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Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013 | 2:05 a.m.
On Monday, Nevada legislators will observe Education Awareness Day. Thousands of teachers will start their day with few resources and overcrowded classes and, in Clark County, they will teach 50,000 students who do not speak English as their primary language. They will end the day the same way they started. Tired and exhausted, but ready to start the next day to do the same thing — teach! On Monday something will be different. Teachers will no be longer invisible. Instead, 9,000 teaching professionals in more than 300 Clark County schools will unite to make lawmakers aware of what is happening ...
Ruben R. Murillo is president of the Clark County Education Association, representing more than 17,000 teachers in Clark County’s public schools.
We need to move to the future with E-Scholls
Get on with it
Thousands of other school are moving into on-line teaching
This cost a fraction of a fully staffed and resourced school
Charter schools, home schooling and school vouchers. All three should be viable and potential options to parents/guardians for their children and students.
CarmineD
Data driven research has repeatedly proven that charter schools perform no better, and often perform worse, than equally funded public schools. Recent studies have also proven that the more charter schools are created the worse they do overall.
Home schooling only works if a family is wealthy enough to be able to afford to have one, already well educated, parent stay home and teach. With many single parent families and multiple job families this just isn't an option. The extremely small number of parents that already do homeschooling is proof that homeschooling as a solution is little more than a fantasy.
Vouchers sound good but in reality based implementation, where parents don't have the free time and resources needed to transport students across the valley every week day, they are used almost exclusively, 90% or more, on religious private schools. Therefore, they been found unconstitutional in most states. Paying for private religious schools with public funding is and should continue to be illegal.
Ideology based solutions will NOT fix our funding problems, only complex solutions based on increased resources and data driven research will fix our education problems.
In addition to what Sebring posted, CCSD already has online schools as a choice. CCSD already offers parent choice in the form of zone variances (and yes, the money follows the student). CCSD already has charter schools.
Online schools are not widely utilized because the child stays at home during the day and it takes a parent to supervise a young child. Even online elementary charter schools are few because of this. My children actually attend both brick and mortar and online HS here in Clark County, and have for 4 years. Last year 4,000 semester credit hours were earned through Virtual HS.
Online schools may be less expensive to run, however most states fund online schools at the same per student rate as brick and mortar schools- for a cost savings of zero. I couldn't find what the state funds our online schools, but in my finance research, I haven't found a different line item for per pupil expenditures for online, so my gut says we fund them equally.
Zone variances aren't widely utilized because parents have to provide the transportation to the school of choice.
Charter schools are utilized. However, last year in CCSD only 34% of charter schools made AYP. There are charter schools that are labeled "N10". They have failed for 10 years in a row, yet stay open because they are a charter. A general public school would have been taken over by the state, or made a turn around team around N5.
Last year, the 10 largest charter school "companies" spent $94.4 Million in taxpayer money on advertising!! K12 alone spent $21.5 million in the first 8 months after opening!! And you complain about CCSD wasting money?? Imagine what 94.4 million dollars could have done for student learning.
Stanford released a comprehensive study last year, the largest done on charter schools. They found about 1/5 (or 20%) fared better than the general public school. Almost half were equal to the general public school, and 37% were significantly worse.
It's not that teachers don't like charter schools because they are competition... we don't like them because they don't work, and the research shows it. They have been hailed as the panacea for public education and it is taken without question. They are selling a false bill of goods, that only ends up hurting the children in the long run.
To the above commenters: When the state of Nevada'a schools are consistently at the bottom of the heap, ALL OPTIONS, I repeat, ALL OPTIONS MUST be on the table for consideration. Just because other locales failed with one or more of these options, doesn't mean Nevada will too. Facts and circumstances are not the same across the board for all these options. There are numerous districts throughout the country where one or more of these options are working successfully concurrently for the educations of our students. Give parents choices. Teachers and school administrators, who have failed miserably in Nevada, should not dictate their same vested interests and their own education agendas. Parents and local governing jurisdictions in concert should.
CarmineD
Melissa Smith has it right:
In addition to what Sebring posted, CCSD already has online schools as a choice. CCSD already offers parent choice in the form of zone variances (and yes, the money follows the student). CCSD already has charter schools.
Online schools are not widely utilized because the child stays at home during the day and it takes a parent to supervise a young child. Even online elementary charter schools are few because of this. My children actually attend both brick and mortar and online HS here in Clark County, and have for 4 years. Last year 4,000 semester credit hours were earned through Virtual HS.
Online schools may be less expensive to run, however most states fund online schools at the same per student rate as brick and mortar schools- for a cost savings of zero. I couldn't find what the state funds our online schools, but in my finance research, I haven't found a different line item for per pupil expenditures for online, so my gut says we fund them equally.
Zone variances aren't widely utilized because parents have to provide the transportation to the school of choice.
Charter schools are utilized. However, last year in CCSD only 34% of charter schools made AYP. There are charter schools that are labeled "N10". They have failed for 10 years in a row, yet stay open because they are a charter. A general public school would have been taken over by the state, or made a turn around team around N5.
Last year, the 10 largest charter school "companies" spent $94.4 Million in taxpayer money on advertising!! K12 alone spent $21.5 million in the first 8 months after opening!! And you complain about CCSD wasting money?? Imagine what 94.4 million dollars could have done for student learning.
Stanford released a comprehensive study last year, the largest done on charter schools. They found about 1/5 (or 20%) fared better than the general public school. Almost half were equal to the general public school, and 37% were significantly worse.
It's not that teachers don't like charter schools because they are competition... we don't like them because they don't work, and the research shows it. They have been hailed as the panacea for public education and it is taken without question. They are selling a false bill of goods, that only ends up hurting the children in the long run.
Carmine,
Your failed "solutions" haven't been tried in just a couple of places and been found to fail. They have been tried in every single state and found to fail.
You complain constantly on the LVSun pages about the state wasting money and then advocate for the state wasting more money on failed "school choice" solutions. It makes no sense.