Recent measures that come to mind:
this cutting back on truancy service (making it even more of a challenge to keep that long tail of underachievers in class);
Education Act amendment forbidding schools to require drug testing of suspect students (more-or-less standard procedure before a Board allows reinstatement after a drug-related stand down, and how are we going to get the evidence to support our case when a student is snapped using or under the influence on site?);
proposed requirement that students of beneficiary families HAVE to be kept in school to achieve Level 2 (thus increasing the number of reluctants stuffing up our classes.) Don't think PPTA are aware of that one yet!
Outcomes of the above will doubtless combine to REDUCE the effectiveness (hence 'performance' of the classroom teachers trying to manage positive learning environments for the majority of their students ... thus making the option of 'charter schools' seem even more desirable ...
The only conspiracy theory I've ever subscribed to was the web of intrigue blown open by the Watergate affair ... but I'm beginning to wonder!
Incidentally ~ our own Truancy Officer is an ex-student and former police officer who's lived in the community for years (and whose mother was one of our staff.) She KNOWS the families, whose places various recalcitrants hang out at, etc ... and even has some kids ASKING HER to collect them to make sure they get to school. No way could some outsider be expected to just step into her shoes!
Cheers ~ Helen.
COMMENT
Thanks for that Helen. The end of an era (21st end of Mayan Calendar) the beginning of another.
If only the younger citizens of this country understood 'Gradualism'
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC