SpicaBooks.Com/Education.html

20 Sep 09 - SpicaBooks.Com/Education.html

New Mexico Education - Copyright 1999-2009 by Andrew Homer - Webmeister StarHeart Web Designs
Improve Education
“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.”
– Eric Hoffer, American Philosopher
Fund Pre-K
Fund the Head Start program
"An investment in a book is always a wise investment." - Ben Franklin
"He who opens a new school door closes a prison." - Victor Hugo
"Teachers who are cookie cutters are not what we need. We need teachers who are creative and empowered." - Joel I. Klein, New York City schools chancellor, on implementing a new systemwide curriculum.
Factoids
65% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 can't find Great Britain on a map. 11% can't find the United States on a map. - National Geographic
Pentagon schools provided for children on U.S. military bases have closer average achievement scores between minority students and white students than anywhere else in America.
Public school attendance rose 16% from 1988 to 1998.
Nationwide, America will need 2 million teachers in the next 10 years.
100,000 students take a gun to school everyday in America. 200,000 students stay home everyday, because they fear of being shot. 13 students are killed everyday in school.
Major Universities Founded Before 1900
Ideas
Charter and magnet schools.
Have parents choose which school their children attend, not the state.
The smaller class size, the better.
If there has to be cuts in funding art teaching, then let the last cut be in music. Students who sing or learn a musical instrument improve their grades in math and science.

Software Tycoon Pledges Riches to Cyber Campus
by Sue Pleming, March 16, 2000, Washington (Reuters) -

The only way Michael Saylor could afford to go to college was with a scholarship. Now the Internet software billionaire plans to use some of his newfound riches to create a free cyber university.

Unveiling his ambitious plans at a philanthropy summit in Washington on Thursday, the president of Internet software company MicroStrategy Inc (MSTR.O). pledged $100 million of his own money to launch an online university he hopes will educate tens of millions of people worldwide.

"I have a big love of education. I could not afford it," Saylor, 35, told the meeting. "I owe a debt to society because they educated me."

Saylor, whose company has its headquarters just outside Washington, is the latest hi-tech billionaire to funnel some of his wealth to educational charities. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has the wealthiest charity in his class and has pledged more than $1 billion in scholarships to minorities.

Saylor's is a classic hi-tech rags-to-riches story.

Just 17 months ago, he had a bank loan for $11 million but a successful public offering last year changed Saylor's fortunes and now he is worth billions. MicroStrategy's stock has rocketed in less than a year from $7 a share to a year-high of $333. On Wednesday it closed at $268.

"Yesterday I lost a billion dollars. It's actually quite exciting to be able to say I lost a billion dollars. I never thought I would get to that point in my life. Now I have got to thinking what can I do with all of this money," he said.

Saylor said his family never had much money but always managed to give a little away. "When I graduated from high school we probably had $7,000 in life savings and didn't even own a house."

He received a Defense Department scholarship to go to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and for this, said he was eternally grateful.

Saylor said the Internet had changed the way people thought about the world and had caused him to revise his views about education. "It may be possible in the 21st century to make education free for everybody, everywhere (via the Internet)." Conceding his mass education plan is in its infancy, Saylor pledged the $100 million as a down payment for the project, starting with state-of-the art digital video studios where the world's "best and brightest" would deliver lectures free of charge. "Let's make TV what it ought to be, which is not a 15-minute sound bite ...

Let's get Bill Clinton to stand up and speak for 10 hours on what it's like to be president at the end of the 20th century," he said.

Saylor said he would build "posting facilities" to make the video available to people with access to the Internet. Next he would campaign governments to ensure that broad-band Internet video access became an "entitlement", much like water. He also planned to speak to corporations to get them to fund departments at the cyber university.

"I think this is such a good idea that it will be hard for people not to make money," he said.

Saylor said he had not yet worked out practical details, but he anticipated the online courses would provide students with certified credits.

Brushing aside criticism that a university was more than "canned lectures" and that his plan would take away some of the atmosphere in a hall of learning, Saylor said his aim was to provide education to people in the most efficient way possible.

He appealed to educators to support his project, which he said would take 99 percent of the cost out of education and still keep much of the value.

Saylor said he hoped to have some test sites up and running within the next year, adding that he had spoken to the Department of Housing and Urban Development which might sponsor some of these sites in underprivileged areas.