- INTRODUCTION
- PLANK ONE
- PLANK TWO
- PLANK THREE
The Freedom to Choose - PLANK FOUR
Establish a Culture of Excellence - PLANK FIVE
More Time Spent Educating - PLANK SIX
Muster An Army of Volunteers - PLANK SEVEN
Standardized Curriculum_Not - PLANK EIGHT
Early Intervention and Specialized Instruction - PLANK NINE
Spend Money as Though It Were Your Own - PLANK TEN
Plant the Seed of Success in Life - PLANK ELEVEN
Establish a Culture of Excellence
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of this approach. Team READ produces stellar results by using high school students who are paid to teach second and third graders. A reduced cost model is currently being tested to see if the use of unpaid fifth and sixth grade students or middle school peer tutors works as well. Another alternative would be to "pay" these middle school tutors by letting them earn money that is put into a college savings account. In 1961, President Kennedy created the Peace Corps. Why couldn't President Obama create a Teach Corps? The purpose of Teach Corps would be to create an army of volunteers who would work in classrooms around the country to assist teachers in any number of ways. "Army" is a good descriptive word in this case. To put this in perspective, the combined strength of the U.S. Regular Army, the U.S. Army National Guard, and the U.S. Army Reserve numbers just over one million personnel. The number of members in the American Association of Retired Persons is over 35 million! AARP's Washington State Chapter alone has almost one million members. |
If only a fraction of AARP members expressed interest in helping students, the amount of knowledge and learning available for classroom instruction would increase tremendously. These volunteers could potentially be recruited from the large number of baby boomer retirees, from the ranks of corporate America, where companies could "loan" employees for one or two years. High school students spending a gap year before going to college could help in K-12 classrooms, as could college graduates wanting to help fix the public schools before committing themselves to their lifelong careers. Another source of teaching talent is corporate alumni organizations, many of which have tens of thousands of members who are retired and still actively engaged in many other affinity groups. Most of these Teach Corps volunteers could focus initially on assisting teachers in the earliest grades and in schools that are not performing well. If there is additional volunteer capacity, it can be deployed in accordance with the priorities of the school district. |