In the NYtimes article from yesterday, it outlines the pain associated with cutting school budgets. The solution for many states and school districts is to decrease the hours within a school day/school year and/or cutting summer school programs. However with these cuts, many would argue that our children need more instruction time, but for some, the solution is the opposite.
The most successful programs in our nation today all contain longer schools days, a longer school year, and/or extensive summer school options. A radical approach suggested in the article discusses the possibility of year round schooling which could possibly eliminate expenses in some avenues yet providing students with an effective means to an education.
One piece to this puzzle I'd like to discuss is that if the school year does get shorter and shorter, and basic supply budgets are getting smaller and smaller, how can a teacher be effective in the classroom with such limited resources? The demand for high test scores and the pressure on teachers to improve performance seems impossible with such little wiggle room.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/education/06time.html?ref=education
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2 comments:
This is exactly true, thus the idea of the wholistic approach comes into play. This way, you not only identify a problem, you also implement a possible solution.
What is going on now, it seems, is that everyone is grasping at straws attempting to focus in on one cause. I don't think there is enough pre-planning being put into place, nor a close enough look at long term effects. Seems like the experts need to be effective teachers themselves, and start with the end result and work backwards. Therefore, the people involved in the plan (teachers)will be engaged and achieve success.
I absolutely agree that our kids need more instructional time and that cutting the school days is in turn hurting our students. But I wonder what it would take to actually shift to year-round schools. And does this actually help the budget?
That's paying teachers a larger salary. More supplies. Programming during the breaks, perhaps? I think it's so difficult to have discussions about the budget without including teachers. Maybe with such budget cuts, we need to be spending less on new equipment or field trips. But I just think that the idea of taking away learning time from the students simply makes matters worse.
If education is the future of our children, then why would we take that away from them? Maybe the real budget cuts need to be coming from elsewhere. Or we are going to need some funds from other domains- because this cannot continue if we want to make sure every one of our students receives a quality education.
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