Interesting Proposal

Grants Would Finance Private Schooling

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: January 29, 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s call for a $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids is the latest effort by his administration to channel tax dollars to low-income parents to help them send their children to private or religious schools.

His proposal, in his State of the Union address Monday night, was denounced by some top Democratic lawmakers and teachers’ union officials as a national “voucher” program that would only drain resources from urban public schools that in many cases are in need of money.

And some critics said that the president’s call for yet another education initiative only underscored the failure of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal law that Mr. Bush considers a landmark achievement of his first term.

In naming his proposed program after a federal scholarship program for college students, Mr. Bush sided with advocates for school choice who say low-income parents should be able to send their children to private schools.

The new program would be modeled after a much smaller federally financed “scholarship” initiative in Washington that Mr. Bush championed in 2003, which has provided more than $14 million a year for low-income children to attend private and religious schools.

But some lawmakers influential on education issues were not impressed by the proposal.

“The president didn’t commit the resources to expand educational opportunity,” Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a prepared statement.

“Instead, on top of a $70 billion shortfall in funding for his own education reforms, he again proposed to siphon scarce resources from our public schools to create new voucher programs,” said Mr. Kennedy, who is chairman of the health, education and labor committee.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the teachers’ union in New York City, said: “It is an indictment of how No Child Left Behind hasn’t worked. If that policy had worked that would be no reason to call for any new policies to turn around and compete with public schools.”

Hmm...I wrote a paper on this topic just a few months ago and had a very different take on it. Is it possible that I actually agree with Bush? In theory, vouchers give the people (presumably parents) the freedom of choice in the education market. Using economic principles, the equillibrium will occur where supply meets demand. In education terms this means that if parents have the freedom to express their "demands" in schools, the failing schools will close and schools that the parents want their children to attend will be forced to accommodate the demand, whether through opening new schools or expanding existing ones. Like I said before in theory this would work, but it has yet to be implemented on a large scale. Could this be the answer to the U.S. education system´s problems? Possibly, but no one policy change would be strong enough to fix all the problems we are facing.

Now using public money (the vouchers) to pay for private, or even religious schools, opens another whole can of worms, so to speak. Every child has the right to receive an appropriate education, but isn´t that what our public schools should be doing? But on the other hand, I did the research and the data shows overwhelmingly positive effects of private, even more so Catholic schools, for low income minority students. So its a tricky, sticky mess trying to sort this all out. Interesting though...very interesting...

People Who Make Me Smile (in Cartagena)

• Catalina: The 5 year old that I live with and who is going to teach me how to dance like a latina. She's become my substitute little sister, and we play games, take pictures, and dance to all kinds of music.

• The guard to the apartment building where I live: He's always so friendly and seems happy to be there, whether its at 1am or 3pm in the blazing sun.
• Eduardo, my TN manager: I swear to god, if this kid isn't in class he's doing @ work. He never stops! He's always calling this person, filling out this form, or taking care of that trainee. He has made this process so much easier and I couldn't imagine a better person to have as my manager. I have yet to figure out how he does it all without driving himself insane, but I guess that's just the life of an @er!
  
• Jenny: The woman I'm renting a room from (and Catalina's Mom): She's so patient with me and eager to help me with my Spanish. Her friendly and bubbly demeanor makes me feel more comfortable and less self conscious trying to say things in Spanish.
• Eddie the IT guy at UTB (universidad tecnologica de bolivar, the place where I work): On my very first day my boss sent me to find this Eddie from IT to help me get an email address at the uni; when i couldn't understand a word he was saying (he has by far the WORST costeno accent I've encountered yet) and he couldn't understand a word of my broken spanish, he laughed at me. Like not laughing at the situation laugh, but laughing at me. Now whenever we see each other in passing (the Manga campus where I teach is very small) he starts laughing. At first it made me uncomfortable, but now it just makes me laugh too.
  

Ups and Downs

This weekend was both excellent and rough. I had an amazing time getting to know the other trainees better on Friday while we became legally blonde aliens in colombia (not one of us classifies as blonde in my book, but they call just about any foreigner blonde), attending a make-shift despedida Friday night, shopping in bocagrande Saturday, and then giong to La Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Saturday night.

The sucky part was that I got sick and being sick is even harder when you´re so far away from home. I have this horrible cough, a sore throat, and I´m losing my voice. The cough syrup I took made me drowsy, which meant that I spent my whole Sunday in bed instead of at the beach :(

I feel like I´ve been making significant progress with my Spanish, but yesterday was like taking 5 steps backwards because I had to concentrate that much harder to understand and to speak. Its so frustrating! Anyways, I really need to work on my speaking still, but my comprehension is SOOOO much better than when I first got here. So its all coming together slowly but surely. Or as Jenny would say "a poco a poco."

My job is, ehh...coming along? I finally taught one class on Thursday, but my Monday/Wednesday class only has 2 students enrolled, so it will probably get dropped. If it does they better give me another class to teach, or else I´m going to be a bit disappointed with only teaching one class. Anyways, when I´m not teaching I´m banished to the language lab which so far equates to me being in a room full of 25 computers for hours upon hours of my life. I guess I have no excuse not to email or blog anymore...

This weekend is TRAINEE WEEKEND IN BARANQUILLA (yes, the caps were just for you Sarah) and I´m so psyched. I can only stay for the weekend because I have to teach Monday and Tuesday (boo) but at least I get to go for 3 days!! Woohoo!

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

So today is what I guess I would call my first official day of my internship. Needless to say its a bit chaotic and right now I´ve been abandoned by all the people who have been telling me what to do all day. I have no idea where they all went (lunch perhaps?), when they´ll be back, or what I´m supposed to be doing right now. All I know is that I was told to go sit in a classroom, tell the students who came in that class would begin Thursday, and start looking through the book. When I came back, the office was empty. Oh well, I guess I´ll occupy myself for a while...

I´ve been in Cartagena since Friday, which feels like both yesterday and a million years ago. The past few days has been a whirlwind of activity and adventure, all in a language that I can´t understand, despite my years and years of Spanish classes. I swear to god that the second my plane landed in Cartagena, all the Spanish I knew went back to the states because I couldn´t understand a word these costeños were saying!!! After attending an EB meeting, an exchange team meeting, and a 9 hour team builder for the OC of recruitment, I finally understand at least a little of what people are saying, but I still feel utterly and hopelessly lost most of the time. The good part is that because I´m the only trainee at this university (there are two other girls teaching at another university) I´ve been forced to improve my comprehension of costeño Spanish, and if I keep this up I should be most everything soon enough. That being said, its still frustrating to not be able to communicate with the people around you in the way you want to. Let´s just say that doing icebreakers and activities in another language is a bigger challenge than I´d ever imagine.

Ok, enough with the hard parts, let´s get to the good stuff - the SUNSHINE!!! Cartagena is absolutely beautiful!! It´s like 90 degrees and sunny all day, every day and there´s so much to see and do here that I don´t even think 6 months will be long enough! I´m so happy to finally be here and after leaving the snow in NY, I´m so happy to see the SUN!!!!

Here We GOOOO!

So I'm sitting in the airport, slightly bummed because I just said goodbye to my teary-eyed family, when I open up my computer to check my email and kill time (yay free internet!!) and see 8 emails sent from 8 different libraries and various staff members.

This morning was their "Cornell History" teambuilder and they had to decide to do something together at Cornell and last semester we had decided to do a library scavenger hunt and see if we could find all the libraries on campus. Well they decided to include me in on their fun and so I got silly little emails talking about who was annoying who, what funny things had been said, and lots of inside jokes. It made me smile and was the perfect pick-me-up I needed.

Right now I'm in Rochester, waiting for my flight to New York so that I can get my visa and see this chica before I leave for Cartagena on Thursday!

To everyone who helped me get to where I am today, thank you. Your support and motivating words have helped more than you will ever know!!

Natural disasters hit close to home

Since late last night the Rochester area has been plagued with extremely high winds that have been creating a lot of damage. Mel's already calling me a wimp for being "afraid" of wind, but this isn't just like a lot of wind and blowing branches. This is tree uprooting, house destroying kinds of winds. The local news is describing it as a "wind storm" with winds at the levels of small hurricanes. People are comparing the sound to a train going by, and the mess it leaves afterward as a war field.

My Aunt called this morning because her (rather large) glass-topped patio table, which had been flipped upside-down, covered by a tarp, and then had two cinderblocks on it to store it for the winter, had been picked up by the wind, slammed against the side of her house (thank god it wasn't her sliding glass doors or her livingroom windows...) and shattered into pieces. A neighborhood only a couple miles from my dad's house got hit the worst in the area, with huge trees crashing into houses, garages, vehicles, and sheds. A lot of areas are out of power and schools were even delayed and closed across the area.

Scary stuff, but thank god everyone is still ok.

And the countdown begins: 9 days

So its actually happening. The flights are booked and plans have been made. I'm actually going to Colombia.

I'm actually less nervous-anxious and more excited-anxious than before I bought my ticket, which surprises me. However, my family's paranoia is at an all time high. Nothing I can say seems to calm their fears and to be perfectly honest its getting to me. I can't even begin to explain the strangeness that comes with goodbye hugs and their accompanying looks that seem to simultaneously convey "I wish you wouldn't go" and "I'm thinking this is the last time I may ever see you."

Everyone says to be careful. Everyone can name 10 reasons why I shouldn't go. But they can't understand the many, many reasons why this is so important to me. I just hope my safe return will help to change their minds and start breaking down old stereotypes one person at a time. This is @ after all, and it is sort of our thing ;)