I’ve consistently tried to teach my kids to be grateful and not malcontents when it comes to how much they have and don’t have. Now I have a way to demonstrate more empirically how rich they are, The Global Rich List. This site takes your annual income and calculates where you fall on the global […]

Well, I’ve broken all the rules of blogging. Our family has just returned from our annual Holiday week at the lake where there is no internet or TV. That time combined with the Christmas festivities means I haven’t posted for, well, a long time. I didn’t have anything written to automatically post while I was […]

Another State Board work session is scheduled next week to discuss the spending restrictions for statewide correspondence schools (SWC). Again, Alaska Home Educators Alliance (AHEA) is asking their membership to show up and testify during the open session. Let’s look again at the issue of why the SWC’s are subject to spending restrictions.

SWC’s exist […]

Today’s Anchorage Daily News writes about a proposed Alaska State DEED requirement for teachers to take a course in reading as part of initial professional certification or certification renewal. Poor reading skills are a common problem throughout the state. This reg represents a concerted effort by the State Board to ensure every teacher has the […]

I came across this post from the UK, “Should 50% of Students Go To University? ” The UK government has set a new target to have 50% of high school graduates enter university. The writer asks a valid question; is this good practice? There’s a shortage of plumbers and other tradesmen in the UK […]

The state of Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development (DEED) counts enrollment for funding purposes during a week-long count period shortly after school starts. Last year, 2006, the enrollment in statewide correspondence schools (SWC) was 6853 students. That’s 6853 students enrolled outside of their home district who have no political representation in the district […]

I’ve been playing around a little bit more with Eddy Jeans’ table that details the revenues and expenditures for Statewide Correspondence Schools (SWC). (I’ve also shown the table below.) Mr. Jeans is the Director of Finance for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED)and he presented this data at last month’s work session […]

I’ve collected all my recent posts on the issues concerning statewide correspondence schools in a single page, Alaska Issues. There is plenty more to write about this issue so stay tuned.

Here’s a super resource kids can use as their schoolwork gets a little harder and mom or dad cannot quite remember the difference between compound and complex sentences. Or how about trigonometric identities? Or what is pH? The Alaska State Library offers live online tutoring for Alaska residents. This service is provided by tutor.com.
My friend’s […]

Continuing the conversation on local control and statewide correspondence schools (SWC) here is a hypothetical example comparing a SWC in Galena, namely IDEA, with an in-district charter school, namely Frontier which is part of the Anchorage School District (ASD).