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November, 2015

  1. nothing you can do to “fix” schools

    November 14, 2015 by Tunya

    What YOU Can Do To Fix Education — NOTHING !

    Magically, by reading a book, you will be able to help your child in school. Or so you’re told.

    Have you, as parent, been able to really, really help your child? Few have. Most haven’t.

    Here are just 13 books that promise much:

    1. Why Johnny Can’t Read, and what you can do about it, Rudolf Flesch, 1955
    2. The Literacy Hoax, the decline of reading, writing, and learning in the public schools and what we can do about it, Paul Copperman, 1980
    3. How To Fix What’s Wrong With our Schools — A Toolkit for Concerned Parents, Bertha Davis, Dorothy Arnof, 1983
    4. School’s Out, The catastrophe in public education and what we can do about it, Andrew Nikiforuk, 1993
    5. Beyond the Classroom – Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, Laurence Steinberg, 1996
    6. Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It, Diane McGuiness, 1998
    7. How to Get the Right Education For Your Child, Malkin Dare, 1998
    8. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It, Kelly Gallagher, 2009
    9. Stop Beating the Dead Horse, Why the System of public education in the United States has Failed and What to do About it, Julie L. Casey, 2010
    10. What's Wrong with Our Schools: and How We Can Fix Them, Michael Zwaagstra, 2010
    11. Betrayed, how the education establishment has betrayed America and what you can do about it, Laurie H Rogers, 2010
    12. Teacher Proof: Why research in education doesn't always mean what it claims, and what you can do about it, Tom Bennett, Jul 12, 2013
    13. Raising Kids who READ, What Parents and Teachers Can do, Daniel T Willingham, 2015

    Category Absurdities, Book Reviews, Education Reform, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Flight From Education Accountability

    November 2, 2015 by Tunya

    Flight From Education Accountability

    Teacher unions are the “protection racket” grown up to shield the public school trade from judgment.

    Politicians and governments fail to use their powers for reform in favor of retaining the “status quo” — continued political funding from unions, “labor peace”, etc

    The media does stories — it’s not their habit in modern times to expose glaring incongruities.

    There is no other human service — medical, pharmaceutical, police, fire fighting, etc. — that is so evasive of accountability or “best practices”. Bad outcomes are not tolerated as they are in schooling. It is only education that is such a “Swiss cheese”, attracting experiments, fads and ideological programs.

    Why, even the supreme chief for international education standards, Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skill for PISA (Program for International Assessment) seems to have been cornered into a state of obvious appeasement to the anti-testing, anti- accountability crowd. See — “Schooling Redesigned”, OECD, Oct 22, 2015, where he argues that those who seek “robust scientific evidence” for new proposed directions will not be favored with any examples of “’proven’ or ‘best’ practices” (pg 5).

    The best hope is not to expect any of the culprits above to change but for consumers to themselves flee the system. Either home educate, where parents overwhelmingly use proven phonics reading programs, or choose a private school.

    Hopefully, in your child’s lifetime a new funding program called Education Savings Accounts (ESA) will arrive wherein parents get an account set up by the Education Ministry by which to choose services. Look up Nevada ESA.

    [ http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_4_new-york-schools.html —What I Saw in the Schools, Sol Stern, 2 Oct 2015 ]

    Category Education Reform, Obstacles, Opinions in media, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

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