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Education News Nuggets
If you want to know more about American Education Week, you can read up on its history here; and be sure to check out the accompanying
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Quotable & Notable
?Yes, there have been gains [for 12th grade], and they're significant, but overall, the results are still disappointing, especially in comparison to the big gains at 4th and 8th grade.'' [In regard to recently released 12th grade NAEP scores] *
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Thanks but no thanks, NAEP
The latest 12th grade National Assessment results (from 2009), released this morning, show small (but statistically significant) upticks over the past four years in both reading and math, both in ?scale scores? and in the percentages of young people deemed ?proficient.? In math, there's been a slow but persistent rise, of which these new results are part.
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Blame the students
Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University and author of The Dumbest Generation (a reference to my generation, of course, not his), reviews in the November issue of Commentary a book by Robert Weissberg titled Bad Students, Not Bad Schools.
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`All together now' meets differentiated instruction
I walked out of a sixth-grade classroom yesterday with my head spinning, having watched a long discussion, lead by a veteran teacher, about why little Mary was upset and couldn't concentrate on her math. I was stunned, but not surprised; thanks to Mary's problem, none of the class was learning math!
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The rubber starts meeting the road: Class size in NYC
Mike reported yesterday on Arne Duncan's ?red-hot?
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Much to do with NEA dues
As union membership can still be mandatory in twenty-eight states across the country, many union members have grown used to their dues money being taken straight from their paychecks.? But how many of them actually know what that money goes toward??
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Arne Duncan wants to stretch the school dollar
Longtime Flypaper readers might remember the old Reform-o-Meter, in which I would rate the Obama Administration's efforts on school reform, from ice-cold to red-hot.
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Quotable & Notable
?How do we go to a child, a student in the system and urge them to study and work hard and then say when the big jobs come up, if you don't go to the right cocktail party, you're not going to be considered.? * ?Patrick J. Sullivan, Member, Panel for Educational Policy, New York City Board of Education
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Thanks but no thanks, NAEP
We hear that the latest 12th grade National Assessment results (from 2009), being released tomorrow, will show small (but statistically significant) upticks over the past four years in both reading and math, both in ?scale scores? and in the percentages of young people deemed ?proficient.? In math, there's been a slow but persistent rise, of which these new results are part.
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Faster
In a longish op-ed in the Telegram, John McTernan, a former political secretary to Tony Blair, writes that the UK's new, Tory secretary of state for education is not moving with sufficient vigor to save the nation's schools.
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Interesting blog post
Oh, wait?did I write ?interesting?? Sorry. I meant ?idiotic.? Want to know what's wrong with America's schools? Teachers who write stuff like this (make sure not to miss the parts about his way-cool band!). Here are some choice bits (emphasis mine):
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Did you know?
We're in the midst of American Education Week, apparently. The Huffington Post tells us that this celebration (commemoration? lamentation?) was ?co-sponsored?
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Competition Works!
This is the conclusion of David Figlio and Cassandra Hart in their new study of Florida's pioneering Tax Credit Scholarship Program (FTC) for Education Next.
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Plain (N)CATE and bonny (N)CATE and sometimes (N)CATE the cursed
While Mike has quickly filed the National Council for Accreditation of Teachers' report issued yesterday in the Unimpressive folder, I'm not so eager to negatively judge.
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Quality education should trump district damage control
In order to fully understand the magnitude of claims that districts don't collaborate very well with charter schools, despite much clamor
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NCATE: Re-arranging deck chairs on the ed school Titanic
For at least a week now, I've been receiving breathless emails from the folks promoting NCATE's new report that calls for teacher education to be ?turned upside down.? The message was clear: this is a big deal, a turning point, a ?seismic moment.?
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Cincinnati's magnet schools: Of campfires and enrollment apps
What should you do to give your child the best education possible? If you're a parent in Cincinnati, Ohio, the answer may be to take a camping trip.
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Education News Nuggets
Have you made it through the nine circles of high school hell? Well, you'll be happy to know that more trouble awaits in college.
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Quotable & Notable
?The whole field of teacher education needs nothing less than a top-to-bottom restructuring.'' [In regard to new teacher prep report]
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How to get better leaders for America's schools
Review: A New Approach to Principal Preparation: Innovative Programs Share Their Practices and Lessons Learned
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In Memoriam: Lovett (Pete) Peters, 1913-2010
Pete Peters passed away last Thursday at age 97, after a long, fruitful, philanthropic, visionary and gutsy life. After a successful business career, he turned?at age 75!?to the ?war of ideas,?
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Corporate takeover! Democracy abandoned!
Paul Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, writes in the Guardian newspaper's Comment Is Free section of a corporate takeover of U.S.
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Ugly in the Garden State
James O'Keefe?you know, the young guy who dressed up like a pimp and, with his hidden camera, took down ACORN and then was arrested for trespassing in Senator Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office?is back.
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Grab the popcorn
Waiting for ?Superman? is not the only education-reform documentary out there. Race to Nowhere, a film co-directed by Vicki Abeles and Jessica Congdon, posits not that America's schools can be too aimless, too lax, but that they can be too intense, too demanding.
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The Flip Side of Cracking the Code: Dispelling Some Myths
Education Trust just awarded Dispelling the Myth trophies to four schools that prove, as the award name suggests, that you don't have to rehabilitate parents, clean up the neighborhood or solve society's problems before you can educate children.?
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If this isn't a spending bubble, what is?
Rutgers education professor Bruce Baker thinks I'm getting all bubbly when I claim that there's been a spending bubble
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Education News Nuggets
Don't worry about the exodus of veteran officials and staffers from the NYC Department of Education,
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Quotable & Notable
?The national spread of parent trigger will also demonstrate how the campaign for choice in education?once a predominately conservative and Republican interest?has gone bipartisan.? David Feith, Assistant Editorial Features Editor, Wall Street Journal
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Reform realism redux
Not long after the 2008 election, Mike Petrilli and I penned an ?open letter? to the new powers that be in Washington, suggesting an approach to ESEA/NCLB reauthorization that we termed ?reform realism.?