Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Thursday, February 2, 2006
Oprah bans homeschoolers
I stumbled across this weird story that accuses Oprah Winfrey of discriminating against homeschoolers.
It seems Oprah is sponsoring an essay contest for high schoolers from “across the nation” but the rules limit entry to only those who are “enrolled full-time (and in good standing) in a public or state-accredited private or parochial school, grades 9-12,”
Homeschool groups are angry and asking if this rule was specifically designed to block their entry.
I just find the rule to be awfully strange. Why limit it in this way? Why not make the contest open to all kids by age instead of grade, so maybe for ages 14 to 18 or so? Essay writing talent could be found anywhere — in an accredited school, an unaccredited school, a home school or even within a kid who is not “in good standing.” (Suspended or expelled, I suppose this means. But couldn’t that be an even better winner’s story?)
So I don’t follow the logic. What do you think of Oprah’s rules?
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
The reform of the moment
So President Bush proposed more math and science instruction in public schools during his state of the state address this week.
So here’s my question — whatever happened to reading?
Remember when Bush came into office and all the education talk was about reading and how important it was, so important that he wanted to convert Head Start into a reading program?
Well, that was yesterday. And in politics, you can’t let your education reforms go stale. There’s always something better you can propose.
This happens everywhere. Consider Ohio’s testing program. Originally, the state tested kids in multiple grades in reading, writing, math, science and citizenship. But then, Gov. Bob Taft’s commission on student success proposed shifting to “end-of-course’ exams — a menu of tests high school students could take when the completed required courses until they passed a certain number that was required.
But then came No Child Left Behind, which cared mostly about reading and math, and the feds weren’t really into end-of-course exams. So Ohio junked the whole idea and built an NCLB-friendly testing system based mostly on reading and math.
About a year ago, the administration was all about high school reform. Now it’s math and science.
What will it be tomorrow?
