The Sunday Education Weekly Reader: 11.13.11

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 11.13.11.

This week we'll be highlighting:

• an example of the growing jobs in online education companies...that really don't require much knowledge in education
  
• an opinion that LOWER taxes, not HIGHER taxes ensure a better education for students
• how the cradle to grave agenda gearing up
  

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Do you need a job? Interested in working for private industry that uses taxpayer money? Check out a job posting for Apex Learning, the leading provider of digital curriculum for secondary education to the nation's school districts. Don't worry, you don't have to be particularly innovative or know much about educational theory in many of these jobs.

A description for an Account Executive in Education reads:

The selected candidate will prospect for new business for Apex Learning digital curriculum within the assigned territory, focusing on sales of packaged solutions.

"Packaged solutions" is the future of education via Common Core standards and a nationalized curriculum. Remember that the next time you are sitting at a school board meeting and the Board members emphasize how the district aims to provide "individual instruction" to your human capital.

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Why is the cost of educating children in the private realm so much cheaper than the cost of public education? Are these programs that provide vouchers for private schools a better plan for student achievement and Constitutional law?

Is it true that lowering taxes actually improves test scores?

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The government wants to give out more money for education! (The Department of Education apparently hasn't read the previous linked article). It wants your child in pre-school now. THAT'S the ticket for students to become STEM ready. That's right. Those Pre-K teachers are the answer for our dismal educational test scores.

Here is a proposed government program and newly created DOE department for your human capital beginning at age 3. The government just can't wait to go into Pre-K programs for child assessments and data mined information. I don't think this is what Mr. Rogers must have had in mind when he talked to young children.

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Educational thought of the day is from the book The Double Comfort Safari Club:

Mma Ramotswe thought about this. Having the right approach to life was a great gift in this life. Her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, had always had the right approach to life--she was sure of that. And for a moment, as she sat there with her friend, with the late-afternoon sun slanting in through the window, she thought about how she owed her father so much. He had taught her almost everything she knew about how to lead a good life, and the lessons she had learned from him were as fresh today as they ever had been. Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.