Schools

Having spent over 1,000 work days in 15 different high school, listening to teachers in the lunch room, I have some ideas about education today. The two main problems are the gap in test scores and disruptive students. Unfortunately both of these center around Black students. I now set aside two hours to hear all the reasons why this is so and concur with most of them. The next step is what to do about it. The government is acutely aware of these problems and have tried gallantly to do something but they have failed. Things like common core math, No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act have not brought the desired results. So what next. In St Paul there are many parents who understand the need for education but they are locked into schools where discipline is lacking and they would like their children to go to schools in the suburbs but transportation is not available. Special buses could be made available and a lottery system could be used to offer these student a way to change schools. Serious students would at least have a chance to learn in a safe environment. This type of experimenting will lead to other approaches and perhaps some solutions. It would not be expensive as experiments go.