kitchen table math, the sequel: Open for Questions: Education

Monday, December 29, 2008

Open for Questions: Education

Why not vist change.gov and ask the Obama aministration a question or two about education? Actually, you can also ask them about the economy, national security, foreign policy, and just about anything else that's been nagging you.

They've certainly made it easy enough. All you have to do is visit Open for Questions (you do have to register to participate). Others may vote on how important your concerns are and you can vote on theirs too.

The goal is to get a pulse on what people like us want people like them to zero in on by using votes to rank the various issues. When it comes to education, we have a big challenge ahead of us while simultaneously dealing with decreasing resources. Figuring out precisely what Americans want the administration to focus on and where to direct funding and effort may be a very wise first step.

They need to hear from us. KTM contributers and commenters have some very important arguments to add to this education debate. It would be a shame if we let this opportunity to add to the discussion pass us by.

2 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

I'm on my way----

concernedCTparent said...

I'm trying to get the liberal arts, the National Math Advisory Panel, Project Follow Through, Precision Teaching, Direct Instruction, and the teaching of decoding language through phonics (not balanced literacy) into the conversation. There needs to be more talk of charters, vouchers,and homeschooling options too.

Unfortunately, the Open for Question system is not set up well. There are something like 3000+ questions posted (regarding education) and no one is going to scroll through all of them. They really should have some type of system of sorting them into sub-categories so people might zoom in on those subjects that matter to them.

There is certainly a theme to many of the questions:

Mostly
anti-NCLB
student loan issues
cost of college education

Many
gifted education (lack thereof)
math and science education
teacher unions
national standards of education
21st century skills/technology

some
charters/vouchers
homeschooling

not enough
liberal arts
reading instruction
math panel recommendations
schools of education
charters/vouchers
homeschooling

IMHO