State of Education: Key education issues at the start of a new school year
We recently kicked off another school year. And with bigger classes, fewer teachers, and thinning budgets, there's been some concern in the classroom. For a little insight, we started at the Alliance for Quality Education. Vince Gallagher reports.
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According to some reports, many New York schools could be heading towards "educational insolvency."
"That means that they're not able to provide the basics, the basic requirements for graduation and entering college," said Marina Marcou-O'Malley, Alliance for Quality Education.
Speaking of college, the Commissioner of Education also spoke of this, specifically college- and career-ready standards adopted by the Board of Regents. This is the first year where the focus will be in grades K-8. This will require teachers to make shifts in their instruction.
"To spend more time on non-fiction text than maybe they have in the past, to focus on application of math skills, so not just thinking about math as a set of rules that a student might memorize, but rather as a set of tools that students might apply to solve problems," said John King, NYS Commissioner of Education.
Some say the curriculum shouldn't be just high school classes, but college prep courses.
"We are competing in a global economy, we want to prepare our students to be ready for that,” said Marcou-O'Malley.
But that brings up another issue, budget cuts and a key word this time around is ‘equity.’
"And whether or not we ought to be doing more as a state to make sure that resources get to those districts that need them the most," said King.
One of the proposals is designed to help regional high schools
"Allowing districts to collaborate on the high school programs so they can have a breadth of offerings for students and lose those opportunities and advanced learning,” said King.
And it looks like there's more to come. The commissioner is expected to further address these issues into the school year and the Alliance for Quality Education is planning on releasing reports based on these current state policies.