Honestly
Jon Crisp's column in this morning's Tennessean points out, again, that there are some serious issues in the MNPS that must be addressed.
This just ought not to be so.Let's first present the facts as the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) and the Tennessee Department of Education published them. Nashville spends more than $9,000 per student per year to educate each child, an amount that puts us near the top of the 135 public schools systems in Tennessee and well above the national average. The graduation rate for MNPS is second from the lowest in Tennessee of all reporting school systems. MNPS is in last place in Tennessee in the number of students determined to be "proficient" in math foundations.
Did you know that there are Metro high schools from which your child has only a one-in-three chance of graduation? Did you know that a large number of our students are unable to meet minimum graduation requirements and will receive an "attendance" certificate at graduation rather than a diploma?
Jon says we need to "declare war on our deficiencies" and "Why not offer financial incentives to our teachers..."? Yes and yes again. Go read the rest and then start asking the current School Board and the candidates running "What exactly are you going to do to fix this?"
5 comments:
So, Kay, what are you going to do about it?
I'm going to encourage parents to learn about their child's school and get involved at holding that school accountable for their child's education. If the school fails I'll help them utilize every aspect of NCLB to get the services their child needs.
I'm going to support incentive pay for excellent teachers willing and able to successfully take on the hard cases--because they've earned it.
I do think that if a child hasn't mastered the core skills they don't need to be moved on to other less essential classes or extra-curricular activities.
MNPS needs to find ways to accomodate children who learn differently than the rest of their class. Often that difference is only a handicap to the effficiency of the classroom--it's not really a handicap once teaching and learning styles match.
I'm going to encourage some public school competition by encouraging charter schools. And the rest of the public schools should be no less accountable than those charters.
That's all that comes to mind immediately.
I thought of another--
If you take an AP class--you must take the final test.
accommodate, accommodate, accommodate
;-)
I sometimes type too fast for the keyboard to accept the double letters. I hate that.
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