This morning’s Intelligencer Journal has a very interesting story on new ideas being implemented by local school districts.
New Programs Welcome New Students
Here are some of the best and the worst. First, the worst:
- At Penn Manor “pupils will be able use their iPads, Web-linked cell phones and laptops in some classes—the teachers allow it.” Having kids use cell phones in class—bad idea…really bad idea. I have never seen kids learn worse than when they are distracted by their cell phone (adults are the same way BTW). The whole push for technology throughout the choices this year is troubling. Most of the ideas as best I can tell are really based on cost cutting instead of improving the education that students are receiving. Cutting costs is good, but cutting cost and diminishing educational quality is rotten.
- Random drug testing at Manheim Township. I run a school and I cannot imagine this sort of behavior. I have talked with a superintendent about it and he claims that parents love it. I am aghast. In a culture where adults are increasing permissive this seems hypocritical. One question: “Do teachers, administrators, and school board members face this testing?” I am not against testing for athletes on performance enhancing substances, but random testing of students makes school start to look a lot like minimum security prison.
- School districts starting their own cyber schools (CV and Ephrata). They are not doing this because of conviction or because they hope to improve education. It is a money grab. That never goes well.
- Hempfield (who is most praised) has “virtual field trips” for middle schoolers. Bad idea. I have tried it. The kids are always more tech savvy than they teacher and middle schoolers will quickly realize that this is not a field trip. Try this with K and 1 maybe you can fool them for a quarter.
- Manheim Township dropped a plan for single gender classes. I thought that this would be an interesting idea to see them implement, and am sad that they backed off. The story says that “Recent research does not support the need for the classes” (i.e., we are bowing to the second wind of political pressure having already bowed to the first).
- McCaskey eliminated 8.5 positions for teachers for gifted students. As if it were not hard enough already for a gifted student to thrive in a “challenging” environment, McCaskey cuts funds. I have said this over and over. It is unconscionable what is happening in the city. We are all responsible for this. The most needy are being given an education that none should except willingly for their children. We will all pay dearly for this.
- McCaskey (please tell me I am misreading this) is expanding teaching Chinese to K and 2nd. May I suggest that focusing on English or some language that connects to the West like Latin would be a much better choice. This seems like an idea that someone came up with that sounded good during some late night meeting. Bad idea. Probably also costly.
Here are some of the best ideas:
- E’town’s new WWII elective: “Hitler, Nazi Germany and WWII” looks interesting. I bet that there is a passionate teacher somewhere at the root of this.
- Hats off to Hempfield School District. They have a lot of money (I am envious) and they used it to be 32,000 new books to spur more interest in reading. Good decision!
- Again, Hempfield implemented an idea that costs no money (excellent). They wanted to get kids to eat lunch slower because they wanted to race out to recess (who doesn’t), so instead of working to re-educate kids on chewing more slowly (you can laugh but I have seen programs on this) they simply moved lunch after recess. This will change the behavior and it costs $0. There are some bright folks in the Hempfield district. Hempfield wins the cost free award.
- Octorara cut all middle school sports. This is sad, but at least some school district is starting to come to grips with funding problems. One hint Octorara: if you would simply make the teams community teams that were open equally to homeschool, private school, and public school kids for a fee, you would have all of the money you need. Octorara wins the honesty award.
