What I learned this week: To be truly happy we need to set boundaries with others, otherwise, many take advantage of you and you won't get what you need.
What I am grateful for: As I watched the earthquake damage in Haiti and now in Chile, I realize how lucky we are in Houston to have missed major damage in comparison after IKE. For that I am grateful. My heart and soul go out to the people of Chile as well as Haiti.
Last week I worked on two stories, one on Yes Academy, considered one of the best public highschools in the nation and Madison highschool, the most improved highschool according to the organization Children at Risk. One of the underlying similarities I found on both schools is very simple but possibly very hard to do. They try doing it on a daily basis. They care about the students as people who have all kinds of needs that may or may not be related to education and they give each other constant feedback on how they are doing.
Both schools face challenges but their focus is clear and they have a capacity to discipline their students and demand the best from them. They also have very high expectations. I hope you will watch on April 20th at 7pm on Ch. 8 I also hope you will e mail us or call us with your comments and questions. haveyoursay@houstonpbs.org 713 743 8513 a viewer response line.
We have a an educational crisis and we can't just blame it on the economy. Our mindset has to change. If we really want to be most powerful nation in the world, we have to improve our public education systems all around the country. I quote from the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman The American labor force is to be weaker in science than peer countries. Another study showed American fifteen year olds are below the international average when it comes to applying math skills to real life tasks. For years America could count on the fact that we still have the best higher education system it he world and we made up for our deficiencies in our public education system by being able to get all those good students from abroad but now fewer are coming and staying.
My question is. Why are we not investing in our own students? The greatest commodity we have is our IQ. We should be improving it for everyone here.
What do you think?
Saturday
The Education Crisis and what's in it for you?
What I learned this week:
I spent 20 dollars on very bad films. The more I go to the movies or watch TV the more I realize how much better off I would be spending time doing something else, unless what I watch is on PBS. Okay I admit I am biased!
What I am grateful for:
When I got sick with a sore throat and a headache, I realized what herbs I needed to take to tackle it quickly. I am grateful I quickly healed!]
EDUCATION CRISIS. April 20th 2010 7pm Live on HoustonPBS
I really want to hear from you. Even if you don't live in Houston Texas, our whole nation is attempting to reform our urban public education system. Our society has changed drastically in the past 3 decades. Most educators, community and business leaders admit, we have to transform the system to better educate our youth for future needs. What are your suggestions?
According to a report from Children at Risk, in 2007 53.5% of children in Harris County public scho0ls were considered at risk of dropping out. Texas ranked 41st out of 50 states and the District of Columbia (the worse district in the country) in expenditure per students. Texas also has a higher average class size and average student to teacher ration than the national average.
The approach in Texas recently has been based on standardized, high stakes test based accountability. A recent study on the Education Policy Analysis Archives titled High Stakes Accountabilty and the Dropout Crisis states. "Disagreagtion of student scores by race does not lead to greater equity, but in fact puts our most vulnearble youth, the poor, the English lanuage leaners and African American and Latino children, at risk of being pushed out of their schools so the school rating can show "measurable improvement" High stakes, test based accountability leads not to equitable educational possibilities for youth, but to avoidable losses of these students from our schools. Each year, Texas public highschools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation.
But what are the best accountability measures for our children? Should we have national standards of education? Can we just hold teachers accountable for what happens in the classroom, despite the fact, children are suffering from abuse, poverty, hunger, violence at home? Let us know what you think for the upcoming town forum on education on April 20th 2010 on HoustonPBS.
I spent 20 dollars on very bad films. The more I go to the movies or watch TV the more I realize how much better off I would be spending time doing something else, unless what I watch is on PBS. Okay I admit I am biased!
What I am grateful for:
When I got sick with a sore throat and a headache, I realized what herbs I needed to take to tackle it quickly. I am grateful I quickly healed!]
EDUCATION CRISIS. April 20th 2010 7pm Live on HoustonPBS
I really want to hear from you. Even if you don't live in Houston Texas, our whole nation is attempting to reform our urban public education system. Our society has changed drastically in the past 3 decades. Most educators, community and business leaders admit, we have to transform the system to better educate our youth for future needs. What are your suggestions?
According to a report from Children at Risk, in 2007 53.5% of children in Harris County public scho0ls were considered at risk of dropping out. Texas ranked 41st out of 50 states and the District of Columbia (the worse district in the country) in expenditure per students. Texas also has a higher average class size and average student to teacher ration than the national average.
The approach in Texas recently has been based on standardized, high stakes test based accountability. A recent study on the Education Policy Analysis Archives titled High Stakes Accountabilty and the Dropout Crisis states. "Disagreagtion of student scores by race does not lead to greater equity, but in fact puts our most vulnearble youth, the poor, the English lanuage leaners and African American and Latino children, at risk of being pushed out of their schools so the school rating can show "measurable improvement" High stakes, test based accountability leads not to equitable educational possibilities for youth, but to avoidable losses of these students from our schools. Each year, Texas public highschools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation.
But what are the best accountability measures for our children? Should we have national standards of education? Can we just hold teachers accountable for what happens in the classroom, despite the fact, children are suffering from abuse, poverty, hunger, violence at home? Let us know what you think for the upcoming town forum on education on April 20th 2010 on HoustonPBS.
Education and the Future of our city
What I learned this week: There are still way too many people who think that by taking care of themselves only, they will be okay. This seldom happens since we are all interconnected. A perfect example is public education. If we don't fund it and support it, the long term consequences will affects us socially, economically and even spiritually. The question is how do we do that?
What I am grateful for. I received a great formal education and I realize that I have to keep learning more on a daily basis. Life is so much more interesting that way.
The next few weeks I plan to write about public education which is the topic of our next town forum on April 20th at 7pm at HoustonPBS. I would love to hear from people all over the country about this issue. We are failing our kids and pointing fingers does not seem to get us anywhere. In Houston for the past 22 years I have been reporting about the drop out problem and frankly, it does not seem to get much better over time. I would say if has gotten worse. According to HISD statistics, the drop out rate is 18 percent. Children at Risk reports 51.3 percent graduation rate or a 48 percent 6 year drop out rate. I am sure they have different parameters but everyone here can agree. Houston has a problem. We live in one of the richest cities in the world. Most of us who live here don't realize that because we don't travel enough to know. Yet our public urban school system struggles to educate students for higher education or other options. We are now holding teachers accountable through particular tests we feel will tell us if our kids know their math, science or reading and writing. If the teachers' students don't pass the test, that teacher may lose his or her job. Of course they will be given courses to get better teaching skills. My question is. Is this the best way to hold anyone accountable? Isn't this putting the responsability only on the teacher? What role should parents play? Are there particular interests such as testing entities that gain from this new sort of accountability? Isn't this an effective way to get rid of bad teachers? Shouldn't the community be more involved in public education? Most kids in our public school system come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Most are minorities with a high percentage participating in the free school lunch program. How are we tackling poverty in our city? I want to hear your concerns, solutions and observations Let's begin to work together to look at this problem, because it is not going to go away and our children are our future.
What I am grateful for. I received a great formal education and I realize that I have to keep learning more on a daily basis. Life is so much more interesting that way.
The next few weeks I plan to write about public education which is the topic of our next town forum on April 20th at 7pm at HoustonPBS. I would love to hear from people all over the country about this issue. We are failing our kids and pointing fingers does not seem to get us anywhere. In Houston for the past 22 years I have been reporting about the drop out problem and frankly, it does not seem to get much better over time. I would say if has gotten worse. According to HISD statistics, the drop out rate is 18 percent. Children at Risk reports 51.3 percent graduation rate or a 48 percent 6 year drop out rate. I am sure they have different parameters but everyone here can agree. Houston has a problem. We live in one of the richest cities in the world. Most of us who live here don't realize that because we don't travel enough to know. Yet our public urban school system struggles to educate students for higher education or other options. We are now holding teachers accountable through particular tests we feel will tell us if our kids know their math, science or reading and writing. If the teachers' students don't pass the test, that teacher may lose his or her job. Of course they will be given courses to get better teaching skills. My question is. Is this the best way to hold anyone accountable? Isn't this putting the responsability only on the teacher? What role should parents play? Are there particular interests such as testing entities that gain from this new sort of accountability? Isn't this an effective way to get rid of bad teachers? Shouldn't the community be more involved in public education? Most kids in our public school system come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Most are minorities with a high percentage participating in the free school lunch program. How are we tackling poverty in our city? I want to hear your concerns, solutions and observations Let's begin to work together to look at this problem, because it is not going to go away and our children are our future.
Education Reform, Living Smart, A Concert
What I learned this week: The more I read about self righteous people, the more I realize they like pointing fingers at others so they don't have to look at themselves and their own inner demons.
What I am grateful for: This week the sun came out after a few cold and grey days. I am grateful I live in a city which sees more sun than clouds!
We began to work on Education Reform. We will be hosting a town forum on Education Reform and the Educational Crisis on April 20th at 7pm. To me education is one of the most powerful solutions to so many social problems we face. The statistics for our local public school system are alarming. Whether the statistics are wrong or not. We will probably never really know, but if the drop out rate ranges from 20 to 60 percent, officially it may be less than that, it should concern us. What we do know is this. In the most industrilized nation in the world, and one of the richest cities in the world, we shouldn't have a drop out rate higher than 5 to 10 percent. This is not the time to point fingers. It is a time for our nation to tackle the fact that we are not educating the work force for this century. That we have to hire people from all over the world because we can't access our own pool of unprepared students right here. Too many of our kids are dropping out and what impact will that have in a few years in our society, our economy and our culture?
Please comment and give us feedback on this blog and let us know your thoughts. We want to focus on solutions. As always we hope our town forums move us out of complacency and into action for a better system. What would you do to fix the system? What works? What Does not?
Please also put on your calendar, in october this year, I will be performing a musical concert of Latin American Music (tribute to Mercedes Sosa) with my former band Barandua to raise funds for Breast Cancer. As soon as I can I will let you know.
On Living Smart, a former Iraq War Veteran, a young woman who recently received her Masters in business from the University of Houston will share why she thinks microfinance is one of the many ways to tackle poverty. She will air on February 9th at 11:30pm and February 12th at 10pm.
Please write on your calendar April 20th for our town forum on Education Reform. We will need your feedback now and then.
What I am grateful for: This week the sun came out after a few cold and grey days. I am grateful I live in a city which sees more sun than clouds!
We began to work on Education Reform. We will be hosting a town forum on Education Reform and the Educational Crisis on April 20th at 7pm. To me education is one of the most powerful solutions to so many social problems we face. The statistics for our local public school system are alarming. Whether the statistics are wrong or not. We will probably never really know, but if the drop out rate ranges from 20 to 60 percent, officially it may be less than that, it should concern us. What we do know is this. In the most industrilized nation in the world, and one of the richest cities in the world, we shouldn't have a drop out rate higher than 5 to 10 percent. This is not the time to point fingers. It is a time for our nation to tackle the fact that we are not educating the work force for this century. That we have to hire people from all over the world because we can't access our own pool of unprepared students right here. Too many of our kids are dropping out and what impact will that have in a few years in our society, our economy and our culture?
Please comment and give us feedback on this blog and let us know your thoughts. We want to focus on solutions. As always we hope our town forums move us out of complacency and into action for a better system. What would you do to fix the system? What works? What Does not?
Please also put on your calendar, in october this year, I will be performing a musical concert of Latin American Music (tribute to Mercedes Sosa) with my former band Barandua to raise funds for Breast Cancer. As soon as I can I will let you know.
On Living Smart, a former Iraq War Veteran, a young woman who recently received her Masters in business from the University of Houston will share why she thinks microfinance is one of the many ways to tackle poverty. She will air on February 9th at 11:30pm and February 12th at 10pm.
Please write on your calendar April 20th for our town forum on Education Reform. We will need your feedback now and then.
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