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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Daily Kos: Another sign of what is wrong in public education

Daily Kos: Another sign of what is wrong in public education:


Another sign of what is wrong in public education

is the desperate need for money as local and state governments either see tax revenues dropping (from depressed house prices and sales taxes or from deliberate attempts to starve revenues as Republicans slash tax rates on corporations and the wealthy).  We have seen schools and districts selling naming rights to football stadiums, we have seen charging of fees for participation in athletics and other extracurricular activities.
This week the system in which I taught for 17 years before retiring in June went a step further, as we learned in aWashington Post story titled Prince George’s considers copyright policy that takes ownership of students’ work
The article begins as follows:
A proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual.
I will not quote extensively from the article.  I want to discuss separately the two issues