Dear President Obama,
As a teacher and a parent, I’m concerned with the quality of education in America. I’ve thought and researched a lot about the issues, and I have three recommendations for how to improve education in America.
First, ensure that parents have as much choice as possible when it comes to the education their child. The diversity of home-schooling, charter schools, parochial schools, private schools, as well as public schools must be preserved. Competition among schools increases quality.
Second, please grant more autonomy to individual school districts and to individual states. Resist the urge to mandate from a federal level a detailed curriculum that every American child will undergo. One of the easiest and best ways to do that is to abolish the federal Department of Education.
Third, don’t increase the length of the school year, the length of the school day, don’t mandate all-day kindergarten, and don’t provide excessive funding for after-school programs. Don’t mandate or encourage parents to allow their children to be raised by school officials. Government should not and cannot be a substitute for the family.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Telemoonfa
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3 comments:
so mostly i agree with you here...however, i believe in all day kindergarten. it's good for kids, and really helpful to families where both parents need to work (or single parents who need to work) and cash for child care is short...
also, having after-school programs funded is good too! i would way rather have kids hanging out doing after school stuff at school instead of being latch-key kids doing whatever on their own. i participated in after-school activities (some of them were with you) and i got into WAY less trouble being at school than i did when left to my own devices....
i do think that parents should take an active roll in their kids life, and that family is important, however, supporting their kids is important too....its hard to balance...school can help.
I might be a bit quixotic here (I learned that word in my vocabulary class today) but I support the arts and sports more than the government does.
I also think teachers should be paid more. that'd improve education a lot. if it was a job more people wanted, the schools would be better.
I want to work at an inner city junior high as a history teacher but mostly orchestra teacher. I'll prolly change my mind but I do want to be paid for it.
Government raising kids reminds me of Brave New World.
but I think I'm a better person for having a public school experience, it has given me a different perspective on life from my parents
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