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Boards of Education |
Questions for school board candidates from "Issues and Action in Education", an e-letter of EdWatch, a non profit organization in Minnesota October 11, 2005
Following are some suggested questions to use to help evaluate your school board candidates. If you have a good candidate to support, please do what you can to help them get elected.
ACADEMICS
- Do you support schools giving primary emphasis to teaching basic skills (e.g. reading, grammar, spelling, traditional arithmetic) rather than social activism or psychological matters?
- Do you support the use of intensive, systematic phonics to teach children how to read from kindergarten on and in special ed?
- Do you support the goal that children should be able to read by the end of the first grade?
- Do you support teaching abstinence as the norm for unmarried teenagers and as the only truly effective way to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases?
- Do you support teaching that the use of illegal drugs and the unlawful use of alcohol are "wrong"?
- Do you believe the topics of homosexuality and alternative lifestyles should be excluded from the classroom?
- Do you reject classroom instruction that undermines American sovereignty, limited constitutional government, or private enterprise?
- Do you reject programs that promote an over-emphasis on vocations in elementary school and that encourage or require students to choose a career path by 8th grade?
- Do you support academic programs for middle and high performing students to complement the NCLB focus on low-performing students?
- Do you oppose global curricula that promote world citizenship? (Examples, International Baccalaureate, the GLOBE program, the Center for Civic Education's curriculum)
- Do you support teaching the scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific principles such as evolution?
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Chaska, MN 55318
952-361-4931