But what you bring up is really something that I am trying to wrap my head around and discussed somewhat in the CBT thread. We, as a nation, built the interstate highway system that opened this country to become much of what it is today. It seems building a national educational system would do the same. Imagine any child able to access any level of education from wherever they are! Whether they get online from school or from home if homeschooled, or through the library in cases like you describe� well, it just makes sense to me.
Oh. �I thought you meant in general and hypothetically and were quiestioning the effectiveness of CBT programs available at the present moment. �You wanna build the "Ender's Game" e-school, or the Jetson's private computer tutor. Let's see... That would take the four best things from Grinity's DI school find- solid foundational teachings for basic skills, frequent functional evaluation tests, and acceleration or remediation, and a noted lack of pointless busywork. �You'd couple that with an idea I think I saw Kriston quoted as saying in the 2010-2011 (?) Kindy & 1st grade, or first and second. �(too many drugs in the 1960's, I apologize.). I only saw the quote not the post because I was just skimming the thread to relax after the boy went to sleep. �But the idea was a homeschool co-op where the classes were treated like college courses in that you just took whatever you needed from the course menu. �So nationalize it and put it online. �Then you would blend it with my NCLB thread core standards to make sure everybody's course selection met the bare minimum core standards for their functional level in each subject.
Then you would have a spreadsheet of all the school-aged kids in the census. �You would have 1 column for each of the core standards subjects required by law. �Parents could select from an exhaustive unabridged list of cirriculum publishers for each subject that meets the core standard requirements of their latest functional evaluation for that subject, or for a single skill remediation program for that subject if the most recent evaluation warrants. �There would be no need for the school, the parents, or any online agency to sign off on the fact that the student took the course, the evaluations will tell. �But you could add an extra column for that purpose just to make it look official.�
Now for the financing. �The church has been whining for years about establishing a federal voucher system where each child takes a coupon for whatever the amount the public school earns per head in it's classroom and then they take their little coupon to the private school of their parents choice and that makes private school affordable to anyone who wants in it in theory. �But that means taxing the unwilling public to pay for religious education as well. �But that's a whole different debate. �Hey, wait. �They could make the vouchers for each credit rather than for each student. �Then they could say that the cirriculum covered can not contain religious material and does not meet core standards. �Uh, nevermind. �I don't know how you'd level the playing field financially and equitably for every child and family. �Also you would scare the Big Brother crowd into fearing that the system will enforce this program on every child and not just those families that want to participate in the society the rest of us are cultivating. �Oh. �And I don't know how the unschoolers would like the evaluations and expectations because it wouldn't allow for asynchronous imterests in the present moment, even though it would be tailored to each child's individual develpment so much better than things are now. �Maybe flexibility in how you balance the course load could accomidate them. �Just say you have to choose so many credits at one time, even if it's unbalanced, and you have to eventually choose all of the core subjects sometime in this decade. �And you're not going to get the Christians to co-operate unless you pay for their agenda. �They won't participate, they'll bargain. �Aye, maybe I'm just too cynical. �There has to be a compromise. �We'll pay for the Abeka reading cirriculum even though it's religious, but let your church pay for the bible study and no it doesn't count as a credit.
The core standards board is asking for feedback on what we should expect as a nation from our children. �I'm keeping it on the back burner of my mind, keeping in mind that they say "grade" and mean "age". �I'm trying to think of how to incorporate Waldorf, Montessori, unschool idealism, fast track yuppie ivy league preschools, and those poor kids in New Oreleans and take all these different philosophies of healthy age-appropriate development and expectations and combine them into one set of universal core standards. �It would help if parents representing these philosphies could chime in on that thread and we could contribute to the nationwide school standards they're writing at this moment.
My posts are always too long when I think about anything. �Embarrasing.��
