Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Saturday, June 9, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.
While visiting your wonderful city, I read a Sun article, “Unions to seek initiative for business profits tax” that discussed the need to “fix our education system.” The Sun’s Sunday editorial “Move education forward” asserted “the district still needs to improve student achievement.” OK, but who will guarantee that spending more money will improve education? Every second of class time is already used, so what new material will be added as replacement and how will the teaching process be changed? Statistics record 63,329 doctorates in education were awarded during the past decade. Can those new doctors answer those simple questions, ...
Schools need to move forward with automation where one super teacher in a discipline can lead a class of thousands of online students. These teachers will excel in different disciplines. The single teacher can be supported by other experts that answer online student questions.
Stop building huge new schools for classes like math, history and English . Limit classrooms to chemistry labs and computer student halls for those that can not learn from home. This eliminate the overhead.
This must and will come even in the face of Union resistance
Education and student achievement is not just about more money, bigger schools and better paid teachers and administrators. It's about dedication, commitment and pride in teaching and learning. Parents need to instill in children the importance of education so that they are inspired to learn, achieve and excel. Can't put a dollar amount on this.
CarmineD
anybody else put off by the fact that the las vegas sun would publish a letter from somebody from alabama...
alabama...
from the deep backward south...
telling us how to run our school system...
good lord...
the las vegas sun is just awful these days...
absolutely awful!!!
Longer school days. Longer school years. Put teachers on FULL TIME and year round. Teach reading in elementary school. No advancement UNTIL you can read at grade level. And writing, basic composition within a grade level.
Birdie: Alabama gets better K-12 results than Nevada. They seem to be not doing so much that is not working.
@Roslenda. How will you pay for longer school days and a longer school year. Every country that ranks above the US in the world already does that.
The only problem is paying for it. The costs for operating schools will increase. Remember a few years ago when the district got rid of year round schools. Those extra costs were part of the reason.
The teacher contract covers 184 days. If you want a longer day and longer school year, those contracts will have to be adjusted. If your employer changes the hours that you work, don't you expect your pay to be adjusted appropriately?
We all have posted quick fix proposals on how to improve things in our Great state. Until we find a way to encourage high school students to finish high school and graduate, We can't address other school problems and expect levels to improve.We Nevadans have one of the lowest percentage of students who graduate from high school 47.3 percent state wide and 46.8 percent for all of Clark County.First things first.
Carmine,
You are exactly right; thank you for sharing your opinion. Have a wonderful day.
"who will guarantee that spending more money will improve education?".
Who will guarantee that spending more money on defense will save lives? When Defense spending paid for by money from Medicare, the Dept of Education, Urban Housing and Development etc. will that save lives and make us ALL safer? A 100% Guarantee isn't the goal.
What is most probable, almost a certain bet, is that spending less money on education will NOT improve education. Money that is spent directly on the teaching and educational process, not awards dinners is the critical factor. Larger class sizes create authoritarians and crowd control techniques, not inspirational lectures.
To improve education, improve the home environment so that students have peace, quiet and no interruptions during evening studies.
Yeh......We should look to Alabama!!!!!Maybe we should start lynching people too.....
anybody else think it's odd...
for a tourist from alabama...
to write an letter to the editor about the clark county school system???
hmmm???
what are the odds of that???
400,000,000 to 1...
that would be about once a decade given the current tourist numbers...
and...
to think that would happen right before an election...
woo wee...
what are the odds of that???
40,000,000,000 to 1???
hmmm???
could there perhaps be political motive???
hmmm???
who the hell knows...
i certainly don't...
but i do know this...
alabama elected george wallace as governor...
three flippin times...
got that...
hello...
this was the man who literally tried to block the doorway to integration...
got that boys and girls...
this was a bad ugly man...
who set the country back a century or so...
and alabama elected him governor...
three flippin times...
so...
excuse me if i say to our tourist friend...
sorry charlie...
but i could not possibly care less about what someone from alabama has to say about education in my town...
got that...
alabama...
the place of the ugliest education event in the history of america...
puh-lease...
stop it...
hope you had fun...
hope you return soon...
but regarding your opinion about the clark county school system...
well...
i think it is pathetic...
especially given the history of your state...
just my opinion...
hey roslenda...
what does nevada rank in terms of spending per student???
hmmm???
stop it!!!
the las vegas sun has turned into a right wing rag!!!
Birdie, Joe Lamy, and the rest of you sane ones.
Here is what you are faced with:
"birdie has that right...
"the las vegas sun has turned into a right wing rag!!!"
it appears a pack of paid posters stack the deck, predominate, post and plunder us asunder.
Nothing better to do than blather hate and disgusting non-truths and factoids."
What is the solution?
Large Scale:
For unions to start becoming more family oriented - doing things more community oriented that will show the middle class they put their money where their mouth is.
Start Groups of Democrats in EVERY church that is politically active.
If you take the number of unregistered voters in every year at least since 1960 those people were larger in number than the winning candidate for president received.
That is right, none of the above has been the highest "unvote" total for the past 51 years.
The republicans thrive on this, if you don't believe me, listen to them yourselves: "Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome. Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPg...
This was from Paul Weyrich, "father" of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and various other groups tells his flock that he doesn't want everyone to vote.
We need to get to as many of those people as is humanly possible in every swing state. Look at what he said " our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." This is precisely what happened in 2010.
We need to solidify our base by having the unions and activists pay attention to the middle class, rather than preach to it. Then we need to get the "None Of The Aboves" to the polls. This is all the republicans have been working on--suppressing the vote.
Small scale:
A website will be set up for those of us who have shown a history of understanding that while you may like Obama, or detest him, as long as you can clearly -- by a sustained commenting history -- demonstrate that to protect America from the Right wing republican teabagger sociopaths they will either love it or suck it up AND vote for Obama in the fall, they won't get in. It will require a password and all entries will be hidden.
We need a place to meet, strategize, and plan how we will defeat the Right wing republican teabagger sociopaths. Someone who wishes to remain anonymous will provide this website. Details to come, according to her, within 2 weeks.
It is a shame the right wingers post here to the point of obfuscation, but they do, so we will let the circle of jerks do what circle jerks are known for.
We will set up shop soon.
Education needs to be locally based. When a district is too large, changing anything becomes too unwieldy, like trying to make a sharp turn with a massive ship at sea. Change can come, but with risks and quite slowly. So to serve neighborhoods better and have more effective and meaningful parent/student/community/teacher involvement, we should look at breaking a super large school district down to more manageable sizes. Then, it is also much, much easier for transparency with individual schools, and being able to address unique challenges to that school towards success.
Loved Carmine D, Tanker 1975, and Jon Becker's comments. They highlighted some very basic reasons and points towards improving Nevada's educational system, Clark County's specifically. Unfortunately, the school system is subject to "the haves and have nots syndrome."
The more elite schools have strong support to supply their needs, wants, and desires, while the poorer schools struggle to fill necessary supply lists and are lacking home support, leaving school PTAs, counselors, and administrators scrambling for needed items each and every year. Even with creative cost cutting as recycling, energy audits/monitoring, outreach to humanitarian organizations(thank you for helping our schools!), poor schools are still left lacking.
Until LAWMAKERS quit "kicking the political can down the road," and begin to meaningfully and effectively address the Nevada Constitution in taxation and revenue for this state, especially in regards to mining, who pays a mere pittance in taxes after all their exemptions, underfunding our infrastructure, which includes schools, will continue. Voters need to hold LAWMAKERS accountable for this mess which has been chronic and going on for over a century.
FYI: I do NOT receive any compensation, favors, or perks, for my postings here or elsewhere. =)
Blessings and Peace,
Star
@Roslenda. In the story in this paper, "Teachers new to district" you wrote the following.
"Uncertain future? How about all the people formerly employed at anything? Anyone in their first year of employment might also be uncertain.
I suspect CCSD has been hiring Science, Math and Special Ed teachers when they can find them. Enough Liberal Arts types already. Arizona still K-12ing for $1,000 per pupil per year less. That's about $100,000,000 WASTED in CCSD EVERY year. And, Arizona gets graduates who can read and write English. All of Europe (save small Switz.) spend LESS than the U.S. and gets results. Nevada: Average spending for U.S. which is be definition EXCESSIVE. Nevada: 51st in results despite years of wasted Class size reduction funding." You wrote this comment at 11:44 June 10th. This is a link to the story.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jun...
In your comments in that story, you are against higher per pupil spending and complaining that Nevada spends too much. Yet in your comments for this story, you want longer school years, and longer school days. The logical extension is that pay will be increased for teachers because their working hours and days are being increased. If your employer increased your hours and days worked, you would expect the pay to be increased as well.
Which is it, are you for or against higher per pupil spending in Nevada?