Here is the Complete posting at Parade.
Sunday July 6th -- It is the forth story Newsmakers
NEWSMAKERS
Fixing Our Schools
Former Labor Secretary William Brock leads the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, created to report on the state of U.S. education.
How can we fix American education?
They he states the same thing everyone says......
You’ve said publicly that we are failing our teachers. How?
We recruit new teachers largely from the bottom 30% of entering college students, train them, and then assign them to the toughest jobs in the most challenging schools with very low pay. When the results fall short, we tell them, “You just have to work harder.” Most feel that they have no voice in their schools. This is no way to treat professionals.
Why isn’t education a bigger political issue?
Primarily because there is no quick fix. It’s complex. Perhaps most of all, no one really wants to admit that we are leaving millions of children behind. Education is the key to better jobs, higher incomes, and greater growth in what has become an extremely competitive global economy. Nothing is more important than education. Absolutely nothing.
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Same story ... Education is really important ... but check the radar screen at any governmental level ... Education hardly rates even close to top billing.
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Looks like another hot-air government commission, this time it is called the:
New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.
I can hardly wait for the substantive improvement that will happen as a result of the latest commission.
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5 comments:
Lets not forgot Senor Brock has been in politics and labor nearly since the inception of education reform (1962).
During his time spent as a US 'trade' representative, his company was paid about $1 million by the Mexican Government to help pass NAFTA and represent Mexico during the debate on fast-tracking authority. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a tremendously bad idea.
Job loss as a result of NAFTA, with Brock representing Mexico, not the US, was almost a million unemployed American workers.
Low achievement in school, leads to more overseas competition, which leads to lower paying jobs.
Senor Brock is a traitor, he sold out American workers and our education system. He is no more a friend to education than Bush and his fellow Republicans.
Why are overseas workers underpaid? The dollar is overvalued, so it gets exported to places like Iran and Iraq. Strong dollar means job loss in the US.
Mexican laborers paid in dollars benefit from a strong dollar, but its at the expense of American jobs.
Free trade only makes sense if you don't have trade imbalances. Americans are paying for their trade deficit, they just don't understand how.
Calling Brock, Head of Labor is a little like calling Hurricane Andrew, Head of FEMA. Whatever happened to ethics?
The only additional punishment that I read in the RCW is a 24 hour student suspension by a teacher. This has limits that kick in when a student has missed enough days that they can't earn credit because of their absenses - its called a silver bullet in my district but especially at the high school level there are a whole variety of things that will ensue at the district level, so rest assured there will be an administrator following the law and attempting to change the situation at the site level. Its easy making decisions in the classroom, but how it translates into the real world is another thing. You have to be concerned that a student's rights are not being violated. Who is the advocate for the child and it can't just be the parents? I am talking about intervention strategies, this should not be an institution that fails the majority of its student body. I believe that's called incompetence.
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