Giving students the right and the resources to find the school situation that is right for them will benefit all concerned. The student will be in a better, healthier position to learn if he or she feels happy and safe in the classroom.
Young adults need a well thought-out financial literacy program. But are schools the right place for it?
In this episode of Vote for Vermont, co-hosts Pat McDonald and Ben Kinsley interview Sharon Academy Head of School Michael Livingston to discuss some of the challenges facing Vermont’s independent schools.
On Friday, Keith Lyman, principal at Brattleboro Area Middle School, lowered the American Flag so Mikaela Simms, the diversity coordinator for the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, and Diamond Bedward, Kia Adams, and Mya Satchell, eighth-grade students at Brattleboro Area Middle School, could raise the Black Lives Matter flag beneath it.
“Very few employers want to hire liberal arts majors,” the research director said, referencing a two percent estimate from another survey. He also mentioned that “no one cares about GPA anymore,” suggesting only around one percent of employers indicated that they valued the metric.
Gov. Phil Scott has unveiled a five-year plan to fill the state’s $58 million education fund deficit and revitalize the state’s education system by generating approximately $300 million in savings over the next five years.
Though it may be unfair to brand proficiency-based learning as a failed concept that should be entirely scrapped, we have to ask why are we making our kids guinea pigs in a costly, radical experiment.
In what looks to be a repeat of last year’s budget showdown between the Vermont NEA and Gov. Phil Scott’s administration, a statement released Friday by the governor’s office reiterated that a statewide teachers health care contract is necessary to alleviate the education fund’s $58 million deficit.
An amended bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee this past week could pressure public and independent schools to decrease detentions, expulsions and disproportionate discipline of minorities in favor of community- and student-led remediation.
Unless the legislators can find $40 million in one-time funding to avoid a veto and kick the can down the road for yet another year, school residential property tax rates will increase to cover a $40 million shortfall in the education fund.
Perhaps one of the most pivotal moments came when DeVos suggested that the United States’ heavy federal investment in education has not yielded any results. Stahl hit back, asserting that school performance has been on the rise. But the latest government data show otherwise.
Last week the House Education Committee heard its share of concerns about the logistical and economic challenges of reworking funding formulas for special education, and this week the Senate Education Committee got its own testimony of similar flavor.