Nancy E. Bailey's Blog, page 38
August 8, 2018
What School Safety Reports Ignore: Reducing Class Size
Over the summer we have seen a glut of school safety reports. Local, state, and federal agencies have written possible solutions they think will thwart future school violence. Some suggestions might be well-advised, but others have created concerns about questionable student surveillance. It’s difficult to believe any solutions will be successful if no one addresses class […]
August 1, 2018
Toddlers & Preschool Testing? Don’t Steal the Joy of Reading!
A child three years old is still a toddler. What demands, if any, should be placed on a child this young when it comes to learning to read? Will it harm their chances of enjoying reading in the future? This is what we should ask when it comes to the new PELI testing. The same […]
July 30, 2018
Why Some Parents Turn Their Backs on Public Schools, And What Can Be Done About It
Why do parents remove their children from public schools? Why do they switch to homeschooling, private, or charter schools? What makes them believe that technology is the answer to their child’s problems? Sometimes, it’s simply because they prefer other settings, and they have no complaints about public schooling. But parents who remove their children from […]
July 27, 2018
The Short Rise and Faster Fall of Special Ed. in the State of Michigan
If Michigan eliminated our state-imposed special education rules, other states’ would fall like dominoes. I could not let that happen. Not without waging a war on the MDE [Michigan Department of Education] and anyone working to deny children with disabilities an education, and hope for a future of independence, and access to the American Dream. […]
July 24, 2018
Does this Summer Reading Program Bypass Librarians, Teachers, and Fun, While Tracking Students?
READS is a summer program for disadvantaged children promoted by the i3 (Investing in Innovation) Fund and The Wallace Foundation. It uses computer algorithms to figure out a student’s interests. Next, it matches them to books. It gives students in kindergarten through fifth grade 10 free books, but there are strings attached. Both the i3 […]
July 19, 2018
People Who Don’t Pay Attention to Public Schools
The other day, I was riding with my husband, who is a pretty good driver. On this day, he maneuvered a busy intersection with his usual aplomb, and out from behind some trees appeared a pedestrian, a young woman, totally self-absorbed, looking down, her ear phones snugly attached. My husband, swerved in the right direction […]
July 16, 2018
K-12 Mega-Merger: What Strange World Is This? Teachers Want Lowered Class Sizes!
Teaching children can be a beautiful thing. But there are so many needs right now due to years of inadequate funding and mismanagement. One solution to many problems is lowering class sizes. But read this article about a K-12 Mega-Merger and it’s easy to see that lowering class size is only on the minds of […]
July 14, 2018
The School Safety Commission’s Troubling Ties to the Border Crisis
School safety is simmering in everyone’s minds during summer vacation. But looking at the individuals on the Federal Commission on School Safety should give us pause. How do they view children? There’s cognitive dissonance when they say they want safe schools, yet they thought it fine to separate babies and children from their parents in the […]
July 12, 2018
Without Professional Teachers, Special Education is a Joke!
How do school districts bypass special education services and get away with it? One way, is to make it look like special education services are being restored, but due to a teacher shortage, the district must rely on teachers without classroom experience. Special education, all teaching really, but special education, especially, demands teaching qualifications. To […]
July 8, 2018
The Ridiculous Ways Adults Ruin Recess
Recess for children is such a simple concept that some adults don’t know how to deal with it. Edutopia is talking about a “right way” to do recess in order to “optimize” it. This stems from a report that is supposed to “help” with recess. They want to manipulate how children play and how we […]
