Douglas Westfall is an author, publisher, and educator and has published America’s history for over 24 years. Douglas has taught throughout the United States, Canada, The Philippines, Latin America, and Europe. As an educator, he has developed curricula from the fourth grade through community college levels, and offers presentations to grade schools for free. He has chaired the Boards of Libraries, History Centers, and the Southern California Library Co-operative plus has been on the boards of Community Colleges. Actively involved in the curation of historic archives and photographic collections, he donates frequently to museums and archives in California. By dveloping his own works, he maintains the control over the quality and content of his material, and brings these to the public through his lectures and presentations.

 

PARAGON SCHOOLS
Proposal

(click here)

PROPOSAL

Develop an education program based upon traditional curricula, specifically for California, to create a system that will incorporate home-schooled, virtual-schooled, and brick-and-mortar students using a local computer cloud structure within each district.

OVERVIEW

The rationale here is to replicate and amplify the success of the past 140 years of schooling within the United States that essentially started with the Chautauqua Summer Schools in 1874 and couple that with the advances available today in modern virtual schools.

This program will allow the advancement of education within the classroom, while allowing the inclusion of existing home & virtual students, thereby increasing the ADA of schools and districts to 99%. At the same time, computer based curricula will allow each student to work at their own level, while the teacher within each classroom can spend more time with students that require additional help.

Also, the administration of each student, classroom and school can effectively be reduced, probably to 10% of previous requirements. Attendance, participation, homework, quizzes, testing, papers, and projects can be handled via computerized curricula, yet the personal attention of teachers will always be present even to those students at home: home-schooled, virtual, ailing, traveling, and simply absentee.

DEFINITION

Ideally, use a previous representative curricula and develop the programming around specific content to foster a higher success rate among grade promotion, high school graduation, and matriculation into college. The best estimation for success of this type of education, would be to cultivate a system where lower grades would not be subject to higher-level curricula as is done today.

DESCRIPTION

Encompassing this system, Primary grades would not be subject to higher-level curricula as is done today. Middle school would carry a heavier load specifically in traditional courses. High school would then be more individualized programs based upon teacher recommendation, scholastic aptitude, and student desires. This is foremost because of the recognition of cognitive learning abilities at and after age eight, and individual learning capabilities on and above age 15.

Primary schools would keep the same scheduling they have today with the constrains that a student at any age, not be in school more than 1 less than their age at the entry of each year. Courses in Middle schools would be run similarly to colleges, with up to three hours per course per day. Classes would be one, two, or three days in scheduling and semesters would be the same as is today. High School courses however, would take on a new form of three to six hours per day per course, five days per week for up to two weeks when the 'semester' would cycle and a new course be taken by students with the same structure.

Primarily, programming would be structured and built specifically for localized cloud computing and based within each district. The secondary reason for this is the implementation of unique and different courses within each district such as foreign language, forensic science, or anthropology, which may be available at one district but not another. As well, courses found in one district could be made available to one or more students in another district, even hundreds of miles apart.

Within marketing surveys of parents of virtual students, many find great appeal for the flexible schedules, curricula based programming, and constant connection to their teachers. This shows we need to be responsive to the new ideals of computerized schooling.

Young people centered around the age of 20 desire knowledge, involvement, and experience in American education systems. This means there is at least a decade of students who require a better education now. As this population ages, their involvement in society will change the personality of America.

SUMMARY

Capitalize on the virtual school concepts, implement that over traditional school curricula, and develop local cloud computing within each school district in California. This will increase ADA, yet reduce administration requirements.

Bring back the arts, field trips, and in-classroom visitors for Primary grades. Revitalize physical education, reintroduce technical subjects, and return artistic courses to the curricula in Middle schools. Structure High school to allow industrial arts, 'domestic sciences', and alternative classes, actually instead of higher requirements in mathematics, sciences, and foreign languages. Teach the 'Whole Child'.

Understand that the desire of a vast number of young Americans in California, is to graduate high school. Yet they require a new beginning for their education, for we have now taken our schools to the lowest level of success, by introducing toddlers to education designed for older children, forcing moderate students to retake entire years of schooling, and allowing the smallest percentage of high school graduates in over a century.

The best estimation for success of this type of education program, would be to cultivate a system where lower grades would not be subject to higher-level curricula as is done today.

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