Black Activist Confronts Bill Ayers

[Maggie]

Black Activist Confronts Bill Ayers

Preach on, sister…ShockBand?

[ShockBand]

I just have a few minutes to quick hit after watching the video.

First off, I'm not an admirer of Bill Ayers by any stretch, and she took him to task pretty well. Kudos to her for wanting to help her students find the best opportunities, whether it be a charter school or wherever.

That said, like with any school type, there are great charters, good ones, average ones, and bad ones. Charter schools are getting a lot of play from people like Bill Gates, but we could make every single school in the US a charter school and still not solve our problems. To me, its like the notion that if private schools do a better job, then we just need to privatize all schools and all the problems should be solved. They won't, as privatization wouldn't correlate to success in my opinion. Many private and charter schools are successful due to excellent parental involvement and value of education, and the willingness to let teachers be creative and not shackle them with excessive standardization and top down control. There is a great blog post I came across today by a Canadian teacher, writing about education and standardization: http://www.joebower.org/2011/03/stan...ou-up-but.html

When I taught in the private schools, many people said to me "oh I bet you guys really want vouchers to happen". Wrong. Because we knew well enough that vouchers would come with more governmental requirements and shackles than we would want to deal with. IMHO, if you started pumping public monies via vouchers into private schools, then they cease to be true private schools. In that situation, you end up with state-supported "private" schools, and then run into the issue of what regulations do you place on private schools. Do you put them under the same regulations and requirements as public schools because they are receiving public monies? I would rather see some kind of tax credit for private K-12 tuition, similar to the kind of credit you can now get for college tuition.

I'm all for school choice and mobility within the public realm, which includes public charter schools. There, the playing field is relatively level, though not perfectly level since most charters can be at least somewhat selective with who they accept. My caveat would be that if there is greater freedom of choice, then schools should have a faster path to exiting students who are disruptive.

Gotta run, thanks for the thought-provoking video find!

[Maggie]

I just wanted your thoughts – sorry I have been busy lately and I may have come off as a bit too blunt. You and I agree with regard to government intervention and “top down control” – I don’t feel like getting into the weeds right now (and you make some good points; however, some of the points strike me as practically unworkable).

Maybe the question is: How is true competition created in the education system?

[t7017s]

The same guy that wants other countries to vote for the US pres...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cuba-to-qatar-should-get-to-vote-for-us-president-radicals-ayers-and-dohn-preach-one-world-government-in-lebanon/

[ShockBand]

Briefly put, because I have other work to attend to, creating true competition across the board in all our widely varied school districts in the country is a challenge. It is easier in urban areas, but more of a challenge in the rural settings. The availability of online courses does help, especially in those rural areas (and urban too) in widening access, but there is one service a school provides that gets forgotten. Let's face it, schools are de facto daycare for most families.

More later.

[Maggie]

Briefly put, because I have other work to attend to, creating true competition across the board in all our widely varied school districts in the country is a challenge. It is easier in urban areas, but more of a challenge in the rural settings. The availability of online courses does help, especially in those rural areas (and urban too) in widening access, but there is one service a school provides that gets forgotten. Let's face it, schools are de facto daycare for most families.

More later.

Please continue and I agree. Maybe teaching decisions should be left to the lowest common dominator then. It sounds like to me you are saying our nation, our communities are diverse; therefore, a “one size fits all” approach – even from the State level wouldn’t be efficient.

[ShockBand]

I have just a couple minutes here...

Yes, I think there should be a reasonable amount of latitude at the district and even building level. Barring a complete chucking of our social promotion based grade level system and going to a mastery based system, I would prefer to have from the state level just a very general framework of what is expected per grade level, and let the powers that be, the professionals in the districts and buildings determine how best to do that. What works in Andover may not work in Wichita, and even what works at Wichita NW HS may not work at Wichita West. All standardization does is ensure mediocrity, in schools it leaves precious little room for great things to happen.