Education reformer Paul Vallas, who last visited Peoria in late 2007, is returning this Saturday morning to meet with Peoria City Council members at Mayor Ardis’s request. The Council has scheduled a full-day retreat this Saturday at the Peoria Civic Center’s Lexus Room starting at 9 a.m. The agenda for the meeting includes several guest speakers including Vallas, a representative from Mesirow Financial, and Heart of Illinois United Way Vice President of Community Investment Don Johnson.
Ardis says he didn’t ask Vallas to speak on any specific topic, but about reforming schools in general. “His experience in successfully reforming urban school districts should make his comments informative and relevant,” Ardis said Tuesday.
The last time Vallas was in town (also at Ardis’s request), the Journal Star reported (12/22/2007):
Vallas said if District 150 were to engage in reform efforts, he would spend his spring break in Peoria working with the district. He would recruit one or more persons to work on the project locally, and he would come back to Peoria periodically to monitor the progress.
He said Ardis has agreed to pay for his gas expenses driving to and from Peoria, along with occasional overnight hotel stays during his road trips.
But despite the City’s efforts to help improve the City’s schools, District 150 said, “no thanks.” Since then, the District has shortened the school day for several Wednesdays at a number of primary schools for no justifiable reason, fired their Comptroller/Treasurer for undisclosed reasons, decided to close four schools (including a high school yet to be named), and issue bonds for $38 million to dig out of a budget deficit. No need for outside advice from a proven reformer here, huh?
More of my favorite quotes on education:
“He is educated who knows how to find otu what he doesn’t know.”
-Georg Simmel
“Leraning how to learn by learning how to think makes a well-educated person. Learning how to learn not aonl yexpands the mind. It also gives you a lifelong asset. Once you have it, it stays with you for the rest of your life.”
-T. Kaori Kitao
“Let children get at the books themselves, and do not let them be flooded with diluted talk from the lips of their teacher. The less that parents ‘talk-in’ and expound their rations of knowledge and thought to the children they are educating, the better for the children. . . Children must be allowed to ruminate, must be left alone with their own thoughts.”
-Charlotte Mason
I’m not saying teachers aren’t necessary or that they don’t do a good job, because I know there are children (whose parents aren’t interested in or available to their children) who need them. I learn something every day from the “teachers” all around me. For example, today Erik taught me what “quixotic” means. (Good word, Erik). I didn’t know what it meant; I was curious; I looked it up in the dictionary; now I know, and I won’t forget. If that same word had been on a “vocabulary list” that some teacher thought I needed to learn, I would have memorized it for the test and then promptly forgotten it.
Wow, that was fraught with typos!! Sorry. I meant to go back and proofread, but clearly I didn’t.
Janel–quixotic from Don Quixote, one of the books that high schoolers should read. District 150 frequently follows Don Quixote’s example by “tilting at windmills.”
Here is one of mine, Janel:
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg. – Abraham Lincoln
Hi Sharon,
I was forced to read Don Quixote in high school, and I don’t remember a thing about it. So thanks for teaching me about tilting at windmills.
Janel: I didn’t read Don Quixote in high school or college–I read it after seeing a performance of Man from LaMancha (and, I think, the movie)–the visual of the windmills probably stuck. I didn’t mean to sound more erudite than I am.