Last week I had lunch with some colleagues, including a woman who was our parent coordinator a couple of years ago. She now works full time in our district's Title 1 office. We've been waiting with bated breath for our Title 1 budget in order to plan staffing for next year. We have several people whose salaries are paid through Title 1 in order to have more Reading Recovery support.
This woman mentioned that she was concerned that our budgets would be smaller this year. She expected that the district would get the same amount as last year (which already means less in buying power), but more of it would have to got to support outside tutoring programs for schools that did not make AYP last year.
So, rather than have funding for staff, professional development, training, etc. we will be funneling money to for profit business that offer tutoring. These programs are not affiliated with the schools and there is no communication. This means that the work they do with children is completely unrelated to the work that is happening in the classroom.
I find this to be incredibly sad and exceptionally maddening.
3 comments:
Yeah, I teach online for one of those for profit programs that work with the kids. It would work a lot better if there were communication lines with the in the classroom teachers. Then we could engage the kids in what they are learning at school, and the teacher could engage them in what they learned on the computer.
As a parent? I find it doubly so. And yet more resources are funneled to teach to the test.
I thought one of the premises of professional learning communities is we take practices that are working and share those practices with schools/programs that need support. Well, the practices that are working include the classroom teachers and data from those teachers about students. I also think building relationships with our students is an important part of their achievement. How can supplemental programs include that aspect of teaching? That happens over time.
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