Mon Sep 27, 9:22 am ET Obama calls for longer school year
By Liz Goodwin
President Obama
said on the "Today" show Monday morning that American students attend school a month less than kids in other countries -- contending that the school-year gap puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy. "The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense," he said, when asked if kids should go to school year-round.
The president also said that though per-student spending has gone up in the country, student performance has gone down, which shows that "money without reform will not fix the problem." He urged
teachers unions not to resist his administration's reforms, which include evaluation of teachers based on their students' test performance and an emphasis on independent charter schools.
Obama has pushed for a longer school year before.
"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day," Obama
said last year. "That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy."
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Photos: More images of President Obama]
He joked then that the idea was not popular with his two school-age daughters. Obama also said that his daughters,
Sasha and Malia,
would not be able to obtain the same quality of instruction at D.C. public schools (which are known for their low test scores and high dropout rates) that they get at
Sidwell Friends School. Advocates of education reform have called out the first family in the past for sending the girls to private school.
This whole article you can read
here
I copied and pasted it for you all to read.
First and foremost, read some of the comments. They are ALL OVER THE PLACE. You can so totally tell who's a parent commenting, who's a teacher and people that don't have kids or give a crap about what's going on in our education system.
As a teacher, do I mind the extra month of teaching?
Eh..Not really. Only if they were not to pay us and increase our salary then I would have a problem because we already all know that teachers work pretty much for free it's ridiculous.
What bothers me about the article is how our President feels the need to compare our education system to students in China, Korea, Japan etc etc.....
Dear Mister President,
if you only knew that extending the length of school has nothing to do with education and the amount we receive, it has to do with the QUALITY kids get, not only from their teachers but from their PARENTS who are suppose to help guide them and teach them at home!!!
Some great comments I found on the forum:
"Case in point: Socialism is for the people not the socialist. The guy won't send his own kids to the public schools in which he is trying to fix? It's ok for "YOU PEOPLE" to send your kids to a broken education system which supports teacher unions but not my kids."
don't even know where to begin but here goes. First of all Obama says he wants to get the best teachers in the classroom. Meanwhile people are trying to cut their salaries, cut their benefits, get rid of their pensions, and make the school year longer. How will you recruit the "best teachers" when you make the profession undesirable?
Second, how will you implement a system of merit pay when there is no real and reliable way to measure? Standardized test scores? This is how teachers will be measured? Please. What about the woodshop teacher? How will he be measured?
Third, the graduation rate of the high school in my distict is 97%. 97%! How is this explained? What are the districts like with a 1/3 drop out rate? My guess is that they are in communities that do not support the public schools. Where there is little or no accountability for the students at home. Where teachers are spending most of their time on discipline rather than teaching curiculum.
Fourth, charter and private schools cannot be compared to public schools. If they don't want a student at one of those schools they just kick them out. And where do they go? Public school where they cannot be kicked out.
The list goes on...
the problem is so much bigger then our education system. It has more to do with our culture. MTV, facebook, cell phones, the programs on television etc. I don't think there's really a way to combat this wave.
the QUALITY of education needs to go up, not the length of the school year. what will a longer school year for a student in a mediocre education system do? nothing.
Enough with this idea that teachers should evaluated based on their student's performance. They can't choose who is in their classroom, so how is it fair to fire someone based on the scores of some kids who could care less about standardized tests, or who have super crappy home lives and don't care about school, or who struggle academically?
There are many good teachers in the public school systems. Why are we always evaluating the teacher for the students failing, when the parents are not doing their job, and that has been proven, when the child has no discipline, that is FIRST taught at home.THE PROBLEM IS WE NEED TO STOP BLAMING THE TEACHERS FOR THE FAILURE OF OUR CHILDREN. Parents needs to work with their children's teachers, and shoulder the responsibility of their children 's education.
Not a teacher, but come from a long family history of teachers.
Oh dear lovelies. I wonder how many of you will actually read this and comment. No one ever likes when people blog about serious stuff but seriously this stuff is going on whether we like it or not and it involves my JOB!
Your thoughts?
