2. The fact that inevitably this school will be compared to public schools. This is SO ANNOYING given the nature of “applying” to be a student in the school. At my school the way you apply is you live in a certain neighborhood. In this school there is a very different process. A committed, interested parent finds out about the program, fills out the paperwork, submits it and hopes that their child is chosen in a lottery system. I’m fairly sure that the parents who go through this process are not drug addicts (unlike the parents of some of my least successful students). If a child is one of the lucky few chosen to attend, I’m sure this fact is mentioned repeatedly throughout the year and inevitably is part of a decision as to whether or not a child may remain in the school. As in, “Your child has not turned in any homework for 3 weeks. You need to work with us. If you and your child are not willing to be part of the team, we think another program would be a better fit for you (read the local public school that has to take anyone who comes and can’t reject a child because he or she does no work).”

I am completely willing to look at the success or failure of this school if they have to follow the same guidelines of public schools. No applying to be part of the lottery – instead just take a bunch of names, throw them in the hat, pull out some and send them a letter saying, “Your school next year is… If you don’t want to attend you will need to fill out this and this form by this and this date.” In this way you will have a much more representative population of children with uncommitted or very busy parents (similar to some of the parents in public school). Then, once a child is in the school they are not transferred out. Public schools don’t have the choice to ask students to leave because of poor performance or lack of commitment. Charter schools should not have that choice either (if they want to be compared to public schools).

3. Think about this program on a nationwide scale. $125,000 is almost 4 times as much as most public school teachers make. Our nation is in an economic depression. Education money is being cut in every state in this country. This type of pay program is simply not realistic. In a company that makes a profit, merit pay makes sense. If an employee is doing an amazing job then he or she is making money for the company – it makes sense to pay that employee more because that extra pay will hopefully pay for itself and more by creating more profit for the company. Public schools have a captive audience. An amazing teacher does not bring more dollars into the system. So quality teachers do not pay for themselves in the same way that a quality employee of a corporation may pay for him or herself.

I’m starting my own educational blog.

Two reasons.

1. I’m starting a website to sell some materials that I’ve written over the years to use in my classroom and apparently if you start an e-commerce website you have to blog so you can occasionally insert a link to your site and up its position on Google. Embarrassing but true. On the embarrassing topic, does this have spell check or do I need to write everything in Word and then copy and paste. (Note, does have spell check and monologue is now spelled correctly, see above.)
So back to the topic: I like my worksheets, I use them, but they are not the only reason I’m blogging.

2. I like to obsess and talk about educational issues and it is driving others in my private life crazy and boring the hell out of them. So this seems a better way to let off steam. So even if no one reads this, at least I get it out – even my dogs are tired of my mumblings on our daily walks. And I never get to finish my thoughts because we hit J.’s house after 15 minutes and I know she needs a break once in a while from my discourse.