[Vision2020] State Board members rip Luna's K-12 budget

[Shirley Ringo]

We could talk about these issues for a long time.  I really regret moves in
the Idaho Legislature (coming from people with little or no education
experience) putting out carrots to encourage students to rush through high
school faster.  In my experience, it was hard to get time to develop
concepts thoroughly.  I have believed that is why students don't retain and
we see so much need for remediation at the college level.  The direction
legislators take will probably make things worse.

 

Shirley

 

From: Kenneth Marcy [mailto:kmmos1 at frontier.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 4:22 PM
To: Shirley Ringo; 'Sue Hovey'; 'Tom Hansen'; 'Moscow Vision 2020'
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] State Board members rip Luna's K-12 budget

 

On 10/21/2013 11:48 AM, Shirley Ringo wrote:

Well, it reminds me of my former students who couldn't come in to get help
on their math - with the explanation that they needed to work after school
to get money for college.


That's another short-sighted, penny-wise and pound-foolish situation that a
well-funded and administered state educational system would discourage for
educational reasons alone, if no other.  The students who don't get the math
help they need show up at college wanting to major in STEM subjects (science
math engineering and math) and find they cannot do well because they are
expected to make up their high school level work simultaneously with taking
college level work in the same or related subjects for which the high school
work is prerequisite.

College faculty get frustrated because some of them have to teach kids at
the kids' levels, which is high school stuff the kids should have mastered
before arriving at college.

The kids get frustrated, discouraged, and after doing poorly, have a worse
academic record than that of which they might be capable, and they have
spent the significant resources associated with a year of college.

Those kids probably would have been better off, and they and their parents
would be a year's (or two years') worth of college costs richer, if the kids
had stayed home another year (or two), stayed in high school for another
year (or two), and took all of the math, science, and foreign language
classes (for B.A. students) they could schedule as more college preparation
at high school prices and room and board.

Of course, it's not all bad news.  There continues to be a substantial list
of new and continuing students on Deans' lists in all of the Colleges, so
the message is not all gloom and doom.  But it is still the case that a lot
of under-prepared students arrive on campus, and the fact that they
graduated from state high schools in that condition is not a mark of
favorable distinction for those secondary schools.




 

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Sue Hovey
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2013 6:42 PM
To: Tom Hansen; Moscow Vision 2020
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] State Board members rip Luna's K-12 budget

 

To my thinking the most interesting statement made by Bill Goesling was his
comment (not in this article)that higher education drives the economy and
K-12 education doesn't.  Anyone see any irony in that rationale? 

Sue H.


Not particularly ironic, no.  It has long been the case that
business-oriented people in positions of legislative and
governmental-executive leadership have had difficulties in distinguishing
investments that will do well primarily for people and secondarily for state
coffers, and those investments that might do well for private enterprises.
Usually those investment types are quite distinguishable and distinct.
Failure to invest more in the former, while loosening or removing rules that
govern the latter, is an ongoing feature, and an ongoing problem, of
governmental organizations.

The proof that is in the pudding, so to speak, is seen in the economic
performance data that indicate that the national economy does marginally
better under Democratic leadership, and marginally poorer under Republican
leadership.  So much for the Rs being the party that can recognize better
investments in the public interest.

Chronic, persistent, unimaginative education policy coupled with regressive,
retrograde, rationed, regional resources has produced an educational millieu
from which its inmates wish to escape if they are able.  Some succeed,
others can not.  Idaho voters' inability, or blatant stubborn refusal, to
elect to their state legislature people who can and will enact policies and
fund programs to actually serve the public interest rather than the
interests of private investors redounds directly back on those voters in the
form of substandard educational outcomes and diminished aggregate state
economic performance.

If Idaho voters appear more retarded in their electoral performances than
voters of other states, one might reasonably ask what is the cause of that
retardation, and what is the source of the cause?


Ken

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