““On the one hand, we all support high-performing charters, and we support choice for our families,” Henderson said. “But at the same time, we want [the school system] to be robust and to provide everything under the sun.”

Henderson says that closing some small schools will allow her to redirect resources from administration and maintenance to teaching and learning, creating the kind of academic offerings — such as art and music programs, modern libraries and elementary-school foreign language classes — that will attract families.”

Closing schools won’t do it. How about the novel idea of attacking the root problems, rather than administering to the symptoms.

Not when the public education system based on 19th century pedagogy, revised to look like 21st century theories, where even in the United States, the IDEA laws, a parent still needs to hire the lawyer to fight the school to obtained reading services. No wonder, 40 percent of parens are escaping to Charter schools. At least at the charter schools, the odds are good that the principal and staff are willing to listen to parents’ concerns, and come up with innovative solutions based on 21st century knowledge for the typical learning struggles of the 3 Rs,  without it costing a great deal of money.

Not on the menu. A paper, ” A paper published just this month by John Protzko, Joshua Aronson and Clancy Blair at NYU reviews dozens of studies on a topic likely to be of interest to parents, educators, and policy-makers alike: what, if anything, one can do in the first five years of life to raise a child’s intelligence..”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/19/169801500/music-multivitamins-and-other-modern-education-myths

How about providing at little cost to the parents, the knowledge of scaffold cognitive and linguistic development, with the explanations duly explained, instead of schools asking for the number of books at home, and categorizing the child according to the SES variables. Or to be used later, to blame the parents why their children are struggling in school.

How about the novel idea of purchasing reading programs developed for the dyslexic students in mind,  instead of having parents pay good money to the private tutors and/or sending the dyslexic student down to the bottom of the achievement charts and labeled deficit.
http://www.wtva.com/news/local/story/Program-helping-students-combat-dyslexia/ORkzMF6ZZEy80BCgt1tzfg.cspx

Or following the sage advice of the professionals who work with children with learning problems?
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/alex-dyer/teaching-children-with-dyslexia_b_2477883.html?utm_source=LDOnLine.org&utm_medium=Twitter

Or the advice of a private school educator on the Common Core curriculum. “If we truly want to increase literacy, we need to take more time to train teachers to implement formative and summative assessments using standardized rubrics.  We must also trust teachers to evaluate accurately. Most importantly, our teachers need smaller class sizes that will for allow frequent writing, speaking, and reading assignments.”  And that is if all students start at the same starting line, the former recommendation can proceed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/24/caution-urged-on-common-core-from-a-supporter/?wprss=rss_education

In reality its all about teaching training, and the knowledge base of the educators.  It doesn’t do much good when the educator is insisting its all about income, and has nothing to do with the lower levels of Omega 3 fatty acids and DHA that are hindering cognitive processes and learning.

But in the end, it certainly doesn’t help anyone when teachers’ faculties continued to produce more elementary teachers, flooding the market where school districts can select on a criteria mode of what they believed is needed to solve the other problem of not having enough specialized educators to aid students in their learning. The cycle completes itself, when students are sorted out by the haves and have-nots on the fundamentals, to be administered by a small troop of educators and consultants by high school to managed the students, until they reach the age of 16 to 18. By high school teachers would not be babysitting, if the children had in the beginning got the help they needed in the first place using 21st century knowledge and not the 19th century knowledge of learning.

No wonder charter schools are doing well, but the DC council should be looking at the public education system and its operations. The knowledge and training of teachers, and check their belief systems. On teachers who insist little Suzie in only capable at the very best a 60 average, and that is if she works really hard. Something is very wrong when the school staff are telling parents that one, in the primary grades, and parents find out the real goods later on in grade 4 and up, their children are indeed capable academic students, they just need remediation in the 3 Rs.