dave-sokola

In writing a comment reply I almost tacked this on because it readily became apparent to me why despite Delaware’s education apparatus being in fairly good shape, we are beset with a battering of how f’d-up our local schools are… As any parent knows, their school is not f’d-up and ESPECIALLY when you put an assortment of parents across the state in a room and ask questions, you readily discern there is a dichotomy between how they feel about their  child’s school, versus the generalities of the state’s running this or that educational program…

The gist being that generally all education is f’d-up; but somehow their schools are awesome…

It is time to shoot the messenger….

Dave Sokola initiated the charter school process back when the first Clinton ran the White House… Particularly now that charters have a black eye, he has used the Educational committee to sneak lobbyist-written legislation through passage and a fellow Newark buddy’s signature to give Charters exceptional rights and access which no one else has…

What ever his reason, that is on him.. (It is not “the children”; his policies have made their lives hell).. But as Delaware citizens we have a choice this November to put our school bickerings on a back burner and move forward with improving the quality of education directly at the student level,….. OR we can continue to have the same confrontations that always say the same things on both sides, that are a back and forth of nothing that has not already been said…

Talk is cheap… As with your children, as with the upkeep of your house, as with the constant health of your car and your own body, if you want to get something done, you have to take the initial action yourself.

There is a wonderful human being named Meredith Chapman now challenging Dave Sokola for his 8th District Senatorial seat… a territory that covers the northeast corner of our state from Newark to Hockessin .

If she is able to knock off Dave, then our constant blather of racist inspired public school battering (they simply don’t want to go to school with blacks…Period),  evaporates… In its place we have a clear day with bright sun to actually turn attention to what helps children…

We know.

Exactly.

What helps children…

If we seriously want to improve education, we need to have an 11:1 student teacher ratio in grades k – 5 and in grade 9 in all schools where over 50% of the student body is at or below poverty level….

This applies what works best to those areas that need work… Nothing else is as effective… Nothing.  The best way to motivate people to learn, is to have someone they admire who knows them and mentors them to learn.  In wealthy districts that role can well be filled by parents.  Therefore wealthy districts don’t need as much attention.. But when you have a child entering the school system behind by a 5000 word vocabulary, you have to do something first to catch them up, and then you have to continue a process that continually advances them forward so at some future point in their lives, they enter the workplace on parity with those who were given a now very lucky head start in life…

There are four other things that must be done but in truth all those four are done solely to allocate necessary resources to the only tried and true method of teaching…. One on one involvement…. 11:1 is manageable.

This will NEVER  happen as long as Dave Sokola is in the Senate…  You’ve had 25 years of watching him go THE WRONG WAY!

And like a pinned flea, so far he has squirmed his way out from being caught, and slipped to bite public education at their hair follicles again and again… Across 25 years our fingers just couldn’t seem to grasp the blood engorged body to pull it out of the coiffured entanglements of our educational apparatus… So we accepted it instead… and after every bite, we scratch our skin raw..

We got bitten again, again, and again, and again, and again… (Did I hit the right number or legislative pieces? )..

This time we have tweezers in the form of Meredith Chapman.  Time to get that little bugger OUTTA THERE!….