kea erupting. They learned differences between boreal, temperate and tropical rainforests by exploring them.
BTW, they didn’t apply to any bible colleges. Actually, their choices were quite “liberal” by Kansas standards. One of them is a registered Green Party member, the other a Democrat.
I understand that many parents can’t help their kids do homework, much less design a comprehensive education for them. Some who could afford home-education don’t want to make the necessary family income and lifestyle sacrifice. Others don’t think they can teach.
We encouraged our kids to be active knowledge seekers. We tested their home-learning by sending them to summer university programs for gifted hs students, and they thrived, making friends with kids from across the country and around the globe.
There are some fundamental lessons that can be applied in any kind of school. The most important is to give kids longer classes in subjects that interest them. You want them to relish learning, would you not agree? For some kids this may mean doing extended-period manual arts. Others literature analysis and writing.
For most gifted students, taking long-period classes in several fields, over a course of several years, and acquiring broad and deep knowledge is feasible, and it should be offered by public schools.
So going to Topeka and lobbying is fine. That’s traditional.
But in this century, we are going to have to think outside the box. In times of rapid change, education is experimental. Doing things the old way is an experiment per se, even though we do not immediately perceive it to be, because it testing the question, “Will the education paradigms of the industrial age suffice in the postindustrial economy?” I don’t think so. Public education as we know it wasn’t an accident. It was specifically created as a complex system to serve the needs of a primarily manual-skills-based industrial economy in which only a minority of workers were supposed to use their brains, read and write in their jobs, do algebaic calculations, run businesses, invent products, et al.
In a deep way, schools, both public and private (including fundamentalist schools) turn children into industrial products. One of “modern” education’s chief architects, Stanford SOE dean Elwood Cubberly wrote extensively about this concept in the 1920’s.
I think vouchers and charter schools are a reasonable concept. As small institutions they can perform experiments. They can evolve much more rapidly than huge institutions, making–and correcting–mistakes, and discovering and implementing new useful methodologies. They can be analogous to Silicon Valley tech start-up companies. (A lot of SV start-ups fold, but many succeed. Lessons are learned.)
Will these thing destroy public education? Not if public educators rise to the challenge. They are going to have to work harder. There is a five-year 150-hour continuing ed requirement for licensure renewal? How about changing this to 100 hours annually? Can helping teachers learn more help students learn more? I think so.
Finally, we are going to have to deal with a significant economic problem. As higher percentages of kids undertake post-secondary study, this creates mushrooming higher-ed costs. At the same time it diminishes the percentage of kids entering the workforce full time after hs graduation, which means they don’t make, as a group, the same level of contributions to the economy as low-cost entry-level full-time workers. Many businessmen who rely on cheap labor don’t like paying more taxes for higher ed, and they don’t like the prospect of a shrinking worker supply driving up wages.
What I am saying is the traditional social ecology is going to be disrupted. So Kansas, and many other states, are conflicted about expanding higher education. It’s a double-edged sword. Long-term the results will be positive for the economy, but short-term it’s an expensive proposition. But, we need to look at it as strategic investing. Change is going to happen no matter what we do. Do we want change to be beneficial or deleterious?
heartlander, I am sure you are very proud of yourself about all the magnificent claims you make.
I’m still not impressed.
Fact 1: Your idea that every child will have an individual education plan isn’t going to happen. It is impractical and costs too much money.
Fact 2: Exposing every child first hand to the the wonders of this world isn’t going to happen. It is impractical and costs too much money.
Fact 3: Your idea about private/charter schools/vouchers are not going to happen. Public education guarantees education for every student, whether it meets your fundie standards or not. Private/charter schools/vouchers allow an elite few advantages. This smacks of an aristocratic class, how un-American.
Fact 4: Teachers already have little extra time in their lives. How are you going to require 100 hours of continuing education annually and WHAT are you going to teach them? Again, this isn’t going to happen
Fact 5: You are dreaming buddy. The Legislative Post Audit Study shows that Wichita alone would need $99 million to bring it up to NCLB standards, little less to the level you think is “the way”. How else do you get more money into the system without lobbying. If you haven’t noticed, lobbying is a guarantee in the US Constitution. It may be traditional, but is the way things are done in this country.
heartlander, I am still not impressed with you or your rhetoric. The more that you type, the more I learn about you. You are not the run-of-the-mill fundamentalist. You are even more dangerous, you are one the extreme wackos who want an aristocratic class in this country. I can only surmise your reasons for this, maybe you think you are better than the rest of us.
I remember in the 70’s, a specific lament that master craftsmanship was dead, a casualty of industrial mass production. But a funny thing happened. In oil-booming cities like Houston, Dallas and Tulsa, many cash-flush young executives decided they wanted to build beautifully-appointed homes, or remodel old grand homes. So the few remaining master masons and woodworkers were recruited, but it wasn’t enough. European master craftsmen were also recruited to the Oil Patch.
Then in the 80’s oil tanked, but wealth was created in new sectors, and master craftsmen were again sought, but the demand was even higher. So they took on apprentices. Today, master craftsmanship is thriving at a level unseen since the 1920’s. There are masters who employ teams of four or five workers and take home several hundred thousand dollars a year. Their experienced employees make $75/hour. No academic knowledge needed. They just have to know how to do their handiwork very conscientiously and skillfully.
I had a friend many years ago whose son was studying diesel engineering at a 4-year technical institute. He was basically a “C” student in high school. His goal was not to design diesel engines, but REPAIR them. He was REALLY SMART. The nation was increasingly using trucks for long-haul transportation of goods. A journeyman diesel mechanic could make $80,000 a year, in today’s dollars. But rising through the garage ranks took 20 years. The (public) technical school accelerated that training–and more–in just 4 years. He got a $60,000 a year job at age 22 and was rapidly promoted to management, earning six-figures by age 30. He was a GREAT student. Just not in the things his high school was wasting his time, his teachers’ time, and taxpayer monies trying to drill into his head.
Can public schools provide preparatory vocational training for well-paying careers like this? I think so. Why would we want to punish academically-indifferent kids by forcing them to toil in things that do not interest them, and then label them as mediocre–or worse–classroom performers? Why would we want to send them to $20,000 jobs when they have the talent to make several times that much, if we cultivate their talent?
“Why would we want to punish academically-indifferent kids by forcing them to toil in things that do not interest them, and then label them as mediocre–or worse–classroom performers”
Toil in things that do not interest them? Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Why take reading if it doesn’t interest you? Maybe because you need to be able to read to do most anything. Why learn how to properly write if it doesn’t interest you? Maybe because you need to be able to write to do most anything. heartlander, I find your logic faulty, as usual.
Apophis, I am trying to explain to you that there are potentials here that are not being tapped.
It seems to me you are a defeatist. I am not saying that your defeatism is ungrounded. It is well-grounded, which is sad, isn’t it?
Vouchers can work, just as they do in higher education. Everytime? No. They only have to work in SOME CASES, to start building a new knowledge base for a 21st-century educational system, with lessons that can be adopted by public schools.
Same for charter schools, which ARE PUBLIC schools.
I am not an elitist. You HAVE TO TRAIN FUTURE LEADERS for this nation to prosper. You have to GIVE leaders-to-be special training, and instill in them an ethos of GIVING back.
My wife is a teacher, perhaps different from what you understand. She gives people who work under her new knowledge and skills, and her staff gains valuable competencies. Leadership as an exercise of giving orders is diminishing. Today, it is raising people up to maximize their abilities. It demands that people THINK FOR THEMSELVES. It demands that people CHECK THEIR OWN WORK.
A few years ago an Eagle article described the local antipathy to a California-based homework-help website called hotmath.com. It was, and is, a great resource. It gives students detailed solutions to their math textbook exercises. The textbook publishers endorse it. Many hs math teachers have contributed to it, and it is absolutely accepted by university and college math faculty, because their own math textbooks have odd-numbered student solutions manuals. Local critics didn’t know what was happening in the world around them, and felt threatened that a resource was available to enable kids to become teacher-independent self-learners.
It wasn’t a matter of students’ cribbing answers. Teachers were free to assign even-numbered problems. But kids could examine proximate odd-numbered exercises, and learn how to solve the next-door even-numbered ones. Plus, hotmath wasn’t available during quizzes and exams.
Elitism isn’t my thing. INDEPENDENCE is. THINKING is. Figuring out, when your job is eliminated in a globalizing economy, how to aquire the knowledge and skills for another job, even an entirely new career is.
Teachers want stability. They want to be assured that they can, in two-income families, buy their own homes, get good healthcare benefits, seniority-based raises, and retire comfortably. But what they want for themselves will not be available to the vast majority of their students. We don’t live in a socialized-security nation. I didn’t create this economy and you didn’t. Instability is just a fact of life. The only thing schools can reasonably do is to prepare kids for instability. If America were to follow the European model of social welfare states, I don’t have a problem with this. But I don’t think it is going to happen. Public schools represent, for the teachers, a social-welfare paradigm. But this isn’t helping students, unless they become teachers. It’s okay. You look out for your own interests. But who are you going to blame when you become obsolete? Me? I supported the school bond issue. I strongly support higher salaries for teachers. But your job description must change, fundamentally. Public education needs to be REINVENTED.
Sorry for not being clearer. Basic phonetic decoding skills can be acquired by the vast majority of kids in 6 months or less. Then kids can learn to read contextually and expand their vocabularies to reach newspaper-reading levels by age 10. (Are schools still using “The Weekly Reader”?)
If you say, “This is impossible,” it’s only impossible if you rely upon obsolete industrial age precepts.
I said that kids are an industrial age product. You are, and I am. I want something different for my kids. I’d like something different for a lot of kids.
Now let’s go to writing. I have a friend whose 7th grader was given a “book report” assignment. It was a pre-written report, in which students were supposed to fill in (contextual) blanks. That’s a really dumbed down “book report”. Especially for a kid who scored a 25 on the ACT reading test at age 12. Apophis, you seem smart. How old were you when you had to first write a one-page essay book report? Ten, eleven?
You have not said whether you are a public school teacher or not. I think you probably are. Tell the readers here I am wrong. Then tell them what you do for a living. If you admit you are a public school teacher, tell the readers what grade(s) you teach and your subject(s). If I were to just guess, I’d propose social studies, but that’s just a first-estimate guess. I would further guess you teach in middle or high school. Or perhaps not you, but your spouse. So if I am wrong, tell the readers that I am a total whacko, and then tell the readers what you and your spouse do for your livings. Or admit that one or both of you are public school teachers. If you make the admission, tell them what subject(s) you teach.
PS. If you or your spouse has risen to administrative posts, tell us what you or both originally taught.
In the hotmath-description post, I failed to clarify that hotmath presents solutions solely to odd-numbered exercises. If students understand the mathematic principles and steps for these, they can apply their understanding to solve most proximate even-numbered exercises, which are usually very similar.
Why would you infer Social Studies?
Sorry, you don’t get to ask a question yet. Under universal rules of debate taught to every high school and college debating team, if a question is posed to you, you must answer the question. If a direct statement is made about you, you must rebut or admit the statement. Then you can do anything you want. Ask me the same question, make a completely unrelated statement, et al.
You asserted that I was a fundamentalist, so I rebutted that, I hope effectively. Then got to ask you a question. If I was allowed only to rebut your statement, then it was your turn, it would not be fair debate, because you would have the power to completely direct the ideas presented in the debate. You don’t get this power.
I could talk around you in response, but you said I don’t know how to DEBATE. Interesting. So you have to answer my question, or if you don’t, you will inform the audience that YOU CAN’T DEBATE or YOU REFUSE TO DEBATE. So answer the questions, or else inform our audience that you will not engage in DEBATE. They will understand that when you accused me of not being able to debate, you were talking about YOURSELF, not ME.
If each student received the same amount of money as a voucher, how does that create an “aristocratic class?” I’m just wondering.
I was not aware that this blog was an actual debate. You made an assumption about me, I want to know why? Choose to answer or not, it matters not to me.
Do not ever presume to tell what I will or will not do heartlander. I do not answer to anyone, especially the elitist, fundamentalist likes of you. I have whatever power I want to have son. If I choose to interact with you in the future, I will. I also have the chose to ignore you.
You are still totally irrelevant.
The whole voucher issue isn’t all that simple.
Not answering question about your or wife’s profession. Your “debate” modus is sinking rapidly.
Apophis, I’m sorry I bothered to ask.
I see you gave up the debate. You tried nonsequiturs. Didn’t work.
Teacher unionism first appeared in the 1920’s. Why? Because teachers, mostly women, were being “f—-d”. So they took a lesson from their union brothers, literally in the case of Chicago, where meatpackers who guided their sisters’ unionization. “Collectivize and gain mass-number power.” You see, industrialists not only created compulsory mass-education, they constrained the teachers’ positions. Your predecessors–my grandmother, great unle and great aunt– were lowly-valued, and had to collectivize with their peers to battle their capitalist masters.
Then unions became corrupt, like the industrial capitalism that spawned unions. Teachers union leaders got to fly first class to 4-star hotels. They deluded themselves: “We are helping our fellow teachers,” while they were enjoying the perks of capitalism.
Politically savvy teachers also decided to enjoy higher income by moving to administrative posts. BTW, call me on this, if I am wrong, but I think USD 259 Superintendent Brooks started out in the PAROCHIAL system. Did he change systems because he thought, “I can make Wichita public schools BETTER THAN Wichita parochials”? Ask him.
You conceded our debate not because I asked tell us your name, but because I asked WHAT DO YOU DO. But you declined to answer. You could have done is honestly answered, and then asked what I did.
You were easy to peg, because you sought to know if I was lobbying Topeka for more SG county funding. Who filed the inadequate-funding lawsuit? Who is going to march and lobby for more money for SG County? Your arguments tell everyone what you are. Then your iunwillingness to debate an adult informs the readership, “I’m really good at debating children who are forced to take my classes, against their will.”
Against me, you used nonsequturs in argument. You identified yourself as incapable of substantive debate.Except you then proed that YOU DON”T KNOW HOW TO DEBATE. Jeff, a public educator, is really smart and wants to help Wichita CHILDREN. You aren’t as smart as Jeff. You don’t even know the basic principles of debate. If you don’t know them. you can’t teach them to children hiw to effectively debate.. Maybe you need to reinvent yourself and find another career. Or trust that Kansas is so behind the curve that change won’t affect your personal bennies. What happens to Wichita kids in 30-50 years isn’t your responsibility.
Now you are really showing your true colors…………..I never GAVE UP on anything, I just have more pressing matters to attend to.
heartlander, did it ever occur to you that I ahve a particular strategy? I have exposed you for what you are, a FRAUD! All of your diatribes aside, you are seen as a FRAUD!
Sorry for the typo……it should be HAVE.
What do you mean by “showing your true colors”?
There is a choice. I can have my children go to government schools, for which are assign only to the area for which I live, or I can go the private route or home school. Thank god parents even still have that choice.
It’s a choice! By choosing private schools, doesn’t make me a hater of public schools, because I went through it from K-12 and even college. But I want the better education choice, and that is private schools.
That is a fact.
If you want parents to be forced to have their children sent to government schools with no choice or options to go to any other school, then you are showing your true colors.
Joe Williams………………Yes you have a choice to send your children to private school…….but at your own expense, tax dollars should never go to the private or religious sectors for education.
If you choose not to have your children attend what you call “government schools”, so be it. Your choice does invalidate the credibility of truly public schools. (remember, PUBLIC schools educate EVERYONE)
I would hope you are not siding with the arrogant, elitist heartlander. His views are quite extremist in comparison to mainstream America.
Heartlander has it all wrong –
There are now over 500 organizations, of which Heritage Foundation is the most influential,all receiving funding from this core group. A 1999 study, $1 Billion for Ideas:Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s,55 shows how well-funded these organizations are.The study found that the top 20 of these organizations spent over $1 billion on theirideological campaign in the 1990s, not only on school privatization, but on a number ofother issues they are advancing.The more recent 2004 NRCP study, Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations andPublic Policy, revealed that “from 1999 through 2001, the 79 conservative foundationsmade more than $252 million in grants to nonprofit public policy organizations. (NCRP’s1997 study profiled only 12 conservative foundation grantmakersThe far-right is firmly in control of all branches of thegovernment, and is closing in on completely controlling the courts as well. And publicschools are under serious attack; threatened with total privatization.
Teacher Unions MUST exist to fight this battle to kill the public education system as we know it. How can you call yourself an ex-college professor? You must have been Junior College level at best because you sure do not know your facts!!!
I understand that some of my tax dollars will go towards government schools. That’s fine. Many of my tax dollars I pay go towards project or people that I will never benefit from. Actually probably 99.5% of what I pay I will not personally use or benefit from.
I don’t mind a voucher system though. I’m not saying 100% of what it cost to educate a child in a government school should be the figure. But a partical voucher of say 1/3 the cost of what it takes to educate a child in government schools. That might be a good compromise. Plus delay the voucher for a year, that way nobody can’t abuse the system.
I know many countries have “money follow the child model”, America is only a few of the Industrialized Nations that doesn’t.
If no vouchers, then school choice would be a good option too. Since children are stuck in the schools in their neighborhood, they cannot go to any school outside their district. I think that is wrong. Schools should compete for students, this is what Universities do and the quality of education in Univerisities are superior to union ran government schools.
But you are probably from the arrogant and elitist camp that public schools just need more and more money.
Thanks NE Heartbreak………..It is great to see that there are a few logical people left in Kansas who see the truth!The Right Wind fundies want to dismantle public education to line their own pockets and the likes of heartlander are supporting this move.
Joe, let me see if I have this correct………are YOU saying that the public schools in Wichita do NOT need more money?
Actually Teacher Unions need to be wiped out. They are the biggest obstacle in our education system.
You must be an idiot to think that teacher unions care about the education system or the children they teach. The Teacher Unions are not for that. They are only for the “teachers” themselves.
I believe it was Albert ShankerAFT President that said “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interest of school children.”
Teacher Unions are not concerned about teaching children. They are just concerned about getting to work as less as possible, while getting paid as much as possible.
Teacher Unions don’t care about the quality of education. Just go to any local Teacher Union shop and see if they do. Don’t think so.
Apophis. After a $250 million dollar bond issue, and tons of money…sure! Maybe they need some more money. Nobody objects to that, but at what point and how much is the question.
Are you saying that the Wichita Public Schools should have unlimited access to as much tax payers money as possible? Are you saying there shouldn’t be a limit or accountability of results?
Joe, Isn’t that a tad bit harsh? You seem to presume that all teachers belong to Al Shanker’s organization (he is deceased)and subscribe to everything he ever said. Shame on you for being so judgmental. What exactly is a “local Teacher Union shop” by the way? it is obvious that you have been misinformed about the mission of the various teacher professional organizations.
Correct if I am wrong on this one Joe, I think that Bond Issue was for upgrading and building new facilities.
Joe, Joe, Joe…………………………..define “accountability of results”.
I really love this one:”Teacher Unions are not concerned about teaching children. They are just concerned about getting to work as less (this is not MY grammar) as possible, while getting paid as much as possible.”
Isn’t this the American way of life anyway? What is good for capitalism must be good for teachers too, huh? Or……..is there a double standard at work here?
Apophis. Yes! You are right. The Bond Issue was for upgrading and building new schools for USD 259, a.k.a Wichita Public Schools. It was to help the overcrowding of exisiting facilities and help eliviate an enviroment that might deter children from reaching their full potential in an education enviroment, such as uncomfortable tempreatures due to lack of climate control systems in some locations.
Apophis! Everything we debate is in generalities. We all assume that what ever we debate on an issue we are not including every single individual in a group.
Sure! There are some great teachers out there and there are plenty of teachers that refuse to be representated by unions such as the AFT or the NEA or their respected local chapeters that repesent them in a given geographical or Unified School District area.
The unions themselves do not reflect the attitudes or beliefs of teachers that actually teach. People that get into teaching (although the drop out rate is over 50% in 5 years), they do it because they want to and love to teach.
The Unions don’t teach and the people that run and operate the unions don’t teach. The people that sit in the office at the local USD 259 Union office haven’t teached in years. They sit in an office all day and try to recruit new teachers into the unions or field complaints from teachers with the threat of lawsuits to the school board. That’s all they do.
Accountability! It’s called the NCLB Act. Google it for the full text of the act.
Apophis! Do you have anything else?
and…Grow up dude!
Joe………….actually, it wasn’t me that brought up the whole union thing. That was NE Heartbreaker. I do know however, that you are totally incorrect about the teacher’s professional organization (what YOU call the “Union”) here in Wichita. There are 4 officers, of which 2 do not actually teach at this time (The organization membership willingly pays for this). The president has been out of the classroom for about 6 years, but was an accomplished educator in his own right. I believe he was a Fulbright Scholar. The current VP was in the classroom up until this year and put in over 35 years of dedicated service to the students of this area. He was the teacher of two of my children and I think very highly of him as well. The other two officers still teach full time. One is a kindergarten teacher and the other is a nationally recognized science teacher.
To make the statement that “They sit in an office all day and try to recruit new teachers into the unions or field complaints from teachers with the threat of lawsuits to the school board” shows your intense bias against professional organizations.
The assumption that teacher’s organizations are only interested in the welfare of teachers is just ludicrous.
Joe, my boy…………you are a full fledged member of the GOPcult if you think “NCLB” is real accountability. YOU need to grow up and learn to think on your own.
I see you first said
“It is clearly obvious to me that individuals such as heartlander really don’t see the “big picture”. The key to long term economic growth is the education of our youth,” AFTER I made the latter argument a few weeks earlier in WEBLOG.
Then you labeled me as a “wacko fundamentalist”, with zero grounds, and then retracted that after I disproved your factless assertion. You said charter schools are NOT public schools, which is news to every INFORMED PERSON, since charter schools ARE legislatively DEFINED as public schools. You refuse to admit that you (or your wife) are a public school teaher or former teacher-now administrator, despite the fact that you frame “fairness” as lobbying Topeka legislators for more money for Wichita schools, challenging me if I’M doing this. You challenged me and got an accurate response. You failed to respond to my fair challenge.
Conclusions:
1. You said I didn’t see the “big picture” me and then copycatted my own argument to “prove” your false characterization.
2. You labeled me as a “wacko fundamentalist” and when I disporved your contention, you responded, “You are not a run-of-the mill fundamentalist. You are even more dangerous, you are one the extreme wackos who want an aristocratic class in this country. ” I drive a Toyota, after trading in an 8 year old GM vehicle last year. So does my spouse.
3. You can’t debate, yet you want to take up political issues that require political debate.
So let’s see, you dream up false charges, without foundation. When they are proved untrue, you make up new charges without any foundation, which are totally false. You don’t want to debate, because in your mind, debate doesn’t work. In the larger world outside your mind, there is a word for you, Apophis, God of Darkness (your chosen name, not mine). It is called DEMOGOGUE.
Since you declined to state you are a public school teacher or not, even though your statements indicate you or your wife is, you force us to surmise that you or your wife is. You are exercising public school teacher ‘logic’ which is really anti-rational. Rational deduction isn’t that hard. If you are unable to practice rationalism. it means you can’t teach it. That’s really bad, bad new for your classroom victims for your students who would like to step out of your classroom, and not hear your anti-rationiomal propaganda, but you won’t let them, will you? Because you are an “authority”. Actually the correct word is an “authoritarian”. That’s really great. Except you haven’t convinced taxpayers why they should pay you anything. Go to Topeka. Maybe some legislators there will pay you a stipend out of their own pockets, instead of paying you OTHER people’s money. See how much you can get, U so smaht. Life is great being a parasite, no?
Do you feel better know heartlander? All of that typing and you still say nothing. You think you know so much about education, but in reality you know little. You think that if I don’t play the “game” by your rules, I’m irrational. Whatever dude. I do not owe you an explanation for anything. You still don’t understand how democracy works I see. Maybe you need to go back to high school and take US Government again. Be sure your exam is essay of course.
Just another fundie, a member of of the GOPcult. You and your kind are the real parasites in our society.
Apophis, here is what YOU said,
heartlander
“What do YOU know about true debate? It seems to me that all you do is spout rhetoric. True debate consists of taking an affirmative and negative side of an issue. All you ever do is spew your opinion as fact. You are irrelevant.”
Since you can’t debate, I guess you are saying that YOU ARE IRRELEVANT. Arncha?
Apophis, you have done hardly anything except bash here. Offer your views and solutions rather than just sling mud so points can be debated.
I’ll start by asking a couple of questions.
1) Do Kansas schools need more, less, or no change in funding?
2) What can be done to continue to work towards raising student achievement?
You mistake “can’t” for “will not play by your rules”. If in your narrow mind that makes ME irrelevant, well……… they do have medications to help you. Truthfully, I’ve never seen the word “Arncha” in any dictionary. Maybe NE Heartbreaker gave you too much credit saying that maybe you were a junior college professor!
JeffYou are correct, I have been slinging mud………this arrogant heartlander has been offensive towards public education and I do not like his style or tone. I believe the claims that YOU are a public school teacher, so maybe we can have some rational discussion. To answer your questions:
1. More than one study has shown that more money is needed in Kansas Schools.
2. student achievement, unfortunately has been equated with test scores. I refuse to acknowledge that as the sole mission of public education. We need to have the best teachers in our classrooms with the resources to bring students up to higher levels of learning.
Satisfied?
OK, then to carry on with your answer to #2, should we or should we not be exploring performance-assessed project based learning as a more widely used tool in teaching? Should we or should we not work towards programs that are more focused on the needs, desires, and gifts of each individual student? Or should we continue with the current one-size-fits-most system that leaves way too many students uninterested in and disengaged from learning (regardless of intellectual ability) and fosters and perpetuates the “do just enough to get by” mentality. I want to see my students learn how to analyze, interpret, reason, or more succinctly THINK in creative ways to solve problems, and drill and kill methodologies just don’t do that. We in education need to always be reviewing how things might be done differently in order to get better results and not get stuck in the nice, easy status quo. Which, by the way, is a very easy trap to fall into. “We’ve always done it that way” is not a phrase I like to hear as a reason for doing things.
Its pretty easy and not as time consuming to be an adequate teacher. Being, or striving to be, a great teacher is a genuine mission, and one that requires time and dedication that is often beyond description. I do believe that the majority of teachers out there fall into the great or striving to be great category, but are weighed down by the shackles of an archaic system. How can we free them?
Apophis, you’ve already totally discredited yourself. You make unsubstantiated accusations that prove themselves to be false. You say your opponent doesn’t know how to debae, without substantiation, and then when your opponent tries rational debate, you prove yourself incompetent. No problem. You are a DINOSAUR. You are a obsolete.
Here is a question, see if you can answer: Why should taxpayers pay for your services?
Jeff, I love you. But I I’ve never met you. I love you because you SEE things, and UNDERSTAND things. Apophis and his/her kind want ot perpetuate an obsolete version of class struggle, in which the dominated classes can never be free.
Jeff, you may eventually teach in a voucher school, either public or private, You may go to a public charter school. Or teach in a “regular” public school. Do you want to teach children what you know best for -3-4 hours a day. I sense that you’d LOVE this.
This is something that the dinosaur Apophis doesn’t “get”:”I LOVE this. My students love this. We’re CONNNECTING.”
Apohis doesn’t understane education. Like when you have student do a blackboard presentation, and as you watch, your mind says to yourself, “No, No, No….Nice job!” You’ve taught you student really well, and then he/she then blows your mind.
Someone said that taxpayer money should never go to private or religious schools.
Public money does that when considering college students, doesn’t it? Someone who receives a federal loan, grant, or whatever, can use it at any type of college, can’t they?
Accountability in K-12 education will arrive when any parent who is not satisfied with the education their child is receiving can change to a different school. Unless the family has a pretty high income, that’s not the case today.
Heartlander –> Let me ask you some questions:
(1) Are you in favor of allowing the Kansas Senate to choose the Justices to sit on the Kansas Supreme Court?
(2) Are you not a product of Kansas public schools?
(3) Are you a white male who attends Central Christian Church on North Rock Road?
(4) Will you pack heat?
(5) Do you actually think gays will try to wed in Kansas?
(6) Will ‘Scruffies Law’ make you stop and think twice before torturing an animal?
(7) Do you trust Les Donovan and believe that he will sell you your new Pontiac for less?
(8) Would you work for 30k/year with a Master’s Degree?
(9) Could you reach and teach a child in spite of his/her background, home life or underlying poverty?
If you answered ‘YES’ to any of these questions, then you are a nut-job. Do something worthwhile with your time. Instead of wasting hours on this Blog, join Operation Southwind.
NE Heartbreak,you’re kinda irrational, arncha? Let’s take your question #6. If I say yes, that implies before “Scruffies Law” I beat animals, but changed my mind in response to the law. No means I still beat animals. Your question is totally puerile, like “Have you stopped beating you wife, answer yes or no.” You aren’t asking a rational question, are ya?
As for question 8, if I only had a master’s degree I might say no. With a doctoral degree, I would say yes. You don’t “get” the answer do ya? Doesn’t compute in your small mind.
On 9, I have done this, successfully in several cases, unsuccessfully in one case.
You call me a nut-job. Good for you. But many readers here understand that what people say represents what they are.
Gosh you are lucky. I answered some of your questions. As soon as Aphiis answers mine, I will answer all of your questions. I mean I could ask, NE Heartbkreak, are you a public school teacher? Who pays your salary? But let’s take an orderly procedure here. My question to Apohis is first on the table.
Some responses:
First to Jeff………..I am not a proponent to a “one size fits all” approach to education. I too think that students should be led (or pushed) to the higher thinking realm, not just the traditional “drill and kill”. Memorizing the state capitals isn’t necessarily going to make you a problem solver. Teaching the students basic concepts and assigning a more open-ended project to produce a product does require a maturation of critical thinking skills. What critics of the current educational system will not grasp is that students reach a particular class with different backgrounds and experiences. How can a teacher do the proper type of teaching when there are 30+ students in their classes? Some teachers at the middle and high school levels carry a 150-180 student load. Challenging students with higher level thinking lessons requires that the results of these lessons/projects be assessed and feedback given to the students. I would think this type of assessment would consume a bit more time than grading a multiple choice/mark traditional test. Teachers only have so much time in the day. Besides teaching, the days are filled with parental conferencing, completing pointless administrative paperwork, mandated pseudo-”professional development” and just filling in the parent role for some students. How do you decrease the workload to enable teachers to teach the “right way”. You have to hire more teachers, at a competitive salary. How do you hire more teachers? Money. Who controls the money? The Kansas Legislature.The First Amendment to the US Constitution states that “the right of the people……to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”. This is “lobbying”. The process of lobbying is how this extra funding is (or should) be obtained. The current Legislature is more than likely violating a Supreme Court order. That is out of our hands, but we need to let our elected officials know that the are not doing their jobs. One cannot change the system by saying that the system is broken and the teachers need to “fix it”. Change has to come from many angles: societal values, parents’ attitudes, students’ attitudes, legislators’ attitudes and YES teachers’ attitudes as well.
Now…….Jeff, do you consider yourself an “adequate” teacher or a “great” teacher? Are you a member of any professional organizations? Are you National Board Certified?
Now to heartlander……….you are still irrelevant. I’m not wasting my time on you anymore.
NE Heartbreak………….. I like your litmus test, it shows where heartlander is on the political/philosophical spectrum. Be careful though, he only wants to discuss by HIS rules. If you don’t “play by his terms”, you’ll be cast as an ignoramus or better yet a DINOSAUR! NE Heartbreak, you appear to be well educated and knowledgable in both politics and public education. I would surmise that you came up through the public education system and have working class values. It’s no wonder that you are immediately attacked by the Cult when you say something that disagrees with their philosophy. Keep posting Dude!
Government solutions, like providing for the education of children, result in one system that everyone has to use. If you don’t like that system or if it doesn’t meet your needs, for whatever reason, that’s not good for you. And look at what it leads to — all the vitriol, the name-calling, the lobbying, corrupt political processes — all attempts by one group to force their will on others.
When solutions are provided by markets, people have choices. They can, almost always, get what they want without forcing others to go along with them.
This is why I believe government should get out of the business of providing education. School choice through vouchers is a first step, and possibly all that’s required.
KSclassicliberal? I see the “liberal” part of you name is total sarcasm. “School Choice” is here now. If you don’t like the school your children attend, move to an area where you do like the school. Vouchers would channel public dollars into the private sector. That is unacceptable. Education should not be a business to make a profit. The charter school idea might have been a good idea when it was conceived, but it is clear that they perform no better than public schools.
Face it, what you consider “Government schools” are here to stay. Feel free to send your children to private or religious schools, just don’t expect tax dollars to go to these schools. Remember, this was YOUR choice to send your children there.
Aren’t tax dollars spent by students at private and religious colleges?
I don’t favor charter schools. They are probably better than regular public schools, but not something that I prefer as a solution.
The record of our public schools is dismal. It really doesn’t matter what the cause is, be it lack of money, bad parenting, too much spent on administrators, or whatever else.
The problem with public schools is that they are government schools. Government requires, by law, that children attend them, unless they can find a way to go to a private school or homeschool. For many families, these choices are out of their reach unless they choose a religious school, and they may not believe in what the religious school teaches.
Government also requires everyone to pay for the public schools, even though many can’t use their product, and many wish they didn’t have to.
One has to be quite confident — arrogant, I would say — to deny parents the choice of where to send their children to school, especially when the choice forced upon parents is to compel children to attend our present schools with their history of poor performance.
Well-to-do families have school choice. They can afford private school tuition, or they can afford to move to cities or neighborhoods where the schools are better. Poor families don’t have this choice. What is it that prevents our politicians, education bureaucrats, and school boards from realizing this, and doing something to truly help those who need it most?
“Classical liberalism stressed not only human rationality but the importance of individual property rights, natural rights, the need for constitutional limitations on government, and, especially, freedom of the individual from any kind of external restraint.”
Apophis, you said this:
“How can a teacher do the proper type of teaching when there are 30+ students in their classes? Some teachers at the middle and high school levels carry a 150-180 student load. Challenging students with higher level thinking lessons requires that the results of these lessons/projects be assessed and feedback given to the students. I would think this type of assessment would consume a bit more time than grading a multiple choice/mark traditional test. Teachers only have so much time in the day. Besides teaching, the days are filled with parental conferencing, completing pointless administrative paperwork, mandated pseudo-”professional development” and just filling in the parent role for some students. How do you decrease the workload to enable teachers to teach the “right way”. You have to hire more teachers, at a competitive salary. ”
Thank you for reiterating points I made a few weeks ago. Either you read my posts, or you see some things as I do, independently.
Here is the thing AP, go to Topeka and get your extra $75 mil. How do you think this limited action is going to stem the 50% young-teacher egress from schools? If we do the math, will the $75M even make up for the wasted cost of training and losing young teachers?
What fundamental changes do you see the $75M bringing? An improved version of same-old same-old? Of course it will enable incremental improvements. But same-old per se doesn’t work, not because it doesn’t have enough money, and not because it can’t do the mission assigned it, but because it was designed for an industrial economy that is being outsourced to the Third World. To wit, what you teach, and the system that you understand is terrific in China, because China is undergoing Industrial Revolution II.
Public education needs more money. But it needs reinvention in order for more money to translate into educating kids for 21st century adult lives. Otherwise more money is just wasted money.
You need to get out more,to expand your horizons. Wichita is a quintessential Rust Belt city, anchored by a single industry that will not be here in 30-40 years. Aviation isn’t the only game in town, but it is the only game in town that brings in the payroll dollars Wichita needs to avoid implosion.
Maybe something like my proposal for nano-manufacturing, or Ben Huie’s proposal for composite-product-manufacturing can work. As I said in another thread recently, instead of collecting $70M in sales taxes for 3-4 years for an arena, we should be taxing ourselves $70M annually for decades for integrated education, research, and commercial-applications-startupseeding.
In other words, some kids can earn bachelor’s and advanced degrees in composite science and engineering, some kids can get vocational training in the field. Recruited and current professors can do research that they and their former students use to launch start-up companies that utilize the research knowledge to make products that can be sold to the outside world, generating a long-term stream of cash-inflow to the city. Research should also be translatable into millions of dollars annually in federal research grants and private R&D contracts, as well as consultation fees for professors.
I attended the Visioneering conference on education. Panel leaders said that WSU’s research underfunding is impossible to solve, because KU and KSU will always get the lion’s share of dollars. True, if you let this happen. Wichitans are going to have to pay out-of-pocket if they want something Topeka won’t give them.
Few Wichitans understand this at the current time, but they can be educated. The federal government created Wichita’s modern aviation industry 7 decades ago. But an externally-devised gift like this is not going to be delivered to south central Kansas again.
Wichitans, on the whole, have a passive ethos. Somebody somewhere else is smarter than locals. Hence outsiders must dream up ideas to provide employment to Wichitans, and deliver payroll dollars. Wichita in return provides reliable workers. Wichita’s leaders have historically been labor brokers.
We see debilitating passivity, lethargy and an un-progressive attitude in education here. The Advanced Placement Program has been in operation since the mid-1950’s. Overland Park and Lawrence began offering AP classes in the 1960’s. Why doesn’t USD 259 have a 20-AP-course magnet school? It is 2006. There has been a half-century to develop one.
To desegregate East High, the district went for an IB programme, rather than AP. The concept was: “Let’s draw academically talented white and Asian students to East High. We’ll obstruct AP development at Northwest High, because that would undermine integration.”
Why was IB chosen over AP? Because it was HARD to develop an AP program. There were resources available ranging from experienced teachers and administrators in JoCo and WSU faculty who would have been more than happy to share their knowledge and provide guidance, to College Board-recommended (not mandatory) curriculum outlines and textbook lists. But USD 259 had to reach out to connect with these resources, study hard, and ultimately design its own AP program.
Instead of doing this networking, legwork and creative designing, USD 259 gave a contract to IBO to provide a turnkey product: IBO had a preset subject syllabus for every course, it trained teachers to teach the syllabi, it did periodic site inspections to ensure that teachers weren’t deviating from the IBO curriculum’s pre-set subject matter and methods of teaching classes, it required teachers to submit classroom tests to IBO for grading. In some cases it overruled teacher-issued classroom grades when it found them not to IBO overseers’ liking. (The intent was to ensure a high correlation between classroom grades and IB test scores.)
These things were the ANTITHESIS of AP. The only tests that the College Board gives are post-course AP exams. Students who have completed AP classes are free to either take or not take exams. Actually, IB students and anyone else can take AP exams.
If the classroom grade average for a given school’s AP U.S. History class is 3.0 and the class-average AP score is 4, while in another school giving the same AP course generates a 3.7 GPA with an average AP score of 3, the College Board doesn’t overrule teachers and change kids’ classroom grades.
Why is this important? Because AP was designed to prepare kids to do well in AMERICAN colleges and universities. KU, KSU and Baker universities are College Board members. Public high schools and districts in JoCo, Lawrence and Manhattan, as well as private Bishop Miege, are affiliate members.
The IBO has ZERO connection to ANY institution of higher education in the US, and only two higher-ed connections in the developed nations (both in Great Britain).
IB was originally developed as a means to educate the children of diplomats, who spoke a panoply of languages. Instruction was standardized to either French or English, depending on location.
Because most children taking IB spoke a language other than French or English at home, the curriculum was less-difficult than curricula of traditional private schools taught in students’ home nations. (The original IB schools were private. The UN IB-diploma school in NYC charges ca. $20,000 tuition.) The IB curriculum is essentially designed to ensure that its diploma-recipients meet public-university entrance standards in Europe.
IB was later envisioned to be potentially useful for teaching minority students in American public schools, and this has remained its primary function in America, although it can be found in a small number of suburban public high schools and private schools. Its functional niche is between a standard high school level and AP level. It is not an accident that the largest IB programme is in Wichita, closely followed by Kansas City, Kansas. (A program at Shawnee Mission East High is moribund, as all the kids there want to take AP courses.)
IB achieved near-parity with AP as AP had gotten watered down, but AP subject matter has been revamped to be more rigorous, in response to American university and college faculty demands. The National Research Council issued a blue-ribbon-commission report ca. 2002 finding serious deficiencies in both IB and AP math and science courses. The College Board responded by beefing up not just m&s courses, but ALL AP courses. The IBO in contrast said there was no need for course changes, because the courses had been revamped a few years earlier. Actually, the truth was that IBO was a small, poor, grant-dependent NGO that was barely breaking even. It didn’t have the money to revamp IB course content. Moreover, with no American higher-ed connections it couldn’t get American university and college faculty to do course revision, as the College Board did. (Of note, there are only ca. 400 IB schools in America, 30 private. There are 16,000 AP schools, 3000 of them private.)
Schools in Wichita are modeled on the core principle of preparing a reliable labor pool for distant-headquartered and local businesses to employ.
This concept, effective for decades, has now lost its utility. Why? Because GM or Nissan isn’t going to build a car plant here to utilize aircraft-builders’ skills. The new “air taxi” aviation pioneers looked at Wichita and said, “Not what we’re looking for”. They went to New Mexico and Colorado.
It would have been wonderful if Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen had said, “Let’s plant Eclipse in Wichita,” but it didn’t happen. If you can get to Albuquerque and spend a few days there, you’ll understand why. UNM gets as much federal science and engineering research funding as KU and KSU combined. 40% of Albuquerque African Americans have bachelors or better degrees, compared to 25% of Wichita whites. Albuquerque has a fully-integrated Hispanic community, which is important because this will enable Eclipse to develop manufacturing capabilities in lower-cost Mexico, using Spanish-fluent Anglo and Hispano-American managers. This company has not been put together by dummies.
I have been accused of being an elitist. I realize that America is a multi-class society. Eclipse Aviation is the product of some very wealthy men, including CEO Vern Raburn, a retired Msft exec who dreamed this up. Mr. Raburn has made Albuquerque his home. He is providing well-paying jobs to several hundred working-class men and women.
Ultimately, the company will become a leader in charitable community activities, and it will give college scholarships to the children of Eclipse workers, and other bright Albuquerque kids who might otherwise not be able to afford college. The company will promote more research development at UNM.
If one of Mr. Raburn’s kids attended Stanford, would that make Mr. Raburn an elitist?
Mr. Raburn grew up middle class. Now he is using his wealth and genius to benefit a city. He went to a public high school in Los Angeles, when that city’s schools were excellent. He gained invaluable knowledge in high school.
Wichita isn’t even close to having a school, either public or private, that identifies and challenges highly-gifted youngsters who are like Mr. Raburn once was. It isn’t a matter of elitism to invest in them, it is a matter of wisdom.
If Wichita were to build the WSU-proposed public charter math and science academy that the superintendent and BOE panned, it wouldn’t help my kids, because my nest is empty. They’re not coming back, so it wouldn’t help my grandkids. But I’d be more than happy to pay my tax-share of the cost of a public charter math and science academy. I’d very likely do volunteer tutoring there, or maybe even teach a couple of extended-period classes without charge. Would that make me an elitist?
Achieving excellence is completely different from achieving “pretty good”, “good enough”, and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
When I started college, I had typical high school study skills. I bombed calculus. Why? Because I didn’t have study stamina. Forty-five minutes of daily mathwork didn’t cut it like it did in high school. I had to learn to read and write math for 4-hour periods. I was an observer. I noticed that two A-students across the hall seemed to study all the time. They weren’t partying like the rest of us.
I had to learn to take notes, review them as soon as possible after lectures, such as during lunch, and make amendments while the profs’ voices were still in my head. I ultimately learned to format them as though they were lecture notes. When profs’ were speaking, and their eyes looked down at their notes, I made sure to copy down what they then said. I unconsciously learned to listen to their voice inflections, and write down things that their voices indicated were important, even if the inflection was subtle.
I read my notes every night. I had Chinese-American, African-American and white friends. Was I an elitist? Were they? I suppose. We were a group that spent up to 40 hours in class, lab and library research-training, and then spent 25 more hours studying in our apartments, fraternity houses and dorm rooms. Maybe that was elitism. It didn’t stop me from helping some struggling students with their problem sets, though. But attaining excellence per se, is perhaps a kind of elitism, because most people don’t want to do the work required.
If dollars are being disbursed in Topeka, Wichita should get a fair share. But if anyone thinks that the additional $75 mil is going to make Wichita schools shining stars, they’ve been smokin somethin.
BTW, I’ve taught in several realms, including several years teaching graduate and post-doctoral students.
I would love to work at KU and access their database on public and private (mostly parochial) high school graduates. My hunch is that the latter very likely have higher graduation rates than the former.
I went to a parochial high school. About half my class went directly to 4-year colleges and universities, mostly PUBLIC. The vast majority of them earned bachelor’s degrees within 5 years. Many other students went to JuCo, then transferred and earned the bachelor’s degrees.
I’ve met a few young adults who went to KU, but dropped out, because they weren’t able to handle a university course regimen, and others who started WSU full-time, but are now working on 8-10 year bachelor’s degrees, being enrolled part-time.
These are intelligent people. Is it fair to THEM that their high school educations have limited, and in some cases, derailed their higher-ed aspirations?
Every year, several thousand Kansas college and university students take college algebra. Many of them have B’s on their high school transcripts for algebra II. Their parents, they, and often government have to pay money for classes that the high schools say the students have already not only passed, but earned good grades in.
Schools are imposing a tyranny of low expectations. Struggling minority students are far from the only victims. It’s white kids too. And Asian kids. It’s smart kids, and very smart kids, and exceptionally smart kids.
The causes are multifactorial. One of them is that teacher-training imposes a tyranny of low expectations. For example, the KU School of Education’s “Mathematics Major”, which suffices to qualify students to teach secondary math, IS NOT THE SAME as the KU CLAS Mathematics bachelor’s degree. The former degree’s mathematics course list ends at junior-year mathematics.
This is true for all science “majors” (bio, chem, physics) as well. Moreover, a student only has to earn a 2.5 GPA in his or her major courses to earn a teaching certificate. That’s a really low standard. Even a B (3.0-3.3) means that in a given subject, the person has substantial knowledge gaps. Tack that on to two-few courses, and you have a state of far less than subject proficiency.
The problem for secondary education is, an education bachelor’s degree with a field “major” is different from most bachelor’s degrees. In most majors, students study a single field for 4 years, along with other subjects. By late junior and senior year, most students are taking 2 classes concurrently in their degree fields. An education degree may involve 4 years of education courses, if a student chooses to take them, but the academic-subject “major” gets short-shrift: it is extremely difficult for the ed student to take 4 full years of an academic-field’s courses, and impossible to take 2 academic-field courses concurrently.
It is utterly impossible for ed students who are going to teach science to spend 30 hours a week in senior-year lab research, which is where you begin to understand what science really is. The same is for honors senior thesis work in the humanities and social sciences.
Thus, the so-called “major” is not a true university major, but a teachers college invention. This creates a severe disconnect between high school and university standards that adversely affects not only students, but taxpayers’ wallets, because the cost of educating a public university student for 6 years is taxpayer subsidized, as even the student who pays full tuition out of pocket is only paying half the actual instructional cost. Extended stay in college also costs the state’s economy by virtue of kids who could be working full-time as college graduates earlier, and contributing more to our economy and our tax rolls.
The state could solve this problem by redesigning secondary teacher-training into a 6-year double-degree regimen, one degree in education, and the other in one’s planned field of teaching. Then the universities could grant degrees based on the normal 2.0-minimum GPA standard, but only certify for secondary teaching graduates who have earned 3.6 or higher GPAs in their chosen academic-field courses completed in junior and senior year. In other words, you wouldn’t dun students for getting lower-division course grades that reflect the struggle to adjust to a to a far more challenging environment than they experienced in high school, you instead judge their later performance only.
Full-ride low-interest loan programs should be implemented. For graduates who then teach 5 years, the loans should be forgiven by the state, or if the teachers go to private schools, these schools should pay off the loans, or some part thereof. In essence, an all-costs-covered program would enable ed students to focus on their studies, rather than simultaneously juggle classes and jobs, and thus fail to gain high subject proficiency.
Other measures could be implemented, for example requiring secondary school teaching candidates to take and score 750 minimum on the SAT Subject tests in the subjects they will teach. These are high school tests taken after 11th/12th grade classes have been completed. You can’t teach a subject unless you know it. An alternative would be to require a 650 or higher score on GRE subject tests.
Why should these things be done? Because high school is increasingly becoming a bridge to college. A high school diploma is no longer an adequate terminal degree.
When hs teachers are required to successfully navigate a difficult university pathway, then they will begin to insist on changes that make it possible for them to prepare their students to complete the same journey, and in some cases, even longer ones. In many of our nation’s public universities, 25-40% of their students are going directly to grad school.
BTW, one of the reasons that we know there is a severe disconnect between K-12 and higher ed can be found in Apophis’s statement:
“Joe Williams………………Yes you have a choice to send your children to private school…….but at your own expense, tax dollars should never go to the private or religious sectors for education.”
Find a professor at KU, KSU, WSU, ESU, PSU or FHSU who agrees with this. They have no objection whatsoever to taxpayer monies being given to private colleges and universities for education. Moreover, consider Duke and Northwestern Universities. Methodist. They both get over $200 million annually in federal research dollars. Johns Hopkins was founded by a Quaker who hired a Congregationalist who was an ordained minister. It was never sectarian, but it has always been private. Today JHU gets more than $800 million in annual federal funding for research. BTW, the preceding figures don’t even include federal and state dollars that they receive for providing medical care, in state-of-the-art facilities where young people are being educated.
I love public education at its best, being a beneficiary of it at its best. But mediocre or worse isn’t best. The illogical hubris of mediocre K-12 public educators is flabbergasting .
“We own the public school system. You parents don’t. We’ll operate it the way WE WANT. Now give us your money, we’re not doing this for free.”
If public education collapses, it won’t be because of people like me who criticize it, it will be because of people like Apophis who plug their ears and stick their head in the sand. Apophis, ignore reality at your own peril.
The money that goes to public education comes entirely from the private sector. The money gets channeled and filtered through government agencies, but its original sources are private. This isn’t rocket science. So, the private sector cannot do what it wants to do with its money? Helloooo. Earth calling Apophis. Earth calling Apophis. Come in Apophis.
I am in favor of public education. But you need to learn what accountability is. Public teaching is not whatever YOU the teacher want to do, it is what society-at-large tells you what to do. Society-at-large has been negligent in giving you new-mission commands. You’ve proved that you don’t know how to develop a 21st century-society-serving mission. You are a servant. If you deny this and alienate your employer, you can look in the mirror to see who is responsible.
You don’t like NCLB. Too bad. I hate it too, but you and your predecessors diddled around for 30 years, so now you have a crappy federal mandate.
But let’s be honest, shall we? You and your fellow public educators HAVE A CHOICE. Nothing has been forced on you. If you give up federal Title I funds, YOU CAN COMPLETELY IGNORE NCLB. But YOU WANT THE MONEY, so you’ve decided to teach to a really f’d- up test because THE MONEY IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN DOING THE BEST TEACHING JOB POSSIBLE. Nice “compromise”. Sweeeet.
You all are shooting yourselves in the foot. Of course, you blame the private sector people who make bullets as the cause of your wounds.
If vouchers happen, which I doubt they will in Kansas for at least 15 years, they should be need-based. Even paying a small fraction of a child’s education cost is a worthwhile exercise, because it causes parents to VALUE their kids’ education, and encourage their kids to do well.
Here are some real-experience anecdotes. A 5 foot 10 kid with okay, but not great ball-handling skills gets to play on his school’s Class A basketball team. More than 60% of the students play some sport, often not all that well. Inconceivable in a public school. 15% of a graduating class does yearbook and newspaper work. Nearby public, 3%. A Thanksgiving food drive to help the poor rounds up 90% of the sophomore class to get, package and deliver the goods. The nearby public school, although far larger, can’t even get the same NUMBER of sophomores to participate, much less the same percentage. Going to physics lab on a Saturday and performing beyond-textbook experiments. The teacher says, “Just be careful. When you are done, put everything away, and don’t forget to turn out the lights.”
The rant and hew of public educators over vouchers is demonstrative of sheer ignorance of something never experienced, and maybe jealousy as well. Private schools offer tremendous participatory opportunities. You don’t have to be able to dunk a basketball to learn TEAMWORK. You don’t have to run a 55 second 400 to love doing a 1600 relay with three other girls. You don’t have to be 6-4 and 230 pounds to protect your quarterback and develop bonds with classmates that public schools don’t allow you to experience.
In private schools you can make human connections that are impossible in public schools. Public schools are impersonal by design. They minimize extracurricular participation by design. For example, they could have six football teams, but they don’t. The public educators yak about how great public education is, while being totally ignorant of the fact that it denies most students opportunities to learn how to work together in peer relationships for communal goals, which are highly important for adolescents’ healthful maturation.
OMG heartlander, do you know how full of **** you are? You ramble on and on and on. The problem is that you say nothing of consequence. I know (apparently you do not) that NSF dollars, to name one source, fund university research. That is a far cry from a K-12 school that everyone has the opportunity to attend. Do you think you can boast about your alleged accomplishments any more? You are really so ignorant of the real face of public education. If you haven’t been in a classroom (well, variety of classrooms) in the last 10 years, you have no idea what is going on.
If you think you know so much about education, why aren’t you actually doing something about it? Can you achieve something by constantly writing tomes on a blog?Again, heartlander shows his irrelevance.
What is going on is that the dinosaur is dying. It’s struggling to stay alive, but its time has passed.
REINVENT pub ed. I’m giving you some ideas. Take them up. Take up other ideas that now seem strange to you because you haven’t encountered them before. I think you are probably pretty young. (Young is 40 or under for me.) You have a lot of time ahead of you. You have a lot to learn. What I mean is you’re going to be living in a very different world soon, so absorb as much knowledge as you can.
In many states charter schools are multiplying because public educators not all that different from you have concluded charters are better than vouchers. Charters are public schools, albeit different from what you grew up in, teach in, and understand.
Do you have a problem evolving? Unless you are in the last decade of your life, YOU NEED TO EVOLVE. What part of “Public education NEEDS TO CHANGE?” don’t you understand? You may say, “It works for ME, I don’t see a problem,” but it isn’t working for the people who PAY YOUR SALARY AND BENEFITS or for many of the CHILDREN who are under your leadership. For example, if you want to be a good teacher, you need to have 2 hours minimum with each class of students. You need to have no more than 60 students total, so you don’t have to use made-elsewhere preformatted tests. You need time to read essays, and sit down with students to discuss their papers, and then have them rewrite them, so they learn the writing process. You may need to stay after school to do this. If you have kids of your own and you’re supposed to watch them after school, bring them to the after-school sessions.
If you love teaching, but feel shackled by the system, the options are: 1. Go private and build a new school. TIS is run by ex-public teachers. 2. Lobby the district, state capitol and press for NEW public education, completely different from Industrial Age public education. Offer salary cuts in exchange for more public school funding for CHILDREN. Identify waste in ADMINISTRATION, and TAKE COMMAND OF YOUR CLASSROOMS. Do you really want NCLB? How BRAVE are you? Only YOU can determine this.
What are you smoking this fine afternoon heartlander?
Unlike what you are smoking, my “weed” is totally legal. It’s sold at Dillon’s, Wal-Mart and QT. : -)
heartlander, sorry to interrupt an extremely fascinating dialogue you all are having, but I have 2 questions.
1. Would you mind posting your 4th grade teacher’s name? And where did you attend school 4th-6th grade? In Wichita? And if so, which school? (I ask because I was a guinea pig, too, back in the early 60’s.)
2. Would you teach my daughter math? ::grin:: Or me, even?