Sunday, January 11, 2004
Stuck In My Craw
Reading the paper to Jay is becoming a daily thing. Today on the front page was an article on a teacher’s struggle to determine how to plan her lessons. It seems she has three new students and 10 lower performing students who will slow down her other students who are preparing for the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test. She chose to remove the 10 from the class for two morning sessions returning them in the afternoon.
The goal of schools in the past was to teach (impart knowledge) to all students enrolled in that school. We heard how it didn’t matter where you went to school, everyone was entitled to an even chance and an unbiased instruction. Not determined by who was ready for MEAP work and who wasn’t. Someone please tell me--doesn’t MEAP measure the effectiveness of the school and it’s teachers? It sounds like it put the weight of the program on the individual students instead.
The other craw sticker is this legal “guest” worker program. The reason being that Americans won’t do these jobs. Maybe if the government worked on making wages a little better instead of having the Labor Department telling employers how to get around paying a decent wage, maybe “American” workers would find the employment that is available a little easier to stomach....
