From Jerry:
MDE has asked for public comment on a tediously long and politically correct document, full of high-sounding words and woefully short on real substance. I predict 10 more years of education failure in MN. See what you think. MN DOE Asks for ESSA Plan FeedbackOf course I went immediately to the ESSA Accountability Document, which is long and full of words. Unfortunately as I often say, I just don't see accountability improving until Education MN and the Public School bureaucrats are willing to truly change the system... Which unfortunately for the unlucky kids is not likely to happen anytime soon.
Erin at MP write a piece on this topic also.
9 comments:
Thanks for posting Erin's piece; it raises three very glaring issues:
1) If we have the continued use of the "support model" for improving schools, why hasn't school excellence been achieved already? Are we doing the same thing and expecting better results?
2) If attendance is one of the critical elements in judging a school, how is anything the school does going to improve it? It's already the law that kids have to be in school.
3) The new system supposedly does better at identifying excellent schools as well as failing ones. So why don't these "experts" simply go see what those schools are doing right, and help the failing schools to do the same thing?
And the other overwhelming concern: The "idea" here is that we are going to have 90% "goodness" by 2025, and yet I see nothing concrete about how this will be achieved, other than the magic of diversity, or somesuch.
Crazy idea: Isn't there a school or schools actually PAYING kids to attend and to get good grades? Seems to me that might be the quickest and cheapest path to improvement.
pay to learn
Interesting piece. I know young kids like stickers... :-)
It just seems so simple to me. Districts will clamor for $5M in extra funding for "improvements" that are never realized, but split that among 10,000 students and you could give them $500 apiece over the year. If that took care of the attendance and discipline problems and let the teachers teach, the academic problems might largely take care of themselves. I would even suggest that, at least initially, the "subtract method" be used. Tell the (parent of each) kid they have $500, but each time they have an unexcused absence or a discipline incident they lose "some" of it. That amplifies the incentive better than the "$10/week." ONLY problem I see is that the "good schools" in the District might think it unfair that they are attending, behaving and learning and NOT getting paid like their lazy, no-good, stupid kids in other schools are.
That does tend to be the problem with most things...
Everyone is out for themselves and the folks with little influence / money / interest / time / knowledge lose out...
There is a great deal of pressure in our district to spend any extra money on the kids who do not need the extra help, but who's Parents are able to move them out of the district if their desires are not met.
Since the money follows the kids, keeping the kids in district and attracting new ones is job one.
Why would any sane administrator strive to attract and keep expensive kids? (ie high mobility, questionable parents, behavior issues, special needs, etc)
I mean the Private schools and Some Charters work very hard to keep those kids from disturbing their classrooms. :-)
My point is that "reward money" and distribution requirements would likely have to come from the State, otherwise the money would likely be siphoned to the kids who's Parents lobby more effectively.
That last is a good point. But since the good schools already educate far better for about half the cost, something could be built into state aid to "allow" that expenditure for schools that wanted it, and those already educating for half the money couldn't afford it, nor need it.
And why would a sane administrator want expensive kids? You don't want parents to have school choice because that will leave all the "expensive" kids in the public schools. Now you want the public schools, which supposedly serve everybody, to throw out people they don't like? Consistency, please! At least my idea of universal vouchers would let the public schools deny entrance to troublemakers, just like the privates, and force competition based on quality, not cost.
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