[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday January 24, 2006 at 12:08am]
Million Dollar Baby
Katherine Kersten's latest column is about Education Minnesota's latest initiative, an outreach/survey project to find out what we're thinking. Only it's really just push polling. As she notes at the end, the project is named "Schools First" not "Students First" with all that this implies.
I took the survey, and yes, many of the choices are not there. Should we raise or lower standards, presented as teacher education/certification standards, the survey asks. How about implementing standards of job performance that would weed out the bad teachers? How about eliminating the capricious standards that would keep Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger from getting a job at your school? They did allow some dissent. I clicked "more than adequate" on all the funding questions.
If the Nihilist in Golf Pants is listening, he could find at least 11 questions not on the survey. There are no questions about how the students are doing other than a general rate your school from 1 to 10. Grades? Grade inflation? Dumbing down the curriculum? Drop out rates? Discipline? English as your first, second, or other language? Do you like Open Enrollment? Would you prefer a Charter School? Would you switch to a private school if you could afford it? None of these are mentioned.
The real kicker is at the end, where they require your name, telephone number, and eMail address to accept your ballot. This is going to be intimidating to many who will stop here, skewing the poll.
This is a year long project, meaning their work will be ready for the 2007 Legislative session. The sky didn't fall when spending was held flat in 2003. After getting a big raise in 2005 which still didn't preclude many local referendums, they must think they need some additional ammo to seek another.
It's for the children.
I took the survey, and yes, many of the choices are not there. Should we raise or lower standards, presented as teacher education/certification standards, the survey asks. How about implementing standards of job performance that would weed out the bad teachers? How about eliminating the capricious standards that would keep Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger from getting a job at your school? They did allow some dissent. I clicked "more than adequate" on all the funding questions.
If the Nihilist in Golf Pants is listening, he could find at least 11 questions not on the survey. There are no questions about how the students are doing other than a general rate your school from 1 to 10. Grades? Grade inflation? Dumbing down the curriculum? Drop out rates? Discipline? English as your first, second, or other language? Do you like Open Enrollment? Would you prefer a Charter School? Would you switch to a private school if you could afford it? None of these are mentioned.
The real kicker is at the end, where they require your name, telephone number, and eMail address to accept your ballot. This is going to be intimidating to many who will stop here, skewing the poll.
This is a year long project, meaning their work will be ready for the 2007 Legislative session. The sky didn't fall when spending was held flat in 2003. After getting a big raise in 2005 which still didn't preclude many local referendums, they must think they need some additional ammo to seek another.
It's for the children.