Posted on 03/16/2006 2:14:22 PM PST by JSedreporter
Imagine taking a teaching position with no training at one of the worst urban schools in Philadelphia. Now imagine that the building was crumbling and rat infested, your 6th grade class was struggling with illiteracy, you had no textbooks, curriculum or guidance, and violence and obscenities were daily phenomena.
Christina Asquith doesn’t have to imagine those things; she lived them. In 1999, with burning questions about why inner-city Philadelphia schools (and those in other cities) were failing, Asquith joined the ranks and became a teacher with no formal training at a time when the schools were desperate for them. Before that time, Asquith had been a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
They were struggling with literacy ... and wallowing in illiteracy.
Makes me want to send in the bulldozers and wrecking ball.
snip
After a year of minor successes and many failures, Asquith considered signing on for a second year, but decided she probably would not survive another. She did; however, come away with several key opinions about what needs to be done for public education. 1) The unions are the problem, not the solution. They are an obstacle to school reform efforts because they seek to maintain the status quo. Also, unions think the answer to all of the problems is money, but there is already $1.6 billion going into the Philadelphia public school system. In Asquith’s school, she didn’t have textbooks for weeks and the books she finally got were archaic and fairly useless. Money is clearly not the answer. 2) Principals need to have authority in their schools. In Asquith’s school, the principal was vilified by many because she wasn’t the “right” race and didn’t speak the “right” language. People didn’t respect her and because she lacked authority there was nothing really that she could do. She had to make things look good for her superiors, while having no authority at the school. 3) School choice gives parents desperately needed control of their children’s education as well as creating a healthy competition that will improve schools. 4) Bilingual education hurts students.
School choice is the only answer. With no accountability from competition, they have no incentive to improve.
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