One of the things I wish I

One of the things I wish I did better is distinguish between my frustrations with political leadership and my love and support of any and all legitimate efforts to educate kids. A lady I don’t know kinda called me out on this on Facebook a few weeks ago regarding ESAs and such, and she was absolutely correct to do so.

In my idealistic lil’ world, we’d have a half-dozen options at least for kids to get some equivalent of a diploma or a ‘pass’ to move on with their lives – public, private, charter, home, whatever – and a much wider set of guidelines as to what that even required in terms of curriculum or hours. Maybe a variety of types of ‘diplomas’.

My hostility is with those who wish to reward only the top sliver of students for the accomplishment of being born into well-off white familes with very involved stay-at-home moms, and who – in order to fund this – punish and starve those who were defiantly born into other circumstances. It’s the Capitol vs. the Districts – especially Districts 11 & 12.

Your school, if I understand correctly, is about MORE choices for kids and parents across the spectrum. Even a school like Town & Country, sometimes put in the role of ‘the other side’ in voucher discussions, is about helping kids not easily served in the average school. If you can help kids learn, then I’m on your side – public, private, charter, alt certified, TFA, OEA, POE, tall, short, flipped, virtual, grades or grade-free – thank you for helping our kids.

I should do a better job with that distinction all the time, and I don’t. I probably owe you and about a hundred other hard-working educators an apology of sorts for the cumulative message of that oversight.

I prefer not to…You should at least look it up.

I really do think we should get together and talk soon. I hesitate to say, but I work for a choice school. And while we have a fair share of white kids, we are a free and open to all of the public option. We do NOT have a seat based time requirement. And that seat based option is only held by most schools be cause it’s been that way forever. The districts have the options to seat based or mastery based learning. For some of our kids it takes longer than the 6 hour “requirement” and for others here, it can be done in 3-4 hours.

At my school however, we teach the parents about the choices. We try to inform them so they are equipped to make the choice. We still have parents that drop their kids off in Kindergarten and hope to pick them up in 12 th grade. But they are beginning to turn around too.

Sit with me for a day. I encourage anyone to see what we do. There can be choice without being the devil or opposed to public education. I am a product of the typical public education. But I am a high school dropout. That’s part of the reason I advocate so firmly that choice should be an option. If I had had this option, I don’t think I would have dropped out. I don’t think I would have had to spend so much money taking zero level classes before beginning my “four year” program for Ed certificate. This choice is not for everyone, but neither is the typical B&M option.

John also makes a good point – what if every teacher this spring said: I am not giving this test to the third graders. What would happen?

To me, it comes down to being responsible. Too many people make arbitrary, questionable choices without any consideration of all options – including those decisions to allow OR ELIMINATE choice for completely inappropriate and arbitrary reasons!!! The decisions on school choice and vouchers being made with absolutely no input from educators as well as the majority of parents is mind-boggling …