Reply to Protest Hogan's diversion of public funds from public schools into private schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I believe in the freedom of school choice.
Why don't you, op?[/quote]

It's only freedom of choice for some. But, while Trump is busy attempting to weaken the independent media, by all means, he should go ahead and weaken public education. Both are essential to democracy.[/quote]

Public education is already weak, IMO.

We spend tons of money on education in this country and it gets wasted on stupid shit like Chromebooks in 2nd grade so kids can learn how to message each other, Promethean boards that don't work properly some of the time, additional testing year after year for no good reason.

What are you so afraid of?  Try something different.[/quote]

This.

MCPS is more focused on perception than education.  I was at an early meeting where MCPS was talking about installing Promethean boards in the schools. I think it was the 2008-09 year, a time when the country was facing economic difficulties.  I know it seemed prudent to use caution before adding a large budget item.  I asked them what function the Promethean boards could perform that couldn't already be done with the technology they already had.  After thinking a while, they finally said that it could be used to annotate videos as they were watched.  I'm sure the Promethean boards are nifty, but I'm not sure how frequently teachers need to annotate videos.

I have seen MCPS pour money into things that have little to no effect on education.  Further, MCPS has poured money into reducing the gap for many years, and it hasn't seemed to reduce the gap.  I remember Jerry Weast having red and green zones.  I don't know how many superintendents before him tried to close the gap.  The people of Montgomery County are not only willing to fund our school system at a high level, but to support allocating higher funding to lower performing schools.  If giving money to MCPS was the answer to helping struggling students, I think they'd be in much better shape.

Frankly, despite it's claims to being one of the best school systems in the country, I think it's a mediocre one at best whose performance is masked by a highly educated population who makes up for its shortfalls either through parents supplementing at home or hiring professional tutoring services.  Seems to me a lot of our public school students are going to private "schools" like Sylvan and Kumon.

[b]If we had charter schools, vouchers to private schools might be less of an issue.  However, MCPS has fought charter schools for years leaving us with the choice of MCPS or private. [/b]

I believe fiercely in the importance of public education.  I think every child deserves a good education.  However, if they aren't getting it from MCPS, maybe we should look for other options that will offer them that opportunity. [/quote]

And that is what so many people try and get into these programs that MCPS offers and why I think MCPS needs to drop programs and focus on better classrooms.  I have seen 3 years of promethean boards and they are a waste.  We also know in a few years they will be extinct.  Elementary schools RARELY teach to the whole class anyway thanks to politically correct mixed classes.  They have these massive boards and the teachers spend 90% of their time teaching in the corner at a reading table.  My daughter's class has reading groups, spelling groups, and math groups.  They all get 5-10min of  the teacher at a time.  She isn't teaching in front of the class.  She isn't using the board except for  1-2 times a day and it mostly just has a list of what they need to do on their own while she is with other groups.  You can write that on a dry erase board.  Which speaking of, no one uses those boards anymore.

MCPS would do best with less technology, making these kids write more, tracking classes with higher end classes with the biggest ratios and lower end classes with small ratios. There is no time to be politically correct anymore.  Get the kids with the highest needs right from the start at K and work intensely with them in EVERY school, not just the FOCUS and Title 1 schools.  Stop all the programs and start tracking the kids in the school.  Appease the kids above-grade average with some advance work, give the kids at grade level peers just like them and teachers that won't ignore them year round.  Give the kids that are struggling a class with kids that they don't feel stupid in.  A small class with the best teachers to motivate and bring them up to baseline. Even let the para's only go into those classes to help.  They basically only come to pull the struggling kids out anyway.   It seems like putting them all together in one class is doing a disservice to all of them as well as the teacher.  And since they have stopped tracked math classes in ES, math scores have consistently gone down.  Why?  Because small math groups with busy work for an hour SUCKS and it doesn't get your child better at math - it makes math boring! [/quote]

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