Dear Secretary of State Clinton,
I am sure you remember the slogan during your challenger’s campaign, the “fierce urgency of now.” It has been exactly 30 months since the inauguration of President Obama, and we still have a public school system in chaos and shambles. In addition, we have not completed the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and test scores in math and English-Language Arts continue to be the major factor in judging effective schools.
However, I know you believe that public education must be so much more than a two-subject curricular dance. All schools for America’s children must have a balanced curriculum, including history, science, world languages, the visual and performing arts with a talented faculty.
America’s children are...
Education
Hello, I'm a 20 year old college student from Croatia. Im 1.85 tall, fit and (according to most girls at college) hot, and like most people, i have my dreams. But first, some backstory
I went to college because of the pressure of the society and my family.
I have failed 4 out of 8 classes on my first year, and i'm now a year behind the rest of my crew. To be honest, the classes aren't getting any easier.
Yesterday, i decided to drop out of college, since i feel like i'm just wasting my time and my parents money. I got instantly pressured by my parents today about my future. "You won't have an easy life, you won't be able to get a good job,you won't have time for yourself". I understand them. But i'm one of people that really can't study. Too lazy and easily distracted.
Now i've been...
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Dear Peter Devlin,
This open letter is to make you aware of incriminating issues that Hard of Hearing and Deaf students have experienced at Fanshawe College. This letter is compiled by a group of Deaf people consisting of past, present and future students of Fanshawe College. We met in February 2015 to discuss our concerns and decided to not ignore these issues any longer.
Fanshawe College has failed these Deaf students and deprived them of their fundamental human rights to the education that they paid and came for. The majority of the group who met in February experienced similar barriers, prejudices, unprofessional behaviour by staff, discrimination and negligence by Fanshawe College.
The primary purpose of Fanshawe College is to provide an accessible place of learning...
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Dear Mr. Charles Ryan, Director of Arizona Department of Corrections,
As a college student at the University of Arizona, I am very concerned with the educational budget cuts, that since 2008 have been reduced by 21.8%. In Arizona we have currently reached the point where our prison spending has exceeded our educational funding. After doing some research as to why this might be the case, I noticed that within the last 10 years the spending, for Correctional Facilities, has increased by 75%. (Online degrees, 2012)
Although this may be a beneficial factor, because a reason that prison funding has increased, is due to the rise of the intake of prisoners. As a result this means that more criminals are kept off the streets and will lead to lower crime activity. However, I have taken...
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Dear Board Members Garcia, Flores-Aguilar, and Vladovic:
We write to you today to ask for your support. We have counted on it
before and you have been there for us in the past. You have been there to
push for A-G classes, small schools, decentralizing LAUSD, sending QEIA
funds to schools with the greatest need. But now when the need is
greatest, you have chosen not to fight for our children and instead you
have given in to fear and hopelessness.
This budget crisis is enormous, none of us doubt that. It is clearly too
large, in fact, to balance by cutting and cutting. We need to find new
sources of funds and that means fighting against those who would choose
the politically easiest path to balance the budget: taking from the most
vulnerable, our children. But instead of leading...
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Dear Mr. Charles Ryan, Director of Arizona Department of Corrections,
As a college student at the University of Arizona, I am very concerned with the educational budget cuts, which since 2008 have been reduced by 21.8%. In Arizona we have currently reached the point where our prison spending has exceeded our educational funding. After doing some research as to why this might be the case, I noticed that within the last 10 years the spending, for Correctional Facilities, has increased by 75%. (Online degrees, 2012)
Although this may be a beneficial factor, because a reason that prison funding has increased, is due to the rise of the intake of prisoners. As a result this means that more criminals are kept off the streets and will lead to lower crime activity. However, the Arizona...
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Colleagues,
Some members of the department have expressed concern about the unholy mix of TA/instructor wages and graduate funding packages in CUPE’s bargaining with the university administration. Some have suggested that CUPE only represents the graduate students in their capacity as paid TA’s or instructors, not as funded graduate students, and that this makes it difficult for faculty members to support the strike. In some cases, our colleagues are only offering observations about the legal “facts”; in other cases, they are expressing a preference. Others, myself included, want to know what other alternative we have given our graduate students.
The administration vigorously objects to the idea that CUPE can negotiate the terms of the funding package; but they are not doing so...
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Dear Professor Pattison
We write to express our concerns regarding the new ‘opt out’ policy on lecture recording that is being piloted across the University this semester. Our concerns are both pedagogical and ethical. In this letter we present these concerns for the University’s consideration.
The University has identified student retention as a significant problem. There is already significant evidence that lecture recording has a negative impact on student attendance. The pilot ‘opt out’ policy, which seeks to universalise lecture recordings, will only compound this trend. Student attendance at lectures and issues of student retention are related. The University should be developing policies that engage the students more with university life, not providing opportunities for them...
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Greetings and Salutations!
We haven’t met yet, but we will meet soon. I need to apologize in advance because I am going to be one of “those” parents. You know, the ones who are constantly checking in, perhaps over protective to a fault.
In my defense I feel like I know a bit more about this whole school thing than most parents. Having taught kids in the same city where I grew up and now teaching teachers (who, in many ways, are just bigger kids) in a city far away from home, I have learned a good deal about what goes on in classrooms nowadays.
There is also the matter of me teaching university courses that deal with educational policy (yuk!) and educational psychology (wow!). Did you know that most of our current educational policy flies in the face of educational psychology,...
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Dear Broadcasters
However difficult it may have been to organise, the forthcoming Leaders’ Debate presents a welcome opportunity for the voting public to hear how the different political parties would act in government over the next five years, if given the power to do so.
Among the millions of children and young people who are affected by government policies every day, one group in particular rely more directly on government than any other – the 68,000 children in care.* For these children and young people, too-often invisible in political debates and without a vote of their own, the state has a special responsibility.
Anyone seeking government office, not least hoping to be Prime Minister, takes on a ‘corporate’ responsibility for all children in care. We believe it is our duty...
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