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-- to respond "onassignment"

 It's precisely class size and the time in seats that I'm concerned about with my son. He's in honor courses, and his teacher told me his humanities class with 28 other kids is the smallest in the school.

The school day and the year are too short. There's simply no substitute for time-on-task, and student contact hours.  I do not think that the school system is the only answer to the mediocrity I see in our students (going to my son's friends' homes and seeing no books, no musical instruments, but plenty of Wii scares me too), but it's the most important part a state can control.

--Leroi   Military spending is rather large in the US. On the one hand, all my grad degrees were funded at least in part by DoD, and you have to admit we "won" the cold war by spending more than USSR could. I have to say, tho, I don't know how much OR spends on its Guard, and of that money spent, how much stays local.

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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Texts in my son's district aren't new, show signs of use.  Books _are_ expensive, but for K-12 it doesn't seem to be the cash-cow that college texts tend to be.

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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I think that with respect to where to cut money, we have to face the issue that in education we're already way behind, from decades of inadequate resources.

I graduated from one of the top 5 mathematics programs in the US. In my courses there, frequently there were 10-15% of the students from the US. Numerically, I was well-prepared (perfect GRE scores, graduated from UO Math), but was just barely able to keep up with the foreign students.

In the US students I teach, I consistently see symptoms of inadequate preparation. Our good students aren't as good as other countries' and our average students are not capable of learning state-of-the-art math and science.

Oregon schools are particularly horrible. Cutting school days, discouraging quality teachers, cutting training, etc., whereas it may be an easy budget solution is something we can not afford if we hope to compete as a state, as a country, in a modern technological world.

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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