Education ideas, odds and ends

(Suggestions)

Require Public school principals to accept nominations for a board made up only of parents/custodians of his/her school’s students (tried and working in Australia) and organize an election at the end of each school term-one parental vote per pupil in attendance at that school the following year.  The principal and the subsequently elected board determine a budget based on needed materials and resources, and elect a representative to hold an office on the District School board for that year.  That way each school is represented equally on the Board.

Omaha Public School District has been unduly burdened. Keep schools along the Dodge Street Corridor in OPS but other districts can help with administration. For instance, South High attendance area can merge with the Bellevue District, Bryan can merge with Ralston or Papillion, Northwest can merge with Elkhorn and North can merge with District 66, as an example. Elaborate and expensive solutions like the Learning Community are not working.

I recommend a return to the Spalding Method of teaching reading which involves saying, hearing, writing (penmanship) and seeing words and phonic patterns to build a list of spelling words that are understood by the child including how to form those words on paper, read them, spell them, listen, define them and say them.  As their ‘individual’ book of sounds and words grows, "reader texts" may not be required as children may select topics of interest from their classroom's books or public library books. Students are better able to think independently and contribute to current community ideas when they've been taught to read effectively whereas in contrast, 47% of the adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate today.

Offer a boost to Secondary education by offering within the College of Arts and Science, a minor in secondary education. Upon graduation with a major in their field, be it Biology, Math, Chemistry or a Foreign language and student teaching under their belt, the graduate is qualified to teach in a secondary school, Junior or Senior high school, in Nebraska and benefit from reduced tuition at any Nebraska University, to complete an Arts and Science Masters and/or Doctorate.  Students benefit from the quality knowledge in their field and the enthusiasm of an engaged instructor.

Education Stamps

My newest idea for improving educational outcomes in Nebraska is radical.

Model an 'education stamp' on the 'food stamp' program as a way to fund all public K-12 education as required in Nebraska's Constitution. Parents receive an 'education stamp' for each child and present it to the Principal of their selected school. Principals in turn send all students for a State administered test to assess their individual annual average gains on the California Achievement Test. And the State releases the annual AVERAGE gains of students, by teacher for the year, to the local news media. More detail below.

Parents can depend on published results by teacher, a type of Red, Yellow, Green report on student progress, to select a school to receive their child's 'education stamp.' By injecting market principles into our schools, all will improve. Just as no one takes 'food stamps' to a grocery store with browning vegetables, parents will choose schools that work and entrepreneurs will open schools in under-served areas.

Imagine the relief when all the overhead costs justified today by Districts, the State and federal mandates and micromanagement melt away and our kids become great Nebraska scholars again, able to read effectively, thinking and reasoning through the complex problems of the future. Many details must be worked out, such as, a Unicameral committee determining the value of 'education stamps' each year and funds for junior, senior and special 'education stamps' adjusted rates but those are the easy part once parents are once again put in control.

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A settling in period can require that private schools must accept the amount of the 'education stamp' as payment in full.  President Obama's girls attend Sidwell Friends which accepted several lottery winners' 50% stipend of average spending per pupil in D.C. Public Schools, or $9600, and added diversity to the education of their other students who pay approximately three times that amount.  Unfortunately, in 2009, Pelosi and Obama removed the lottery only grandfathering in some recipients.

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Average reading level of second grade students and their gains in Class A; Class B

Reading level of Students	Teacher A’s Class	Teacher B’s Class
Average leaving First Grade	Grade level 1.9	Grade level 2.5
Average leaving Second Grade	Grade Level 3.1	Grade level 3.4
Average increase	1.2 years	0.9 years

While in math problems,

Math level of Students	Teacher A’s Class	Teacher B’s Class
Average leaving First Grade	Grade level 2.9	Grade level 1.1
Average leaving Second Grade	Grade Level 4.0	Grade level 3.4
Average increase	1.1 years	2.3 years

In reading, Teacher  A is able to speed up reading scores faster than Teacher B but Teacher B does not let readers fall behind and accelerates math scores faster than Teacher A's class.  Teacher C’s job was eliminated as scores in reading and math in that classroom fell below grade level. No parents allowed their child to be assigned to Teacher C’s classroom.

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Some eighth grade graduates taught in Nebraska's country schools of our past and used the Spalding method.  "Once students have learned the first 30 phonograms, they can begin to read the Spalding Series 1 Leveled Readers. This occurs in Academic Week 10 of the Spalding Kindergarten Teacher's Guide."

Children learn sounds, and create a list of words they know, can read, spell, pronounce, use in a sentence and write and their list keeps growing.  Being in a classroom of mixed age children, drill for the younger students was often performed by the older ones. Every had multiple chances to fill in information they may have glossed over when presented earlier.

Success stories in Nebraska are legend, Willa Cather, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, Mari Sandoz, to name a few but remember our grandparents and great aunt's penmanship and English was impeccable. Teaching reading, needed for all the other subjects, isn't rocket science.

Don't be fooled by universal preschool raising scores of the underprivileged like we did all day Kindergarten classes. All day classes doubled the amount of resources required; two teachers and two classrooms, but as I discovered by comparing the OPS 8th grade outcomes 9 years after all day kindergarten, that they did not rise scores and in fact scores had dropped again.  Universal preschool may cause our high school graduates to carry a four year college loan for an Early Childhood Education degree to work in a preschool.

Perpetual War for Petroleum

Clinton bombed Kosovo and Serbia and Iraq for good measure. His sanctions left approximately 200,000 children dead from water borne illness because we withheld dual use chemicals like Chlorine and deprived the Iraqis of water treatment chemicals IN A DESERT!
Clinton's team couldn't manage to find support for invasion at Ohio State:

Bush bombed, invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, two of Iran's neighbors, and CIA targeted drones bombed across national boundaries.

Obama bombed Libya and caused death of Qaddafi who supported the African Union and selling petroleum products in gold, Hillary and Kerry funded rebels in Syria to oust Assad, and supplied the rebels with weapons (possibly shipped out of Qaddafi's arsenal) as those rebels were beheading Syrian Christians. When questioned about Qaddafi's weapons by Rand Paul, Hillary 'could not recall' whether any were shipped out of Libya & reminded me of the times Hillary 'could not recall' when questioned under oath about Whitewater. The CIA targeted drones kept flying across national borders, and Obama has bombed Syria even without UN or NATO approvals.

And we're now asked to give arms to Ukraine after Victoria Nuland and our Ambassador to Ukraine supported the riots which overthrew their elected leader. Russia's one warm water port is in Crimea, needed for imports and exports, as well as their Navy, so we must have known Putin would attempt to annex Crimea.

Beau Biden is now, after testing positive to Cocaine while in the US Navy, on the board of the Ukraine Gas Pipeline company.

Here's how I put this all together, as it always comes down to money and power in the end.
1) the US$ has flourished when tied to petroleum and is often referred to as the petrodollar.
2) Russian has been a major supplier of energy to the EU flowing through pipelines in Ukraine.
3) Middle Eastern petroleum is still sold in US$s, so a pipeline through Syria (would Assad oppose?) expedites the process of supplying the EU's energy needs in US$s instead of Russian Rubles.

I hope someone can correct me! 

Slip the Bonds

In, High Flight, — John Gillespie Magee, Jr, gave us the memorable lines,

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings"

and this week, President Obama is slipping the bonds of our Constitution.  The voters said no, but like a petulant child, it didn't matter.  We said, we are having no more of your socialist agenda, and he's not hearing us.

Instead, Obama is amassing an army of millions entering the US as undocumented, and adding them to his victim side of the "victim vs. oppressor" scale, the (proletariat vs. bourgeois) paradigm of Karl Marx.

Instead of Ferguson ready to explode, Martin Luther King, Jr., took the high ground of Gandhi and non-violent protests and blacks were on the their way into the middle class until 'the great society' taught many they were victims instead.  Babies and their young moms were snatched from family homes where Gramma and Gramps lived, in the 'village' of responsible grownups and placed in projects, alone in an apartment with their infant, a recipe for depression, where few if any of the adults were not victims.  Generations followed in their footsteps, pushing post WWII, 75%+ two parents in the home, down to below 25% today.

Hayek understood the difference between socialism and Marx.

"The totalitarian leader must collect around him a group which is prepared voluntarily to submit to that discipline they are to impose by force upon the rest of the people. That socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialists disapprove is, of course, a lesson learned by many social reformers in the past. The old socialist parties were inhibited by their democratic ideals; they did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task. It is characteristic that both in Germany and in Italy the success of fascism was preceded by the refusal of the socialist parties to take over the responsibilities of government. They were unwilling wholeheartedly to employ the methods to which they had pointed the way.They still hoped for the miracle of a majority’s agreeing on a particular plan for the organization of the whole of society. Others had already learned the lesson that in a planned society the question can no longer be on what do a majority of the people agree but what the largest single group is whose members agree sufficiently to make unified direction of all affairs possible."

The adage, "you can't fight city hall,' just became a whole lot larger and more dangerous.

UNSHACKLE OUR TEACHERS

"Whereas, an educated population being necessary for informed voting, civic duties, economic growth and tranquility in daily discourse; and,

Whereas, multiple funding sources originating outside of Nebraska and lacks parental oversight add burdens to teachers in their classrooms complying with various rules and regulations which are attached to said funds, and,

Whereas, these burdensome rules and regulations have caused a precipitous decline in student achievement while simultaneously growing the divisions between segments of the population; now,

Therefore be it resolved, that the Sarpy County Republican Party encourage the State of Nebraska to break all ties with federal or any other outside control of education within our borders; and,

Be it further resolved, that any and all remuneration for education from outside the State is encouraged to be accepted and acknowledged by Nebraska's schools, including private & parochial schools, so long as the funds do not require the school to change its curriculum, add burdensome rules or regulations for teachers, the school, or the district offices." Will be voted on Thursday as a Resolution. 

From 2009 through 2012, PISA international statistics saw the U.S. slip from 25th to 31st in math; 20th to 24th in science; and 11th to 21st in reading. Let me repeat, our teens in the USA slipped from 11th place to 21st place in THREE YEARS.  If you cannot read effectively, you cannot think! 

A Resolution for Enhancement of Quality Education for Nebraska's Youth

Whereas an educated population being necessary to informed voting, economic growth and tranquility in daily discourse, and whereas since the federal government of the United States and many funding bodies not directly linked to Nebraska schools, have become involved in local public schools and the education of our Nebraska children to an invasive extent, scores have dropped, a large percentage of graduates must take remedial classes in Math before attending Nebraska’s Universities, and division between segments of our population have grown, be it resolved that the State of Nebraska breaks all ties with federal control of education within our borders.  Any and all remuneration for education can be accepted from any source by any school of the parent’s choice including private schools, but funding may not be accepted by any Nebraska school when tied to changes in curriculum or added burdens for the school.

All public school boards are to be dissolved, administrative offices used in the future as classrooms, and each public school principal is required to accept nominations for a board made up only of parents or custodians of his/her school’s students and organize an election (one parental vote per pupil in attendance at that school) within two weeks of the start of the school term. The principal and the subsequently elected board write the budget and determine materials and resources required for the year.  Once in place, this election can be held closer to the end of their school term for the following year. All principals are required to teach one or more classes during the school day to keep in touch with students. California Achievement tests are administered at the end of each school term (annually) to determine the quality of the individual teacher and determine their individual bonus by the actual growth and performance of those so trustingly placed in their care.  New students or transfers can be administered the tests at the principal's discretion.
Staff members tasked to individually assist the disabled, in accordance with ADA law, are funded by that federal agency and barring classroom disruption, the child and their assistant may mainstream in public schools.  Impact aid from the federal government for areas close to Offutt reduce the amount allocated per pupil.

All private schools also administer California Achievement tests and results are published in the local newspapers annually next to the public school scores.  If a parent changes jobs and their employer maintains a school on the premises, there should be no barriers for their child changing to that school.  The school day, materials, hours, business involvement, is at the discretion of the each school as long as their overall achievement remains acceptable which is the only Unicameral function, setting the lower end of achievement which may cause a vote to determine if the school is to be closed or a principal replaced. 

I recommend a return to the Spalding Method of teaching reading which involves saying, hearing, writing (penmanship) and seeing words and phonic patterns to build a list of spelling words that are understood by the child including how to form those words on paper, read them, spell them, listen and say them.  As their book of sounds and words grow, "reader texts" may not be required as children may select topics of interest from their classroom's library of books. The board of parents and the principal make decisions on "texts" for young readers, however. Students are better able to think independently and contribute to current community ideas when they've been taught to read effectively.  

Could this work in Nebraska?

Maurice P. McTigue is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he directs the government accountability project. Previously, he was a member of the New Zealand Parliament and New Zealand’s ambassador to Canada, and was closely involved in New Zealand’s deregulation of labor markets, deregulation of the transportation industry, and restructuring of the fishing industry through the creation of conservation incentives. He also served as Minister of Employment, Minister of State Owned Enterprises, Minister of Railways, Minister of Works and Development, Minister of Labour and Minister of Immigration. Among his many honors, Mr. McTigue is a recipient of the Queen’s Service Order, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. In the U.S., he was recently appointed to the Office of Personnel Management Senior Review Committee, formed to make recommendations for human resources systems at the Department of Homeland Security. He also sits on the Performance Management Advisory Committee for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The following is [an excerpt] adapted from a lecture delivered on February 11, 2004, on the Hillsdale campus, during a five-day seminar on “The Conditions of Free-Market Capitalism,” co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.

New Zealand had an education system that was failing as well. It was failing about 30 percent of its children—especially those in lower socio-economic areas. We had put more and more money into education for 20 years, and achieved worse and worse results.

It cost us twice as much to get a poorer result than we did 20 years previously with much less money. So we decided to rethink what we were doing here as well. The first thing we did was to identify where the dollars were going that we were pouring into education. We hired international consultants (because we didn’t trust our own departments to do it), and they reported that for every dollar we were spending on education, 70 cents was being swallowed up by administration. Once we heard this, we immediately eliminated all of the Boards of Education in the country. Every single school came under the control of a board of trustees elected by the parents of the children at that school, and by nobody else. We gave schools a block of money based on the number of students that went to them, with no strings attached. At the same time, we told the parents that they had an absolute right to choose where their children would go to school. It is absolutely obnoxious to me that anybody would tell parents that they must send their children to a bad school. We converted 4,500 schools to this new system all on the same day.

But we went even further: We made it possible for privately owned schools to be funded in exactly the same way as publicly owned schools, giving parents the ability to spend their education dollars wherever they chose. Again, everybody predicted that there would be a major exodus of students from the public to the private schools, because the private schools showed an academic advantage of 14 to 15 percent. It didn’t happen, however, because the differential between schools disappeared in about 18-24 months. Why? Because all of a sudden teachers realized that if they lost their students, they would lose their funding; and if they lost their funding, they would lose their jobs. Eighty-five percent of our students went to public schools at the beginning of this process. That fell to only about 84 percent over the first year or so of our reforms. But three years later, 87 percent of the students were going to public schools. More importantly, we moved from being about 14 or 15 percent below our international peers to being about 14 or 15 percent above our international peers in terms of educational attainment.