Your comments are so interesting. I've seen that here in Los Angeles too.
How to reduce costs? How about chucking the entire Department of Education? Wasn't Bush going to do that? There's a cost-saver for you. And then teaching the 3-R's and leaving it at that.
Suing should be totally out of the pix.
I think education has to be fixed from without. The Administrators are not going to be able to reform it, nor the NEA.
One of our children will be a middle schooler next year. Recently, he came home with a list of elective classes from which to choose. Teen Living and Tech Ed are two of the choices. Nine weeks of Spanish and/or French are options. We homeschooled our eldest when she was a sixth grader. She begged to go back to school, so we let her go to the seventh grade. She signed up late, so she had to take the seventh grade versions of some of these courses. In Spanish, you learn to count to 20 or maybe 100. And you learn a few phrases and colors. Never mind that our daughter already knew all these things from second grade in another state.
Soooooo, our son has these choices, and hubby and I are bothered by the waste of time that all the electives are. Our son can already cook. He can already type. He can already turn on a computer and search the internet. He can use power tools. He has no interest in band or chorus. We think he should be able to take a full year of a foreign language. The school says that sixth grade is a tough transitional year and that the students need to try out a few things before they decide what subjects they want to pursue further. I made an inquiry via email of the head counselor. She sent my email on to a higher pay grade, the assistant principal for sixth grade. When my husband entered the email conversation, our emails were copied to another higher pay grade individual, the principal. When I responded to the asst. principal's emails, I told my husband that the emails would be sent to an even higher pay grade individual, and they were. Yesterday, I received an email from the head of the entire school system's language department. She was the most intelligent and articulate regarding this subject. She went on about how the school system powers that be decided on offering the subjects they offer to sixth graders. They did a survey. Of whom, we are not sure. The subjects seem to be the same as the subjects I took in seventh grade in Mississipi back when we had junior high schools. They renamed Home Economics as Teen Living. So, the schools are preparing sixth graders for seven years of their lives? Shop class was renamed Tech Ed. They were a waste of time when I was in seventh grade, and they are a waste of time now for sixth graders. These children need to be preparing for their futures. Wasting an hour a day on dead end subjects is not what students need. I let them all know that they are failing these students. They should have been teaching them alternative languages in first grade. And they are balking at teaching a sixth grader. I told them it was past time for them to adapt to the world as it is today. No response from them as of yet.