Friday, May 15, 2009

Baltimore County Public Schools Tumbling into Educational Malpractrice: An Inside View from a County Student



Crime scene: AP students robbed of excellent teacher!!!
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There is no issue Right Minded Fellow takes more seriously than the dreadful decline of public education in the United States and how politicians and the teachers' unions are making school reform impossible.

Here's a very insightful article written by a junior at Pikesville High School in Baltimore County. For our readers not familiar with Baltimore County, Pikesville is one of the most academically oriented communities in the entire county comprised of students from a tight-knit Jewish community and rather upscale more diverse neighborhoods. Parents have high expectations of their children, and the students are well-motivated many destined to the top colleges and universities around the country upon graduation.

In what is an all too familiar scenario, Pikesville High School had something that was working very well, an advanced placement teacher who labored to challenge his students to achieve at their highest level possible. This teacher was reassigned to teach less significant classes while a teacher who has the reputation of being unmotivated and lacking interest in his subject matter was moved in to teach the course. Such teachers are seen as a threat rather than an asset in the large bureaucratic, highly politicized climate that governs Baltimore County, a school system whose Board of Education is appointed by the Governor of Maryland. These appointments generally are ones of political reward for those having favored status with the Governor with no regard to how much they truly represent the communities they are supposed to serve. In that context, those things that matter to students and parents are secondary to the whims and political sewage emanating from Annapolis.

Read this story as one sad reflection of how their is no room for true excellence in a school system held hostage by a Governor who appointed the President of the state's largest teacher's union as one of his top education advisers. If this story doesn't make the reader angry, something's wrong.
http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/news/jt/local_news/death_of_literature_at_pikesville_high/12420/
Read it and weep, then do something about it!!!

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