Monday, August 18, 2008

LA Gardening Program in Danger

Los Angeles Times staff writer Jennifer Oldham tells about an interesting, but like many other school programs today, endangered gardening program in Los Angeles in L.A. Unified's gardening program may be uprooted.

Environmental Education in California

Two views of educational recovery in New Orleans surfaced recently. The first, Technology key to New Orleans school revival, tells of using technology to help improve schools in New Orleans. The second, A Teachable Moment, presents a less optimistic view, but is an interesting story.

A Little Fun

A posting on the eduwonkette blog last Friday led me to a delightful video about Klona, a superteacher who can do it all, on the After Ed site. "After Ed is a web-based video channel produced by EdLab at Teachers College, Columbia University." Klona is a first year teacher who magically clones herself to do all the things necessary every day to be a successful teacher.

Report on Birmingham OLPC 1:1 Laptop Initiative

Christine Van Dusen tells a bit about Birmingham's laptop initiative in Low-cost laptop experiment under way. The Birmingham schools piloted around a thousand of the OLPC XO computers this summer. They've now gone ahead with the purchase of 14,000 more of the low-cost computers for all Birmingham students. Dusen highlights many of the challenges of implementing such a program.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Denver Merit Pay Plan

Stephanie Simon has an interesting story about some bargaining problems in the Denver merit pay plan. In Denver Teachers Object to Changes in Pay-for-Performance Plan in a rare, free Wall Street Journal post, Simon relates that the plan "stands on the verge of collapse after months of contract negotiations have stalemated." She continues:

The district is offering large increases in incentive pay. But the biggest rewards will go to early- and midcareer teachers -- and to those willing to take risks by working in impoverished schools or taking jobs few others want, such as teaching middle-school math. Yearly bonuses for such work would nearly triple, to about $3,000.

The union is all for boosting bonuses but also wants an across-the-board pay increase. Most crucially, union leadership objects to proposed changes that would hold down the salaries of veteran teachers to free more money for novices.

An interesting graphic in the column from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association breaks down the current performance pay incentives.

1. Earned a graduate degree - $3,201
2. Got a satisfactory evaluation - $1.067
3. Worked in a tough school - $1.067
4. Took a hard-to-staff job - $1.067
5. Raised student test scores - $1.067
6. Worked on professional skills - $711
7. Worked in a school with strong academic growth - $711
8. Met two student-growth goals - $356

Also interesting is a blog posting from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association President, Kim Ursetta:

As we discussed at the AR meeting, this is not just another squabble over what the COLA will be. If we are successful, we will make some modest salary gains, but if we accept the caps, quotas, and capricious bonuses DPS is trying to push off, we stand to lose $300,000 in career earnings and about $14,000 a year in retirement. Anyone who looks at the facts can see it's bad for teachers, bad for students, and bad for Denver Public Schools.

Transfer Option of NCLB Hollow in D.C.

Bill Turque writes in yesterday's Washington Post that the D.C. School Choice Program Offers Few Options. Turque notes that "in a system filled with failing schools, parental choice can be a hollow proposition. Perhaps that's why officials reported Friday that they had received just 34 applications for transfer.

An Essay on Technology in Schools

Steve Lohr's essay, At School, Technology Starts to Turn a Corner, in the New York Times tells of teachers using the New Technology model from the New Technology Foundation to improve instruction. Lohr writes, "I have always thought that the people who advocate putting computers in classrooms as a way to transform education were well intentioned but wide of the mark." He goes on to say that it may be time to reconsider his previous views, as "There are promising examples, both in the United States and abroad, and they share some characteristics. The ratio of computers to pupils is one to one. Technology isn’t off in a computer lab. Computing is an integral tool in all disciplines, always at the ready."

For those of us who have seen how integrating technology into our curriculum can help students (and parents...and the teacher:-), we know that technology isn't THE TOOL, but it is one more tool that we can effectively integrate into our bag of teacher tools to help our kids.

An Interesting Proposal for Teacher Certification

Veteran educator Walt Gardner has another good article about teaching in Weigh teachers' ability to teach above paperwork in the San Francisco Chronicle. He writes about the "formidable obstacles" in currently required to attain teacher certification in many states, especially in California. He offers this rather provocative and simple alternative:

Require all candidates to teach a group of students in their respective subject field before a panel of judges with certification in the same subject area and with at least five years of recent classroom experience.

Asparagus

I wrote last May about growing asparagus from seed. Doing so takes an extra year (or two, as in our case) when compared to buying and planting asparagus roots.

We could have done a light picking this year from our patch, but it had really suffered last summer from dry weather and lack of care (from me). So we manured and mulched heavily last winter and this spring and now have a thriving asparagus patch that will support good pickings for years to come.

While still talking gardening, I recently added a couple of garden shots to the Desktop Photos page that make great wallpapers or desktop images.

Grape Tomatoes	Petunias (mostly:-)

Today's Posting

Today's posting, along with postings to several other pages on this and another site, were substantially delayed due to connectivity problems. I'm getting pretty well worn out from the frequent outages we expereince in our internet "service" from Wild Blue. I finally gave up and simply used my old dialup account to make the posting!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

NYC Cash for Test Plan Falters

An item I'd written a bit about last March is in the news again. New York City's privately funded initiative that pays students a bonus for passing Advanced Placement tests isn't showing the results that had been hoped for. Articles from the Associated Press, NYC cash-for-tests program shows mixed results, and the New York Times, Mixed Results on Paying City Students to Pass Tests, both relate that the passing rate dropped slightly this year despite the cash rewards of up to $1000 for the highest score classification.

Homework and Calculators

ScienceDaily has a couple of articles this week that I found interesting. I'm not sure either tells us something we didn't already know. Tons of homework may not be the best way to go, and calculators are not such a bad idea if the kids already know their facts. But it's nice to see some research backing up such opinions.

• Piling On The Homework: Does It Work For Everyone?
• Calculators Okay In Math Class, If Students Know The Facts First, Study Finds

Tips for Teachers

Gail Tillery has an excellent article for old and new teachers in Teacher Magazine this week: Teaching Secrets: Take Charge of Your Classroom. Her tips aren't anything really new, but it's sure a good review before starting a new school year.

Friday, August 22, 2008

A Week About Incentives

It seems this week's news is dominated by news of incentive programs. On Tuesday, news came of problems with the much heralded Denver merit pay program for teachers. On Thursday, the news was about the disappointing results of New York City's cash for AP test scores program. Today comes the story that Washington, D.C. Schools' Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is starting a cash for attendance and behavior rewards program for half of D.C.'s middle schools. V. Dion Haynes and Michael Birnbaum tell the story in D.C. Tries Cash as a Motivator In School. They write, "Beginning in October, 3,000 students at 14 middle schools will be eligible to earn up to 50 points per month and be paid $2 per point for attending class regularly and on time, turning in homework, displaying manners and earning high marks."

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