Posted on 04/24/2006 1:52:20 PM PDT by JSedreporter
In their fight against school reform, organized teachers in the Aloha state are running into adversaries they probably did not anticipatecar salesmen. The push for a rigorous, common-core curriculum did not come from the teachers unionwho testified against the bill, nor the Board of Education, but rather from the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association (HADA), according to Laura Brown of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.
HADA President David Rolf testified that the reason for his organizations push was initially the rejection of reimbursement claims for warranty work done on cars by the Detroit manufacturer, because the written claims submitted by the Hawaii dealerships auto techs were not clear.
Like the rest of the nation, it seems, Hawaiis schools embraced the education fads popular three decades back, with about the same results. Now, 30 years later, parents and teachers are experiencing the fallout from progressive-education theorists failed assumptions, Brown writes. More than 80 percent of Hawaiis public school children are not functioning at grade level and less than two-thirds of all public school students graduate from high school.
An education policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute, Brown is also the education reporter and researcher for HawaiiReporter.com. Brown reports that the state Board of Education mandated that the development of student literacy in all content areas and in all grade levels is an educational and cultural imperative.
Unfortunately, the Department of Education has failed to follow the boards mandate, Brown writes. Instead, the state-level DOE devised elaborate standards, and then collaborated with national vendors, such as Harcourt Inc. and American Institutes for Research (AIR), to foist progressive education theoriesreeking with assumptions about social justice and diversity that favor process over contenton teachers and their students.
Meanwhile, teachers are struggling to reach many of their students who have not even learned how to sound out words or organize those words into coherent sentences.
Union Mis-education Correction
In a recent story on teachers unions, I incorrectly reported that Leo Casey of the United Federation of Teachers was head of the UFT and a union boss. Specifically, he is special representative for high schools for New York Citys United Federation of teachers, a position he has held for six years, according to the bio provided at the book launch of the collection, Collective Bargaining in Education, for which Casey wrote a chapter.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia
The hidden objective.
Hawaiin schools have embraced fads only three decades back? If I was writing about the decay of schools, I'd start all the way back with John Dewey and his hazy dream of applying scientific socialist principles to create a new society, starting with the schools. Practically everything I've run across since, from the college of education to the latest fad to appear in my mailbox, appears to have Dewey's fingerprints on them. Once the mission of schools changes from teaching things to changing society, it is reasonable to assume that the students aren't learning much reading, writing, and mathematics.
Just another argument for school choice, vouchers, and local control.
Accuracy in Academia?
Is there such a thing?
A sheriff's department man told me that they have upped the requirements to be a cop here to include a year of college. Why? The HS grads were scribbling police reports that were so bad they did not hold up in court.
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