Upper St. Clair parents are not about to let the conservative attack on their children’s education go softly into the night.
Some are looking into a recall of the majority, and an ad hoc committee is raising money for possible litigation. Some parents have even talked about starting an IB charter school. And students are pondering how to replace a program they think has no equal in the district.
“If there is one thing on which all agree,” said Linda T. Ambroso, spokesperson for the committee, “it’s to not let the matter rest.
“There are all kinds of ideas bubbling around,” she said. “Our next stop is to organize these ideas into effective action.”
That action starts at tonight’s 7 p.m. planning meeting in the high school cafeteria.
They’ve started a website at KeepIB.org
This is the solution. If you want a curriculum that isn’t supported by the school district, then design your own school.
Yes, JWG, spoken like a true anti-intellectual con.
Unfortunately, they won’t be able to get a voucher to go there. Democrats endorse “Make Kids Dumber.”
Frank, that’s kind of inflammatory coming from an intellectually lazy self-loathing crypto-hippie, isn’t it? Are we getting cranky? Time for our nap? I know, being inflammatory is what you do. So let’s see here–assuming that I take your statement at face value… Nah, screw it. Why do you hate America so?
Interesting. I haven’t disparaged the program. I merely agreed with the parents who support the program and consider setting up a charter school to handle the curriculum. (The comment is especially funny considering I’ve mentioned numerous times that I am a public school teacher.)
According to OW: Charter schools = anti-intellectual
I know Upper St. Clair well. Nice, rolling hills, etc. Well-rated schools. Classic upper-middle class “white bread”, if you’ll pardon the expression. An adjacent, similar nieghborhood concocted a legal “technicality” to deny the sale of a luxurious home to an athlete, years and years ago. I remember it.
The athlete was Muhammad Ali. The Greatest, without a doubt.
But, in fact, Mr. Ali is a negro.
And that just won’t do, now will it?
So yeah, there’s a few frightened assholes in USC, who want to preserve the shelter. And there’s some real scary freaks too, who in fact present themselves as quite normal, and more than acceptable in company. But they’re Not all bad.
I’m not from there, but you can take my word for it anyway.
D.
It would be nice if Frank and JWG realized that when people railroad your education because of intellectual dishonesty, you don’t just throw up your hands and say “ah shucks, well I accept being cheated and move on”. I would add that JWG is not wrong in asserting that OW made a fairly blanket statement. Charter schools are not the problem, thought I would argue with Frank about Vouchers. Frank needs to provide some research on Vouchers because the public is not buying into Bush’s rationale. As someone also in academia, I mearly disagree with ludicrous and unfounded assertions of IB critics. They need to go grind thier political axe elsewhere and away from children succeeding in learning.
JWG: They shouldnt have to set up a whole new school when it was working perfectly fine as part of the public school, preparing students in a way that will benefit us all in the long run.
bfb: “intellectually lazy self-loathing crypto-hippie”? I didn’t know you knew so many multi - syllabled words.
You sure don’t know what you’re talking about. And what the heck does what I said have to with hating America?
Have you been smoking the New York Times again?
BTW, I never heard of the IBO until the other day. Which doesn’t make ‘em bad, but they sure don’t loom too large on the educational landscape, considering I minored in Education 10 years ago, and never heard of them.
Yeah, democracy sucks.
Look, charter school laws were designed to provide students with innovative curricula that could compete with the standard school system. This is a great example.
Moby Dick: “Frank needs to provide some research on Vouchers because the public is not buying into Bush s rationale” WTF? I already know why there should be vouchers… If you don’t like them, you go do some research and back it up.
It is true, whether you like it or not, that most Democrats oppose school vouchers, because they’re in bed with the Teachers’ Union. Vouchers would be the perfect remedy for this situation.
Frank,
Provide research. Look if you believe in vouchers, fine. I think they suck and have researched, but since you don’t want to expound upon the voucher issue, thats cool. I doubt I can change your opinion based on research because you SEEM to be too bent up in your hate of things like public education and a broad scope of learning tools for children. I believe it would benefit you to actually look into this and not just immediately defend a group that can’t stand a succesfull education program that isn’t religious cult training .
Then why did you did you delete the comment?
There was a whole lot of other material on that website (that you didn’t link to, as if I couldn’t find it), and I read some of it before I mad my (now deleted) comment.
The curriculum and pedagogy of IB programmes focus on international perspectives of learning and teaching, while insisting that students fully explore their home culture and language.
The International Baccalaureate Organization chooses to define “international education” according to the following criteria.
* Developing citizens of the world in relation to culture, language and learning to live together
* Fostering students recognition and development of universal human values
* Equipping students with the skills to learn and acquire knowledge, individually or collaboratively
* Providing international content…
* Encouraging diversity and flexibility in teaching methods
* Providing appropriate forms of assessment and international benchmarking.
“International” pops up all over the place — that isn’t “globalism”?
And, of course, the other buzzwords for “elite”:
learn and acquire knowledge, individually or collaboratively
Encouraging diversity and flexibility in teaching methods
Everything about their web site says “We’re special!”
Actually, unfortunately for you, the schools are being laughed out of the school because they are, at the very least, perceived as elitist.
Frank: You should research before you shoot off at the mouth, you’re starting to sound like Ian Schwartz, and usually though wrong-headed you can generally argue better than that.
As I mentioned, I was personally an IB student in Ft. Lauderdale FL at a school were you’d be laughed out of the county if you declared that it was a place for elitist liberalism.
Frank_D, take a look at this - http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP102.pdf
Here’s the money quote:
“At this time when market-style reforms are changing the public school landscape, prompting many to call for various forms of privatization of schooling options, this study takes a fresh look at the common assumption that private schools are more effective than public schools. The results of this comprehensive, large-scale study indicate that once we account for the fact that private schools draw a more selective student intake with background attributes associated with success, public school students significantly outperform both Catholic and other private school students.”
White Whale: why don’t you ask me what I think, instead of giving me orders, and telling me what I think.
The only reason you could have for thinking that vouchers mean the end of public education is because parents would pull their kids out of public schools so fast, the suction would pull the doors off.
But, why would you think that? I went to public school for four years (1950 - 1954). Even then Catholic school was better, and my parents pulled me out.
However, there is always the possibility that vouchers might produce a positive kind of competition, with public schools improving to garner more vouchers. That’s win - win, isn’t it?
http://tinyurl.com/f4535
Well, then, beerwulf, assuming that that information is correct, what’s the objection to school vouchers?
Frank_D, the whole rationale behind vouchers was that (1) private schools are better at educating students than public schools and (2) if only students can get tax money to go to them, the private sector will have been triumphant once again.
I’m not even philosophically opposed to vouchers, as long as the playing field is completely level. This means (1) every student that gets taxpayer money to go to a school should have to take the same tests as public school students (in Florida it’s the FCAT), (2) the FCAT data for public and private schools would have to be published, (3) private schools would have to take any student that applies the way public schools do.
But as you can read in the linked report, the private schools take advantage of their ability to cherry-pick the students with the best family backgrounds. If they had to deal with the flood of students that public schools work with every day, *plus* having to teach to the FCAT, *plus* having those FCAT scores made public, you’d be amazed how few of them would want anything to do with it.
Frank, you minored in education but you sure don’t know much. IB was designed by a British educator for children of embassy staff so that the kids would be guaranteed a good education no matter where they went and also would have the same curriculum no matter where their parents were stationed.
Its demanding rigor made it hugely popular and embassy families wanted to follow it even when they came home and Americans and Europeans were clamoring for it too. I don’t know where this “Marxist” BS came from, it shows just HOW ignorant the Christian right is in this country anymore. My religious fundamentalist family tried real hard to get my sister and brother in the IB program back in the day — unfortunately I was too old when it started becoming popular. It’s widely regarded worldwide. The “global” emphasis was because it was designed for families serving overseas. Duh.
And it tries to incolcate civic values. Students are required to do volunteer work. Once again, I dropped from the Southern Baptist church years ago, but back when I was a teen attending church, volunteer work was considered a *good* thing. Now I guess volunteering is considered socialism.
Yes, Frank, we shouldn’t be international, we should teach our children to stare at our navels so they can report to their Chinese bosses 20 years from now.