Two Million Minutes, a documentary due out this fall, follows two students each in the USA, China, and India and compares their secondary educations. Are American students being appropriately challenged and prepared to compete in a global marketplace? Looks like it will be an interesting project. Sadly, it may be along the lines of Stupid […]

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 […]

Blog Action Day is yet another environmental activist project. This one aims to get all bloggers to post gaia-type articles on the same day which is today, October 15. OK, I admit it. I almost blew it off until I found this rational thought over at Are We Lumberjacks?.
So consider this a science enrichment exercise […]

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.

What’s school without hugs? Our school day requires lots of hugs.

A Chicago-area school has banned hugging. Typical over-reaching by educrats.
HT: Voice of the Times

Linda Perlstein’s Tested is a chronicle of a year in the life of a Title I elementary school in Annapolis, Maryland. I’ve heard a lot of grumbling about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) from teacher friends. I admit it. I expected this book to be about grumpy teachers. But it isn’t. I came to […]

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).

Those such as the Alaska Home Educators Alliance (AHEA) who advocate for less regulation of statewide correspondence schools (SWC) are adamant that they do have local control. That is, the parent in the home is the local control; the parent’s accountability to the district is all that is necessary. Let’s take a closer look at […]

Just back from the public comment and work session. Initial impressions are there is not as much controversy as anticipated judging by the public participation. Public comment did go overtime but not in overwhelming numbers. Comments were typically from parents who wanted more freedom to spend their allotments on Fine Arts and PE and to […]