*sigh* I suck.

[agilebrit]

Writing? What is this "writing" of which you speak?

I have words. And verily, they sucketh mightily. So, what am I doing to avoid writing? Hunting for free images on the web for my business cards, because my clipart collection that I actually paid money for has no shiny anteaters whatsoever. Lame ones, it abounds with. And I've discovered that I can't draw an anteater to save my frigging life. Yay.

And the ads opposing school vouchers in Utah are beginning to piss me off.

"No accountability!" they say. Well, see, that assumes that parents are stupid. No, there's no accountability to the public school system. That's kind of the POINT. Why should there be accountability to a school system that's failing in its most fundamental job? But there's certainly accountability to parents, because the schools that they send their kids to with the vouchers are going to have to prove themselves to the parents. Otherwise the parents will yank them out and send them elsewhere. Because they can.

"No accreditation!" they cry. Why, there's not even a requirement in the law that the teachers in those private schools have so much as a college degree! Yeah, so what? It's not like you people with all your learnin' and edumacashun are doing us a lick of good. In fact, if you were halfway decent at your jobs, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Why are you so threatened by a hint of competition? Wait, don't answer that. We know why.

"It's an experiment!" Er, yes. Why is this a bad thing? After all, it's apparently okay for you to "experiment" on our children with "new math" and "whole language." Thing is, in this case, the experiment puts power in the hands of parents. Explain to me again why this is a bad thing?

So, yes, you people opposed to vouchers (read: the NEA). Your message is coming through loud and clear. You think I'm stupid and incapable of making decisions in the best interest of my own child. Gotcha.

Er. That turned ranty. Sorry about that, only, um, not really. A commercial on TV hit me just as I was writing the part about writing and I found myself flipping it the bird. Which probably makes me rude and immature.

Comments

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

I think everyone without an agenda can agree that the public school system is a mess. If vouchers can give some parents options, I'm all for it.

Our school board had community meetings wanting to explain their need for more funds to be had with a local sales tax. I attended the meetings and listened to all the points made: we must have more money for technology, to attain good teachers, to retain good teachers. I lifted my hand.

"What about the poor teachers?"

"We need money to attract good teachers and to keep the excellent ones."

"I understand that. I want good teachers, and I think they are worth a good salary. What about the bad teachers we currently have?"

"With the extra money we can hire good teachers and retain the good ones we have."

"I understand that, but what do you plan to do with the bad teachers?"

I was ignored. My son suffered through a terrible teacher in math at the high school level. When I talked to a friend, another teacher, he laughed and said that she had started in grade school, but she was so terrible, she had been moved to the middle school. She couldn't function there either, so she was sent to high school where it was assumed the students were old enough to work around her.

Rant away. I am angry that teachers are forced to deal with classrooms of disruptive, dangerous juvenile delinquents and receive no help from the administration or backup from the parents. I'm angry at a system that spends six years hammering away at sex education and misses teaching children how to read or write. I'm angry that achievement is ignored because it might hurt someone else's self esteem. I am downright disgusted that a child can graduate from high school and receive a diploma and be less educated than a junior high student a century ago.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Wow... so rather than the firing she so richly deserved, that teacher in effect got promoted! And yet here they are, whining about accountability. The irony, it burns.

All they're worried about here is losing their power. I think that private schools actually have more accountability, because they're not unionized and can therefore FIRE incompetent teachers. And the NEA and the UEA are just frosted by that.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

Our children attended a private Christian school for their elementary years. I saw teachers mentored who needed help. When one young man couldn't or wouldn't change his abrasive and demeaning style, he was fired. I don't see the same accountability in public schools. If a teacher is incompetent, everyone knows and nothing is done.

As for accountability, have an unbiased testing of the vouchered and public school children. If the vouchered children show they aren't being taught the required material, then steps can be taken. I am willing to say that the public school would not want this to happen, because the vouchered students would hand them their fannies in a hat.

When our children were attending Christian school, I was forever warned by people that they weren't receiving a quality education. I was told it would be so very difficult for them to enter college--they would struggle and be behind their peers. It did cause me to worry, but I knew they were learning fantastic amounts of material and skills. When we switched over to public school for middle school, we were able to assess how much their private education had harmed them. Our children were far superior educationally to their peers. Their education did hurt them, in a sense, because they had to coast through middle school and high school. They both admit that high school was a waste of time. It is only now, in college, that they are challenged and feel as though they are learning something. Last semester, they both made all As. My son told me today that he is concerned he will be making a couple of Bs this semester, but this is his third semester of 21 credit hours, and he is taking 400 level courses.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

As for accountability, have an unbiased testing of the vouchered and public school children.

You and I both know that this isn't about accountability, though. Classic straw man argument. And it's hilarious how prejudiced people are about home and Christian schools, when they've been demonstrated over and over again to be vastly superior to the public ones. But the prejudice remains because we've got it so ingrained in us that parents "just aren't qualified" to teach their kids...and we all know how ignernt [sic] them Christian folk are.

That's a serious load he's taking! But it's excellent that he's pushing himself. I wish I had.

[fierynotes.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have to agree with New Math. I was taught it in school, but my grandmother was also a Math teacher, and at one time she explained to me how Old Math worked. I'm glad I learned New Math instead -- Calculus would have been a lot more tedious without it.

I don't know what "Whole Language" is. Gimme a hint?

Personally, I'm against vouchers, and in favor of overhauling public schools... but I may be biased. (I don't remember the story myself, as I was in first grade at the time, but I was apparently yelled at and reduced to tears for writing in cursive instead of printing, and a signed note was sent home with me, instructing my parents to prevent me from learning at home because I was getting too far ahead of the class. My parents managed to get this teacher sacked... but they had to go to the Principal, then the Superintendent, and then threaten to go to the media. And let's face it, the teacher was stupid enough to sign a note demanding that I not be allowed to learn.)

(As for flipping the TV off... nothing I haven't done.)

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

I agree that the public schools need a massive overhaul. However, they have no incentive to overhaul themselves, and the teachers' union has such a lock on them that it's unlikely to happen without the pressure of competition from the outside.

In our case, Utah spends about $7,000 per pupil in our schools. The vouchers will give parents (depending on income) somewhere between $500 and $3000 toward sending their kids to a private school. They're always bitching about "overcrowding" (I'm not sure what this means; when I was in school we usually had thirty kids in the classroom, and I think I remember hearing that they think anything over 22 is "overcrowding," but I could be wrong about this) and how we need to spend more. Well, if the parents take their kids to a private school, that will relieve overcrowding AND provide more in the public schools per pupil, because we're not going to spend any LESS. Which sounds like a win to me, but apparently the UEA is threatened by any lessening of their stranglehold on our kids.

"Whole language" is the look-say method of learning that replaced phonics and has given us a nation that's 20% functionally illiterate. The schools are finally figuring out that this doesn't work too well and are slowly trickling back to phonics, but I'm not going to sit around and wait until they get their heads out of their asses. The curiculum I'm using lays out the rules of language in a logical and easy-to-understand way that builds on itself as it goes, and so far we're doing really well. I think it's giving him a really good foundation for later.

I'm actually surprised that the teacher in your case got fired, considering how protected they are by the union. I guess I was lucky going to school and they hadn't started sucking yet. I went into first grade already knowing how to read (Green Eggs and Ham FTW!), and they stuck me in a classroom during the time they were teaching that and let me work on my own...and that followed throughout my schooling. I wasn't always by myself, but at least back then they weren't holding me back because I was ahead of the other kids. We weren't so worried about "self-esteem" back then, and how the other kids would feel if they didn't all progress at the same rate as the slowest kid in the class.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

This is new ground for the NEA how? I swear they seem more intend on being the arbitrators of morality and right thinking they they are on educating children. This is what happens when you threaten a powerful group's power base.

That said, they wouldn't have this position if there weren't so many parents willing to turn their children's moral and social upbringing over to the state. I am blessed to know a sizeable number of good parents, but I know there are a huge number of bad, or just plain overwhelmed ones out there.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not new ground at all. This is just one more brick in the wall of my determination to never ever not ever let these people anywhere near my kid. They forced this issue on us in the first place; the legislature passed a voucher bill and they managed to get enough signatures on an petition to bring it to a ballot in a special election. The union is a powerful animal in this state.

Meanwhile, our "professional" soccer team gets a brand new stadium paid for courtesy of us taxpayers...when they can't even fill up the local college football stadium. Gee, wouldn't it have been better to let them take their team elsewhere (as they threatened) and spent that thirty million dollars on, say...schools? But we couldn't get enough signatures on the petition opposing that, oh no. *growls* But I guess that's a rant for another day.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Oh don't even get me started on sports versus schools. In Texas, football is the state religion and all other concerns must bow to it. As an employee at the state's flagship institution of higher education the situation regularly makes me sick.