Well, once again, South Dakota public schools have, according to “Education Week” flunked the course and rank dead last among all the states in the country. Shame on us for intentionally neglecting our children\u2019s education so.<\/p>\n
Or are we?<\/p>\n
Let’s take a closer look at the 6 criteria used in this condemnation of South Dakota education; \u00a0student’s “chance for success” later in life if they attend school in the state, school finances; state assessments and standards; and teacher and school accountability<\/em>.” Oh yeah, it also considers student achievement<\/em> but, apparently, the fact that South Dakota kids rank consistently well above the national average on every level from report card grades, to \u00a0SAT scores to the percentage of those who graduate high school to the percentage of those grads going on to college..doesn\u2019t count for much . Here are some of the latest actual figures<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our \u00a0kids and teachers are getting that job done, folks; in spades..but \u00a0you\u2019re not seeing those numbers in \u201cEducation Week\u201d which would have you believe that students in New York and New Jersey are much better off than those in South Dakota.<\/p>\n Is there room for improvement in K-12 education? \u00a0Of course there is. Teacher salaries, for example, are embarrassingly low by comparison to other states and it\u2019s high time we put a higher priority on paying them more before the realities of the economy outweigh their willingness to keep biting the bullet . Please don’t say, well,\u00a0they only work 9 months out of the year. I think if you totaled up all the hours they dedicate to the job day AND night, you\u2019d find they could put in for overtime.<\/p>\n Look, I don\u2019t have any solutions to education issues but, like a lot of you, grow tired of having outsiders keep calling us dumb because we don\u2019t measure up to their perception of how schools should be run and our kids\u2019 chances for success in life.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t know us..so shaddup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, once again, South Dakota public schools have, according to “Education Week” flunked the course and rank dead last among all the states in the country. Shame on us for intentionally neglecting our children\u2019s education so. Or are we? Let’s take a closer look at the 6 criteria used in this condemnation of South Dakota…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11684,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions\/11684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}