MOMocrats

Dreams of a Mother: Education

I dream of a world where education is a top priority and the government puts its money where its mouth is. No more lame slogans without funds to back them up. No more impossible mandates.

What I dream of is simple: a world where I can send my children to our neighborhood schools, confident that they will be taught, nurtured and protected - no matter what neighborhood we live in.

My dreams extend to our nation's upper 2%: I dream that our nation's wealthy can keep more of their earnings, because the quality of our public schools is so high that they no longer feel the need to spend $30,000 per year per child for private education.

I dream of a world where teaching is respected as a profession; where teachers can earn as much as stockbrokers, because we, as a society, recognize that there is no investment as valuable as our children. They are our future.

I dream of a world where the schools are all clean and safe, where there are enough books for all the students, and desks and chairs for all of them, too.

Teacher's Pay: Finally! A Reflection of Worth

Teachers at a charter school in New York City, The Equity Project Charter School, will be paid $125,000 a year, with a bonus up to $25,000. Hiring criteria includes a portfolio of past student work, demonstrated innovation and effectiveness in the classroom, and GRE/GMAT/etc verbal scores in the 90th percentile.

Women Who Weld Together, uh, Support Their Families.

Here's a project that could certainly be looked to as a model to expand upon with the new, Democratic administration that takes the reins come January of '09.   (I refuse to acknowledge any other potential outcome.  I'm blithely optimistic like that.)

A quote from Melissa Kutz, one of the participants in the project:

“I spent a lot of years trying to figure out what to do, how to make things work, and after a while you reach a point where you’re completely hopeless,” Ms. Kutz said recently at Climb Wyoming’s training center. It is a barracks-like building at Laramie County Community College, where workstations are a jumble of computers, blowtorches, copper pipe and circuit boards.

“You hear it all: ‘You’re white trash. You’re a welfare mom. Why’d you have kids if you can’t feed them?’ ” Ms. Kutz said. “But I just have never been as hopeful as I have in the past few weeks.”

This isn't a national issue; it's our conjoined human plight.  But we've gotta start somewhere.  I think it's precisely the kind of thing that our Dem nominee ought to be encouraged to broaden and develop in the coming years, if we're going to breathe new life into the idea of the American Dream - the one everyone gets to participate in.

Cross-posted at Debbie's personal blog, i obsess.