School Voucher issue-Sorors Please

[NinjaPoodle]

All of you teachers out there, how do you feel?

I will add my opinion later.

*note-sorry, I ment to put teachers and not "sorors". Too many things on my mind. My mistake

[SeriousSigma22]

Sorhor Ninjapoodle,

Girl, I haven't heard from you in a while! Sorry for getting away from the thread anyway as a high school educator (ten great years!) I believe that school systems have a clear obligation to fix up their run down public school before they start handing out financial assistance to private institutions. Moreover, the real problem is that politicians, counties, and districts talk this great game but they really don't value education because if they really valued education then teachers would receive better salaries, class size would be kept down to a minimum, standardized test would require students to really demonstrate their knowledge (Please get rid of those culturally biased multiple choice test!), and principals (administration) would develop a backbone and speak out about working with limited budgets.

I fortunately teach in a very wealthy county (Fairfax, Va.) but if the (Fairfax) school system continues to grow (we are over 155,000 students) and the taxpayers refuse to vote for bond referendums or refuse to support the budget increases developed by the school board then our school system will run into some of the same problems as Ohio, Phila. Pa., parts of Florida, etc. It is really hard to teach over 150 students a day with limited resources.

However, I really can't blame parents for wanting to utilize the voucher program if they live in areas where the public schools aren't safe or their children really aren't learning.

The moral of this story is. . . the powers that be must provide adaquate budgets, colleges and universities must really train and prepare new educators, districts and counties must hire the best qualified, and parents need to spend quality time with their children to reinforce their learning because I wasn't hired to raise children. I know that students look up to me as a role model but that is very different from actually be expected to raise their little or rather big darlings.

Just a few of my thoughts. . .

Serioussigma22

[jojapeach]

Soror SeriousSigma22, I totally agree with you!

My sister-in-law yanked my niece out of my old elementary school after putting her in 2 different 1st grade classes. Frankly, they weren't making the grade with those same teachers that were there when I was in first grade in '82. (Sorry, but those ladies are negative and just don't seem to genuinely care about the kids.)

If the public schools we pay taxes for aren't cutting the mustard, fix them before you let kids run off to private schools. The list of problems is too long, but I think some primary problems lie with administrators that hire underqualified, unmotivated teachers and/or don't support their staff and teachers that just mark attendance and give up on the students. Unfortunately, they exist, and I have personally experienced it. I'm not forgetting the politicians either, but you see how this list is getting longer and longer........