Students tell me that most of the time in school, they do a lot of extra stuff. But online, they only do the essential material. We had a town hall with our local middle school, and they require kids to wear masks outside in the hot sun. They aren't allowed to carpool, and if they miss their drop off or pick up time, they get bumped to online learning. Teachers have to escort you everywhere. (But they hired extra people to prevent the kids from going up to talk to their friends. )
Why are we creating unnecessary suffering for the kids?
Look at any study, we all know that children are at low risk of getting the virus. We are pulling the innocent into this mess.
Kids are being left behind because the teachers are leaving them there.
All the woke mob agrees that education is a driving force of inequality.
So, when teachers refuse to go in, who will suffer the most?
The way socialist deal with inequality is they bring others down. So, here they force private schools to close when the public-school teachers refuse to go in?
Here there's debate on how to proceed in opening our school year in the fall. Yet, the United States is the only country where teachers are fighting the country on it.
No other country has delayed or even questioned the need to focus on kids’ education. Many districts still don't have a coherent plan. Broken quarters, tentative start dates. Even how to move forward with virtual online learning. Parents learned what a joke it was in the spring, which gives us little hope now.
The kids are the ones that will suffer. They had all summer to prepare. Public schools are still trying to adjust and figure out what is going on. I don't want your kid to be part of the plague of education on the American Youth.
Start Homeschooling.
The longer we treat the education of Americans as a political issue, the farther we will fall behind.
Pre-COVID: Even with in-person teaching, out of 30 countries, the USA fell below average on an international scale on the PISA.
We have had zero improvements or decline in:
Reading since 2000
Math since 2003
Science since 2006.
Opportunities for Americans will not change unless we start making our kids intellectually competitive.
This problem becomes clear after it's too late. When parents try and send their kids off to college. Only to have them rejected. After a hefty application fee, because international students are taking the spots. Who are, in fact, ready for college-level curriculum.
We know that most of the US colleges depend on international students to pay full price. A large part of the contribution to the rising cost of college. Why admit someone in State when someone oversees will pay the total price?
Last year:
1 million international students enrolled
1 in 5 of them are students from China or India that pay $76,000 a year for NYU
International students will pay up to 3X the cost of in-state students
Now they will not obtain student visas into the USA if their college has their courses online
One of our largest exports in the US is education
Universities are primarily employers of students and international ones as well
Pre-COVID universities depended on international students to subsidize the cost of in-state students. And as I have before indicated:
public schools are dropping their standards. They will admit more students into college, knowing that the kids will need to take more than four years to graduate and most likely drop out.
Yet, I have met friends from South Korea, Japan, and India. And they all tell me that college here is like high school level for them back at home. It's's easy.
Why? Because their schools focused on Math and Reading.
So pointing out the flaws doesn't change anything. What good does it do you or the kids in your neighborhood?
The case for Neighborhood schooling:
Do you think a teacher knows better than you do?
Suppose parents were to take it into their hands. There is a way it could work. Neighbors could come together to come up with local solutions.
Pool together money and pay a private teacher. Or a current teacher (and they would make more working for you and your kids than what they make now.)
I know you can't stop working to check if your kids are following their virtual learning. So, neighbors could start their rotating homeschool program.
You could rotate. Then one parent from each family gives four hours for five days a week. You could put together an amount to pay the parent that decides to watch the kids.
It'll be cheaper, safer, and the kids will learn more and with their community.
Teachers are everywhere. Individuals are abundant with a wealth of knowledge. Cooking, art, history, philosophy, personal finance, and nutrition. Students can access quality material and tutorials anytime. The school no longer has a monopoly on education.
If we are behind still in reading and math…
Focus on their reading and math.
Then let them direct the rest.
As parents, we know that the only courses that your kids need a tutor in or extra help with is these two subjects. Schools fill their schedules with other "necessary subjects".
But at the end of the day if our kids still can’t read or do basic math how do we expect them to do the rest?
Our teacher unions make it sound so complicated. But the market demands it. Simplify the teaching means going back to the basics. And then doing them well. If we can make sure they can do the necessary skills, then their natural curiosity will fill in the rest.
We need to stop making it so complicated with all these various subjects and essentials. It dilutes resources. In the future, those are the only courses/ skills that we still would need teachers in. Especially as we enter a new phase of AI and technological advancement.
So then your question is… well besides reading and math, how else do we fill their time?
The case for Self Directed Teaching:
Nowadays there is too many subjects to train students in.
Do students need to be trained in every area for the future?
If the future is unknown how can you prepare them?
So, say the Teachers Union get what they asked for. We defund the police, give each school a shipment of PPE, more social workers, better pay…
Is that what will push the line to make American kids better at reading and math?
No. Most likely the money will trickle out in dispersion each dollar given making less and less of an impact.
The current cost:
Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States in 2015–16 amounted to $706 billion.
$13,847 per public school student enrolled in the fall (in constant 2017–18 dollars).
Over the years as the cost of education has increased and skyrocketed. Parents pay local taxes and then settle on top of that for charter schools. Even if your kids go to public or private school, you still have to get them a tutor for math.
I'll end it on this note: The Republicans have been trying FOR YEARS. To pass a bill that gives each student in America an Education fund. Money from the government to go to their education. Support Children Having Open Opportunities for Learning (SCHOOL) bill.
FUNDS FOLLOW THE STUDENT from ages 5- 17: THIS IS EQUALITY AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR EACH STUDENT.
"purposes of ensuring that funding under such titles follows children, whether learning in person or remotely, to the public school, private school, or home school."
directly to the eligible to the student itself with an education savings account