The upcoming school year

[Terry Allan Hall]

As school is now startintg back up (last week, out our way), let us consider what kind of education our kiddos are getting...

What do you like about your child's education, or your education, in the case of our younger members?

What do you dislike?

Is there an area where you feel that your local ISD has done extraordinarily good things?

Is there an area where you feel that your local ISD has done extraordinarily ridiculous things?

Right off the top of my head, I feel like, what with budget cuts and purse tightenings, our ISD is spending too many tax dollars on our various (scholastic) football teams...and spending entirely too little on science, math, culture (music, art), and the library.

What is your perspective on your ISD?

 

[dbeilfuss]

As school is now startintg back up (last week, out our way), let us consider what kind of education our kiddos are getting...

What do you like about your child's education, or your education, in the case of our younger members?

What do you dislike?

Is there an area where you feel that your local ISD has done extraordinarily good things?

Is there an area where you feel that your local ISD has done extraordinarily ridiculous things?

Right off the top of my head, I feel like, what with budget cuts and purse tightenings, our ISD is spending too many tax dollars on our various (scholastic) football teams...and spending entirely too little on science, math, culture (music, art), and the library.

What is your perspective on your ISD?

Well, I live in CO in a small rural town. My husband and I are both teachers with MA in education. It drives us both batty the way our local school districts are ran. Test scores show little to no improvement over the years and yet they don't make changes that will help kids excel.

Our five yr old started school this year and we have made the choice as informed parents in the district to NOT put our child into the local schools. We feel that we can provide a much better education for our child at home then what is offered locally.

It is scary when school districts will spend six figures for someone to lead the district and won't hire teachers with experience because they are too expensive. Therefor they hire 1st yr teachers (who have excitement for teaching, but often lack the expertise that comes with years of practice-I was there too once) who are inexpensive and then let them go prior to them gaining tenure and a pay raise.

While these are just my personal views, I am sure that there are fantastic schools/districts out there. And I have seen fantastic teachers that I look up to for advice and mentoring-I just know that locally there is a real lack of leadership within our districts and education.

 

[DocNezzy]

I feel that less time should be spent on trying to pass some standardized test at the end of the year. Start teaching the kids more things that they will use, money management for example. I am in the military, and I am blown away about how little new recruits know about managing their finances. Most have no idea about a 401k vs a Roth IRA. Some have never even heard of compound interest. What a shame!

 

[dmarcus]

I agree with Tony, so many schools focus on getting students to pass the standardized test so they don't lose any funding that the forget about teaching the basics. When a school's main goal is to ensure they get a certain percentage of students to pass the government issued test so they can keep getting grant money, then you start seeing a lot of student who are not prepared for college or life.

I was shocked when I started going to college when I was in my early 30’s and there was so many students who just graduated high school taking remedial math classes because the algebra and calculus class did not teach them what they needed to pass college algebra…

My daughter goes to school in Hot Springs Arkansas and I just have to keep my fingers crossed that they do a good job educating her...