Monday, August 24, 2009

PULLING TAX MONEY FROM RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS TO FINANCE IMPROVED TEACHER TRAINING

** Belize rural school house.
** Belize rural school children.

TEACHER TESTING AND MONEY FOR PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN BELIZE

The question is: what are we doing about fixing our appalling educational system at the PRIMARY SCHOOL level in Belize? (70% DROPOUT RATE before finishing primary school.)
We have buckets of tests to tell us which schools and which teachers are failing our young people. The kids take the tests and then we can see where the school administration and teacher talents are failing.
The question is: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
How do we debate and handle this situation? Since our tax dollars are financing both the school administration ( most of which are religious schools ) and the teachers who are failing our children, how can we apply the money incentive, or money control, to improve the situation? If school management is a RELIGIOUS control problem, then maybe the money should be pulled from failing schools?
We can talk about training teachers and of course we should do that. Should we pull the money from a failing school and instead have it applied to the particular district village for a teacher training program for new teachers? How do we use the tax money being spent, to improve the product of education at a village level? Can we stimulate better teacher hiring and training and school administration by using the money we spend from tax dollars? There must be ways in Belize? What are the options? Something should certainly be done, but what?

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