A Change is Needed
Posted by Brian McLaughlin at 5/27/2010 8:28 AM 
Categories: Educational Innovations
Tags: new jersey education shareski reform standup rally budget crisis
Categories: Educational Innovations
Tags: new jersey education shareski reform standup rally budget crisis
This past weekend I traveled to Trenton for the Standup Rally organized by Better Choices for New Jersey. This is the view from my spot on the green:
It was an exhilarating day with speakers from a variety of organizations, including the NJEA , presenting their ideas for a better New Jersey. Eyewitness News filed the following report on the activities of the day:
I understand that Governor Christie has a difficult situation to deal with. I understand that things need to change. In my opinion, the Governor's attitude toward teachers is a large part of the current crisis. I don't understand this approach. But enough others have addressed this sad state of affairs. I'd like to move on to thinking about some other issues.
2 Issues for further blog posts:
Where Do We Go from Here? (New Jersey Version)
There are almost 600 school districts in New Jersey. (NJ Public Schools Fact Sheet) A similar sized state, Virginia, has less than 200 school districts. I'm not an economist or a budget expert or even very good at arithmetic, but I think this is clearly part of the problem in New Jersey. But the bigger issue is: HOW DO WE FIX IT? Even if we get all the stakeholders to agree that this is a problem that needs to be addressed, HOW DO WE FIX IT? I don't have the answer. BUT, I think it has to be discussed. Our current system is institutionally inefficient!
Where Do We Go from Here? (USA Version)
The current school year structure was custom designed for the United States of America as it existed over a century ago! My PLN at school has been reading Diane Ravitch's new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. She covers a lot of great discussions and honestly identifies her flip-flops on education issues over the past few decades, but much of what she discusses at the end of the book is where do we go from here. I agree with Diane that The Race to the Top is NOT the answer, I love her recent post on the issue. I'd like to find out how public education can change to address the vastly different world that we live in now.
Inspiration
shareski
Recently tweeted:Not sharing online, can be, in
some ways is a selfish act. (I'm trying Dean, thanks for the push!)
More to follow . . .
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