Part of Obama’s Education Plan Explained
Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education
NBC’s Chuck Todd wrote about the Wednesday night Charlie Rose interview of President Obama’s new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
During the interview, Duncan explained part of the new president’s proposed agenda for public schools AND utilization of stimulus monies.
Part of the interview . . .
DUNCAN: I think our schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day. So it’s not just length –
ROSE: So eight to eight, or something like that?
DUNCAN: Yes, and let me tell you what — not just lengthening, obviously, the school day, but a wide variety of after school activities: drama, arts, sports, chess, debate, academic enrichment, programs for parents, GED, ESL, family literacy nights, potluck dinners. At home, we attached health-care clinics to about two dozen of our schools. Where schools truly become the centers of the community, great things happen. So I think we need the schools open much longer hours, and by the way, we don’t have to do this all ourselves as educators. You can bring in great nonprofits: the YMCAs, the Boys and Girls Clubs, mentoring and tutoring groups to co-locate their services and bolster the community from the school. And every neighborhood in our country, you have schools. In every school, you have classrooms, you have computer labs, you have libraries, you have gyms, many have pools. Those buildings don’t belong to you or I. They don’t belong to the unions. They belong to the community. We have these great physical resources, and we even maximize them.
ROSE: Keep them open 12 hours a day, 12 months a year.
DUNCAN: Yes.
ROSE: Twelve hours a day, 12 months a year.
DUNCAN: And I would go to six or seven days a week, not just Monday through Friday.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! 12 hour school days! WHAT!?!? We can’t even keep kids in school now!
But Duncan explains that he and the president envision a public school becoming a community center.
This means that when they advocate lengthening the school day, they’re not necessarily calling for more public money to be spent on after-school programs.
They are talking about, literally, using the building as a community center.
Yep, sounds like a great utilization of resources!
As a matter of fact, in The Kingsland Plan, Don shows how part of the plan brings communities and schools closer together. Also, the plan utilizes school facilities to conduct biweekly parenting classes in the evenings. These would alternate with parent/community concern and curriculum meetings, held in those same schools in the evening or on the weekend.
However, in this time of politically-correct policies, how do communities (or Big Brother) decide WHICH GROUPS will utilize these great public facilities?
O.K. YMCA, tutoring and health clinics sound ideal, but what if a subversive group like the Boy Scouts wants to use the building? The ACLU and other PACs will be outraged if equal access is given to a group that discriminates against women (not allowed, except as Den Mothers) and homosexuals (not allowed at all).
Policing “political correctness”, in the use of public places, will give the ACLU, and other special interest groups, a stronger grip on our educational system. Which is the last thing we should want.
I’m all for good utilization of resources, but . . .
Tell ya’ what Mr. Duncan. Why don’t you spend your efforts and our stimulus money FIRST on changing EDUCATION, to get improved LEARNING results?
Let’s stop the escalating dropout rates! Let’s have ALL of our students who DO graduate able to read and write and think.
THEN, if you’re gonna take the decision out of the hands of local communities, let’s concentrate your energies and our taxpayer money, on deciding who gets to set up programs and use the buildings after the school day is done.
JMHO,
Brennan
National Teachers of the Year Interviewed
The following quotes and video come from interviews conducted by Charlie Rose:
“The American public school system has long been under scrutiny and in crisis. However, there is growing sentiment that large scale reform could be possible. In anticipation of the 2008 election, I have been conducting a series of interviews on education, sponsored by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.”
“Most recently I spoke to four of our nation’s best teachers, all of them recent winners of the National Teacher of the Year award. Here is some of what Michael Geisen, Jason Kamras, Kimberly Oliver, and Kathy Mellor had to say about standardized testing, merit pay, and other features of the current educational climate:”
The only comment I can disagree with is Kathy Mellor’s comment (the final teacher), that the NEA is an “association, not a union”. Whether the NEA benefits teachers or not, it is, first and foremost a union.
If enough parents and teachers can rally around The Kingsland Plan, then we can implement the positive changes needed to straighten-out public education in the USA.
Brennan
