You may think that education of our youth is not your responsibility because you don’t have children or your children are grown and no longer at home.
Education is every ones responsibility. Next time you are out walking in a park, take a look at those children around you. Those are our future nurses, police, doctors, mechanics, etc. I don’t know about you but when I am ready for the nursing home I want the best educated person tending to my needs. If I should ever need heart surgery I want the best doctor performing it. When my car breaks down I want the best skilled person working on it. Don’t you?
We take for granted that if our children are going to school and getting A’s & B’s everything is ok. Is it OK that only 79% of Nebraska students graduate from high school and out of that 79% only 32% have enough education to get into college? NO, that is not OK!! We live in a college town that cannot produce students who can go on to college. What do you think is going to happen to our economy if we continue to believe that our current public education is OK?
Lincoln Public Schools website says that “Education systems in the capital city provide employers with a ready supply of skilled personnel.” I wish this statement was 100% true but it is not. Too many of our youth do not even know how to make change while working as a cashier or do not have enough writing skills to fill out a resume. The dropout rate has only increased over the last 10 years. I have not found anything on LPS websites that says how they are going to change the dropout rate or the low scores of our youth in math and science. LPS is run by highly educated individuals, they must know how economics work, so why haven’t they changed?
Education here and across the USA is about the adults, it is about the teachers, it is about tenure, it is about money. LPS website says more about the opportunity it gives to teachers then they do about opportunities they offer to your child. I am not saying all teachers are bad, because there are good teachers out there that want children to get the best education they can give them however, they like our children are stuck in a system that does not work. What incentive does a good teacher have to excel when their pay is the same as the teacher across the hall who says, “I get paid if I teach or not.” The pay is set by the teachers union and it doesn’t allow schools to compensate good teachers. So as a good teacher it can be very frustrating to be working across the hall from a bad teacher who gets paid the same as you for doing less work. One might then ask why do teachers join the union. The answer could very well be that some schools have a contract with a teacher union agreeing to only hire union teachers or when new teachers are hired they are asked and sometime coerced into joining a teachers union.
As parents and tax payers you have a right to know how LPS handles bad teachers. I strongly urge you to find out. I think you will be shocked at what you are told (if you are told anything). Most teachers are protected by a teachers union which has made it almost impossible for a school to get rid of a bad teacher. In short this means if a teacher is verbally or physically abusing your child they are probably going to get away with it. Teachers Unions have been allowed to go beyond their intended purpose and have stretched their arms into politics. As the old saying goes money is power, unions money is part of our city’s education committee. Union money pays to get bad teachers off the hook for giving our children a bad education and our government lets it happen.
When I was in high school I had an English teacher who came to class and told us, “read this book and be quiet”. He would then leave the class room and go to his office to smoke. My parents, including several other parents, wanted the issue dealt with. It never was he continued to teach. That was my freshman year; the teacher was still there when I graduated.
Do you know that Nebraska has been unsuccessful in passing a charter school law? In the last 10 to 12 years there have been a few attempts, but none that have even made it out of the education committee and on to the senate floor for a vote. The bills that have been submitted so far would not have allowed for a strong law that would give the kind of autonomy needed to produce effective charter schools. Why shouldn’t a parent be allowed to choose the best school for their child? Not allowing charter schools is wrong. The number of students enrolled in U.S. charter schools more than tripled from 340,000 to 1.3 million between the school years of 1999-2000 to 2007-2008. As of February 2010, 40 states and the District of Columbia have operating charter schools. So why doesn’t Nebraska allow charter schools as an opportunity for our children?
Charter schools scare the unions because they work, because charter schools are focused on the student and increasing achievement for students. Charter schools also have performance measures for their teachers. However, charter schools can only teach so many students, so they are required by law to hold a lottery every year to fill student slots. A single mom working two jobs, trying to keep her son out of the gangs hopes that luck is on their side and his number will be picked. Getting a good education shouldn’t be the luck of the draw. If charter schools had the kind of money the teachers union does to spread around during election year I am sure they would get a charter school law passed.
Oh I am sure you will hear from the “powers that be” that there is no data out there that proves charter schools work. There is data out there , the government officials and the teachers unions have decided that data doesn’t exist. They have the ostrich mentality of burying your head in the sand. If you can’t see it, it can’t be true.
Large technology and engineer companies have had to look over seas for highly educated individuals because they could not find the skilled labor they need right here in the USA. For the last 30 years educators and law makers have only been concern with the status quo. We need to change our education system. Our world is changing around us and our schools need to change too.
Our children are our future if we don't start giving them the best education possible, then what future do any of us have?
Reference:
http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/
http://www.thecartelmovie.com/
http://www.lps.org/hr/recruitment/our_community.html
http://www.publiccharters.org/node/981
No comments:
Post a Comment