Recently State Education Commissioner Roger Breed shared the information below with the Northeast Nebraska Superintendents. It shows that Math scores in the United States have continued to improve over the past forty years and the graduation rate has increased, yet confidence in public education is half what it was in 1970. It is hard to understand why people are so down on public education.
Most people give their own local schools high marks when asked how they are doing. The problems seems to be those "other schools" out there that are not doing a good job. The finger pointing is usually at large urban schools that face the problems of educating low income, high minority populations of students.
It is obvious that Public Schools have not done a good job of pointing out their success stories. So when given the opportunity, I will share some of the good things we have going at B-R.
Last week I saw Greg Vanderweil, Assistant Professor of Industrial Technology Education at Wayne State College. He talked up the three B-R students that are doing well in the Industrial Technology program at Wayne. He said he wants to keep the "pipeline" going. There is a shortage of "shop" teachers in Nebraska. Mr. Smith gets the credit for being a good model for our students and getting them interested in teaching Industrial Technology.
