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Top 10 Education Concerns

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Michael Shaughnessy interviews the Washington Post’s Jay Matthews:

7) What do you see as the top ten concerns in education? What are the biggest concerns in the Washington Circle?

My concerns or Washington’s? I will go with mine:

  1. Low standards and expectations in low-income schools.
  2. Very inadequate teacher training in our education schools.
  3. Failure to challenge average students in nearly all high schools with AP and IB courses.
  4. Corrupt and change-adverse bureaucracies in big city districts.
  5. A tendency to judge schools by how many low income kids they have, the more there are the worse the school in the public mind.
  6. A widespread feeling on the part of teachers, because of their
    inherent humanity, that it is wrong to put a child in a challenging situation where they may fail, when that risk of failure is just what they need to learn and grow.

  7. The widespread belief among middle class parents that their child must get into a well known college or they won’t be as successful in life.
  8. A failure to realize that inner city and rural schools need to give students more time to learn, and should have longer school days and school years.
  9. A failure to realize that the best schools–like the KIPP charter schools in the inner cities—are small and run by well-recruited and trained principals who have the power to hire all their teachers, and quickly fire the ones that do not work out.
  10. The resistance to the expansion of charter schools in most school district offices.

Matthews list is comprehensive and on target.

One thought on “Top 10 Education Concerns”

  1. School employees in Virginia can be denied the right to due process and can be found guilty without having the opportunity to be defend themselves.
    A substitute teacher’s aide has been determined by 2 principles and one vice principle to have been derelict in her duty. Vice-Principle, Mike Stanley of Christiansburg High School, Christiansburg, VA, specifically said she called groups of children “stupid” – another child retarded and abandoned a special needs child in a bathroom. Christine Golding, former substitute teacher’s aide of Christiansburg VA, simply seeks to clear her name and exercise her rights under subsection 1983 of the constitution. She needs your help. Please contact her at Freshstart 062103@aol.com if you are an advocate for justice and a believer in the constitutional right to due process.

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