Pardon our skepticism, but we remember when the governor toured public elementary schools last winter saying he supported funding all-day kindergarten. That didn’t happen. Now he’s talking about early childhood education. We believe the lack of early childhood education places a higher burden on the K-12 system and misses an opportunity to help Kansas children succeed. But we want to see real progress on this issue rather than posturing. “Shannon Cotsoradis, president and chief executive officer of Kansas Action for Children in Topeka, wasn’t invited to join Brownback’s working group… “Cotsoradis said Kansas could have greater resources for...
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Framing education as business is inappropriate
We have been concerned with the increasing use of business terms when talking about schools. Schools are very different from most businesses, and we find those hostile to public education use the “business speak” the most. “The marketplace excels in many ways—it keeps capital circulating, it spurs innovation, finds efficiencies, and all the rest. But business is also prone to overhyping its capabilities to believing its own press, to adopt reductive thinking too readily in the interests of simplicity. The ‘ROI’ in the classroom takes a thousand forms, and in many cases bears no fruit for years after...
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Leave a Comment Hard-to-fill positions extend to elementary level
“After surveying school districts across the state, the Kansas Department of Education reported that secondary English language arts and literature, secondary science, secondary math, elementary classroom teachers and fine arts are the hardest positions to fill this year.” Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article38961978.html...
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Leave a Comment Attacks on judicial branch related to school funding cases
“Gov. Sam Brownback and fellow ultraconservatives control the executive and legislative branches, yet Brownback wants the judicial branch as well, to eliminate any possible resistance to his far-right ideological agenda. “Brownback’s recent tactics included threatening to defund the state judiciary in the event of a court ruling against a law the governor favored — one that removed Kansas Supreme Court authority to set district court budgets and appoint local chief judges. “Other ideas from the ultraconservative camp involve scrapping the state’s current merit-based system of selecting justices, lowering retirement ages for judges, and partisan elections for judges. “Frustrated...
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