“We can pass business friendly bills all legislative session, but if we fail in education, none of that matters... Our education system is the key to our future workforce. For that reason, the Missouri Chamber is preparing to take an aggressive position on education reforms 2012.Perhaps they just got Bill Gates' memo, that there is money to be made in education. Too bad they didn't get Arne Duncan's memo about local control for education content going away. They also need the report that shows merit pay does not influence student outcome.
The Missouri Chamber board of directors approved a broad agenda of education reforms, many focusing on empowering the local community in its education future.
The Missouri chamber will support expanding charter schools statewide in failing school districts.
"We will support allowing charter schools to be established in any district throughout the state where the school district is unaccredited or provisionally accredited."
In addition, the Missouri Chamber will support establishing a system of merit pay for teachers.
Their platform also states, "The Missouri Chamber also will push to eliminate the state-imposed teacher tenure system." That sure sounds great, but it was a mandatory part of the RTTT grant program. Even though MO did not win a grant, because we spent so much money writing the grant proposal and because we asked school superintendants to sign off on the terms proposed in the grant, most school districts are implementing RTTT requirements and that includes tenure.
Their last plank, "The Missouri Chamber will also advocate that Missouri’s education system be fully funded on all levels," is a little vague. Are they suggesting that k-12 education is not fully funded with 52% of the state budget going towards education? Are they suggesting that college be fully funded by the state? If all this is so they can have competent competitive workers, where is their share of the funding for the training of their future employees?
Looks like the MCC needs a little education.
The foundation of the education problem is the destruction of the family. The Federal and State support of single parents has destroyed the American family. Tax penalties for staying married and monetary compensation for single mothers accelerates this issue. One of the nastiest trends in our country was the payment of Social Security benefits to parents with disabled children. Some parents found that if their children were totally uncontrollable in class, they could collect $500 per child. It was not unusual for families to have 4 or 5 uncontrollable children enrolled in school. I do not know if this is still going on, I hope not. –Ted Engler
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