When will educating all our children be a priority?
At the beginning of my teaching career in the early seventies… schools were finally integrated and and the funding of federal programs such as Head Start…were in place to provide the necessary resources to help with educating all children that were in need ….
I was so inspired and hopeful to be a part of this moment…We were giving our children opportunities they never had before….
However, progress slowed down in the nineties due to the enactment of “No Child Left Behind”… by then Florida Governor Jeb Bush…
This policy would continue through the millennium and into the present….
Even with the Obama administration, who too, was a proponent of privatization and the charter school movement…Monies that had once been allocated to our public schools were now being funneled back into private schools with our tax dollars;
Affecting many of the necessary resources and programs that had been in place, providing our children… a chance for that strong, public education….We in turn began utilizing into the curriculum, thanks to Bill Gates and his Foundation… Core Curriculum, a developmentally inappropriate curriculum; which included the use of a sophisticated battery of standard testing…
Trying to bridge this learning gap associated to those children who struggle …
Now resulting in an inappropriate program with more objectives and standards for children to master…With fewer resources to meet those standards!
Then, just before President Obama left office, finally realizing our children in public schools deserved more opportunities to achieve success, he signed:
The Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015 that governs the United States K–12 public education policy. This new law was to replace , the No Child Left Behind Act, …This was to be that wonderful opportunity for all children…
Continue reading “2019…When will our Children be that Priority?”
Janis Sexton...Teacher...Advocate 