From a reader:
“The Arizona Legislature (Republican majority) just passed a bill to allow the hiring of uncertificated teachers. They also just opened up the voucher system to ALL students. Furthermore, they gave teachers a measly 1% raise. Arizona is 49th out of the 50 states in teacher pay and funding per pupil.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What about uncertified physicians, or dentists, or airline pilots? How careless of these Arizona Republicans to leave out so many professions. JVK
Save the students. Guess Arizona is showing their appreciation for teachers. Good job, Arizona!
Good job Republicans! How much lower can this country get? Every day is a new low. It is just a matter of waking up and finding what has come next.
God forbid that taxes get raised to fund schools adequately. Let’s continue to debase the profession.
“Appreciate our teachers!”
Appreciate our teachers!
Give them higher pay:
An apple in their lunchbox
To help them through the day
Appreciate our teachers!
Give them smaller classes:
Unvalidated colleagues
To educate the masses
Appreciate our teachers!
Give them all some choices:
“My way or the highway”
To amplify their voices
Appreciate our teachers!
With testing and with VAM
Let them know we really
Really give a DAM
In case anyone has forgotten, DAM stands for Devalue Added Model .
Thanks WI and AZ for moving us, ever, closer to 3rd world status.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Well, lucky AZ! New Mexico teachers haven’t even had a 1% raise in (?) I don’t know how long….
Well, this should make it even more attractive for Ed majors to go into debt for tens of thousands of dollars for an advanced degree in their chosen fields. After all anyone can do it!
Disgusting! How fascist is the alleged Republic of Arizona?
Educational Savings Accounts differ from traditional voucher programs.
From the ExcelinEd website:
Traditional choice programs (vouchers and tax-credit scholarships) allow parents to choose among participating schools. While this is an important improvement over the way public schools are organized, voucher and tax-credit programs are school choice programs. An ESA is an educational choice program. Through an ESA, parents can direct their child’s funds to a private school – just like a traditional choice program – but they also have the ability to direct the funds to tutoring, online courses, costs associated with college entrance exams, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks, curriculum, college savings, and many other authorized uses. Through an ESA program, parents are no longer relegated to School A or School B – they are able to completely customize their child’s education.(END)
see
http://www.excelined.org/education-savings-accounts/
The program gives parents the opportunity to control and tailor the entire educational experience for the child. This is a special boon to special-needs children. Although the article does not mention it, gifted/talented children require additional flexibility to ensure that their child gets the attention and expertise to achieve their fullest potential. ESA’s are a real benefit to the gifted/talented.
Charles wrongly says, “The program gives parents the opportunity to control and tailor the entire educational experience for the child. This is a special boon to special-needs children.”
BS
Finland doesn’t do this. Read this piece from Smithsonian.com and learn what really works.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/
Finland is a socialist, Scandinavian country. Although many of their concepts are excellent, and the FInns seem to be satisfied with their school systems, most of these ideas would never fly in the USA. (sadly!).
And what does their socialist system have to do with giving USA parents more control over their children’s education? And especially special-needs children?
Finland based its education system on American ideas
In addition, China also based its education system on what the Chinese learned from America’s public schools prior to 2000 and NCLB and all the other autocratic, greed based programs from the private sector, for-profit corporations.
The city in China where the changed were implemented first was Shanghai and Shanghai has been ranked #1 on the PISA tests in every subject area for several years now.
What the Chinese learned in America no longer exists because of the high stakes test-based system that replaced what teachers were doing right before the autocratic era of high stakes tests, rank, and punishment.
CHOICE is not a CHOICE. CHOICE is a corporate propaganda slogan that is worth less than diarrhea and vomit.
I reject your changing the subject by focusing on “socialism”, and Finland is a democracy with social safety net programs. It is NOT a socialist country or there would be no private sector businesses and the people would not be allowed to own homes.
The issue is how Finland manages its education system, not socialism and/or social safety net programs.
I do not think you read the Smithsonian piece to discover the biggest difference between the United States and Finland when it comes to education.
In Finland, the teachers are treated like the professionals they are and are trusted with making decisions regarding how to teach the children in their classrooms. The teachers get the support that’s needed.
They are encouraged to work together in teams to solve difficult challenges from children that are having problems.That has nothing to do with socialism or social safety net programs. The fact that Finland does not have high stakes tests that are used to rank and fire teachers and close schools has nothing to do with socialism.