Posts in "Public Education"

By James Maier at 9:01AM

Mar 13, 2011

The Truth about School Vouchers in My Town

On the local radio stations, the Perry Education Association -- basically the teachers' union of Perry Township schools, which are on the southside of Indianapolis -- bought time for an ad to advance their views on the education reform that is being attempted. The ad starts out with what can be described as a country-like background beat and continues with Terry Rice, the president of the PEA making absurd claims about education reform that sound rather conspiratorial. While I do not believe any of the things he is saying, others may not be as well informed about the issues.

My mom, who works for Perry Township as a payroll clerk (she also supports the education reform) admits that Rice has to take extreme stances like "[the education reform is a] punitive agenda aimed at the destruction of public education," in order to attract public support and perhaps a political victory. In the words of the great football coach Mike Gundy, "That's not true!!!"

In this piece, I seek to refute the absurd statements he makes, piece by piece. It's only a local issue, of course, but local politics are the easiest to influence. Never pass up a chance at changing something for the better locally because it seems "too small." Now, on to the issue at hand.

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By Ryan Gilroy at 3:31PM

Feb 15, 2010

Stupid in America?

I have a friend who is going into the education field, and we have had many discussions about the free market and the failure of government education in America. What he's seen so far corresponds, he says, with what John Stossel found when he did a documentary on this exact subject (excuse the poor video quality; it's the best available on YouTube):

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By Devon Minnema at 6:50AM

Jan 25, 2010

END COMPULSORY EDUCATION

Though the only real hope for American education is privatization, public education isn't going anywhere over night. Jack Batson, a career teacher and former city councilman for Fairfield, CA -- about 20 minutes from the YAL@DHS Chapter -- wrote an excellent editorial for the Vacaville Reporter in light of a coming education reform bill from thegovernator's administration:

So we're going through another "education reform," because "our schools have failed." Well, here we go again.

Pardon the cynicism, but haven't we seen a goodly number of these crusades before? When I first went into teaching in 1971, we were in the midst of the first great convulsion of educational reform. You may remember the books that fueled that long-ago fire: "Why Johnny Can't Read" and "Teaching as a Subversive Activity."

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By Devon Minnema at 11:48PM

Dec 11, 2009

DHS Teachers Embrace Collectivism

As a student at Dixon High School, which is located in the rather conservative community of Dixon, CA, I never expected to see collectivism so boldly embraced by faculty members.

Today, Friday, Dec. 11th, I had the amazing pleasure of arguing with a biology teacher who had the audacity to say, "There should be no individualism." A biology teacher looked straight at me and said that, her words ringing in the empty classroom with a slight pitter-patter of rain from outside. The statement was provoked after a relatively lengthy argument about a disciplinary issue that had faced the bureaucrats in the school administration.

I serve as a representative in DHS's Leadership assembly, and this week was supposed to be a school-spirit week that ended was to end as all school spirit week -- with a rally at the end. However, two students got in a fight on Thursday, the day before the rally, and the rally, in a knee-jerk decision by the administration, was cancelled. The Leadership Assembly had been planning the event for a month and a half and was therefore very indignant, however the YAL@DHS actually did something about it.

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