vision2020
RE: DISCUSSION:Teacher shortage
After working seven years with the MSD to bring a
Professional-Technical Pathway into being, I found that resistance to change and internal bickering over all but the students outcomes to be most unfortunate (except for the elementaries). Maybe this can be changed with a focused district sponsored charter.
Marilyn Howard's office sent me Northwest Regional Lab.'s evaluation report of the Meridian Charter. The school accepts 50 students a year for a total of 200. It was sponsored by the district and the district supplied the new building. There are strong waiting lists for admission and the charter uses a lottery for admission. The building is 16,000 Square feet and new in 2000. The Charter's ethnicity favors multiracial by 5% over the rest of the district and is 77% male. The charter is adding two new permanent classrooms.
The Charter graduated its first class with zero dropouts and the highest composite test scores in the district and looks like the state (to be verified by Marilyn's experts). Student/FTE Teacher Ratio:1/28. Departing staff= zero except for one year and that involved having a baby. The school reports no dropouts during each year.
100% of their students took college entrance exams. The school heavily dual enrolls with BSU, for example 78% of their juniors are enrolled in college courses. Students may elect to take any class as an honor's class and can work at their own speed. There are 43 Business Partnerships: Seniors serve 280 hours of internships throughout the area and juniors have at least two hours of job shadowing. Business satisfaction surveys are given to each employee and internship grades are based on their level of satisfaction. They have foreign language at all grades, freshman and sophomore classes have integrated block classes such as history and science. Classes are concept based and concepts change each nine weeks. Parents serve on many committees such as the PTO, School Improvement Committee, Oversite Committee and chaperone all events. Cost per student $8009/student for 2000/01 and $8137-01/02.
In summary, Students choose to be here with built in flexibility. Characteristics include: block scheduling, character instruction, foreign language at all grades, hands-on, individual education plans, technology as major focus, thematic/interdisciplinary, project based and concept based. Counseling, Special Ed, and many of the after School programs are on site. After School Programs also occur through the distrtict.
My observations. 1) Boards are very focused and aligned, 2) Charters have small and focused administration, 3) their teachers are very focused. 4) they extensively and use outside resources such as Businesses and post secondary institutions and 4) have significant and meaningful parent involvement.
During the Moscow Charter's new building grand opening, I observed: 1) a focused and proud staff, 2) small administration,3) excited and devoted parents,4) loads of community volunteers, and 5) an aligned Board. Both charters in Moscow are operating at capacity and the Moscow Charter started with a waiting list. Both charters had to provide their own facilities and therefore operate at much lower funding levels than the MSD.
Sorry for the Length... Jerry
At 03:47 PM 10/07/2002 +0000, thansen@moscow.com wrote:
Greetings Visionaires -
Dale Courtney stated:
> In the USA we have one public school -- all VoTech.
Where are all these public/government vocational technical schools, Mr.
Courtney?
Just another product of public schooling,
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
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