You Can't Turn a Wrong Into a Right

I just got an electronic newsletter from Congresswoman Barbara Lee and two headlines caught my attention: "Congresswoman Lee and Colleagues Introduce Iraq Withdrawal Plan" and "House Votes to Stop Oil Company Subsidies and Make College More Accessible". As a high school senior I have narrowed my college picks to NYU and Howard. NYU is almost $50,000 a year and Howard is about half, but $25,000 is still out of reach for me. I hope they use the oil subsidies to help subsidize education. As a co-founder of Georgia Kids Against Pollution I work on global warming and air pollution issues. Burning fossil fuel contributes to global warming so there is no way that we should subsidize oil companies that already make huge profits and pollute the air for free. On the withdrawal plan, it sounds like we could find a way to leave Iraq and just admit that it was a mistake. In a way that would be a victory because we would have to be big enough and honest enough to admit we were wrong. It would not mean that the sacrifice was wrong. Here in Georgia there are people who still celebrate the Confederate soldiers even though they fought on the loosing side and the wrong side. That is war. We have to learn that killing people is just not the best way to get our way. If we must use violence we should just create virtual war games. Right now we need to get over the war thing and move on. When you make a mistake the only thing to do is to acknowledge it so that you can move on. My grandmother told me that you can't turn a wrong into a right no matter what you do. Wrong is wrong and right is right.

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A teacher once told me that every president has focused on one side of the presidency, either domestic or international. Clinton was hailed as "great" for the U.S. because of his domestic policies, but it is clear that he sucked at international politics. Bush (who I can't with any type of conscience say is good or even decent at international policy) has a strong focus on international policy, but he clearly sucks at when it comes to domestic policies. Take his "Every child left where no one can find, help, or teach them, but not behind policy" for example. The idea is that schools will have certain standards to live up to and if these standards aren't met then any child at the school will have the opportunity to transfer to a school that has met the standards. I think it is great that we are now deciding to hold schools accountable for the student's education, but this is a poor approach to creating school choice. Funding for public schools is attached to the number of students in the school and more recently to how well the school scores on tests and whether or not they meet standards. In theory the transfer option is supposed to provide access to a better education and improve the student's performance. The truth is that this rarely ever happens. All it does is take a little funding away from the failing school that the student left thereby adding more pressure for the school to conform and "do better" with even less resources.

And what happens at the new school? I currently go to a school that, in my sophomore year, met the standards when many other schools in our county didn't. Last year after all of the kids who under the NCLB act transferred to my school we did not meet the standards. Coincidence? I think not. Now our school, that was fine before a flood of new students searching for a better education arrived, is failing. One problem with NCLB is that rather than fixing what is broken it burdens the few schools that are performing. Students take tests all of the time but the quality of a school depends on the teachers. I think that it is time to test the teachers and put the teachers with the highest scores in the failing schools. We don't have enough teachers so we can't get rid of teachers that get low scores, and there will be a lot of them, but failing teachers together with failing students is a formula for failure. Strong students can make it through with weaker teachers because we sort of know how to learn and we help each other. The best teachers are needed for students that perform poorly or learn differently, but you cannot have unqualified teachers teaching advanced placement courses or gifted students. Many AP teachers don't have a clue about the subjects that they are teaching so if they are not qualified they should be considered monitors and more materials need to be available so that students can learn more independently. Technology can be used and we can plug into lectures from more competent teachers. The monitors can help keep students focused and make sure things are set up. These are all temporary solutions but it would improve education while somebody figures out how to update the whole system.