Do we have any new year resolutions? If it were up to me, I'd say California's resolutions should include not only education reform, but reformation of the expenditures and cutbacks. It boggles my mind that we are to continue providing great services to our students and families and be held accountable while we continue the billions of dollars in cuts. Our focus seems to be getting lost in many government programs.
Jack O'Connell, California's State Superintendent of Public Instruction, would most likely stand up for what we all believe. Education is a crucial aspect of all life within a society. I agree with him completely when it comes to his statement made, "We protect our collective economic viability by educating student to their full potential and preparing them to compete in the global economy." Our current population of students has their work cut out for them if they are to be competitive in society today. If we continually downgrade our educational resources and not find creative ways to fund programs, we will surely fail to keep the next generation on the playing field.
As an educator and a citizen of California, my hope is that we can keep class sizes down and test scores high. This will come naturally if we use some good old fashioned common sense. This is something I've noticed people on the West Coast do not naturally earn. Growing up in North Dakota has afforded me the opportunity to see many perspectives and advantages of rural life that many kids in California don't experience. Public school systems in the Midwest tend to be on average much smaller than anything I've experienced in California. In the article written by Greg Toppo of USA Today, you can pick up what I'm laying down. My first year of teaching in Hanford allowed me to see a class list of 45 students with 39 showing up for the first 2 months of school. After they did the class shifts the district does each year, I still was left with 36 fourth graders. Turn back time, when I was attending Lansford Elementary School in fourth grade, I had 9 classmates. This was a large class for me when I was in fourth grade as most were around 6 students, but considering I was now teaching 6 times as many students, I was a bit overwhelmed in my first year! They didn't even have math texts or English, spelling and grammar books! But that's a whole other blog I'll save.
When I consider our test scores, I see the results continually seem to resemble that of a teacher forced to teach more crowd management skills than reading skills. When you have little physical space to walk around your classroom, or even a table from which to work in small groups, you tend to understand the test scores. Public schools in rural Middle America have class-size reduction simply because of population and proper tax distribution of monies.
What has California's solution been for these issues? Cut jobs for everyone. Increase class sizes everywhere.
California Department of Education News Release, May 29, 2009
http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr09/yr09rel83.asp
Greg Toppo's article in USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-03-24-small-classes_N.htm
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