The Best Schools In America - Public Education Questions and Concerns - Obama Common Core Standards, the Latest Silver Bullet - Duck Dynasty - The Emperor's New Clothes

Basis Oro Valley, Arizona - tht Best School In America

I was looking at my friend's daughter's math book and I was very impressed. She goes to Basis in Oro Valley and is in 8th grade. She is thirteen. This is a charter school open to anyone who wants to go there, and the school is free. There is no admission test. These were some of her practice review problems on lesson 61 which is about half way through the text book:

• A car has wheels that have a radius of 16 centimeters and the wheels turn at 40 revolutions per second. What is the speed of the car in miles per hour?
• The central angle of a sector of a circle is 1.6 radians. Find the area of the sector in square centimetres if the radius of the circle is 1 meter.
• The total cost varied linearly with the number produced. When 200 were produced, the cost was $2050. When 30 were produced, the cost was $350. Write an equation that gives cost as a function of the number produced.
• The number of reds varied directly as the number of purples and inversely as the number of whites cubed. There were 200 reds when there were 50 purples and 10 whites. How many reds were there when the number of purples was increased to 60 and the number of whites was decreased to 5?
• How many distinguishable three-digit permutations can be formed from the letters in the word Mississippi?
• Slove cos 3 theta plus the squre root of three over 2 equal to zero give that zero degrees is equal to or lesser than zrro which is less than 360 degrees.
• Shila bought k squared x plus m pencils for d dollars. How many pencils could sho buy for $500?
• Sketch the graph of the function y = log squared x.

I was on the Superintendent's Committee and I don't think there was one person on that committee who could solve these 8th grade math problems.

Why is this school Basis so successful? Why do their students graduate and go to schools like Princeton, Harvard and MIT? Basis is successful because they are not afraid to make the students work hard and to challenge them.

I know of several students from my class at Copper Creek who were average students and they are successful at Basis. What is Basis' secret?

• High standards
• Plenty of practice
• Better text books
• Better curriculum
• Teachers knowledgeable of their subjects

Her daughter does these problems herself, and she has learned to be an accomplished student. Impressive.

You Heard It Here First

You might have heard it here first; a comprehensive list of the questions and concerns about the importance of the education of our children. That need was identified by our Founding Fathers at the beginning of our country. Every child needs and deserves a good education. Every child ought to have the opportunity to reach their potential. While the challenges our schools face are complex, they are solveable and managable?

Define Your Mission - Make Your Pledge To Help Public Education

Define your mission. Make a plan. Follow your plan. Stick to it; don't give up.

Define the problem. Write out all your questions and concerns. Do research. Add more questions based on other people's ideas and concerns. Then attack each concern keeping in mind unintended consequences. There you have it. Field test it. Get data. Measure results.

No sophistry; no jargon; no ten dollar words.

In July we will begin the quest.um of Democratic governors, the topic of education was linked to jobs and improving our economy. In a world economy, good paying jobs depend on a skilled workforce which makes it possible for businesses to have a competitive edge, allowing them to compete successfully on a world stage.

Oprah Winfrey, Bill O'Reilly, and Dennis Prager Should Follow This Blog

Why should they follow this blog? Because there needs to be a debate about education. They have the research staffs, resources, and influence to make a significant difference in a problem so important to our nation and the future of our children.

This blog has many of the questions that should be asked, answered, and resolved. Oprah, Bill, and Dennis are unbiased celebreties who are well known for shedding light on troubling topics and bringing about postive change; they have no agenda other than being part of a solution.

This debate needs to thoroughly exhaust all the questions, all the concerns, and all the unintended consequences of implementing the wrong solutions, or not fixing this problem. It's much more than money. It's much more than fodder for talk shows. Public education is broken; the time to fix it has come.

"We shall overcome." Martin Luther King

The Public Education Debate Has Only Started

The public education debate has only started. They are never going to find the right solutions because of the different directions they are going in and the narrow focus. The problem is BIG. It's complex. That questions and concerns list on the right of this blog keeps getting bigger. Fixing part of it, only fixes part of it. I never knew there were that many problems in education. What? You think more will be added to the list? You've got to be kidding. I need to be retired to spend the quality time needed to address even one of these questions.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Schools and administrations do NOT want teachers who bring up the truth. Don't point out what is wrong; don't point pout what won't work; don't point put what you need to do your job; don't tell parents the truth about their kids; don't point put when the principal is enabling and appeasing.

Everything Is Obvious Once We Know the Answer - Education Doesn't Rate by Bill Floore

Maybe Duck Dynasty should run our public schools.

Once someone states a problem and the answer, often people will say they knew the solution all along. Sure they did.
Soon our problems with education will have to be addressed. Education needs all its problems clearly stated and the solutions identified. Right now education is a back burner item, just as Social Security and the budget have been for years. Every four years it shows up as a campaign issue. Then it disappears.
We don't even have all the questions involving this very important and complex problem called public education.  The longer our country waits, the more difficult and painful the solutions.
The following are the headings of the blog sites for the major news organizations. Notice the absence of "education." It sadly doesn't even have a heading.

CNN
world - politics - justice - entertainment - technology - health - travel - money - sports
ABC
politics - health - entertainment - money - world
NBC
politics - health - world - weather
FOX
world - politics - entertainment - leisure - health - science/technology - sports
CBS
world - politics - entertainment - health - money - technology - sports
Wall Street Journal
world - business - markets - technology - life & culture - real estate
BBC
world - science/environment - technology - sports - weather
NPR
news - arts & life - music

William H. Gates Speech on Education by Bill Floore

William H. Gates hits many of the points about education covered in my "Concerns and Questions About Public Education." And William H. Gates, like many others including President Obama,  knows the system is broken. If enough people of all political persuasions put their heads together, this broken system can be fixed without a lot of additional money being spent.

His speech:

The last time I spoke to this group, I got a big laugh by making fun of my son for being a college dropout. I can’t tell that joke anymore. In the last couple of years, he’s gotten an honorary B.A. and an honorary Ph.D. Now, I tell him I’m full of pride—honorary pride.

I’ve been working at the Gates Foundation for more than 10 years now. I’ve spent that time learning about the toughest challenges the world faces. And the issue I just can’t stop thinking about is education right here in our own country.

The statistics are bad, and there are plenty of ways to slice them: The dropout numbers; our ranking in core subjects compared to other countries.

Here’s one that is intriguing: More than 80 percent of parents want their children to get a college degree, but less than 30 percent of students ever get one. In my experience, when something works less than half the time, we can call it broken.

At the Gates Foundation, our goal for schools is the same goal most parents set for their children: college-ready. We believe that every single school should prepare every single student to succeed in college. This is not merely an aspiration—it’s a specific standard that leads to success. The alternative is our current educational system, in which we too often practice what our outgoing president eloquently decried as the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

A few weeks ago, I learned about a powerful illustration of this point. At the University of Washington, my alma mater, there is an initiative called the Dream Project. It was started a few years ago by a group of low-income students who came to an important realization: Most of the students they had gone to high school with never made it to college. They wanted to help, so they took it upon themselves to go back to their old high schools and work with their former classmates. They were surprised by what they learned.

It turned out that the problem wasn’t that their friends weren’t smart enough. It wasn’t entirely financial aid either. Instead, the problem was that in many of the cases the adults who run these high schools don’t set high expectations. They don’t encourage the young people in their care to strive for greatness, don’t inspire them to imagine a place beyond their horizons. The result is that too many students are meeting the low expectations they’re being held to. For the Dream Project students, it’s clear that they must not only convince students that college is attainable; they must also show some teachers and administrators that every student—every student—has the potential to succeed.

My son and daughter-in-law have made education their top priority for the foundation’s work in the United States. They believe that every child is college material, and every child should be educated accordingly. And I agree with them. I’ve seen high expectations work time and time again when I visit schools. When you ask students to do more, they thrive.

Over the past decade, in partnership with all of you, we have worked with 2,600 schools in 45 states, trying to build models of high-achieving high schools. We assumed that the really good ideas would spread.

In many cases, our strategy didn’t work as well as we had hoped. We focused a great deal on schools’ structure, but simply breaking schools up into smaller units did not always generate the improvements that we were hoping for. In our first four years, most of the struggling schools we helped fund continued to score below district averages on reading and math tests.

But there were extremely encouraging results as well.

In New York City, the small schools we worked with posted graduation rates almost 40 percentage points higher than the rates in the schools they replaced. There have been a number of small school replications that have performed very well: KIPP, Green Dot, Hidalgo Early College High School, YES College Preparatory Schools, Aspire High Schools, the Noble Street network, IDEA Public Schools. The list goes on.

All of you here today have done the hard work of showing us just what great schools should look like. I want to thank you for the work you’ve been doing with us and I want to commend you for dedicating your careers to helping young people thrive.

Yet, even with the successes of so many individual schools, we did not see any evidence that the existence of a great model was going to trigger widespread reform in a district.

Our challenge now is making sure that all students get the high-quality education that schools like YES and KIPP provide.

We spent last year studying the results we’ve gotten so far. We talked to all of you about the lessons you’ve learned over the past decade. We consulted many experts.

This is what we learned: Without a doubt, what really matters the most is what happens in the classroom between a teacher and her students. A great teacher has more impact than any other single factor on student achievement. 

So we are going to sharpen our focus on effective teaching.

Due to a growing body of research on teacher effectiveness, we now know that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is between classrooms in the same school. In short, it’s more important to be assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

So let me lay out in a very general way some of the themes we’re pursuing as we make great teaching our priority. Vicki Phillips, our education director, will fill in the details.

The first key issue is standards.

They need to be higher. That means college-ready. And they need to be consistent across the country. Common standards are the educational backbone of the world’s top-performing countries, and they are a key ingredient of the work we must do to help our young people become top performers once again. Without them, we have no basis for knowing how good our schools or our teachers are—and, more fundamentally, we have no way of ensuring that they are as great as our students deserve.

At the foundation, we’ll keep working with states and districts to develop a common set of core standards that are tied to the demands of college. More than 30 states have already come together on this issue through an effort called the American Diploma Project, and we’re supportive of the push to bring this number up to 50.

The second theme that runs through our new strategy is data.

Data tell us whether we’re living up to the standards. Without data, teachers and policy makers have to guess about what’s working. But with it, they have the evidence they need to devise smart lesson plans and wise education policy.

Teachers should have data about the students assigned to them. Right now, on the first day of school, a ninth-grade teacher has absolutely no idea which of her students can calculate the area of a circle or identify the elements of a short story.

I’ve heard that some teachers have resorted to keeping their own data in Excel spreadsheets on their own computers. The data help them figure out that student A needs more practice on reading comprehension while student B needs extra help with the quadratic formula. But when the year is over, the data goes away, and the next teacher has to start all over again.

The third theme is supporting great teachers so they can continue to be great.

Data systems, of course, will tell us which teachers are getting the biggest achievement gains every year. If we’re going to retain the teachers whose students excel, we’re going to have to reward them.

I’m amazed that we have a system that doesn’t allow us to pay more for strong performance in teaching. This is the only profession in the world that could be described in this way.

Let me insert this footnote: Our system spends $8 billion a year on teachers with master’s degrees, even though there is no evidence that it helps students achieve. 

There’s nothing wrong with a master’s degree, but let’s first put our dollars behind initiatives that we know will bring real results for the kids.

If we don’t pay the most effective teachers more, we won’t develop and keep more effective teachers. That is the way the world works—actually, it’s the way humans work.

When I was a lawyer, I spent considerable time interviewing job applicants for my law firm. I was always impressed by them, and then I started to wonder. Why were none of these exemplary students applying to work in our schools?

We can draw more of the best people to the teaching profession if we ensure that work done well is rewarded, that innovation in the classroom is embraced, and that teachers have the information they need to measure the progress of their students, and, in turn, the support they require to cultivate their own strength as educators. 

Many teachers want to be effective. I saw this firsthand when I visited one of the Green Dot schools in Los Angeles—Oscar de la Hoya Animo School.

I spent an hour meeting with four teachers and I was moved by the way they described something called Friday afternoon critique. Every week, they gather together to receive feedback from each other on their teaching. In addition, the principal from the school and an expert teacher from the district office join in to make suggestions and to respond to questions. Nobody’s defensive. They’re just trying to get better. These teachers take pride in their craft. We need to adopt practices that foster that feeling in our schools.

Two weeks ago, right at the beginning of his inaugural address, President Obama called our schools an “indicator of crisis.” I am grateful that he understands the seriousness of the situation.

But he also understands the American spirit—the American values—that will help us address the situation. “The time has come,” he said, “to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” He was talking about our kids.

For our society as a whole and for every precious child within it, that full measure of happiness depends on our schools. Our schools today are breaking that God-given promise. But if we follow the evidence, if we make sure that every child, everywhere, has an effective teacher, we can renew that promise.

Thank you.

Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt need to read this list of questions and concerns. Their radio shows for several years have explored the problems facing public schools and the criticisms being voiced by a concerned public. Blame the teachers, blame the parents, blame the school administrations, blame the government; blaming hasn't produced positive results, nor quited the rhetoric. The issues surrounding public education definitely paint a picture of a system that is wasteful and broken. But the problems are not insurmountable. Hope and change are needed more than ever. Clarity and leadership are needed more than ever. Putting aside ideology is needed more than ever. Parents are faced with the decision each year as to whether to keep their children in a public school, or find an alternative. Children are being sent each year to schools that underachieve and do not give them a quality education. Teacher appreciation is often a discount coupon, coffee and a bagel, but real appreciation ought to be so much more. When will our nation have the will to manage this problem? Mathematics hasn't changed much since Issac Newton invented calculus in 1666; why do elementary schools and middle schools repeatedly fail to focus and properly teach reading, writing, and arithmetic? Aren't most schools in session at least five hours a day? Isn't that enough time to teach these three important subjects, the same three subjects that were important to teach ever since the founding of our country?

National Issues - Federal Government Issues - State Legislatures Issues 
Why has education been a priority of so many administrations of both political parties, and yet poor performing schools nationwide have continued in spite of years of throwing trillions of dollars at the problem? When will liberals, conservatives, and independents put aside their differences, biases, and demonization of each other, to be able to listen to each other, to find common ground, to once and for all find solutions that put us on a clear path to educating our youth for the 21st century? Public schools are filled with intelligent, good intentioned people. Why can't that collective intelligence be harnessed to correct the deficiencies in public schools that prevent success in all areas? The failures in public education are not failures of intelligent, educated, dedicated people. Public schools all over America have that. They have administrators and teachers who care about children. The failures are failures of leadership, of good management practices, of proper training, and of effective supervision. What is needed is administrators that have the kind of skills and intelligence that presidents of corporations and CEOs have: excellent judgement, excellent decision making, and they inherently do not abuse the power and authority they were given. What should educational leadership be at the federal level? state level? district level? the individual school level? Will solutions to our educational problems be found in big words? or big ideas? semantics, the meaning of words? or clarity, and the meaning of ideas? Why aren't special education students taught the things that they are capable of learning and need such as life skills so they can be successful as adults? Why are programs like special education and speech required to complete so much paperwork? Why are special education students required to take and pass state standards? Why doesn't the federal government make sure that the programs they mandate are properly funded? How can we instruct elected officials on the reasons schools succeed or fail? What are the appropriate solutions for failing schools? Why can't every United States senator spend at least one week of their time while in the Senate in an underachieving public school? Why can't our nation have the courage to go to the metric system and change the spelling of EVERY English word in all of our dictionaries to phonetic spelling? Why did the legislature vote to take away the teachers' tenure and seniority? What will be the consequences of that legislation? Can frightened teachers be risk takers and leaders, or will they become pleasers and appeasers? Why don't gifted students get the proper services? Why is public money and tax credits going into charter schools and depleting school budgets throughout our states? Charter schools do not meet the need of ALL students. Do women manage differently than men? have these differences affected performance evaluations? leadership? decision making? gossiping? trust? objectivity? Do almost all male dominated professions have their own inherent problems? Why was a man, who served in both the Marine Corps and the Army Rangers, who was wounded twice in combat, find it more difficult to be a classroom teacher than a combat soldier? What can we learn from his example? How many things being done in public schools are being done because they were always done, or done that way? Should we adopt Dennis Prager's speech as a philosophy for all our public schools? The federal government gave an extensive amount of land to encourage the building of railroads, why can't school districts be given land to build new and better schools? The responsibility for educating our children belongs to the states, but the federal government plays an important role. What problems are caused by these shared responsibilities? Why aren't public schools protected from expensive law suits the same way the government is protected? Does "office politics" have the same adverse affect on education as it does business? Why does education remind me of Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass?

Public Schools versus Private and Charter Schools 
U.S. News and World Report? Why are public schools a needed alternative to private and charter schools, and why should tax payers support them? Should we privatize public schools? Should parents have vouchers and send their children to the school of their choice? Why do public schools, parochial schools, and charter schools all operate under different state requirements and restrictions? Do teachers know what the district standards are? Do parents know what these standards are? What are the differences between state standards, core standards, and standards of excellence?

School Boards
Do school boards ever question how decisions are made? When decisions are made, how much effort is made to identify unintended consequences? How are those unintended consequences resolved? What guides a school board? What things should they know to prepare them to be effective school board members? How can they avoid having "smooth talkers" and ineffective leaders in their senior administrative positions? Do we have the correct organizational structure in our school districts for effective leadership, decision making, and performance evaluations? Why are there so many "yes men" and kool-aid drinkers on important committees? What curriculum should be included in higher education for teachers and administrators? What aren't they being taught that they need to know? Do certification requirements prevent us from getting the best people to teach in our classrooms? manage our schools? manage our districts? Does the cream rise to the top? Is the system to hire the best teachers flawed? Is the "system" to promote teachers to administrators flawed? Is the process of hiring capable superintendents flawed? Why doesn't educational research improve our schools? How do parents and teachers get listened to? How do school boards know what is going on in the schools they are managing for the public? Why did the President of Jewel Food Stores ask the audience of managers and executives what business they were in? What is the TEMS story? The Curriculum Mapper story? Are anonymous teacher surveys useful? Are they really anonymous? Are notes home a major priority? What is the story about "The Will to Manage?"

School Board Meeting and decision:
March 31, 19__
By (redacted)
     Teacher (redacted person) pupils at (redacted name of school) Elementary School in (redacted location) will complete their 4th-grade educations this spring, but thanks to their local school board, they will also come away with advanced degrees in adult studies.
     Lucky kids. It takes most of us years to learn that talent, accomplishment, creativity and hard work can be useless if you don't play office politics well; that those in power aren't particularly interested in and often resent hearing the suggestions and criticisms of underlings; that the independent thinker often gets shown the door; and that even those with goodness and truth on their side don't always win.
     Oh, sure, they're bitter about it now. Their teacher, (redacted name of teacher ), (redacted teacher), a man who inspires devotion and respect from his pupils, their parents and his colleagues, will be dismissed after this year, apparently because he did not tug his forelock often enough in the right directions.
     Last week, the seven-member West Northfield District 31 Board of Education voted unanimously not to renew his contract. Pupils fled the meeting in tears, and a large contingent of parents and fellow teachers sat stunned. But when the shock and sorrow wear off, they will all be the wiser learning from the key mistakes Floore made along the way.
     The first was in taking seriously the notion that the education establishment is genuinely interested in hearing fresh ideas and new voices speaking out for change. The education establishment, like just about every other establishment, is filled with the people who established it and who believe deep down that they know what's best.
     But Floore, overcome with idealism, resigned his position as director of safety programs for Jewel Food Stores in 1992 to pursue his dream of teaching. He was the top student teacher at Elmhurst College in 1992 before taking a job at Winkelman at one-third his former salary.
     Pupils and parents raved about his approach, which focused on self-esteem, positive reinforcement and the joy of classroom achievement. At the end of his first year, his principal, Marilyn Helberg, gave Floore the highest rating in all nine teaching categories.
     He said his troubles began at the start of this school year when he was invited to join the Principal's Advisory Group, a six-teacher panel established to provide a forum for frank and honest exchange between staff and administration. These, dear pupils, are groups to avoid.

Change and Reinventing the Wheel 
What happened to schools without walls? Whole Language? tracking? leveling? the 3 R's? Cooperative Learning? Madeline Hunter? Lee Canter? Piaget? John Dewey? Back to Basics? Portfolios? No Child Left Behind? Spiraling Curriculums? the Six Writing Traits? Mastery Learning? Stanford 9 tests published in the newspapers? Curriculum Alignment? High School Feeder Pattern Programs? Curriculum Mapper? "Why Can't Johnny Read?" Phonics? Thematic Units? Inventive Spelling? Criss Training? English Language Learners? Study Island? Vocational training, shop? English Immersion? Bloom's Taxonomy? Teaching to the test? Standards based curriculum, assessment, and report cards that are letterless, just numbers? the 5 minute observations? Star Enterprise? Renaissance Place? Shift Happens? Response to Intervention? School Based Intervention Plan? School Study Team? AIMS Tutoring? National Standards? Core Standards? National testing. What materials will teachers be given to teach the core standards? What curriculum is being left out? Is this the first step in public schools becoming the responsibility of the federal government? Is this teaching to the middle, one size fits all?

Budgets and Money
Why is it impossible for districts to move money from an account they don't need it in, to an account where they badly need it? What happens to the money that school districts get from the federal and state governments that is supposed to go to classroom instruction? Where is the accountability of this spending? Where are we auditing this spending? Why does so little of the state and federal funding per student actually reach the classroom? Why is Arizona one the states with the lowest funding for public education? Why are teachers so poorly compensated? Are we attracting the most talented people into educational careers? Why can't tax credits be spent on books and classroom materials? Why is funding of public schools so complicated? Does receiving state money, federal money, block grants, Title I schools, earmarks, overrides, tax credits, fund raising, donations, and bonds make the appropriation of dollars to the needed areas more difficult? Why do state legislatures wait so long to let the schools know the actual dollars they will have to work with for the following year? Why do states that are bankrupt keep giving tax credits? Do tax credits put more money in the affluent schools? Public schools have started charging tuition for all day kindergarten. Is this an unhealthy trend? What should educators know about parent, adult, child relationships that make communication ineffective? What should educators know about the effective ways businesses use progressive discipline to improve performance? Why does bullying still go on? Are there teachers and administrators who are bullies themselves? What is wrong with current school boundaries? Does it make sense for schools to spend money they have in their budgets for things they don't need just so they don't lose the money? Is there no way public school districts can seek remedy for outrageous expenses they incur due to decisions federal judges make? courts make? laws legislatures pass? mandates from the federal government? Why was a school district spending $60,000 a year to guard a piece of land where someone spotted an owl, and it held up the construction of a high school? Why was an entire wing added to a middle school that has declining enrollment? If a district is cutting all P.E., art and music teacher's pay by 10%, cutting the number of teachers in each grade level, cutting crossing guard pay, how is it they have money to hire two REACH teachers, install new lighting fixtures in all the classrooms, build a brick building, make the school ready for wireless, put in drop lines to add five or six computer hookups in each classroom, give the special ed teachers Smart Boards and lab tops, put 36 flat screen computers in the computers rooms which were moved to the main building, getting new flat screen computers for the library, and taking down th4 portables?

Psychology/Human Relations
What is the story of the vending machines? the stories about Illinois Workers' Compensation? What can we learn from Archie Hollins and Bob Blondin? What do dehumanizing words like: that is not your classroom; those are not your kids; that's not your computer; you are just an employee and you will work where we tell you; what do those words do to a teacher? What is the story about the paper clip? What is the story about "You will look at me when I talk to you?" How does Abraham Maslow and Theory X and Theory Y apply to the human side of public education? How does the Peter Principle apply to public education? What can the public sector (i.e. public education) learn from the private sector? What can educators learn from Peter Drucker? Why did the one time friend warm up to me, share feelings with me, and then totally ignore me because she was sitting with the principal? Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Career Ladder
What is it? What could and should it be?

301 Money
What is it? What could and should it be?

Districts
We are producing some of the best prepared public high school graduates in our country's history. Why do so few people know about it? Why doesn't the public know about our public school successes? Public schools have students earning high grades in challenging classes and achieving high test scores in college placement tests; why don't the districts publish these successes? Public school high schools have graduates attending and being successful at every prestigious college and university in the United States.Why doesn't the public know about those successes and the excellent careers these public school students will enjoy? Why aren't the academic achievements of the advanced students in middle school and the intermediate grades published on a regular basis? Where are the successes and where does work need to be done? change need to be made? Do public schools do a good job of letting the public know about the fine schools they have and all they have to offer? When are teachers going to be left alone to teach? When are principals going to be left alone to run their schools? Do school districts live up to their mission statements? Are they held accountable? How can we prevent administrators from being pulled out of their schools for district meetings when classes are in session? What are the latest fads school districts are embracing, and why do they so often spend limited funding on expensive programs that are later discarded? What recent programs have been dropped? Why don't districts hold on to their talented teachers and administrators? Are districts top heavy? What are the best school districts? Where are they? What are they doing? What are the best school districts with underprivileged kids? What are they doing? Who are the best superintendents? who are the best principals? who are the best teachers? What do they ALL have in common? Why did the principal give his teachers a bag of rocks? What causes economies of scale to work against our schools and our budgets? Why do we have so many schools with empty classrooms? What is the most important data that is needed to manage learning? student progress? teacher performance? administrator performance? school performance? district performance? What are the districts goals and objectives? the schools? the teachers? the students? Why don't school districts have their own programmers? Could programmers be shared with other districts for a common purpose? Why don't districts do exit interviews to find out the truth about Career Ladder and other problems teachers experience? Why are Arizona teachers not protected by a strong union? Why are some administrators allowed to play God with teacher's lives? Do we need a book like Uncle Tom's Cabin that exposed to the nation the condition of slavery, a book such as that about education to expose the dehumanizing treatment and cruelty many teachers experience in our public schools and the blatant incompetence that mismanages budgets and classroom instruction? Should the public read about the Raisin Lady, The Sand Lady, H-Bomb, the parent that called the teacher deaf, the hate emails, and the parent that insisted that parents and students could not be involved with grading or filing papers? What is the First Assistant Philosophy and how would it benefit a school district? How do we prevent schools from experiencing too much change in a short period of time? How do we make changes that are researched based and field tested? How do we avoid unintended consequences? What part does demographics play in the success and failure of schools? What do districts do to cope with changing populations? Was busing successful? Why are school clerks given so much authority? Why aren't some clerks "service" minded? When do unions help the education of our children? When do unions hurt the education? What is the fairest way a school district can dismiss teachers who are not effective even after being giving training and time to improve? Do districts ever let colleges and universities know that they are sending teachers not educated and skilled to teach in a classroom and are probably in the wrong profession? How should excellence be rewarded for students? teachers? administrators? Would merit pay work? How can principals be freed up from any work that does not have to do with improving teaching and achievement? Why isn't it the Principal's job to improve performance and classroom instruction? Is the system set up to realistically do that? Is Dennis Prager correct that one of the number one problems in public school education, and a significant reason why it continues to fail, is that there is an imbalance in the number of men and women who are teachers? In business the most important thing is the bottom line. Make a profit. Be better than your competition. Increase your market share. Be efficient. What is the bottom line of education? Business tries to recruit and keep the people who will get the best results. Does education do this? Why did the administrator keep his desk that had confidential teacher and student files on it, at the bottom of the stairs where students passed by it every period? where teachers had access to it on the weekends? What does The Emperor's New Clothes have to do with schools? Are principals ever proactive with parents that cause their schools and teachers so many problems? What can we learn from the Brett and Anita Howard story? Why does it so often seem that a meeting is held to work on a student's underachievement, and is list is developed that lists everything everyone has to do but the student? What can we learn from a young (50), healthy, retiring principal who kept a five year calendar where she was crossing off the days until she could leave? Do teachers know when principals are not coming around? Have we learned anything about appeasement since Neville Chamberlain? Should you train trainers so you can do training on early out days instead of pulling teachers and administrators out of the schools on days when school is in session? What are the district jobs and what do they do all week? math coordinator? writing coordinator? Should a teacher who is dating a married man have that man's child in her class and have that father be in there as a parent helper? Should that teacher be allowed to announce to her students that she is dating this man? What is the story of the paper clip?

Teacher Unions
I constantly hear people in the news blaming unions for our failed schools. I worked in two schools for two different unions and never saw them involved in curriculum or the spending per student. Yes, they might give teachers protection form unfair treatment, but administrators could always use progressive disciple as is done in businesses that deal with the strongest labor unions in the country. Progressive disciple should be used in most cases to correct behavior and improve performance. Termination should be in those cases where the teacher won't improve.

Schools 
What is a good teacher? What do they do that distinguishes them? What are the exemplars? Can a person learn to be a highly effective teacher? What are the roles of PTOs and Site Committees? Are they effective? Do assemblies and field trips hurt critical academic time needed to prepare for the standardized tests? How many are too many? What is the best way to begin a new school year? What kinds of meetings? What kind of teacher training? What kind of in-service training should take place throughout the year? How often should there be staff meetings? What should be covered at those meetings? Why does so much of the work displayed in schools have so little content and academic value? What is the best educational philosophy for the classroom? the school? the district? the state? the nation? Is your public school a welcoming place? is the front office welcoming? the library? the lunch room? the classrooms? What are the advantages of K-8 schools and why don't we have more of them? What is wrong with our middle schools? Why can't public schools offer free all day pre-school and free all day kindergarten? Why don't all schools have built in remediation for reading, writing, and math? Should schools have publicly funded after school programs? Should schools have a shorter summer vacation? When should departmentalization start in schools? When is leveling/tracking successful? What advantages are there in a multiage classroom? looping? What was the MAI program? Why was its success ignored and not understood? Why don't middle schools and the intermediate grades have AP classes? Should middle schools be set up with credit hours and required credit hours for promotion to high school?How important is it for a school to have art, music, and P.E.? recess? classroom plays? science fairs? a school Variety Show? Why do schools abhor competition? What is good about competition for schools? teachers? students? Should there be transparency of test scores by district, by school, and by teacher? How can schools promote a school spirit and a sense of community? What can we learn from the Plainfield stores? What jobs are teachers doing that take time away from instruction? AR trophies? AR certificates? meetings? duty? copying?

Principals 
What is the story about the principal who didn't satisfy a parent's complaint that her child wasn't being challenged, and her complaint that he was being bullied? Not meeting that parent's needs might have cost the district the enrollment of twelve hundred students? Why were an acting principal and two office clerks in the school at 6:00 P.M.? Why did two fourth grade teachers try to prevent two girls from going on a field trip? What is the most important job of the principal? What should they and their assistant spend most of their time on? Are they qualified to do it? Are they effective? Is every one of their teachers an excelling teacher, or a teacher well on their way towards becoming an excelling teacher? How does a principal get away with falsifying records? writing up teacher performance evaluations that never happened? writing up post evaluations conferences that never happened? writing up fire drills that never took place? signing documents that did not take place on the date indicated?

• my principal didn't understand that an assignment book should record homework on the day it's due, not the day it was assigned
• my principal didn't understand why I assigned so much math practice
• my principal didn't understand way I assigned so much reading practice
• my principal didn't understand why I gave consequences for missing homework
• my principal didn't understand why I did Read Aloud every day

Teachers
What makes an excellent teacher? What makes them effective? What characteristics do they have that makes them different than the average, and the poor performing teachers? What are the exemplars? Can effective instruction be taught? Can it be improved through the teacher evaluation process? Do teachers have the freedom to teach their class the way they know best based on their training? Is teaching a profession? Are teachers treated as professionals? Is teaching a career, or has it become just a low paying job? Are teachers paid like professionals? Do teachers have too many responsibilities that take away time needed for lesson planning, parent communications, and grading? Why do so many teachers who used to come in their schools on the weekends to work no longer do so? Why are young teachers with masters' degrees looking to make a career change? Why are there annual Academy Awards for movies, Emmies each year for television, Halls of Fame inductions each year for baseball and football, yet no significant recognition is given to people involved in education? How can we make teaching a more attractive profession? Are the people selected to be "Teacher of the Year" really the best teachers, or are they being selected for other reasons? Why are there so few men teaching in elementary school? Like nursing and secretary positions, teaching started out with almost exclusively women filling the positions. How has this affected the teaching profession? Why don't teachers retire at the Social Security age? How can districts and states afford to have teachers retire at fifty? Should teachers be paid incentives based on their students test scores and growth? Should teacher performance ratings be partially based on student growth? Should teachers work during the summer learning more about content and teaching strategies? What is the art of teaching? what is the science of teaching? Are teacher's with master's degrees better classroom teachers? Is the training of teachers at seminars during the school year a good use of the teacher's time and the district's resources? Is much gained in the re-certification programs teachers are required to meet in order to keep teaching? How many teachers try to teach what the state wants, their district wants, and then teach the things they know the students need to learn? Are teachers living a lie? Are the pet projects teachers hang on to a productive use of time? What should be covered in parent orientation? What kinds of communications should there be between teachers and parents? Who has the monkey? what does this mean? What is an effective parent conference? The idea that the more a teacher talks, the less the students learn has been around for a long time. Why do teachers who keep their direct instruction to less than twenty minutes get criticized? The idea that the more a student works, the more they learn has also been around a long time. Why do teachers who have students working hard and practicing during the class get criticized so much? Why do teachers underestimate what the students are capable of doing and learning? Do teachers still teach to the middle? When do we teach and convince students that they control their report cards? their grades? their learning? their skills? and their futures? Should teachers have a Teacher's Bill of Rights to protect them from parents and students that belittle them, hit them, swear at them, threaten them, harass them, humiliate them, yell at them, and bully them. Should teachers have some protection from administrators and clerks who are grossly unfair in how they treat them? What kind of ongoing training should teachers receive? What happened to the teacher mentoring programs? Should new teachers be in an apprenticeship program? How can we avoid students experiencing a wasted year due to teachers that are just learning to teach and "manage" the class, or due to long term substitutes? Why are some teachers allowed to be absent so much? Why do some teachers always get the better students and other teachers get the problem students? Can teachers be effective if they are afraid for their jobs? What ought be the correct ratio of direct instruction to independent work? How can teachers be freed up from the busy and needless work that they are required to do? How can teachers become a team and work together in collegial harmony for the good of the school and the students and not their own self-interests? Why isn't time spent on team building?Why do teachers so often get involved in gossiping with each other and with parents? The gossiping is very damaging to morale, trust, teacher's reputations, and the good relationships a school needs to be a community. Why are some parents allowed to pick the teachers their children will have? Why are parents allowed to transfer their kids out of a teacher's classroom once the school year has begun? some as late as after Christmas? some as late as the fourth quarter? Why are parents appeased? Why are teachers asked to grovel in front of parents to satisfy the parents' need to punish the teacher and get their pound of flesh? Should tenured kindergarten teachers be terminated four weeks before school is out? Should teachers be observed by dozens of administrators from other schools in a two week period to build a case for termination? Should terminated teachers be required to wear a visitor's pass while school is in session and they are moving their personal things out of the classroom? Should teachers be asked to change report card grades to appease parent complaints? Why was a teacher fired at the end of the year for poor performance and yet called up to receive a certificate of service at the end of year celebration? Why did a teacher who suffered so much personal loss in a year; the death of her father, husband, son-in-law, and favorite dog have to endure other teachers on her team picking and criticizing her? Where was the empathy?Why are some teachers allowed to tell on other teachers, be tattle tales, be spies which prevent privacy, honesty, and good communications to take place between colleagues? What does the term sheepole mean? Are most teachers passive? do they ever tell the emperor he has no clothes? do they ever try to tell the administration they are making them ineffective and are taking away from them the most important commodity they have and need to teach effectively, namely time? do teachers stay in the profession because they work less than 178 days a year, or because they are too far invested into retirement to leave? If they made teachers work eleven months a year how many would stay in the profession? Why was the teacher told in front of other teachers that he was old/ that he didn't need pillows under his shirt to look like Santa? Why do teachers who don't make a lot of money, especially single teachers, spend around a thousand dollars a year on their classrooms? Why do some teachers work a fifty hour week? Why do some send most of the summer working in their classrooms getting ready for the next year? Why were teachers told it is not their classrooms, not their computers, not their materials, and not their students? What do you think of a school where the teachers are more concerned about parties, field trips, and the presents parents will give them than they are about their students' and their school's math scores? How expert, how qualified, are teachers to teach each of the content areas? What do schools do to prevent kids from shutting down at the end of the year? When teachers are giving a spelling test, most people do not know what they are looking at. What is the story of Cocoa? what is the story of the administrator who made fun of the Pledge of Allegiance. How do we select the bast long termed substitutes?

Dear Teacher Bully,

This letter has been a long time coming and I have ignored this situation long enough.  I am tired of teachers who bully other teachers.  I have been a victim and seen too many friends go through it to just sit back anymore!   In the past, this has made me feel inferior, and I am ready for it to stop.   I am NOT inferior!
In true teacher fashion, I made a list.

For the love of teaching and teamwork, please stop doing these things:

• Stop sharing your opinion all the time.  Everyone knows how  you feel, so constantly stating the same opinion again and again is not going to change my opinion on the matter at hand, even if I choose to just sit silently and let you speak.  I have no energy for things that are not constructive.  If there is a conversation happening, and you believe differently, just stay out of it.  We know how you feel.
• Stop speaking for others.  ‘This person said this’ or ‘this person said that,’ as a means to justify your point is more than obvious.  If those people wanted to share their opinion, they would share their opinion, participate in the conversation at hand.  Guess what? They are not in the conversation, so your second hand pieces of information are not valid in your constant explanation of your own opinions.
• Stop speaking over me.  I can tell by your body language that when anyone else speaks, you are completely uninterested.  It’s rude and it’s not professional.
• Stop speaking at me.  If you want to talk about teaching, learning, or the business of education then let’s have a conversation about it.  Don’t exert your opinions on me, and then dismiss the opportunity for a conversation.  Your approach to communication makes others feel as if they cannot have an opinion for fear of what you might say or do next.  People engaged in conversations with you fear you. Let that sink in for a few moments.  People. fear. you.
• Stop talking about yourself all the time.   I know your lesson was perfect and we know that administration loves you.  You do have some amazing lessons and teaching practices, but that does not make you the be-all-end-all of teaching. It also does not make your ideas any better than anyone else.
• Stop saying each year your class is the best or the worst class ever.  Why does it have to only be both extremes?  When you have 4-5 other teammates, it’s highly unlikely that your class is the worst/best behaved or the worst/best at reading every single year!  It puts others down and devalues that the struggle in our profession is real. We all feel it – trust me.
• Stop running and telling administration everything that happens.  I am not admitting to doing anything wrong, but if you have an issue with me, then talk to me.  I should not have to hear from my administration that so-and-so says I am in violation of the handbook.  No one likes “that teacher” who constantly has their nose up administration’s rear-end….and to be honest it is contributing to my feelings of you being a bully because I can’t talk openly around you.
• Stop teaching the same thing again and again and again.  Guess what.. it’s not 1984 anymore and there are all sorts of new concepts and learning approaches out there!  Don’t judge me for not graciously accepting your “binder of resources” that has been handed down again and again. I am a professional, and I choose to create resources and teach concepts that are up to date.  And I won’t judge you for teaching the same thing for 32 years.  For the record, I have shared, and you have not been open to other ideas outside the binder.  {Whoa – that was a little more passive aggressive than I normally am.}
• Stop criticizing others for trying new things.  Best practices change, and you have to be able to ebb and flow with them!  You can’t pass judgement on others who choose to have an open mind about new ideas.  Of course, you can challenge new ideas, but don’t be closed off to trying them.
• Stop excluding others.  It’s just not nice and although it may not be considered bullying, for example,  to buy 2 out of 3 teachers a soda on your team it is just not nice.   And on a wider level…having groups of people that openly or secretly meet is just rude.  What are you doing that is so secretive that others cannot know?  Do you really think you are that much better than the rest of us?  Because in my opinion, this very approach makes you weak and dependent and it’s not for the good of all!  #counterintuitive  I don’t know what ya’ll are talking about at your cocktail hours, but I cringe whenever I hear an inside joke.
• Stop throwing me under the bus.  Seriously.  We may not be best friends, but we are in this together. We don’t all have to be the exact same.  We can respect each other and work together without having to tattle and talk negatively about what others are doing.  If we are both a minute or two late for duty – you don’t have to tell everyone you were there first.
• Stop telling me what and how to teach.  We all went to college and we all have a boss. We all deserve to be where we are at!  I can sleep at night knowing that I am a professional, and I take my job very seriously.  Again – I can sleep at night knowing that what I am doing is right for me and my career.  Not to say that you don’t, but I like to lift people up, encourage, and help others, and not pass judgement or throw stones.  If there are any REAL issues with how others choose to do their jobs, it’s an issue for administration.  Not an open issue you should talk about.  So I will continue to do my work in dynamic ways and if there is an issue, someone with the authority to do so will inform me to stop.
• Stop talking about other teachers or professionals.  If you have a problem with someone, go speak to them privately.  Otherwise accept how they are and move on.  When you talk trash about others, you are only making yourself seem weak!
• Stop being unwilling to change. If there is one thing that is constant in education, (and in life in general) it is that things change. If you can’t get with the program and change with how your professional environment thinks you should, then maybe this is not the profession for you.  We are tired of hearing you complain about it.

Enough is enough.  We are all here for the students, and we all have different viewpoints and beliefs on teaching, learning, and the business side of education.  We as professionals need to find a way to get along, respect one another, and not make anybody feel inferior because of our differences.  We should celebrate those differences the same as we do with our students!
To say someone is a bully is a big deal, and doing any one or combination of these things surely does not make you a bully; it makes you human.  But what I am referring to, is those people who do these things in such a way to put others down in an effort to make themselves look better.  This is directed at those people that you are afraid to reply to or avoid because of their negativity towards everything.
For me, I have no problem standing up for my friends in person.  (Although online attacks are harder) This has gotten easier as I get older.  But standing up for myself is a challenge because I ultimately know that nothing good comes of many of these interactions, so I save my energy for things that bring good to the world.  I go about my business the best way I can.  I make decisions based off what I know as a professional.  I don’t have time for drama, shenanigans or people who are constantly creating or participating in it.  I have been through enough in my life to know when to listen and when to realize that people are being self-serving at my expense.
I choose not to associate myself with bullies.  I choose not to associate myself with you and I will continue to keep my interactions to a minimum with you.  It is a conscious choice I make, and it’s just not healthy to associate yourself with crazy.  I guess that makes me an easy target as well.
And for the record, I sleep just fine at night.
Best Regards,
Jennifer

Teacher of the Year
I was approached by parents who recommended me for the Arizona Teacher of the Year. When I was a student teacher my college, Elmhurst College, selected me the Student Teacher of the Year. But the Arizona Teacher of the Year was not about teaching success or student learning. It was all about what the candidates did for the community. I wanted no part of that.

Students When do we teach students to work hard? When do we teach students to be better listeners? When do we teach students to learn how to learn? How do we distinguish between serious students, pretend students, and students that are not students at all? What do we do about it? When do we teach students to be students? When do we teach perseverance and patience? What motivates students? Should students be held back? double promoted? What should schools do about students who don't come to school to learn? What should students do during the summer? Why did the student bring a twelve man tent and insist he put his up before the other kids?

Things students who don't want to learn, need to learn:

How to say:
May I take your order?
Will you be having dessert today?
Do you want your tires cleaned?
What sent would you like?
School Psychologist 


Special Education


Tent City
What social skills were developed during Tent City?

Field Trips

Homeschooling
How do home schooled students improve their social skills? how do they make friends? how do they make lifelong friends and connections with peers?

Standards Based Education - Core Standards - State Standards 
Is the goal of education to help our children become the best they can be, or is it to make them become what others want them to be, or think they should be? Is standards based education trying to fit square pegs into round holes? Is it the cookie cutter approach? Are we taking the joy out of learning? What is the truth about state standards? Where did they come from? Who decided? Why does the Arizona State Standards require that second graders learn about the Revolutionary War, and third graders learn about the Civil War? Are these topics and concepts age appropriate? Why aren't cursive and typing skills state standards in the intermediate grades? Why don't the materials purchased for the teachers match the standards?  If you only teach the state standards, how can a student exceed the standards? If a student only learns the state math standards, how can they qualify and "test" into the high math classes in middle school? How much of state standards should be knowledge and how much skills? Why aren't teachers trained to teach the state standards and trained to teach beyond them? Are state standards designed to bring the low students up to the 50th percentile? What is going to happen to the high students when the bar is set so low? Why do the states keep changing the state standards? Should we have three sets of standards; one for high achieving students; one for average achieving students; and one for low achieving students? Why did only twenty-six out of fifty states adopt the core standards? What are the district standards that go beyond the state standards?

Assessment and Standardized Tests
Do we have the right assessment tools? Why aren't the AIMS tests done on a computer? Is the scoring of AIMS tests accurate? Why wasn't there a correlation of significant difference between AIMS math scores and the MAP math scores? Why aren't there national standardized tests? Why can't standardized tests be diagnostic and give teachers, students, and their parents specific things to work on so they can improve? Some schools ramp up the excitement during standardized testing. They try to make it fun. They give the kids snacks and juice before each day of testing. They let the kids know that the tests are important. They do weeks of review for math Some have kids come in on Saturdays to review for the math tests. Do these efforts make a quantifiable difference?

Curriculum 
What is a good K-5 curriculum, one that prepares students to be independent learners ready for middle school, high school AP courses, and highly selective colleges? When are we going to do more than just talk about challenging our students? How do we make sure students at each grade level meet their benchmarks so they are ready to be successful at the next grade level? Do we know what these benchmarks are? Do the teachers agree? Were they asked for their input? What is the value of assigning projects? What is an effective science program? writing program? In what ways do we teach critical thinking and the higher thinking levels on Bloom's Taxonomy? When is a field trip of more academic value than reading, writing and math? How many field trips should a classroom have? when? and what should be learned to make them a productive use of time and money?

Report Cards 
What should report cards report? Should report card have a narrative? work habits? productive use of time? organizational skills? areas that the student is doing well? specific things the student needs to do to improve in each academic area? should they be on line?

Parent Conferences
Boy at Coronado
Morgan
Stern

Homework
Why did most fifth graders get more homework in second and third grade than they did in fifth grade?

21st Century Skills 
What are the 21st Century skills that need to be taught? What do employers mean when they say they need an educated work force? educated in what knowledge and what skills? Why aren't gifted learning objectives offered to the regular students?

Time Management
How many problems in education have to do with time? When are we going to take an in-depth look at all the facets of time and its impact on learning? How much time in school are students working on busy work and not really learning or being challenged? How long should the school day be? the school year? How much wasted time is built into the school day?

Successful Schools
What can we learn from the successful schools and successful classrooms that ought to be shared throughout the system? Why are one room schools in Nebraska successful? Why is Basis successful? Why is Basis not the school for many students? What is wrong with homeschooling? Why was Officer Ed a waste of money and no use to correcting the student bad behaviors at Copper Creek?

Classrooms
Why can't small classroom sizes be maintained? What is the right classroom size for each grade level? What things are we doing correctly that we shouldn't change, or allow to be affected by change? What is the right classroom environment for learning? Why can't classroom interruptions be kept to a minimum? Why is a regular routine so important to students? How do we teach students that it is okay and normal to make mistakes? What are the better classrooms, the ones where the teachers are working hard, or the ones where the students are working hard? Does leveling take role models out of most classrooms? Are role models important to have in each classroom? Does leveling put most of the behavior problems in the lowest levels? What data do you use to correctly place a child in the right level? Is it working?

Text Books and Other Teaching Materials
How important are classroom materials? School is in session for thirty-eight weeks; why don't teachers finish teaching every chapter in their math books? Why don't we have better text books? What is a good text book? Why don't districts write their own text books? What is the best program for text book adoptions? What is the truth about Smart Boards? Why are so many teachers, at the same grade level, in the same district, teaching from different materials and covering different content and different skills? Why did the new text books sit in the warehouse for almost the first quarter? Why do teaching materials like the practices book either not get ordered at all, or arrive after the school year has begun? Why do teachers have to copy so much? Why are the copy machines broken so often?

Parents and parenting
Enabling students: who does it? what is it? what does it look like? what harm does it do to children? How do we stop parents from enabling their children? How can parents help teach their children to be organized? When do we teach students to use their assignment books and write their assignments on the due dates? What is the most effective way parents can help their child be successful in mathematics? Why don't parents trust a teacher's knowledge of pedagogy? Why are teachers so disrespected by so many parents? What happens when a parent puts a teacher on the defensive? who gains? why do they feel they need a pound of flesh? Why and how often do teachers have to lower their expectations due to parent complaints? Why can't our children walk to school? Why are so many students, the same students, tardy and absent? Why do parents get to take their children out of school for additional vacation time when they are off for eleven weeks during summer, seventeen days off during winter break, a week off for fall and spring break, Rodeo Days, and five other holiday days?

Reading 
What is an effective reading program? Why don't parents read to their children? Why don't teachers read every day to their students? How much reading practice should a student get? What books should most eighth graders have read before entering high school? Should we have a suggested reading list for each grade level of the books that should be read? Should all schools have Accelerated Reader? How should this program be effectively managed? How important are libraries and librarians to every public school? to every school? for what purposes? When should students be taught research skills? should libraries and computer labs be combined since they both are about information? How do we effectively teach reading in a content area and get the students prepared to comprehend the more sophisticated text books they will encounter in the AP classes and college? A school had for years been labeled an "excelling" school. Then its math and reading scores dropped. What would you think of this school if you learned it often has its library closed, its library is not a welcoming place, and the teachers do not let their students use the computer to take reading tests?

Mathematics 
Why is mathematics so important? If mathematics is so important, and it has been identified as important since the days of Sputnik, why aren't we seeing improvement? Should public schools put the resources in place so that the majority of students are in pre-algebra in the sixth grade? What are all the important math habits that every student needs to learn? How much of math success depends on reading skills? Do math text books have too many concepts per chapter? How much homework should a student be given? Should each school have a math coordinator? How many minutes per day should each grade level have to effectively teach mathematics? Why don't many of the fifth graders know their math facts including multiples, and why do so many count on their fingers? What is the value of timed math tests? Should math concepts be reinforced and covered in art? music? science? P.E.? language arts? social studies? How do we teach students to be able to explain how to the math problems? How can we efficiently assess their explanations of so many math concepts and so many math problems? Will they still be doing enough practice? Do we teach students the right way to complete their scratch paper? When? How often? How is it assessed? How do we teach students to think about what they are doing, and not just do the problems? How is it possible for teachers to take one math methods course and from that be able to teach math concepts from kindergarten to eighth grade? A school was for several years an excelling school. The schools math scores dropped and it is no longer excelling. This same school has teachers who don't send students for math remediation because of birthday parties, a book fair, kite flying, a "Slime" Party, a St. Patrick's Day party, a play practice, a pop corn party, and making masks in art. Would these teachers not send their students to math remediation for these same reasons if their compensation was tied to their students and their schools math scores??? What does it do to math leveling when one teacher in the group takes her class on a field trip? Why did the teacher think it was a good decision to keep a student in her class to take a spelling test instead of sending her to remedial math? Are most teachers qualified to teach math? What does qualified mean? Why did the 5th graders care so little about the math class they would be placed in in middle school? Why did the girl in the lowest math class think she was an A+ student who has mastered most of the fifth grade concepts? When do we teach the students what "is" and "of" means? What kind of teachers try to be the last to take the MAP and Orleans-Hanna tests versus the teachers who allow their students to be the first to take them? How and when do we teach long division? dad, mom, sister, brother, repeat? where to put the numbers? how much practice should they get? how much review? how long does it take to master learning division? Can a student study for a test by studying the test? can a student master the math concepts by doing homework twice a week with as few as eight problems? who is monitoring what these math teachers are doing? can students learn if their teachers was absent 35 days? should we have math competitions in the elementary schools like we do in middle school/ do we ever have rewards and parties for math work?

My Career

When I first got out of high school I thought about becoming a teacher. I worked for the Board of Education of the city of Chicago as a playground substitute instructor. But I got married and never finished a four year degree or earned a teacher certification.
to be continued if I ever would ever get comments....

I love the topic of education. Before becoming a teacher, I spent twenty-five years in management in the food industry. Much of that was managing problems. During the years when I was a lowly clerk, to years later being part of senior management, we tackled problems like reducing shrink, curbing Worker's Compensation costs, and greatly improving our inventory turns, thereby reducing dollars tied up in stagnent shelf and warehouse stock. We developed a system of measuring our earnings against assets; a very useful tool to measure performance.

Teachers are not in the kind of leadership positions, or decision making positions, to tackle the questions and concerns about education that I listed on the side column. Those questions have answers and solutions. Once retired, I'd like to spend my time examining each one of them. Most teachers entered the teaching profession to make a difference in the lives of children. In the coming years, my retirement years, that might be a way that I can try to make a difference in the lives of children.

My MAI class
What I needed for my class that I didn't have were as follows:

• a supportive principal and assistant principle
• a service minded clerk in the front office so I could order the classroom materials I needed
• more supportive colleagues
• better text books
• better science materials
• more training in teaching science
• more practice materials and less xeroxing
• less field trips
• less assemblies
• no leveling

Math Boosters Students often come in late and miss the direct instruction. Students have been absent for the following reasons:

• birthday parties
• play practice
• book fair
• fly kites
• slime party
• St. Patrick's party
• pop corn party
• recess after coming back from a field trip
• make-up spelling test
• masks in art which couldn't be done during regular art class which was being evaluated
• multiple field trips in the 4th quarter
• moving desks
• to do a 3rd grade presentation so the parents could see it
• to shoot off rockets
• two teachers talked to a student for 25 minutes about his stems test
• to go to buddy class
• a one hour root beer float party
• practice Character Counts
• make Mother's Day cards
• to go to the MAP play

The movie Ants reminds me of my last few weeks of teaching in the Math Boosters class.  I have four classes of second, third, fourth and fifth grade students. It keeps me busy, but I get to meet a lot of students throughout the school and see other teachers teaching their classes. In the movie Ants you get very focused on all the goings on in one ant hill. Like it's the whole world. But the camera moves back and you see other ant hills. The camera moves farther back and you see a lot of ant hills in a field. The camera keeps moving back and everything gets smaller and smaller, but your view gets larger and larger until you see the entire universe. As I think about my questions about education (below), I'm like the camera moving back seeing more and more of how these problems are more than a classroom problem, or a school problem, or a district problem, the problems with public education span the nation from coast to coast. I think the future of public education is at stake. As more and more problems surface, more and more failing solutions are being put in place making the situation  more and more problematic.