The difference between education ideas and rhetoric in education, teachers versus executives

I wrote a blog about school board seats for sale and said the price was 84 thousand dollars. That is the amount that Chartrand executive Ashley Smith-Juarez raised in the first quarter of the year. A few of her supporters said I was being unfair and that she was the real deal. I told them, well tell me her ideas. Thus far I have yet to hear back. I took it on my own to go to her web-site and look at her stance on the issues.

Deliver a school district that meets the highest expectations. Doing so will lower crime and unemployment, bring more jobs to town and provide a better quality of life.

Ensure all schools are inspiring, relevant places for all children to reach their potential. Every school should be a model school of excellence. Each student deserves a learning environment that is fun, engaging and safe.

Envision school governance differently. We need visionary, strategic and
accountable leadership. We need policies and practices in place to recruit, train and retain the highest quality principals and teachers. We need fiscal accountability with efficient, effective use of resources.
Provide autonomy to the school based level. Give administrators, principals and teachers the tools and liberty they need to do their jobs and do them well. Then, hold them accountable.

Impart a positive, proactive, can-do culture on the School Board. The status quo isn't working. We need to seek and implement reasons why we can provide the education each student needs to be successful in the classroom and in life.

After reading above I have to say it sounds nice, unfortunately it is also the same thing everybody who doesn’t understand the issues in education would say. It is filled with rhetoric and woefully short on ideas.

An idea would be to put a mental health counselors and social workers in all our struggling schools because often why our kids do poorly in school have nothing to do with school. We have to provide wrap around services for some of our kids to have a chance to be successful.

An idea would be to change the schedules at our local high schools because right now they are taking too many classes that are too long for them that meet too infrequently. Eight classes at a time that are ninety minutes long and that often have days between meetings sets many of our kids up for failure. We need six periods 50 minutes a day that meet every day.

I could go on and on. Friends we have had enough rhetoric and voted for too many people that come wrapped in a pretty bow and it has gotten us to where we are at. We need people who understand the problems in our schools and who have solutions to fix them.