Stooopid State of Pennsylvania

[ellyssian]

In an effort to comply with federal mandates and ensure Every Child Is Dumb As A Post, the state of Pennsylvania has threatened to revoke the charter/licensing/whateverthehellitisthatallowsthemtonotteach for Justin's school if they continue the CHAMPS (college ed concurrent with high school ed) program.

Wouldn't want to educate our kids, now would we?

Justin will be able to continue out this semester because it's paid for, but that's it for further education.

Maybe if we weren't paying so much for the education he's not getting, we could afford to send him there on our own, but the annual school taxes are already more than a month's salary.

I don't think I'd mind the high price if there was actually an education attached to it.

Comments

[blood-of-winter.livejournal.com]

uhhh...what exactly is their problem with the program??? thats the most ridiculous thing ever.

[pecosdave.livejournal.com]

So, if I read that right it comes down to something like this:

Other schools don't have this program so your's shouldn't either.

instead of

That program needs to go because it's hold him back.

Please, write in David Monroe for president next November.

[cornetdude.livejournal.com]

The mind boggles...yet...I guess I'm not completely surprised

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

Who can you contact to start a "support of..." group going with petitions, publicity, etc? I doubt the program is only for Justin therefore other students/families are involved. This is the sort of petty bureaucracy that wastes our tax money. Cannot all the parents of the school(s)/children involved write to the state dept in charge of this, along with letters to editors, governor, mayors, Federal Dept of Education, the President and Oprah? Start petitions? What about getting news-investigator teams interested to show how the D. of Ed. is misreading and misusing the no-child left behind act? Surely Philadelphia has local TV shows and newspapers interested in this sort of stupidity by government departments?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

D. of Ed. is misreading and misusing the no-child left behind act

Sadly, the person in a certain ovalish office created aforementioned act, and it is damaging without needing to be misread. It's bringing the public education system to its knees and it will be a miracle if anyone is actually educated while it exists.

Why do you think we pulled Justin out of public school so many years ago? The school district changed to teach-the-test and sent home a pamphlet that, more or less, stated the parents should be doing the same amount of work to teach their kids as they would have to do if they home schooled.

The only reason Rachel went to public school was she wanted to check it out for herself, now she wants out because she's bored to death and there's nothing they can do to her except apologize - well, they had to the other day, anyway. Usually, they don't.

[silme.livejournal.com]

Weird. I hope that's not happening in Colorado. Back in the late '80s, Colorado introduced a bill that permitted high-school students to take university classes in anything not offered at their high school -- at the school's cost. (It later was modified that they had to pass in order to reimbursed. Schools were spending a lot of money on kids who signed up for classes, then promptly failed them.) The small rural school where I first taught had a lot of kids taking community college courses because we couldn't offer a lot of different topics due to our size. Boulder High offered a lot more, but kids still went up to the University of Colorado for more advanced classes (like for the genius kids who took AP Calculus in ninth grade :) and courses in languages, such as Italian, that weren't available at BHS. I think one reason why BHS introduced Chinese was because they were spending money sending kids to CU to take it. :)

I can't see the state reversing that decision, but who knows? Anything is possible under Shrub. :(

What on earth does Shrub think of AP? *sigh*

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure he remembers A&P's being around, but what does a supermarket have to do with education? =)

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

The CHAMPS program violates the every child left behind act because it lets Justin get ahead, which means everyone else is bahind?

Seriously, how does it violate the rules? I wouldn't mind a good excuse to write letters the people elected to supposedly serve me.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I don't actually know for sure why they're being made to get rid of it - that's just a guess from a decade of working with K12 districts and DOEs across the country - but the school says they are being forced by the state to get rid of it.

Everyone knows politics are more important than anything else!