Monday, February 9, 2009

Big Cuts in Education in Senate Stimulus Package

I haven't found a complete article that specifically addresses what education items got cut out of the Senate's trimmed stimulus bill. From a CNN report, What got cut from the stimulus bill, it appears that NCLB and Head Start funding were totally slashed along with a number of other education related items.

• $600 million for Title I (No Child Left Behind)
• $1 billion for Head Start/Early Start
• $16 billion for school construction
• $100 million for distance learning
• $98 million for school nutrition
• $2 billion for broadband
• $3.5 billion for higher education construction

A posting on the Council for Exceptional Children website, Senate Compromise on Economic Stimulus Cuts Education Programs But Keeps IDEA Funding Intact, notes "the proposed changes led by Senators Nelson (Neb.) and Collins (Maine) cut the investment in education by $60 billion to $80 billion."

President Obama, speaking today in Elkhart, Indiana, said he hopes some of the education funding cut from the stimulus package will be restored. (See Obama: Education Funding Cuts Should Be Restored In Stimulus)

Charter Schools and Unions

Jennifer Medina has an excellent article in Friday's New York Times about what happens as teachers in charter schools try to organize. In Teachers Say Union Faces Resistance From Brooklyn Charter School, Medina tells about teachers' efforts at the KIPP AMP Academy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to organize and the school's response.

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

More on Stimulus Package and Education

Sam Dillon has penned the article I was looking for yesterday that gives a good look at the Senate's compromise stimulus package. Trimmed Bill Still Offers Vast Sums for Education notes what got cut and what may be restored in the House-Senate compromise committee.

Update: The Senate has passed its version of the economic stimulus package, and it now goes to the House-Senate compromise committee.

• New York Times: Senate Approves Stimulus Plan
• CNN: For House and Senate, it's time to compromise

DOE RSS Feed Active Again

The U.S. Department of Education's RSS feed is once again active. One of the things the Spellings Department of Education did well was to get word out via their RSS feed about good web sites for teachers and students and grant opportunities. After a period of inactivity since the administration change, the feed became active once again today. I'd recommend adding the feed to your RSS reader or your favorite web browser that supports RSS feeds.

Orion's Belt

Maybe I'm too influenced by movies, but when I saw the title Orion's Belt on APOD, I thought of the cat and its necklace in the film, Men in Black. But today's Astronomy Picture of the Day features a fantastic shot by Martin Mutti of the stars in the constellation Orion's belt, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.

As I'm mentioned before, there's a cool way you can use RSS to add the Astronomy Picture of the Day to your class or school web page. You can grab the code here.

Odds 'n' Ends

I ran across an interesting article by Mary Wiltenburg that takes a look at what our craft is like in Third-grade math: a teacher’s calculus. It features teacher Ann Griffith and how she reconciles "diverse languages, experiences, and the playfulness common to all 9-year-olds" at the International Community School in Decatur, Georgia. Wiltenburg is in the middle of a year-long series of articles exploring this community model school that welcomes and celebrates student diversity through the eyes and experiences of a Congolese third-grader and the ICS community.

Another good article this week is A Blessing for Teacher Grace by Theresa Vargas. It's a heartwarming story about Grace Lusweswe, a teacher at the Arlington Academy of Hope in rural Uganda, and how a sister school, Arlington Traditional in Arlington, Virginia, "helped Lusweswe get surgery in the United States for a painful tumor that affected her vision."

Scholastic is drawing some heat over including non-book items in their monthly book clubs.

• Scholastic sales pitch draws criticism
• Scholastic Accused of Misusing Book Clubs

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Image Site

A posting on the HECC (Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators) listserve today led me to the Pics4Learning.com site. Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. I was impressed with the assortment of images available for teachers to use. I also like that when a search of the site fails to yield a match, a list of other copyright-friendly image sites appears.

I shared my image of a tobacco hornworm that was feeding on my tomato plants a couple of years ago with Pics4Learners. The image is also available for use as an ugly desktop or wallpaper from my Desktop Photos page.

New Online Math Game

eSchool News tells of a New online game [that] brings a fresh approach to learning middle-school math. Prepared by Maryland Public Television, in collaboration with MIT’s Education Arcade and educational media producer FableVision, Lure of the Labyrinth is "a free learning tool to help all students learn pre-algebra concepts regardless of their math ability." Be sure to look at their Teachers page for a full description of the game, along with lesson plans and such.

More on Stimulus Package and Education

Another eSchool News posting, Stimulus deal addresses school modernization, give the lowdown on what education items are in (and out) of the House-Senate compromise, $789 billion economic stimulus bill.

Odds 'n' Ends

Taking Shop Class to a Higher Level is an interesting read in today's Washington Post. Mary Wiltenburg also has two more installments in her series, Little Bill Clinton: A School Year in the Life of a New American.

• Who’s failing – the student or the test? This one is a really revealing look at how NCLB doesn't work for some schools.
• Tackling the three R’s in a second or third language

Dr. Tony Phillips has another good posting on Science@NASA, Gamma-ray Flare Star.

And finally, if you're looking for something for Presidents' Day, check the listing for Presidents on the FREE (Federal Resources for Education Excellence) site.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

Conciliatory Tone in Rhee Column

I missed Michelle Rhee's column in the Washington Post on Monday, The Toughest Job. It's a new look for Rhee and has a new tone of respect for teachers! I have no idea what produced this change in rhetoric from Rhee, but it is a welcome change.

Thanks to reader Edmund Harris for a heads-up on Rhee Says Economy Forces D.C. to Cut Wage Proposal. Rhee also on Monday said "that the deteriorating economy will force the District to cut the wage proposal in its contract offer to the Washington Teachers' Union." The column goes on to say:

Rhee is now trying to temper her take-no-prisoners image -- captured most vividly in the broom-wielding Time magazine cover in December -- in a series of after-hours meetings with small groups of teachers. The two-hour sessions, over pizza and soft drinks at D.C. school offices, cover a range of issues, including the perception that she has targeted older teachers -- an idea Rhee said was created by the media.

"Something Old, Something New..."

It appears that Colorado's Adams 50 district in metropolitan Denver is trying something old, non-graded schools, with the twist of standards-based instruction. Big district dumps grade levels -- for starters tells of a plan for "10 multiage levels, rather than 12 grades, and students might be in different levels depending on the subject. They'll move up only as they demonstrate mastery of the material."

Odds 'n' Ends

The KIPP AMP Academy administration missed the deadline for voluntarily recognizing that 16 of the school’s 20 teachers had signed union cards. I wrote about the front end of this story on Monday in Charter Schools and Unions. Charter School’s Deadline to Recognize Union Passes tells of the ongoing process of a union forming and apparent administrative efforts to block it.

Today's posting really seems to be all odds 'n' ends, as there's not a big story or software release out there today. Maybe that's the way to ease into what for many may be a three day weekend.

Have a good one!

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Saturday, February 14, 2009 - Happy Valentine's Day

Annie and I have a pact to only buy each other cards for Valentine's Day. It's not one of her favorite holidays. I often violate this pact by picking up some kind of flowers for her, or just for the house. This year, I saw a nice pot of forced tulips on the markdown rack at a discount store and couldn't resist. It's the wrong time of year to talk about forcing tulip bulbs, but all it takes is some big (forcing grade or #1) tulip bulbs, a pot and some soil, a plastic bag, and refrigerator space. But that's for next fall. For now, I'll simply refer you to Crockett's Victory Garden if you're interested in how to do it.

House and Senate Approve Compromise Stimulus Package

Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate approved the $787 billion economic stimulus package. The compromise measure was approved mostly along party lines, with only three Republican Senators voting for it. All House Republicans opposed the measure. President Obama is expected to sign the measure into law on Monday.

• CNN: Stimulus package en route to Obama's desk
• New York Times: Stimulus Plan Receives Final Approval in Congress
• Washington Post: Congress Approves $787 Billion Stimulus Package

Maria Glod has a related posting, Stimulus Includes $5 Billion Flexible Fund for Education Innovation.

National Alternative Education Framework Adopted

The Associated Press reports that the "National Alternative Education Association adopted Tennessee's program as the first national framework for alternative education programs." In Tennessee program standardizes alternative education, AP writer Juanita Cousins tells of some of the guidelines of the program, including a 1:12 teacher-student ratio, job shadowing and mentorships related to students' career interests, and a required student plan, much like an IEP, to address educational and behavioral needs.

Gloxinia

Since it's Saturday, and the only reason I'm making a posting today is because of the passage of the stimulus package, I'll just add some more fluff here. (Note the tulip fluff earlier. :-)

Late last evening after making the initial posting here about the stimulus package, I ended up at the Pics4Learning.com site I mentioned on Thursday. I had a few other pictures I wanted to post since the original posting of my hornworm photo had gone up well there. I noticed the site didn't have any photos of gloxinias in their plant and flower section. When I checked my file of gloxinia photos, I found one that I'd been editing, removing a poor background with the "magnetic lasso tool" in Photoshop, but hadn't finished. I uploaded it to the site.

The image above is of the Double Brocade variety of gloxinia. The photo was taken in my classroom sometime in 1996. We had lots of gloxinias and other plants in the room, as it had great west-facing windows and bright fluorescent lighting. The gloxinias figured prominently in science class when we discussed pollination, as students hand pollinated the flowers with Q-tips. They produced viable seed, some of which I still have stored in the freezer!

Seed for the Double Brocade variety has been difficult to find for several years. I finally found one outlet in the United States this year and am in the process of trying their seed. So far, the germination rate has been disappointing.

Ah, I'm getting even further off track.

Gloxinias are easy to grow from seed and to maintain. They're related to the easy-to-grow African Violet. One exception in care is a required period of dormancy for the gloxinia that African Violets don't require. You can find lots of pages online on how to grow them, including one of mine, Gloxinias, on a new site I began last July.

I realized last summer that a lot of the content I put up on Educators' News was becoming more and more garden oriented. I also realized that no matter how great a special ed teacher I was, no one was going to hire a top-of-the-scale teacher in the current economic climate. So being almost fully retired, I began a new gardening web site, Senior Gardening.

One of the Joys of Maturity

I'd originally hoped to run the site on the open source content management system, Joomla! I found my Moodle skills weren't as easily transferable to the new CMS as I thought, and later decided due to legal issues, that maintaining a blog site for seniors was something more than I could currently handle.

So senior-gardening.com now exists as my outlet for my garden blog, some feature stories about gardening, and a few favorite, time-tested recipes. And that is the reason why almost all mention of plants and gardening has disappeared from Educators' News since last July. I still hope to work out the software and legal issues for Senior Gardening, and to begin adding senior specific gardening content.

If you're a gardener, young or old, take a peek at Senior Gardening to see what I'm doing these days (besides editing Educators' News, doing a bit of substitute teaching in special ed rooms in Terre Haute, chasing grandchildren around the house, etc.).