Cheap! Maybe that's the key that'll open the door to educational change!

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http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/

An historic electronic online archive of children's folk songs.
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Children pick up the Phone and SING OR CHANT (SAY) THEIR SONG. It's simple.
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They are doing this for the world. Using the internet and technology
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From: Marion Brady <mbrady22@xxxxxxxxxx>

Knight-Ridder/Tribune publishes these columns, which appear when I feel 
like writing them (usually every couple of weeks), first in the Orlando 
Sentinel, and then in any other of the 600+ newspapers KRT serves that want 
to use them.

Marion

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Cheap! Maybe that's the key that'll open the door to educational change! 
The appeal of lower taxes almost always trumps the appeal of higher-quality 
education, so the trick is to figure out how to educate better with less 
money.....a whole lot less money....so much less money that state 
legislators won't be able to resist removing enough bureaucratic barriers 
to allow experimentation.

High school reform is on the front burner right now, so let me suggest some 
ways to save money at that level. Those who think quality lies in doing 
better what we're already doing will be appalled by the suggestions, but I 
agree with Joe Graba, former Minnesota Deputy Commissioner of Education: 
"We can't get the schools we need by improving the schools we have."

So, starting with a clean slate, and thinking "cheap," here's a dozen 
proposals:

ONE: Take the phrase "neighborhood school" seriously and design around it. 
Choose local adult-student steering committees to locate, rent or lease 
centrally located community centers, churches, houses, or other facilities.

TWO: Set maximum school size at 30 to 40 students for morning classes, 
another 30 to 40 for afternoon or evening classes.

THREE: Hire a three-or four-person teacher team, based on interviews and 
the team's written program proposal.

FOUR: Right up front, spend whatever is necessary to test and fix sight and 
hearing problems. It's a waste of money to try to educate kids who're 
functioning at less than peak potential because they don't hear or see well.

FIVE: Find out who each kid really is. It mystifies me how, with straight 
faces, we can simultaneously sing the praises of "American individualism" 
while forcing all kids thru the same narrow program. For a fraction of the 
cost of present standardized subject-matter tests, every kid's distinctive 
strengths and weaknesses can be explored using inexpensive, proven 
inventories of interests, abilities, personalities, and learning styles.

SIX: Eliminate grade levels. Start with where kids are, help them go as far 
as they're able, and give them a diploma describing what they've done and 
can do.

SEVEN: Eliminate textbooks. They're relics of a bygone era, cost a lot of 
money, the day they're printed they're out of date, and they're the main 
support of simplistic ideas about what it means to teach and learn.

EIGHT: Stop chopping knowledge up into "subjects." Knowledge is seamless, 
and the brain processes it most efficiently when it's integrated.

NINE: Push responsibility for teaching specific skills and knowledge on to 
users of those skills and knowledge - employers. Specialized, 
occupation-related instruction such as that now being offered in magnet 
schools will never be able to keep up with either the variety or the rate 
of change. Employers will resist, so sweeten the pot with subsidies as 
necessary. (A bonus: Apprenticeship and intern arrangements will go a long 
way toward smoothing the transition into responsible adulthood.)

TEN: Eliminate school buses, food services, athletic departments, athletic 
fields, cops on campus, non-teaching administrators, attendance officers, 
extra-curricular activities. (And add into the tax savings much of the 
$50,000-plus it costs each year to keep poorly educated kids locked up in 
prisons.)

ELEVEN: Strip away all the non-academic roles and responsibilities state 
legislators piled on schools during the 20th Century. Create independent 
municipal support systems for neighborhood-level, multi-age programs for 
art, dance, drama, sports and anything else "extra-curricular" for which a 
local need or interest is apparent.

TWELVE: Drastically shrink central administrations. Have them coordinate 
the forming of teacher teams, and relieve those teams of paper shuffling, 
resource acquisition, and other non-instructional tasks.

School doesn't need to take all day every day. Suggestions FIVE thru NINE 
will make it possible to accomplish more in three hours than is now being 
accomplished in six. The special-interest, personal learning project which 
every student should always have underway can be done on her and his own time.

Not incidentally, I'm concerned with matters in addition to functional 
schools - the creation of a sense of neighborhood and community, the 
expansion of community service activities, and vastly increased contact 
between generations. Cutting out all the non-academic responsibilities will 
open up time for all kinds of fascinating, new, growth-producing activity.

Don't like my proposal? Dream up your own. But keep another Joe Graba 
insight in mind: "Everybody wants the schools to be better; but almost 
nobody wants them to be different."

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