Do you think education will be better off in four years?

As a future teacher, even though I have been a teacher to my children and my grands, I believe our Educational System will get better. I believe that if people believe in their children and themselves they can work with the President to make our educational system work. It is not hard; and money is not always the answer (even though it helps). Since I am an American citizen, speaking from personal perspectives, if grown-ups who are in their right minds would just think. What do we need to make sure our lives are improved through education? and what can we do to make education what it should be? which is learning from each other to make our society a productive place to live. In America it seems that everything is about the dollar or race or culture, when it is not. Let's just get together with each other stop fighting about races, religions and creeds and just live by what the constitution has taught us in America.That all men are created equal and Reach one Teach one. And if we just look at our children while they are small ask them what they think can make our society a better place to live (from the mouth of babes):It all leads to working together, being honest (get honest people in the systems who really want education to work and patience, plus let God be our leader. Let us pray like we should, and hear from God.

Elementary

My experiences teaching for the Chicago Public Schools for the last 32 years leaves me feeling somewhat pessimistic about the future of the schools. In this city, politics and patronage usually supplants educational experience and knowledge. Although Arne Duncan is personable and has a clean record, under his tenure as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, we have experienced more school closings and replacement of entire staff than actual reform or addressing individual school needs. It has been a policy of one size fits all, but within the context of an uneven playing field created by Central Office policies and the inequities from neighborhood socio-economics. In order to keep white and middle class families from fleeing to suburban and private schools, Chicago has created magnet schools and academies that have selective enrollment, leaving neighborhood schools with less motivated students that have less academic skills and that cannot filter out low achieving students. Yet every school is assessed by the same standardized tests. Most of the "failing" schools continue to fail, so the policy now is to close the schools and fire all the teachers. In Chicago, we hear that 50% of the public schools will be privatized by 2015. If this is the direction our new Secretary of Education plans for the schools nationally, I'm afraid it's the death knell for the public schools. I don't believe this is the type of reform that will create better schools and higher achieving students.

Having worked in both public and private schools for the past 37 years I continue to be dismayed by the fact that we simply have not changed our strategies for meeting the individual needs of students. Yes, the latest catch words are differenciation and RTI or is that RIT? But yet in truth for the most part we place children in classrooms by age rather than by abilty. We still present a lesson to the whole class without consideration for the mastery level of some students and the serious deficiencies of others. Are there teachers out there who do pre-test and do assess what their stduents already know? Of course, but it has been my experience that because teachers are always strapped for time, good intentions often fall by the wayside long about Novemeber! If we do not convert our schools to a continuous progress format - we can never expect to compete with other more advanced and rigorous world class educational programs. Perhaps the one room school house where younger children very often learned what the older students were studying, and older students benefitted by working with younger students really WAS the answer.
The United States also must move beyond the agricultural approach and progress to year round education throughout the nation.

If Obama can find a way to increase the length of the school day and year, employ international benchmarks in math and science to establish where our standards need to be in order to be "World Class", no longer allow states to define "proficiency" and face the facts that if you want a Spanish speaker to learn English it takes longer than two years he will have accomplished quite a bit. If he backs away from accountability in any form and allows the education establishment to continue to define success he will fail miserably.

Obama will make a serious mistake if he selects CEO Duncan as his secretary of education. This individual does not belive in public education and has no compasion for minorities. He is enemy #1 for students with dsabilities.

How come a basketball player with a BA can be a secretary of education. There are other brilliant individuals in the country.

Obama shows lack of sophistication and knowledge. Obama selects the best brains to deal with the economy and the worst for education.

Obama should ask for letters of recommendations from ALL THE LATINO LEGISLATIVE CAUCUS MEMBERS as well as the Chicago City Clerk (Obama's friend).

Maria Garcia

I have long been concerned about the direction that our nation's public schools having been moving. The bipartisan enactment of the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002 brought hope to many schools but quickly became a lightening rod for controversy when promised funding fell short while strict adherence to mandates increased. Like most of our nation's major institutions (economy, military and healthcare) education is at a tipping point. The election of Barack Obama as President this past week represents a dramatic cry from the American people to bring change to all facets of our lives. Clearly, ensuring that our next generation of leaders receive a high quality public education that prepares them to be productive and engaged citizens is arguably the most important change needed for our nation's continued survival and growth. Since most of the public debate about how to change public education in America has come primarily from those who do not work in or have a vested interest in it, I have decided to utilize the same medium our new President used to share his ideas and mobilize his supporters to develop and facilitate an online forum (see link below) to spark and archive a conversation about the direction our public education systems needs to be moving. This forum is open for anyone and everyone to participate in. I invite you to engage in this debate and help us make others aware of it through promotion on your blog and via your social and professional networks. Ultimately, after the forum closes on January 18, 2008, the summary of ideas, comments and statements will be collated and submitted to President Obama, his designated Secretary of Education and the members of the Senate and House Committees dealing with any public education related topics for review and implementation.

Please visit http://educationdebate.blogspot.com to participate. I truly believe that we the people have a profound responsibility to influence the policy of our nation with respect to such an important issue.

I believe that Mr. Obama believes that he can make a difference. And some of his ideas are good ones. But I need to see an administrator who chooses his advisors in education from people who have really been on the front lines, TEACHERS! Wouldn't it be great if he opened a dialogue in which we (all of us "in the trenches" so to speak)could give real feedback and suggestions. Through all of the past years, I kept thinking, "I wish somebody would ask ME about this or that."

I have been in Education for over thirty years from junior high to high school to community college. The problem I see is that our students are not striving for the best education they can get. The parents are not making the students do the best they can and the public is not striving for prefection. When you mix special need students in class with everyone one else, so they make up 1/4 of the class. The teacher begins to teach down to the students and not challenging them.

I do not think that public education for children from low-income, single-parent families will improve in the next four years since these youngsters typically are not supervised properly by parents, and thus do enter schools with positive attitudes toward formal instruction. These children's negative feelings toward teachers, other students, and their future lives are so strong that all that teachers and principals attempt to do to reduce them are ineffective.

As for children from middle- and high-income, two-parent families, their growing abilities to choose the schools their children attend (if Obama makes that a basic plank of his plan to improve schools) should improve these students attainment of academic knowledges and skills. However, if Obama appoints the wrong Secretary of Education, the academic scores of the more financially well-off children likely will not improve.

Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University.