20 questions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/20-questions-for-parents-about-k-12-school-reform/2012/03/21/gIQAMytwaS_blog.html

Read them, made me think, which is the purpose of reading.

Daily 5

At last nights School Board we were entertained and informed of a program called "Daily 5". It was nice to watch a video of young students excited to read to themselves, write, and read to others. Perhaps there are new ways to teach and some of us are willing to try them. Thanks for trying something new.

A Riddle

What does the Iowa Legislature and public education have in common? Nothing! The school system is expected to show results, we can't extend our year if we haven't made our goals, we can't "close" the session early if we did. I think I have a new designation for the State government, GINA, Government In Need of Assistance. I suppose we could rate the government on how it improved over last years government, or if we get our "waver"  we could rate them by using a growth model. So let's reform something already!

Facebook at School

I'm sure people will find it unusual for the school to use a Facebook account. This is an experiment to get more information out using the social media of today. I'm not sure of the future for blocking access to Facebook while on the schools' network. While in school, announcements and postings will suffice for now. Facebook could serve the public outside the walls quite well, I'm sure we'll consider all options in the future for students during the school day. I can't speak for others, but I expect sarcastic remarks about the school using Facebook, and if there are suggestions for changes to school policy I hope they are supportive or I can consider changes very slowly.

Swords to Plowshares

I'm not a big fan of the push in the State Legislature to put gun rights in the State constitution. I actually think the new "conceal carry" permits goes far enough. My biggest concern before was transporting a weapon in a vehicle, the conceal carry permit makes it legal. Now with the push in Des Moines it could become a constitutional right to carry the weapon everywhere, this goes too far. You may have the right to carry a weapon, but a property owner should have the right to say "not here". I've been on jury trial many times (much to the dismay of the defendant) and I would not be happy thinking anyone in the courtroom could be "packing". Any business, local government agency, etc, those closest to the individual voter should be able to set some restraint. Whatever happened  to local control? It's understandable to have 99 counties with the same rules now, but Hy-Vee should be able to ban guns from all their stores if they wish. The Democrats in the Senate won't let this happen anyway, so our State government just wasted a day, and I can't see where this proved anything symbolically.

The Games We Play

I went to the "Eggs and Issues" forum Saturday morning and listened to our legislators talk about different issues. The one thing that I picked up on is how the Senate won't allow certain bills forwarded by the House to come to the floor for a vote, or how the House won't let certain bills come out of committee. So I think we can see why things don't change. I don't know why the label of being in one party or the other removed the ability to work together. Do we really lose something if we were to cross party lines? Why does there even have to be a line? It would be an interesting experiment for two different party members to quietly switch bills and see if the vote would completely reverse. Politics, Bah Humbug

Iowa Department of Education

I find it amusing that Brad Zaun's bill introduced into committee to do away with the IDOE has met with so much opposition. I thought we were looking at a total overhaul of education in Iowa? Why wouldn't the top dogs be under the microscope? If you have a school in need of improvement, and this goes on for a number of years, the State would step in and replace the administration (the "State" has never had the guts to do this). So if education in Iowa has been on "the list" for a number of years, I'd start at the top too. The question that should be asked of everyone involved from top to bottom is, "just what have you done to make things better?" If the top people at the IDOE are offended by this, tough. Its a simple question, if this offends you professionally then I guess you can't answer it. I better add that even though things could be "better", things aren't terrible, we just are not performing at a level that we would like to be, and one of the ways to get money and attention is to turn it into some kind of "crisis".

There is one simple thing that could be done to make things better, and sometimes I feel I'm the only one who knows. I think you know what it is too, and just don't realize it. I won't reveal what it is until someone at the top asks me. (this is just a pathetic attempt to gain readers)

National Debt

A simple look at our national debt, pulled from a Van Diest newsletter, Bob Van Diest says it like it is.

United States Tax Revenue                                        2,170,000,000,000
Federal Budget                                                          3,820,000,000,000
New Debt Added This year                                       1,650,000,000,000
National Debt                                                          16,271,000,000,000
Recent Budget cut                                                          38,500,000,000

Now remove the 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget

Annual Family Income                                                        21,700
Money family spends per year                                             38,200
Annual Debt added to Credit cards                                     16,500
Old Credit card debt                                                         162,710
Family budget cut                                                                     385

Now these numbers are about a month old, but you can see that we have a problem at the national level, I wonder how much longer we have until a "reckoning" ! I'm going to see how school numbers work in this format, we currently we are just overspending considering our revenues and aren't over on the credit card limit, but within a couple years that will change. The columns just don't line up all that well, and I tried to fix that, but you can figure it out.

Online school good for Iowa? Prove it!

Well, I didn't think I'd see the day when anyone would just open this Pandora's box, especially here. A little friendly competition is one thing, but this is just a grab for the money. If the State of Iowa wants to support something online that makes sense, put all approved, or approved by the majority of districts, textbook series online. California has done this, and I won't go into the discussion about doing anything California does, but this is something that should be done soon. This would be helpful. Find the Horizon Report, read it. I believe that the prediction of "open source" education within 5 years is accurate, though I'll bet it will be sooner than that. The internet is a big place, it has room for quality information. Sure you can learn from the internet, but can you retain it? We'll being hearing a lot about Hybrid classrooms, but the teacher is still the key.

I should put a disclaimer here that I'm not going to worry sentence structure, grammar, etc. I should worry about it, but its hard to find the time.

Is that a dog?

I'm just a little concerned that the Westminster Dog Show in New York had a Pekingese win the show. That's not a dog, that's a mop. Give me a real dog! I was going to comment about the definition of support, but I forgot I was going to use this blog for factual reporting of situations we need to deal with. Of course if I actually had some readers, I might be tempted to go off the reservation from time to time.

Cellphones

Love them or hate them, the kids can't live without them. Okay, so what do we do? At first the phone was banned when the camera was added, the precious students had a new toy and they tried their best to abuse it. Now it has morphed into a "device" that has other uses we cannot live without. So should we allow phones during "passing time", lunch, or when allowed by instructor? Parents should still call the school to get a message to their kid until things are changed around. When a parent calls and says they cannot get a hold of their child, maybe its because they're in class? I wonder why the student council hasn't submitted a proposal. Should the rules be different for different ages? When we have more computers (tablets, laptops, Ipads) what social media will we allow then? We probably should start to address this, but I could use some guidance.

Facebook

I set up a Facebook account and this Blog page to experiment with ways SWG could keep current with technology and media. I'm not sure who should be in charge of either site, but I can see that many people spend too much time viewing trivial postings. That being said, the "ask a question" could be very handy in gathering input from stakeholders, not that I think everyone gets to vote on any little topic, but I've seen some questions asked by people that are interesting.

There are area businesses that are "fighting" the amount of time employees spend on "social sites". The school cannot allow a lot of that to happen, so how would we monitor and limit abuse of such activity? I think the administration needs to get more information out, and these sites can be a tool. I will experiment when time allows, but now I am asking for input on just how we can utilize this for mutual benefit.

I'm getting the hang of this

I'm hoping to use this blog to discuss any school related topic we can. I'm going to start by saying that Sue Franey and Stacie Schultz gave a great presentation at the last School Board meeting.

Hey, I'm just getting started

I didn't mean to put that picture on the page so big