Education Week October 20th Issue

New Orleans article:  It may just be me, but I felt particularly outraged by this article.  It's been five years and this article led me to believe that only now are new schools being opened up in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  6,000 of 36,000 students are still using portable classrooms?!  That is almost seventeen percent of the area's kids using portable classrooms!  Could you imagine if such a thing were to happen here at Willamette University?  People would be outraged!  Granted, Willamette University and the public schools of New Orleans are completely different places with completely different funding.  Regardless, from what it seems like to me from reading the article, a tremendous amount of time has been spent dilly-dallying around trying to figure out how the money they got from FEMA is going to be used and figuring out who is going to oversee the use of that money.  That isn't to say that those things aren't important.  They are very important.  But honestly, its been five years since the hurricane and stuff just doesn't seem to be getting done...

Early Ed Absenteeism: I think I might be a little biased about absenteeism but that is largely because of my background.  In 9th grade, I didn't miss a single day of school.  I remember that because I got an award for it at an end of the day assembly.  Not too many people got it.  When I was younger, if I was ever sick and it caused me to miss a day of school, I was made to watch History Channel or National Geographic Channel specials and write up a report on them for my dad (this was probably more incentive for me to go to school in the first place haha).  Obviously, other kids don't get the same treatment growing up.  I know for a fact that some parents couldn't give a rip about their kids education and do very little to support them.  How is it that missing 10% of school is Chronic absenteeism?  Why is it so darn high??  Shouldn't it be closer to 5 or 6%?  Could anyone imagine missing 10% of the days at work due to sickness or playing hooky.  I'm only 22 years old and I can tell you right now that you probably wouldn't last long in many workplaces missing days at that rate.  The fact that it isn't lower is an indication of the extremely low standards that we have for student attendance.  Where is the accountability?  Why are we selling our kids short??  It's amazing how little we care, especially for the early education absenteeism, considering how important it is.  How else are kids supposed to get acclimated to living and working with others.  This immediately sets children up for failure!