Submitted Advice
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 to send their children there. Charter schools also would not have the public school union to deal with. This would force teachers to work their hardest, because their job is in jeopardy from year to year if they are not teaching to the schools standards. This would leave the traditional public schools in the dust. I also think that all parents should have the choice of where to educate their children. Charter schools would make this possibility into a reality. If you had a choice between two schools in your district, wouldn’t you want to send your child to the one that best fits their needs? If charter schools were implemented into our society I believe that we would have a stronger education system that would produce more effective learners. Charter schools are known for their parent involvement. It is a proven fact that when parents are involved in a school district that district more successful. I think that charter schools would be a very beneficial addition to our school system. Charter schools are designed to help students and teachers reach their full potential, while giving parents reassurance that their child is learning. Please keep this in mind when you are re-evaluating our nation’s current school policies.
Thank you for your time,
Skyler Harmon
This post was submitted by Skyler Harmon.
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 doesn’t try to go above and beyond and doesnt go out of their way to help a student succeed, which makes be beleive that the teacher who went above and beyond not get their merit pay is not right. Although I think that merit pay should of not even been invented. Among teachers I can see this topic bring alot of anger to all of the co-workers and tention within the work place. I believe that as a teacher it is their job to go above and beyond what is called of them to help everyone succeed in life and in school. A teacher who knows what is to be qualified for his or her students then they are going to make sure that his or her student knows what to do and how to do it. Also I dont beleive that just because a teacher does more than another teacher they should get merit pay. All teachers should be treated equal and get what everyone else gets, unless they are doing extra curricular things on the side such as: being a coach, or running a club. Overall, when I become a teacher I dont want extra pay for going above and beyond what will help all students out in the long run to succeed in life and be well educated.
Thank you for your time and effort on my views about merit pay for teachers.
Sincerely,
Ashley Weiss
This post was submitted by Ashley Weiss.
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 at work simultaneously and not always harmoniously,” meaning that even though both groups are trying to improve education in the United States they are in some ways inhibiting each other from succeeding. For instance, standardized test are extremely popular with policymakers (even long before NCLB) because it is a way to hold the schools and teachers accountable for what the students were learning. However, teachers fear that this encourages “‘teaching to the test,’ ‘narrowing the curriculum’ to what is tested, and cheating by teachers” (Ravitch, 17). So many educators speak out against standardized tests and NCLB because they want discourage learning only for the test where as policymakers think that educators do not want to be held accountable.
Catherine Marshall explains in her article that “some policies are implemented with goals and procedures becoming a part of the ongoing processes in schools. More often, however, districts simply declare policies to be implemented with no real accounting for results. In addition, the norms and values of teachers affect what happens to policy as it is implemented.” I do not agree that educators should ignore policies because they are put in place to help the students, but maybe if policymakers had a better understanding of what daily classroom life is like then policies would be easier to implement and more efficient. Marshall goes on to say, “Without educators’ cooperation, policy will not be implemented. Without the clout of state policy, many of the problems of education systems cannot be addressed.” It is imperative that both sides work together otherwise education will essentially remain unchanged. “Structures that enable policymakers and educators to experience and discuss each other’s worlds work to span the chasm that separates the formulators and implementers of educational policy” (Marshall 102).
I believe that American education does need to improve but I also believe that improvements cannot happen until policymakers and educators understand each other’s point of view and work together.
Marshall, Catherine. “Bridging the Chasm between Policymakers and Educators,” Theory into Practice, Vol. 27 No. 2 pp. 98-105, 1998.
This post was submitted by Erin Killey.
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 phones within the school during school hours. By doing this, students will have a better opportunity to focus on their classes rather than texting or sending picture images. Also, this will eliminate the amount of cyberbullying that is going on during school hours under the noses of our schools teachers and administrators. It is also my opinion that cell phone usage during school hours can interfere with the right of other students.
Another way to help eliminate the amount of cyberbullying occurring during school hours would be to demand school computers to be used for school purposes only. For example, stronger filters can be installed into computers as a way to ensure that websites commonly known for blogging, chatting, or emailing will not be accessible. Also, school administrators can require for students along with parents to sign an agreement stating that they understand the policy for proper computer use. This could be a requirement before the students receives a password and a computer account on school computers.
Finally, there needs to be a stronger punishment for students who are posting, emailing, or texting explicit or harmful messages, pictures, and information about other students or teachers. This does cause a substantial disruption to others at school and therefore a policy would make an effect on the schools of our nation.
Cyberbullying leads to many emotional and psychological problems among students and therefore it is a serious problem that needs to be addresses. There have been many cases where students not only became depressed and refused to go to school, but also have decided that suicide was their only way out. With your help, cyberbullying can be diminished and students can begin to feel safe and comfortable in our schools once again.
Thank you for you time,
Lydia Loehner
This post was submitted by Lydia Loehner.
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 are being formed for students. Most of your legislators are not educators. Many of them are attorneys or have a law background, who has worked their way up the political field to where they are today. Even at the national level, shouldn’t we consult a professional? We do when we have a toothache or a broken arm. Our system needs for us to work for the betterment of the future of our society, the children. This means we all need to work together. We should not have some making laws and guidelines in Washington while leaving the teachers to follow these, then having the teachers and educators being held totally accountable for the success or failure of each student. As the old saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I feel it takes a nation to educate a child appropriately. We are all responsible for working together, as a team to educate our students. Educators need to have a say in the laws that are made for education. We cannot just have legislators making the laws, who truly may not know the impact that their laws have on the students, teachers, and administrators. As a future educator, I feel that having educators on your legislative board would be significantly influential in improving America’s education system. By having educators, assist with the law-making process, I truly believe we will have great success in our American schools. It is important to use the knowledge of many, instead of just knowledge of the few legislators in Washington, D.C.
This post was submitted by Elizabeth Hummel.
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 case in the teaching field and it is not until we solve this issue that the field of teaching will be marred with those who are being paid the same as those who go above and beyond the call for their students. By far the most notable issue with Merit Pay is determining which teachers deserve it. The use of testing can not be the main format for determining a teacher’s ability in much the same reasons as testing is controversial with No Child Left Behind. There needs to be many different factors in determining a teacher’s ability not simply test scores. The one factor I feel that needs to be associated with Merit Pay is student evaluations. The goal of teaching is to better educate our youth and provide them with the resources necessary for them to be successful in life outside of school. Because of this I feel it is imperative that students be allowed to evaluate their teachers the same way that students in college are allowed. From this administrators can better determine how successful the teacher is in their classroom as they are able to discern from the students how effective the teacher is in providing the students an education. Of course this can not only be the only measure taken to determine Merit Pay as issues of favoritism can emerge and thus disrupt the accuracy of the tests. That is why I also feel that it is important to have an outside group or company be brought in to also perform evaluations and measure the students’ abilities. This would help to alleviate issues of favoritism as the outside group would not be connected to the teacher in any way and thus help promote fairness and equality in an issue that is often surrounded by negativity. These two actions I feel would be very instrumental in helping to bring about the nation wide use of Merit Pay, and thus help better reward those teachers who have gone above and beyond the call of their job for so many years. These teachers have gone for years without being properly rewarded for their hard work and effort, but still they continue to put forth a hundred and ten percent in their jobs because they love their job and educating our children. It is time for these teachers to be properly acknowledged for their excellent service in educating our nation.
This post was submitted by Andrew Reynolds.
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 are already doing a good job and are at the top of their performance. Merit pay can reward bad teachers for making little improvements. Teachers would be teaching for the wrong reasons. They would be teaching just to get a little extra cash and we need teachers in our school systems that are willing to teach to help kids succeed in life.
Another reason that we should get rid of merit pay is because it may create competition between teachers. Merit pay as been found to hurt teacher collaboration, because of this it will create a weak school culture within the school. We do not need our teachers trying to compete against each other. Teaching students is not a game and the teachers need to work together to better their teaching, not compete against each other.
If we have merit pay within our schools, teachers will start teaching to the test and fail to teach other material. This is not fair to the students and they deserve the chance to learn different types of material not just test material. Because of teachers teaching to the test, they do not focus on long term goals. They strictly focus on short term goals.
Merit pay increases tension and stress for a teacher and that is something they do not need. Other teachers think that merit pay is a way to threaten a teacher. They might think that if their students do not perform well, they may loose their job. Because they feel threatened, it reduces their freedom of action and the teacher may experience anger and dissatisfaction.
As you can see merit pay should be taken out of all school systems. It is not a reliable way to measure a teacher’s performance, it may create competition between teachers, and teachers will teach to the test. If we focused more on trying to hire good teachers and not trying to think of ways to make bad teachers good, our school systems would become a better place for students to learn.
Devin Whitehead
This post was submitted by Devin Whitehead.
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 the best teacher possible…but I know that there will be someone down my career road that will think differently. What if I go into a school and I have a disagreement with my superiors. Will my pay be cut because they don’t agree with one of my opinions? This is one issue that I am extremely nervous about and really wish to know an answer to. Another concern I have is teacher collaboration. If I borrow a teachers work down the hall…get commended on it, and get a pay raise, will that be considered fair to the people I work so closely with. My advice to the president would be to strongly pay attention to education. It has been terribly overlooked and it is time to make some changes. I am relieved to see that Obama has taken consideration that teachers who work extremely hard deserve to be paid more. I am especially happy to know that he wants to pay teachers across the board more money. It is relieving to have a president who is taking education seriously.
This post was submitted by April.
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 student in Illinois. There are significant differences in funding among the fifty states. On average, local school district’s funds are 65% from local sources, 27% from state funding, and 8% federal monies. In Illinois, this compares to the funding rate for prisons, which is done at an annual rate of $21,000 annually per inmate. Schools are still largely funded by local property taxes and there can be great disparity among districts within a state. School districts located in areas with higher property values have higher funding levels than districts with lower property values. Many times they have the ability to offer specialized programs and curriculums because of their funding levels. Very often students in districts with lower property values are the ones who have the most acute need for a well-funded education. State and local sources do not always level out this disparity. Additionally many times there are federal and state mandates placed upon schools without funding. Schools are left to work budgets even more to meet these unfunded mandates. The consequence is that classes of forty students are housed in rooms that were meant for thirty. These students who don’t have seats or books in do not feel that they matter, while students in the suburbs have adequate facilities. If we are unsuccessful in meeting the needs of these “extra” students, there is a chance we will continue to fund them via the prison system. They need someone to care enough to help with the financing for adequate books and seats, which can come from the federal government. They need our president to lead them into a better future where they will feel as if they matter, and can learn.
This post was submitted by Melissa Neill.
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 learning environment. After reviewing many cases, problems that arise in school funding are that students can’t receive equal expenditure due to their different needs and that education is not protected by our Constitution. Education is what frames generation’s minds and dictates how each student learns to be a voice in our country. I have been in those school’s where they didn’t have the resources in the classroom nor school to make it a comfortable learning center and I have been in a school where they every resource you could think of and the difference in each was very large. By seeing both sides, it felt great for me to see these student’s in such a great school with so many resources to learn from. Some districts spend their money the wrong way and not in needs of the students. Whether it’s helping a student out with the ability to eat lunch every day, adding a few more computers to the media center, or having colorful positive posters displayed around the classroom, teachers and officials should make simple things like this mandatory so that school funding is directed towards the students best interest. General State Aid and Poverty Grants should allow each state and district to ensure schools have the necessary funds to improve and sustain academic achievement.
This post was submitted by Angela Corsolini.
