A Radical Proposal |
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By Richard Emmel
Arkansas schools have too many administrators. We need special schools
or classes for students who do not fit in regular classrooms. We make test results too important. We do not do a good job of supporting public education. We do not prepare students to enter the workforce when they graduate.
Many of our schools are run down and offer no protection from the high winds so common in Arkansas. There is not a lot of talk between teachers at different grade levels.
For the most part only secondary schools have science, language and math labs.
The following vision improves public schools and keeps a small town atmosphere even in the big city.
Do not keep the hundreds of chief school officers and their staffs to run the schools. Place one person in charge of districts with at least 30,000 students. If each chief school officer worked with at least 30,000 students we would need only 15 of them for the entire state. That would save the state millions and give us better management.
The President of the U. of A. runs a system with 35,000 students and several campuses from his office in Little Rock. Is there any reason to doubt that public school administrators could not do the same thing?
The answer is they could do as well because you can run a school system from an office anywhere. These men and women would get good salaries and be worth every penny.
A campus causes people to work together and that leads to success. The pride resulting from that success would be felt from pre-school to the last grade, which could be junior college in some instances.
A campus meets the needs of its students with the help of all of its members. The campus would be as diverse as its population.
Many small towns build schools in one area rather than spreading them out. The school grounds are like a park. A campus can have up to ten elementary schools, five middle schools, and two high schools.
Some of the benefits of a campus are:
- sharing equipment and facilities,
- keeping brothers, sisters, and friends together for several years,
- multilevel teacher meetings,
- easier upkeep,
- better safety
- and beautiful grounds.
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Safe rooms can be economically added to a campus because they can be shared by many students. A safe room would be multipurpose so students could ride out a tornado in a room full of books, for example. Safe rooms would be too expensive to build for every school but could be built for a campus.
Having several schools on one campus would make electronic connections between schools much easier. If the state had only 15 districts then networking software would be simple. Since many students would be in one area schools could afford to build labs shared by all the students.
Clustering schools on one campus would make hiring professionals such as psychologists, hearing and vision specialists, and speech pathologists feasible, because the number of students would be large enough to support them.
Even such things as yard equipment would cost less for a campus. For example, one tractor could take care of the grounds. Separate schools need their own tractors and the operators or a mowing crew must travel from building to building.
Special classes for troubled students would be at the same place so they would not be apart from their friends.
Being on the same campus makes it easy to take part in optional activities. For example, students in special classes could still be in the band, on sports teams, or in clubs because all of those activities take place on the same campus.
Finally class time should not be used to study for standardized tests. Students study for tests in subjects because they are learning concepts. A standardized test finds out if you have learned those concepts.
Textbooks and programs help teach concepts, not standardized tests. If you have worked hard on your course work, you should score well on a general test.
Studying for a test using material similar to the test is so boring that students put forth minimum effort and make minimum scores. Good education and hard work gets good test results.
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