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May 18, 2005

Go - Go - Go - Camarillo

It looks like Camarillo and Oxnard residents will decide who has administrative jurisdiction over Camarillo High Schools, and whether Camarillo High School students will be part of the Pleasant Valley School district.

Local control is great - but there is a LOT to consider in all of this:

First and foremost - the educational experience for the students.

Also:

Taxes
Costs
Teachers & seniority
Finances
New Schools

Insiders tell me that a new High School is needed. Where will that funding come from? Camarillo residents want more local control, but do they want the bond indebtedness to go with it?

Talk to me!

Tim

Posted by Tim Keaney at 07:21 PM

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May 10, 2005

Such as?

Next time you hear someone in the education establishment say we need to "fund our unfunded mandates" your answer should be:

Such as?

I've heard this line a lot, especially about Federal funding on education. "There are all of these unfunded mandates!' they yell. Even the head of a local teachers union complains about unfunded federal mandates in this very blog.

The Wall Street Journal says that the claim that NCLB is an unfunded mandate "strains credulity". Overall education spending rose to a half-trillion dollars last year, and federal support for k-12 spending has risen by nearly two-thirds since 2001. Two Thirds! In 2001, Federal k-12 spending was $17.4 Billion. In fiscal 2006, it will be $25.3 billion

I don't have a problem with the educational establishment looking for resources. That's fine. That is their job. What I do have a problem with is intellectual dishonesty. A two-thirds increase in federal spending means the money is going somewhere. I'd like someone to tell us where, what's its buying us, and what programs should be cut to spend more on education, and what THAT would buy us too.

Anyone?

Tim

Posted by Tim Keaney at 09:00 PM

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Did your High School make the grade?

Newsweek is out with it's rankings of the best High Schools in the nation. It's a very interesting article and read, but in classic news media fashion, it's much more of a sound bite than it is a real analysis of school performance.

Here is the entire criteria they used:

Newsweek's Best High Schools List uses a ratio, the number of Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate (IB) tests taken by all students at a school in 2004, divided by the number of graduating seniors.

That's it. No concern or analysis of:

# of students who start high school but never finish.
Teacher to student ratio
Innovation of program and curriculum
Computer to student ratio
Extra Curricular activity and #'s of students involved
#'s of students who go on to and graduate from college
Overcrowding
Drug Use, Suspensions, Expulsions
Budget per student etc...

So, in other words, what it really asked was how many kids are taking hard classes vs. the number of students graduating? A good question for sure, but the WHOLE story? I think not.

Read the article, do the research and look at the school report cards (that in many cases are posted on district and school web sites) and ask yourself this one question. Would I move to let my child attend this school?

The answer might surprise you, just as the Newsweek methodology surprised me.

Tim

Posted by Tim Keaney at 07:15 PM

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