President Obama and Education

Dear President Obama:

I applaud your effort to improve education.

It has been my great pleasure to teach math and science to High School Students over the past year.

Here are some observations: Each student is different. Some do well on their own and some don't. Those students who receive individual attention do best. Punishment is a poor motivator. Gratitude, love and devotion are great motivators. Some students give up under the pressure of unrealistic expectations. The teachers that I have met are incredible. They accomplish amazing things. Where performance is measured, performance improves. It is impossible to be completely fair and equitable to all students. And this is not the most important point. The important point is that every student has the opportunity to learn in a safe environment.

Protectionism is still a problem.

I was disappointed to read that Utah did not receive any money from the last distribution of grant money. Utah submitted a 600+ page proposal. And based upon student funding needs, Utah should have ranked number one, because Utah spends less per student than any State in the Union. Based upon performance, Utah should have received funding because of the remarkable success of the students based upon the performance per dollar spent.

Utah should have received some of these funds. Utah has more students per capita than any other State in the Union and these students are the future workforce that will support the aging world populations.

BYU now ranks higher than Harvard in students choosing to go there based on application acceptance. The University of Utah is ranked among the top 100 Universities in the world.

That tells me that Utah is doing something right.

Protectionism and Charter Schools: Charter schools funnel money away from the public school system. Charter schools could provide specializations that would make our country more competitive. But my observation is that special interest groups utilize charter schools to subvert laws and regulations. Thus, valuable funding for public education gets diluted by special interests.

A final thought for today: Government regulations cause public testing to dummy up the opportunities for students. What do I mean by that? As an example, some math tests are designed to place students in classes where they will be certain to succeed. This success is based on criteria, which guarantees funding by government agencies as a percentage of students that perform well on the designed tests. Unfortunately, the students are so under-challenged by the class material that they get bored and discouraged. They get pigeonholed in classes that don't challenge them. They quit pursuing math and science because the system is more focused on meeting testing results to keep funding than it is on challenging students.

Keep up the good work. My prayers are with you. Best wishes on your efforts.