Set Our Teachers FREE!

Happy New Year everybody! As you feverishly finish all your New Year’s Resolutions for 2008, I hope you’ll add a commitment to education reform onto your list.

Is there a reason to be concerned? Let’s take a quick look back at a few of the highlights (lowlights?) of the happenings in Education in 2007:

• No Child Left Behind became increasingly unpopular as studies revealed that results of massive testing included lots of inaccuracies and even widespread cheating.




• Congress recessed for the year without making the needed changes to NCLB, so we are still stuck with a program that, even if it did work, can still be abused.




• Violence became more widespread than ever:
  
  
  • A 16 year old student in Wisconsin was convicted of murdering his high school principal.

  
  

  • An Amish school experienced the slaughter of several young girls.

  
  

  • A teacher in South Carolina was terminated for reporting a rape threat from a student. (NOTE: She sued the district and won the lawsuit.)

  
  

  • Bullying, especially cyberbullying, increased drastically - resulting in several suicides by victims of the attacks.

  
  

  • Gang violence increased on campuses nationwide.

  
  

• Our very best U.S. students failed so miserably in an important international competition (ranking 24th) that we didn’t even enter the competition in 2007.




• Drop-out rates continued to soar - up to 75% in some urban areas.




• Early campaigning for the 2008 Presidential election gave us candidates who first ignored education in their campaigns, then offered the same old tired, unworkable solutions.




• Several studies were published that suggested billions of dollars and up to 15 years would be needed to fix our troubled public education system.

Basically, 2007 was another year of ‘nothing done’ to fix our schools.

EXCEPT: In the latter part of the year, a new book was published. Written by a Master Teacher with a 50-year span of teaching experience, the book “Set Our Teachers FREE! A Plan to Save Public Education” by Don Kingsland, was introduced to the online community.

From the book, The Kingsland Plan was formulated. Now there is a complete plan for fixing U.S. public schools and a grassroots movement started to implement the plan and fix our schools.

Let’s see what happens in 2008!

Brennan

Filed under: Education Reform