Since 2002 actual Head Start funding has been dramatically cut, while mandates and needs have grown. Public high schools have increased needs, fewer public funds and, consequently, cut classes and extracurricular activities. In this age of growing needs coupling with disasters and disappearing finances, we need the paid-for resources People’s Lobby’s American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals provides our education system and the world.
About half of those financially insecure children who qualify can’t get Headstart schooling.
Why? Because we don’t field enough Head Start teachers.
Just as young bodies need milk, young people need teaching.
Generally, secondary teachers face more diverse classrooms, increased pressures to teach to a test, fewer counselors, and less extracurricular activities. Our graduation rates, as well as science, reading, etc., scores stack up poorly against many less renowned nations. Our ability to think critically, research, and draw logical conclusions is sinking, as reflected in the news many Americans tune to and the public policies into which we lackadaisically stumble.
One of the stimulus packages we need to pave this bumpy schoolyard lies in introducing and enacting People’s Lobby citizen-initiated American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals. Sending this AWSC army is the surge our country, the world, and kids surging toward adulthood need.
How does fielding twenty-one million American volunteers addressing poverty, climate change, and ignorance over the next twenty-seven years help Headstart and our school systems?
Here’s how. With smart leadership, People’s Lobby American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals provides sufficient incentives with fair and progressive cost covering revenue streams to get a million Americans a year (about .4 of 1% of those 18-70+) off of the couch and into national and international service. http://www.worldservicecorps.us/...
These full time volunteers will have their choice of serving in such organizations as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Teacher Corps, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, State Conservation Corps, a rejuvenated Teacher Corps, etc.
So, imagine introducing and passing People’s Lobby AWSC in this Congress. Ramping up by about 140,000 per year for the next seven years, by the eighth year one million American volunteers would be serving at home or abroad for the ensuing 20 years before sun-setting would be considered. Of that one million, perhaps 50-200,000 might chose to serve in the rejuvenated Teacher Corps, Headstart, or through AmeriCorps, assisting in teaching or extracurricular activities.
Imagine how:
• Each state could use 1-4,000 of these volunteers in their schools.
• Teachers could coordinate with these AWSC volunteers to better address diversity, crowded classrooms, discipline, tutoring, special needs, etc.
• Penal institutions, like San Quentin, could use AmeriCorps and Teacher Corps teachers to expand educational opportunities and reduce recidivism.
A recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed:
• American 15-year-olds performing below the international average in mathematics, literacy, and problem solving.
• Almost half of American 17-year-olds lacking the basic understanding of math needed to qualify for a production associate's job at a modern auto plant.
• Less than 1 percent of American high school students’ study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, or Urdu—combined.
The spiraling cost of the last eight years should teach us how important critical thinking, increased productivity, and world understanding is to maintaining the health of our loved ones, as well as our economy.
Have any of us ever suffered from some extra well-intended individual attention?
Does any thinking American believe that adding full-time AWSC volunteers would harm our educational standards, productive output, and knowledge of the world?
Have you been, or are you now a teacher? Would you welcome a handful of character rich AWSC volunteers into your school, one into your classroom? If so, learn more and help by at least telling your Congressional representatives where you stand on People’s Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals. www.WorldServiceCorps.us