Archive for the ‘adult education’ Category

Same old, same old won’t do

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Same old, same old won’t do for public education anymore

School boards will be under tremendous pressure for the next three to four years to meet two seemingly contradictory goals:  cut budgets and improve school achievement.

Schools can produce revenue

I submit that schools should add one more goal:  increase revenue.  If districts can increase revenue when tax receipts are down, maybe they can also make forward strides on student proficiency.

School buildings, especially those with dwindling student enrollment, can be more efficiently used to bring broad-based education to whole communities, not just kids in the communities.  With the push for high school kids to take community college courses, and with more adults needing to train for new careers, public schools become an ideal place to institute post-12 education.

I’m suggesting public school-community college partnerships to reduce new construction and to create satellite delivery systems for face-to-face higher education.  Community colleges wouldn’t have to raise money for new construction, and public schools can gain revenue from leasing rooms and advanced technology.

Adult learning in public schools can help kids achieve

A cheap way to increase student achievement is to provide middle and high school courses to adults, particularly parents with kids in school.  Math is taught differently today from 1980.  If parents take a beginning algebra course today, about two weeks ahead of their children, for example, they can be much more instrumental in helping their kids learn.  And we can charge parents for the opportunity.

How can this happen?  As school districts develop online classes for kids, those classes can also be offered to parents, at a price.  Why not?  If a high school class that a teacher wants to offer doesn’t fill, maybe that class should be offered also to the adult community, which would create an interesting mix of adults and adolescents.  Maybe an adult wants to learn the physics he or she never took, or study a foreign language.  Or revisit the classics in literature.  Or relearn grammar.  Or take art.

Online courseware swapping can save everyone $$

School districts can save money and improve education outcomes by trading online courseware.  If one district has great science courseware and another district has great writing courseware, why not swap and trade?  This method saves money for everyone.

Put post-12 remedial education online through high schools

Currently, community and four year colleges do a lot of remedial skill building for students.  Why not bring some of that work back to high schools using online courses to deliver the services.  This may be a place where state or federal funding could intervene to support remedial programs and allow public schools to more expansively use their courseware.

New to a school board in a large Colorado district, my goal will be to think outside of the traditional boundaries, and I hope those ideas will bring more money and better learning to public schools.

Will let you know as changes move forward.

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Posted in adult education, community colleges, program improvement, public schools, school community, school resources |
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Next Year

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

When I read the newspaper I wonder how schools will ever change.  Budget cuts threaten everyone and everything associated with teaching students.

Now, I’m the lucky teacher.  My district cut costs in the 2008-9 budget, somehow recognizing the dangers lurking in the economy.  Also, the residents in my school district, who strongly support education, passed a parcel tax at the last election.

The district has saved so much money that, at the end of the school year just completed, we were assured of weathering the disasters affecting other districts.  The major disruption will be a reduction of before and after school classes.  They will only be offered for students with learning difficulties.

On the other hand, funding for adult education classes, touted to retrain the unemployed all over the country, is being slashed (the New York Times, May 28, 2009, and the San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 2009).  I question how people are going to get back to work without the programs offered in the community colleges?

In Oakland, California, a school district under state takeover after making a mess of its finances, is now back under the guidance of its school board, along with $60 million of debt.  How is that low-performing district going to devise a plan to raise its students reading and math achievement when it’s searching for money to clean the school restrooms?

A teacher friend in a large district in San Jose, California, told me the schools will revert to 30-1 students per teacher.  The 30-1 formula reduces the number of classrooms needed.  That’s when teachers will not be rehired and the “who-to-lay-off” question comes into play.  A young highly-qualified teacher or a tenured teacher?  In my school, the issue has been put off for a year because of the massive savings held by the district.

In the huge Los Angeles district, I’ve read that most summer school programs have been cancelled.  The cuts leave students whose parents work at loose ends; leaves teachers who depend on the summer income searching for work in a recession; and worst of all, leaves the achievement gap, that most worrisome of school issues, to expand because students don’t have access to learning opportunities.

Most students in my school have highly-educated parents with time and money to provide all sorts of opportunities during the summer.  In my small district I only worry about keeping students at the top of the achievement benchmarks in California.

It’s infuriating that the federal stimulus funds, supposedly available to support a turn around in low-performing schools, will likely be used for basic services.  Why?  Because the legislature in California and other states gives funds and takes them away from the budget depending on the temper of the governor and legislators from one day to the next.

As a teacher I surely want clean restrooms in my school, but I also want to teach my students with all the resources available, not simply ‘make do’.

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Posted in California budget crisis, Education, Elementary, Primary School, adult education, community colleges, highly qualified teachers, low-performing schools, public schools, stimulus funds |
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