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Education news nuggets
CALL 911?From employees watching porn to extracurricular sex toy lessons, sex is leaking in
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Why do students have greater free-speech rights than teachers?
The Supreme Court's near-unanimous decision allowing protests at military funerals is getting a lot of attention this week, raising questions about the limits of free speech.
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Quotable & notable
?Indeed, there are virtually no documented instances of troubled schools being turned around without intervention by a powerful leader.'' * -Kenneth Leithwood, Professor, University of Toronto
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Reading is not fundamental. What you read is.
John Merrow, the sage PBS education commentator (and one of the founding fathers of the modern charter school movement [see here]), has a new blog essay devoted to what several of his readers said about a previous postof his on early reading.
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Shirts, courts, homosexuals, schools
Here's the abridged backstory: In 2006, Heidi Zamecnik, then a student at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois, arrived at school wearing a T-shirt that instructed readers to ?Be Happy, Not Gay.? The dean told Zamecnik to shed the shirt (and, presumably, to put on another one) or go home. The student declined.
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Education news nuggets
Feeling anxious about college admissions? Trying to find the best schools to study video game design?
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PODCAST: Rick rocks, Stevie Wonder-style
Mike and Rick compare GOP govs, determining who is the fairest of them all. They then think outside the box on integration before debating findings from our recent survey of Ohio supes. Amber dissects the latest science NAEP TUDA results and Chris ODs on adderall. [powerpress]
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Journalists win EWA awards
Earlier this week the Education Writers Association (EWA) announced the winners of its 2010 National Awards for Education Reporting. You can check out the list of winners here.
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Teachers and their bitter harvest
?Teachers wonder, why the heapings of scorn?? is the front page headline over a Trip Gabriel story in today's New York Times. (The web version headline was shorter, better: ?Teachers wonder, Why the scorn??)? And, indeed, teachers have been taking it on the chin of late.?
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Cuomo caves on LIFO
Though no one expected Andrew Cuomo to be a Chris Christie, the tough-talking Empire State Democrat who promised to take on the unions ? well, he blinked.?
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The Insanity: Tighten Your Belts, Providence and Detroit and Rochester?.
NPR's Morning Edition had a couple of good stories this morning: one included an interview with Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, a Democrat, defending his decision to give all the city's teachers layoff notices.
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A tiff over RIF: How to decide which teachers get fired?
Today's New York Times carries an op-ed by Samuel Culbert arguing that performance evaluations are "subjective evaluations that measure how 'comfortable' a boss is with an employee, not how much an employee contributes to overall results." If true, one implication is that it would be unwise to let managers--includin
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Mere words
Three cheers for Sean Cavanagh, who pointed out in a recent, long Education Week article that ?A set of stock phrases, sound bites, and buzzwords has come to dominate the public discourse on education, summoned reflexively, it often seems, by e
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Education news nuggets
If you're feeling discouraged about the state of our schools, look no further than thirteen-year-old Adora Svitak or
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Quotable & notable
??[Miami Central Senior High School] epitomizes the turnaround process? this is a school where miracles have taken place.'' * - Alberto Carvalho, Superintendent, Miami-Dade Schools
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Are pensions underfunded?
Education Sector's Chad Aldeman has posted the results of a thought experiment he ran trying to prove that states' assumptions about 8 percent returns on their pension portfolios are not overly optimistic.
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First ever: Education Next Book Club Podcast
Check out the first ever Education Next Book Club Podcast!
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Quotable & notable
?I definitely think that students need to get involved in decision-making on a deeper level, beyond simply being on an associated student government or student council.'' * - Adora Svitak, Child prodigy writer and poet
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CAP, Ed Trust, and federal policy foolishness
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="201" caption="Photo by Westside Shooter"][/caption]
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Memories of David Kearns
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="190" caption="Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times"][/caption]
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Quotable & notable
?For more than 30 years, spending has risen while performance stayed relatively flat. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more'' * - Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
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Finn on NBC and ABC
Fordham's president, Chester E. Finn, Jr., has been in front of the camera a lot lately.
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Talkin' some more about U.S. history standards
As you probably know, we recently released a?new study,?The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011). Our reviewers, historians Sheldon M.
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Teachers Speak
My ?`Great Teacher' Trap? (GTT) post from last week elicited some comments from teachers that I think warrant some more discussion.? The GTT was my take on the Carnegie Corporation's ?talent strategy?
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Bloomberg loses the thread on unions
I nearly choked on my morning coffee when I read this quote from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's New York Times op-ed on public sector unions:
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The Story in Indiana
For those of you following the public union fights in the Midwest, I recommend Steven Greenhouse's story in today's New York Times.?
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Fire em all!
For better or worse, the current public employee union battles are forcing many educators to confront some deep (shall we say existential?) questions.? As Mike pointed out yesterday, DFERS especially, ?are struggling to figure out what to say about Wisconsin.?