Education news nuggets
Yes, things are changing. Wiki's are certainly making the grade?even 5-year olds get i-Pads to ensure success.
Yes, things are changing. Wiki's are certainly making the grade?even 5-year olds get i-Pads to ensure success.
?Teachers want to be evaluated fairly and we want to be evaluated on the things that really matter.'' * ?Michelle Shearer, 2011 Teacher of the Year
A few days ago Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari, founders, according to their official ID, of the 826 National tutoring centers and producers of the documentary ?American Teacher,?
Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the wealthiest and highest-performing large school districts in the country, is likely to reduce its level of per-pupil spending, in violation of a state maintenance of effort requirement. This means giving up an estimated $29 million in state aid in 2013:
The U.S. didn't triumph over terrorism today but its brave fighting men won a crucial battle when they rid the world of Osama bin Laden. Bravo for them?and may his soul suffer eternal damnation.
?Working together, we can transform teaching from the factory model designed over a century ago to one built for the information age. We can build an accountability system based on data we trust and a standard that is honest...
According to today's New York Times Chris Christie went to ?the heart of liberal darkness? yesterday ? and kept his cool.?
Alfie Kohn is the latest to weigh in on ?the pedagogy of poverty,? as he calls it, with his ?How Education Reform Traps Poor Children? commentary in Education Week ?
Mopati Morake will graduate shortly from Williams College. He was born in Botswana but finished high school in Hong Kong.
There will be no more crying over spilled strawberry and chocolate milk in some schools, but at least you can get
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Click to watch a video of this commentary, as part of Fordham's recent event Are School Boards Vital in the 21st Century?"]
Education ?reforms? abound today, yet the sluggish pace of actual changes wrought by those new policies, programs, and practices demands a fresh look at public education's basic structures and operating arrangements. What America needs in the twenty-first century is a far more fundamental approach to ?re-forming? K-12 education. Our ?marble cake?
?It's not about giving up on public schools but it is about acknowledging that right now, when you step back, [only] 8 percent of low-income kids can expect to get a bachelor's degree by the time they're 24. ...
Andrew Rotherham turns in a nice column for Time magazine in which he reports on the findings of a study of the rates of college completion by graduates of the Knowledge is Power Program.
Great news! There is a new honorable title for schools?a ?Green Ribbon' school.
Mike and Janie look into the crystal ball of edu-policy, making predictions on the sustainability of the local school board, potential backlash to reform, and the market's role in education. Amber blows holes in the teacher-quality-gap line of reasoning and Chris gets salty about pepper spray. [powerpress]
?There is not a single school factor that has more of an effect on student learning than teacher quality. It's more important than shrinking class sizes or building state-of-the-art science labs.''*
In case you missed it, here is the video of our April 26 event, Are Local School Boards Vital in 21st Century America? It was a great discussion; o
In a generally positive profile of Jean-Claude Brizard, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel's pick for new Chicago school system chief, the Sun-Times applauds the nominee for ?the charismatic way?
While Trump's claims that Obama was a student in Advanced mis-Placement are undeniably sill
?To provide more choice for parents, you need to create more options. ... It shouldn't be limited to just those at the poverty level.''* ?Robert Behning, State Representative, Indiana
Forgetting for a moment the perhaps unfortunate coinincidence of another Bush governor taking his state education formula national (remember NCLB?), we have a pleasant story in today's Times about former Florida governor Jeb Bush traveling the country talking education.?
Depending on which ?listening tour' you're tuned into, you might hear about students playing Bridge or the
"There is so much more to being able to teach urban students than certification.''* ?Jeff House, Principal of Achievement First Middle School in Hartford Connecticut
In his most recent missive (published today in Ed Week), Alfie Kohn decries "the pedagogy of poverty," i.e.: the way many poor children are taught in traditional public and public charter schools around the nation. He complains:
Unfortunately, in his Limits of School Reform essay this morning, the newest op-ed columnist for the Times, Joe Nocera, shows the limits of logic in thinking about the subject ? or writing about it.? After throwing up the standard straw men ?
Though Mike wouldn't allow me anywhere near today's Fordham event, Are Local School Boards Vital in 21st Century America? I will answer the question here: Yes, more so than ever.?
The Fordham panel on school boards this afternoon, most of which I caught on the web, was an important one and I recommend it to anyone interested in school governance issues. (We were told that the video should be available on the Fordham website by Thursday).
We don't often talk about the political risk borne by public-sector workers in traditional pension systems, but that risk is now very real for cops and firefighters in Detroit.