Education Short List

Earlier this year I wrote several articles about schools and how they are dealing with the economic recession. The majority of the articles spoke about how class sizes are becoming bigger and students are going without extracurricular activities.

—

In The Week Magazine two weeks ago, there was an article about how Hawaii is creating shorter school years for the next two years. The reason for this is due to budgetary issues.

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/101995/The_world_at_a_glance____United_States

Honolulu
 School year cut: In an effort to cut $468 million from the state education budget over the next two years, Hawaii’s teachers have agreed to take Fridays off for the rest of the school year. The plan, which goes into effect next week, will give Hawaii’s 171,000 public-school students the nation’s shortest school year, at 163 days. Although teachers say they will try to compress five days of schoolwork into four days each week, parents are objecting. “It’s just not enough time to learn,” said state PTA president Valerie Sonoda. Hawaii already trails most states in national education achievement.

—–

A school district in Portland, OR head an auction recently. There they sold basketball bards, toilet paper, and copier paper (among other items). What was the reason for the auction? To aide the district in generating much needed funds. The reason for selling these particular items? Because the schools and teachers had deemed them unnecessary. How does someone find that toilet paper is unnecessary?

http://wweek.com/editorial/3551/13258/

—-

In California, local universities, teachers, and workers are taking furlong days for the year. Again, the reasoning being it is finances.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd14-2009nov14,0,359774.story

—-

These three stories aren’t the only ones out there. Schools and districts across the country are facing fiscal hardships. Although these little ways help the districts to save money; the long-term affects on the educators and their students doesn’t seem to be a concern.

It is confounding to me how someone can think that teachers can cram five days worth of lessons into four. There’s barely enough time as it is. And with more and more schools having to worry about meeting national standards, teachers are taking out any creative lesson planning and filling it with test preparations. How are students supposed to take their tests if they don’t have paper to write on? You laugh, but I had two students who, at the end of last school year, were doing work on colored copier paper; or taking exams from overhead copies because the teachers didn’t have enough paper to print out the test for all of the students.

Situations such as these, in my humble educational opinion, are a tragedy along the lines of a Shakespearean play. In the long run, the only ones who are going to be suffering from these shortcuts are our children. The depth and breadth of their education will diminish; which will put them at an even great disadvantage later on, then they already are facing today.