Senate Bill 563 Insane!

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

State Senator Joseph Cervantes, link, is the sponsor of Senate Bill 563, link; an effort to lengthen the school year.

Cervantes believes doing the same thing but more will yield different results.  I believe he is wrong.

It's rather like driving further on a flat tire, in hope of fixing it.

The problem with public education is not that there isn't enough of it - though there is not. 

The problem with public education is that it is based on the premise that students must learn in unison; each on the same page, in the same book, on the same day, preparing for tests which them must all take at the same time. 

There is no greater obstacle to learning than
the relentless emphasis placed on standardizing it.

Nobody is even asking anymore; why?
Even if we could make children learn in unison,
why would we want to?

Why do we need to standardize the educational performance of children having little in common at any given moment, other than their age and the neighborhood they live in?

In lieu of a better idea, or in doing the same thing "more", I propose a change in the mission; from "standardizing individual performance" to "maximizing individual performance";

create independent lifelong learners at the earliest opportunity.

Sure, at some point students who want to graduate must pass standardized tests in order to validate their diploma and certificate of graduation.  But they don't all have to pass them on the same day and they don't have to arrive at them by exactly the same path.  Some may take them a year later; some may take them years early.  And why not?

Students don't need more schooling;
they need better schooling.