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Late Update: Arne Duncan Selected for Secretary of Education Multiple news outlets are reporting this evening that President-Elect Barack Obama will name Arne Duncan tomorrow as his choice for Secretary of Education. Duncan, who is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools, is considered by many as a middle of the road choice, acceptable to both hard-line school reformers and national teachers' unions. Choose your favorite news outlet to read all about it!
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More on Secretary of Education Prospects Education writers and bloggers have pretty well beaten the subject of President-Elect Obama's possible Secretary of Education choice to death. Many are setting up "us vs. them" scenarios of brave, bold, union-bashing reformers versus lazy, incompetent, union classroom teachers, or dedicated, overworked classroom teachers versus reformers bent on destroying public education. Sam Dillon, writing in the New York Times, brings a little fresher view to the discussion in his piece, Uncertainty on Obama Education Plans. He tells of Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, framing the debate in some interesting terms.
While Fuller's comments may lean toward the "dedicated, overworked classroom teachers" group, I think he may be accurate. Sadly, a lot of the school reform crowd who advocate school vouchers, charter schools, the elimination of teacher tenure, and getting rid of "bad teachers" are people who haven't been in the classroom full-time for a very long time. I really hope the President-Elect finds a way to get some input from real teachers in the classroom. That may prove difficult, as those folks are generally too busy teaching to have the time to think about school reform on a national level.
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Chicago's Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education Nominee President-Elect Barack Obama announced in a news conference this morning that Arne Duncan, head of the Chicago Public Schools, will be his nominee for Secretary of Education. Time Magazine's Kathleen Kingsbury has an insightful article about the pick of Duncan in Will Arne Duncan Shake Up America's Schools? Sam Dillon's first paragraph in Schools Chief From Chicago Is Cabinet Pick in the New York Times may sum up the wisdom of the choice:
Some of our nation's schools are in desperate need of renovation and reform. It appears the President-Elect's plans for economic recovery that includes school renovation and greening and his reasoned pick for Secretary of Education signal a positive future for education in this country. Some Recommendations for NCLB Maria Glod had an interesting and different article about NCLB in yesterday's Washington Post. How to Go Forward With No Child Left Behind contains comments from "a student, a PTA president, a charter school advocate, a teachers union leader and a superintendent" about how to improve the the No Child Left Behind Law. Their ideas are quite interesting. Something New in Solar Flares? Solar Flare Surprise on Science@NASA tells of "a stream of perfectly intact hydrogen atoms shooting out of an X-class solar flare" where "not a single atom should remain intact." I like to include Dr. Tony Phillips's Science@NASA postings here on Educators' News because they present good science in an interesting way, are written at a reading level appropriate for many middle and most high school students, and are available in both English and Spanish web and audio formats. In other words, they're tailor made for use by students. Day After SecEd Announcement News Today's education news is naturally dominated by articles about President-Elect Obama's announcement yesterday of Arne Duncan as his nominee for Secretary of Education. Most of the reports are quite positive, as the selection of Duncan appears to be acceptable to most education factions around the country. Of course, Obama hasn't yet taken office, and Duncan hasn't been confirmed. One actually has to hunt a bit through old postings to find anyone writing anything nasty about Duncan!
Yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible shot of the constellation Orion with Mount Nemrut and the ruins of ancient statues in the foreground. New Superintendent for Los Angeles Schools It's a little weird to have to read about LASUD naming a new superintendent first in the New York Times: California: New Schools Chief in Los Angeles. With the Tribune Company in bankruptcy (It owns the LA Times as well as the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and others.), RSS education feeds from the Los Angeles Times just flat out stopped. The Times does report that Ramon Cortines will assume control of the Los Angeles Schools on January 1 in Cortines hired to lead L.A. schools. Cortines will face stiff challenges in inheriting leadership one of the nation's largest urban school systems. His task may get even tougher if the California assembly follows the Republican plan announced on Monday to "cut deeply into education spending and dip into voter-approved funds intended to pay for mental health services and children's health care" to balance California's budget. Watch That Mac OS X 10.5.6 Update Educators' News dropped any pretense of being a Mac-centric site years ago, although I still publish it almost exclusively on an old Mac G5 tower. But to the remaining Mac-toting educators visiting the site, let me post a word of caution about Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.6 update that was released on Monday. There are a whole bunch of horror stories online about machines not rebooting properly after users applied the update! It would appear that most folks who got in trouble with it used Apple's Software Update to download a flawed installer. The larger Combo Update appears to be a bit less troubled, although reports of problems after using it do exist as well. If you've experienced problems after applying the update (and can still get online), MacFixIt and MacInTouch have suggestions that may prove helpful. I finished editing today's update in Leopard 10.5.6 after applying the combo update without any adverse issues.
And yes, the flower image on my Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.6) desktop is available for download on my Desktop Photos page. While most area schools today are on a delay or closed because of icy roads, it's still summertime on the Educators' News desktop!
Homes Wanted for Retired Space Shuttles
It seems NASA has posted an RFI about donating the shuttles to museums, education institutions, etc., after they are retired in 2010. Don't start preparing your document just yet, as NASA estimates the cost of receiving a retired shuttle at around $42 million! "The projected price tag does not include the provision of an indoor, climate-controlled facility to house the shuttle, which NASA requires. Nor does it come with the orbiter's three space shuttle main engines."
Regressive Autistic Spectrum Disorder Article ScienceDaily has a good posting about regressive autistic spectrum disorder (RASD) in When It's More Than The Terrible Twos. California 8th Grade Algebra Test on Hold California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell finally won a round in his ongoing battle with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Board of Education. Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang "issued a preliminary injunction against a new state policy requiring all eighth-graders to be tested in algebra." O'Connell has been fighting budget cuts for education had also brought a suit alleging the state's new requirement for eighth-graders to take the Algebra I test "didn't give enough public notice before its vote and stepped outside its legal authority in making the decision." Jill Tucker, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle in Court blocks state algebra requirement, notes that "O'Connell's opposition to the requirement has been more firmly grounded in his belief that state schools wouldn't be able to get kids ready for the requirement without significant resources - up to $3.1 billion for more teachers and remedial instruction, among other costs." Report on "Shaming Kids" From ScienceDaily and others comes a report that students with low self-esteem may not "feel the need to protect their punctured egos" with violent or anti-social behaviors in Shaming Some Kids Makes Them More Aggressive. "A study published in the December issue of Child Development finds that early adolescents with high self-esteem are more likely to react aggressively when they feel ashamed than their peers with lower levels of self-esteem." I'm really not sure shaming anyone is a very good idea. Help on Mac OS X 10.5.6 update Apple Computer has posted a help page for those users who experienced problems installing the Mac OS X 10.5.6 upgrade in Software Update stops responding during "Configuring installation". Busy Week I just sent a Christmas card to a friend from my teaching days with a comment wondering how we found the time for work before retirement! This week began for me with two days of subbing in a moderate-severe MR room. It moved on to one of our old, stray dogs being ill, passing away, and needing to be buried in the frozen ground. It wound up yesterday with a very quick post on Educators' News before I took off for Indy to see my mother for her ninety-second birthday. Dad is now 95 and drives daily to the nursing home to see mom and feed her lunch. (Yes, I'm from good, healthy stock. But then, they've lived a much cleaner life than I. For those of you still in the classroom, I hope the holiday break will rest and refresh you for the spring semester. And...retirement really is pretty cool, if busy. The view from day to day and month to month out our kitchen window always relaxes and refreshes me. The photo below is from December 1, 2008, and our first snow of the season.
Have a wonderful holiday break!
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) After lunch, I rushed back to Terre Haute for my wife's Christmas party for work.
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©2008 Steven L. Wood