Pawlenty Pushes New Teaching Rules

Our governor wants to change the way teachers get into their job, their pay, and how they keep up to date skills. In this article on startribune.com, Pawlenty says he wants to have "...summer school programs geared toward eighth-graders whose test results show a need for extra help in math and reading." I think it is a good thing to have special summer school programs for different ages, but not just one grade (8th grade), because if you get them the help they need earlier in their education, they can become a better student earlier. If you target students at a younger age to get help in subjects they are struggling in, they should be able to understand it more in the following years and get a better education during those years. He does not mention anything about new school funding, which is what many teachers are looking at the most. Pawlenty says this would be "unwise" to guarantee the major funding schools are looking for. The chair of the House education committee says that he is avoiding the big picture of school funding. She also says that those are not new ideas on how to change teaching rules. I do not think this is a good idea, because I don't believe it looks at the real issues that teachers are thinking about and what the community is thinking about.