A Reno teacher wrote a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun about the budget cuts in Nevada’s education system. She makes valid points which should be in the minds of all Nevadans. Here is what she wrote:

Education in Nevada is a sad state of affairs

Megan Gonzalez, Reno

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 | 2:02 a.m.

As a Nevada teacher, I’m appalled by the recent multimillion-dollar cuts in education. Nevada ranks at the bottom in education funding, and now schools have taken a massive hit to their undersized budgets as the school districts must stretch to accommodate the vast student population.

Additionally, extreme focus on test scores has only intensified. Rather than educate, teachers are commanded by No Child Left Behind to get students to pass a state exam.

As the economy declines, parents lose their jobs, cars and homes, and students are distracted by their lives outside of school. Student achievement in socioeconomically depressed areas is often disproportionate to student achievement in more affluent areas.

Despite those circumstances, teachers are still compelled to move students toward passing a test, a test that is a minuscule, vague snapshot of a student’s capabilities. Teaching to a test leaves little room for creativity, imagination or “real world” application of skills.

The decreased funding directly contradicts the increased demands on Nevada teachers and students. If teachers are truly expected to educate instead of prepare for testing, funding for Nevada’s students must be increased, and demands for hitting an abstract bench mark must be reexamined.

[Source: Las Vegas Sun]

A “new” method of evaluating the effectiveness of school teachers is being explored in Washington, D.C. It is called IMPACT.

From what I read the evaluation process includes observing teachers in the classroom during the school year and evaluating their teaching techniques. Then meeting with the teacher afterward and discussing the evaluations with the teacher, offering suggestions where appropriate.

IMPACT requires each teacher be observed twice a year by an outside evaluator called a “master educator,” and three times by an administrator at the school. The teachers are measured by a point system on various criteria. Followup conferences with the teacher are then held where their performance is discussed and suggestions offered to assist the teachers in improving their teaching skills.

There is, of course, mixed reaction to the method by teachers. Some feel threatened, others welcome and praise the new method.

Now, I’m no school teacher. I did take education when I was in undergraduate school and did a stint as a student teacher. I have also taught courses in community colleges and the University of California at Chico.

I think this new IMPACT idea has some merit. I do because of my experience as a new lawyer in the Ventura County District Attorney’s office in California. The District Attorney was Woody Deem in the 1960-70s. I was hired by the office in the fall of 1968 as a law clerk, along with six others, just out of law school, awaiting the results of the bar examination in December 1968.

The newly hired class of the seven of us were schooled in the DA’s office half of every workday on conducting trials. The other half was spent assisting Deputy DAs prepare for and conduct jury trials. We were taught how to conduct ourselves during trial. Ethics. Rules of evidence. How to address and handle juries, and a myriad  of other trial matters.

The training continued until the bar results came in and we were sworn in as lawyers in late December.  My first week as a Deputy District Attorney I conducted three jury trials.

Each of us was continually evaluated by our supervisors. Those evaluations focused on our strengths and weaknesses as trial lawyers. They were objective and brutal. But they worked and were valuable in improving our trial performances.

The Ventura County DA’s office was, in my judgment, the very best in the state of California. Mr. Deem was, I think, one of the best DAs ever. The conviction rate of the office was over 90%.

I see the idea of IMPACT as similar to the evaluations we experienced as prosecutors. The focus of IMPAC appears to be different from the “No Child Left Behind” method because it shifts the focus from the students to the teacher as the means of evaluating the effectiveness of education.

Considering the problems faced currently in Nevada’s education system, and nationwide, educators should take an objective view of IMPACT and determine whether they might adopt the method here in Nevada.

The following is a letter to the editor that appeared in today’s Las Vegas Sun. It was written by a school teacher, Jeremy Christensen of Las Vegas. I’m running it here because I agree with what Mr. Christensen writes:

“It’s time to stop whining that education in Nevada doesn’t work because of a lack of funding,” Gov. Jim Gibbons said in his State of the State address last week. “We need to quit throwing money at programs that haven’t worked and don’t work for our children.”

What hasn’t worked and doesn’t work for our children is throwing clichés and ideology at problems.

This question is not as complicated as it seems. What is a reasonable cost to educate a child? Most of the other states in our nation believe that it costs more than what we spend in Nevada. How do these other states pay for the generous investments they make to educate their children?

Forty-five states in our country have an effective state-level corporate tax rate of at least 5 percent. How long have zealous ideologues proclaimed that businesses would flee if we even considered any taxes on corporations? These corporations pay taxes almost everywhere else in the United States. How long have our children suffered some of the largest class sizes in the nation and parades of long-term substitutes in vital courses such as mathematics because of this outrageous lie?

The state of Nevada is not making a good-faith effort to provide quality education for its children. Apparently our children have no voice or heroes to stand up for them and say enough is enough. The greatest sins in Sin City are committed against its children.

Governor “No New Taxes” Gibbons has a duty to those school children to see that their education proceeds with quality and unabated. It is his duty as elected governor whether he wants to raise taxes or not. I personally don’t care whether he gets re-elected or not. I didn’t vote for him to start with. I do care about the education of Nevada’s children.

All my kids are now grown with kids of their own. All still in California, which has its own financial problems. My grand daughter, Joan, will graduate from the University of California-Chico in June. She plans to then attend law school. She works and attends college now, has she has done since she started. One of my grand sons, Aaron, is attending college in California with the objective of obtaining a degree for his future as an accountant. He also works to pay for and attend school. But the financial burden of college tuition and expenses for law school are mammoth to a 22 year old.

Cutting the education budget, again, as proposed by Governor Gibbons, may be expedient to him, but not to those kids trying to get a college education.

Nevada maintains one of the lowest commitments in the nation for education. California is slipping fast, losing it’s once high education status.

I read that Nevada’s mining industry has enjoyed a low rate of taxation for 150 years. The implication being that that industry does not pay its fair share of taxes—a tax status that is unfair to ordinary taxpayers in Nevada.

I, frankly, think it is time that Governor Gibbons begin to realize that his obligation to Nevada taxpayers is higher than his adherence to his “no new taxes” creed. It is time to fairly and evenly raise taxes in Nevada, even if it requires applying a fair tax on the mining industry.

The University of California Board of Regents announced a staggering 32 percent midsemester tuition hike. Students responded by demonstrating, chanting, and occupying administration buildings.

California is leading a national trend. Higher education is becoming less affordable across the country every year. And the problem is spreading nationwide, writes Kevin Carey of Newsweek.

It takes two thirds of both houses in the California General Assembly to raise taxes.

“The young men and women rushing to the barricades on UC campuses are Ronald Reagan’s children, victims of a failed antigovernment movement that managed to turn people against taxes while leaving their appetite for public services unchecked.”

Each time a recession hits, tax-frightened state legislators raise revenue by cutting university budgets disproportionately and allowing tuition to make up the difference, a back-door levy that hits poor and middle-class students the hardest. [Read more →]

My grandaughter is just finishing up with her pre-law studies at the University of California-Chico. Next year she hopes to go to law school. She has been working at two different jobs while attending school. My own experience indicates she will also have to work while attending law school, which is more expensive than undergraduate school. She is very determined to succeed. Her parents and my wife and I try to help her but none of us are wealthy.

Earlier in the day hundreds of students marched and chanted against the increase while outside the UCLA building in Los Angeles where regents met to vote on the hike.

Protesting students and others say the increased tuition will hurt working and middle-class students who benefit from state-funded education. But officials argue that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending are necessary because of a persistent budget crisis that has forced reductions across California’s state government.

Students chanted as they marched and waved signs at UCLA. “Education only for the rich,” one sign read.

The first tuition hike, which takes effect in January, will cost undergraduate students an additional $585 a semester. The second hike kicks in next fall, raising tuition another $1,344.

[Read more →]

President Barack Obama

Organizing for America (OFA) has officially landed in Nevada. Organizing for America is dedicated to forwarding President Obama’s agenda through grassroots action, and to creating a progressive, grassroots movement in the State of Nevada.

In order to best serve Nevada, OFA will visit cities throughout the state to re-engage and mobilize the grassroots movement in support of President Obama.

For Organizing for America to succeed, we need to hear from you – your effort and commitment are the backbone of this movement, and your input will help guide our action in Nevada. [Read more →]

Yesterday I discovered something I think is very good for Pahrump, Nevada. It is the Great Basin College facility nestled on the Pahrump Valley High School grounds.

The reason I went to the GBC building was to submit my offer to teach a course in using the Internet in researching Genealogy. I have proposed teaching the class on each Saturday of August this year.

For the first time in the six years I have lived in Pahrump I explored their building. It is really something! Spacious, with modern class rooms and filled with modern computers throughout. [Read more →]

-Zeke
May 2009

Zeke Says So is a Nevada blogger. Not a bad poet either.

Photo: University of California, Berkley, Marian Diamond, a legendary lecturer. Kathrin Miller for TIME

This week’s Time magazine has an interesting article called Logging On to the Ivy League.

What is this all about?

Well, it seems that some in the education profession are using the Internet to provide educational lectures by esteemed persons from all over.

Ms. Diamond, pictured above, is just one of a host of others, whose video lectures are posted on line for all of us to to see and listen to. Go take a look at Academic Earth and see for yourself.

The subjects on Academic Earth include Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, Entrepreneurship, History, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology and Religion.

These are true Ivy League Universities putting these things on the Internet. University of California-Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. According to Time it is all

part of a growing movement by academic institutions worldwide to open their once exclusive halls to all who want to peek inside. Whether you’d like to learn algebra from a mathematician at MIT, watch how to make crawfish étouffée from an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America or study blues guitar with a professor at Berklee College of Music, you can do it all in front of your computer, courtesy of other people’s money.

It isn’t just Academic Earth either. YouTube is doing the same sort of thing as well. Take a look at YouTube Edu. Run a search on YouTube Edu for any subject you like and you’ll likely find it covered. You can learn about Mathematics, Music, Cooking, etc all while sitting at your computer—and for free.

The possibilities of all this and the use of it presents a whole new view of educational thinking.

It is commonly known that Nevada doesn’t rate well, nationally, in it’s education stature. Nevada, in my view, is a cheapskate state. The people of Nevada wants to have tourists pay for Nevada’s needs rather than themselves. Witness the recent “Tea Party” celebrations.

And the hassle between Governor “No New Taxes” Gibbons and the Education community in Nevada about cutting the education budget even more.

Perhaps it would be fruitful to open up our minds and think about taking a whole new approach to education.

Why wouldn’t it be possible to present all college courses, Universities and Community Colleges, online so that students can attend class via their computers and participate in the classes via accompanying “chat rooms” or the like in asking questions and getting answers from their teachers, just like they would if they were personally present in the classroom? Imagine the money that would save Nevada, or all states of the union for that matter.

Think about how many more students could attend college then!

Even high school classes could be held the same way. Elementary grades are a possibility as well.

More than 170 schools offer content free to the public on Apple’s iTunes U, which originated in 2004 as a way for colleges to distribute content privately to their own students.

Even Columbia University is using iTunes for teachers.

Actually, education via the Internet is really global. Professor Diamond’s lectures and courses have been attended by students in England and Egypt. What if all the great Universities of the world were online? Wouldn’t that be something.

While I’m thinking about it why can’t other meetings be held online. For example Nye County Commissioner meetings, meetings of the Pahrump Town Board, the Nye County School Board, etc.

Why can’t the Nye County Democratic Party lead the way to these kinds of innovations. In fact they could hold their own monthly meetings online, don’t you think?

With all the hassle and news about the education system in Nevada I took a look at the Great Basin College website. Most of their classes began January 24. You learn stuff surfing the net that way.

Their program issues associate and bachelor degrees throughout rural Nevada. They cover 62,000 square miles, two time zones, and six of Nevada’s largest rural counties. Interim President Carl Diekhans heads it up.

“Our rural centers are doing well. We are expanding our services in Pahrump and Nye County. We have rented a 10,000 square foot facility enabling us to offer more day time classes. The present Pahrump Valley Branch Campus, located on the high school campus, has no room for additional expansion. This year we will be working with the Bureau of Land Management to obtain acreage to build a permanent college campus in Pahrump,” says their website.

They have a lot of information about the Pahrump facility. Great Basin offers a host classes over a very wide range. Some classes are in traditional classrooms. And they are in the 21^st century too, with classes on the Internet and LiveNet.

So, if you want to continue your own education I’d highly recommend you check out their website. I was pleasantly astonished.

Great Basin College is caught up in the education funding crisis also. Their site provides up to date news accounts plus a way for you to express yourself to Nevada’s legislators right from their website. So, if you want to do something about the mess, don’t just sit there, do it.