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Health & Fitness

Schools Should Attack Learning Factors They Control

In order to meet the demands for 21st Century schools, educators, legislators, and parents need to attack those factors that influence learning which are within the control of public schools.  Those factors are:

• Installing rigorous curriculum for all students; 

• Assigning adequately prepared and experienced teachers to schools with minority and low income students;

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• Reducing teacher absences and turnover in minority and low-income schools; 

• Reducing class size in early grades and in schools with minority and low-income students;

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• Reducing fear and increasing safety in all schools, but especially in minority and low income schools;

• Reaching out to all parents, but particularly parents of minority and low income students, to increase their participation in their children’s education.

 

May I be so bold as to suggest some courses of action that will require all sides to be willing to change their focus, expectations, and levels of participation:

• Educators & legislators need to work together to fund pay incentives to bring more experienced and prepared teachers back into minority and low income schools.  That will mean teachers’ unions putting aside their objection to incentive pay and focus on attacking specific areas of difficulty.

• Educators & parents need to work together to encourage more rigorous curriculum. Parental objections to more rigorous curriculum are at least as big an obstacle as any other.  So, parents need to work within their communities to reduce the objections of parents to higher expectations.

• We all need to find ways to make all schools, but particularly low performing, minority, and low incomes schools with histories of safety problems, safer places and to insure that the funding necessary to do so is never subject to political whim.

• Legislators, parents, & educators need to bring about fully funded education that provides sufficient resources to low performing schools for them to attack these issues.  Our tendency to fund minority and lon-income schools more poorly than most has to end.

 

It will take more money than we are willing to spend right now.  It will mean some will have to put aside plans for other social programs and others will have to put aside objections to new taxes.  The bottom line is that “Money Matters”!  These are learning factors schools can control; but expecting the school system to work miracles without sufficient funding is irresponsible.  

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