Author Archive
Charter Schools
Dear Mr. President,
I am a Senior Elementary Education major at Western Illinois University. I am also currently enrolled in an Education Law and Policy class. In this class we have learned about a broad range of policies concerning school districts; the policy I am most interested in is the implementation of charter schools. I think charter schools would be a wonderful addition to our public school system. I believe that if charter schools became widespread we would see an end to the traditional public school. Charter schools would create competition between school districts; each school would be fighting to be the best so parents would choose [Read more...]
Merit Pay For Teachers
Dear President Obama,
My name is Ashley Weiss and I am currently a Senior at Western Illinois University and I am enrolled in EIS 401 which is a class that talks about law and policy’s in the United States on education. I would like to share with you my personal views on merit pay. I beleive that merit pay is not a good idea. Everything should be equal no matter what kind of a teacher you are. I believe it is unfair to teachers who are going above and beyond to make student’s succeed and are going above and beyond to help student’s be successful in life,compared to a teacher who [Read more...]
Policymakers and Educators
Policymakers and educators live in separate assumptive worlds. Policymakers see the United States academically slipping behind foreign countries and they see laws such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 as a solution to that problem. Educators see all the distractions that the students bring to school with them and a lack of resources. They see NCLB as an unobtainable goal despite its good intentions. To improve the education of the numerous students in the United States policymakers and educators need to understand the other’s point of view.
Diane Ravitch states in her article “Testing and Accountability, Historically Considered” that “there are two competing paradigms of education reform [Read more...]
Cyberbullying
Dear President Obama,
I am currently finishing my senior year at Western Illinois University where I have studying English Education. This past semester I have had the opportunity to take and Educational Law class where I have learned about policies, issues, and laws surrounding education. Recently, I have learned about a new issue that is growing rapidly throughout schools in the United States. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying using emails, text messages, websites, and even pictures. It is my opinion that schools across the country should be enforcing rules for cyberbullying along with more severe punishments.
For example, schools should restrict the use of cell [Read more...]
Educators as partners with Legislation for the future
It would be beneficial to the NCLB Act as well as to education in general, to have more educators, who are currently in the classroom, along with their administrators help you and your staff work together to redefine the criteria and testing methods as well as the education laws. We as educators have the students’ best interests at heart and know what works well. It is extremely important to have qualified and experienced people make the decisions for all the citizens of our country. You would not want a banker performing open-heart surgery on a patient. The same goes for our educational policy-making and laws that [Read more...]
Determining Merit Pay
As a college student who is to begin student teaching next fall, I have begun to take more and more interest in what it is you plan to do in regards to your education policy for the United States. I just wanted to say that I too am in favor of Merit Pay for teachers that are deserving of it, but I feel certain steps need to be taken to ensure the policy is a successful one that teachers all across the nation can find acceptable. In America those who work harder and do their job better are suppose to be compensated appropriately for their effort. This is not the [Read more...]
Getting rid of merit pay
There are many things that need to be fixed within our schooling systems. There are many issues and areas that need to be addressed, but one issue I that I think needs to be addressed is merit pay. I believe that merit pay is a bad way to judge a teacher and a bad way to award a teacher. Merit pay should be taken out of all school systems for many reasons.
One reason is because there is not a reliable way to measure a teacher’s classroom performance. For this sole reason, many teacher unions oppose this idea. You have to think about the teachers that [Read more...]
Merit Pay
I would first like to start out by saying that I am very interested in this topic. A teacher of mine had us do a presentation for a significant amount of time which really helped in my knowledge of this subject. At first in my research, I thought that Obama didn’t support merit pay. My teacher later cleared it up for me that he does stand for merit pay, but only for teachers who truly deserve it. My question that keeps being raised is how do we, and who judges who gets paid more. I feel that I have significant education to help me be [Read more...]
School Funding
The one major difficulty I see with our public school system centers on the financial problems of many districts and funding inequities among many of them. I am concerned with the financial status of my school because the students in my classroom need to feel that they are important and that they are worthwhile. In today’s society we tell children that they must attend school and that we value them. Yet, we do not necessarily show them that we value them if you look at the funding levels of the public school. We spend annually $8,560 per student in Oregon, $5,300 annually per student in Florida, and $5,734 annually per [Read more...]
School Funding
Dear Mr. President,
As being a future educator of America, I had a few concerns about education today. My utmost concern is about school funding. I believe that it is fair to give every student the same opportunities as you would want to be given. I am a senior at Western Illinois University and in my educational law and policy class, we have discussed this issue and looked further into the issues by studying familiar cases focusing primarily on this issue. I feel that it is very important to have not only an appropriate classroom but district as a whole so each student is in their best [Read more...]
