Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Great Teaching Plus Great Social Services Needed

Jay Mathews had a great article in yesterday's Washington Post about the needs of foster kids to be successful students. He writes in At-Risk Need a Mix of Good Teachers, Social Service Help that "Karen's story suggests that only a deft mix of great teaching and energetic social services can do the job, particularly for children in the deepest trouble." I'd guess that suggestion might well apply to many of our urban and rural poor educational situations. Mathews column is an inspiring read.

Ask for a Pay Cut

Winnie Hu wrote in last Friday's New York Times, "Bankers, lawyers and journalists have taken pay cuts and gone without raises to stay employed in a tough economy. Now similar givebacks are spreading to education, an industry once deemed to be recession-proof." In The New Math: Teachers Share Recession’s Pain, Hu tells of voluntary pay cuts, contributions, and teachers banding together to reduce their salaries to save teaching positions in their districts.

Klein Interview

The Washington Post's Michael Alison Chandler has a very chummy interview with New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel I. Klein, in yesterday's Post. Reform, Through the Eyes Of New York's Chancellor gave Klein a great opportunity to toot his own horn and also praise D.C. Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee. But before you believe it all, be sure to take a peek at the reader comments.

In a related article, Principals Younger and Freer, but Raise Doubts in the Schools, Elissa Gootman and Robert Gebeloff look at the New York City school principal situation. "The role of principal, once the province of middle-aged teachers promoted through the ranks, [is] now often filled by young graduates of top colleges...An analysis by The New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that schools run by graduates of the celebrated New York City Leadership Academy — which the mayor created and helped raise more than $80 million for — have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes."

Hey! The Shuttle's Back!

The space shuttle Atlantis finally got to land Sunday morning at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The astronauts spent a couple extra days in orbit after completing their servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Poor weather conditions at the primary landing site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida delayed the landing from Friday until Sunday. The STS-125 mission "rejuvenated Hubble with state-of-the-art science instruments designed to improve the telescope's discovery capabilities by as much as 70 times, while extending its lifetime through at least 2014.

• NASA Press Release: NASA's Space Shuttle Returns to Earth after Hubble Mission
• Space.com: Shuttle Atlantis Lands Safely After Hubble Success

The next shuttle mission, STS-127, is currently scheduled for a June 13 launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for a "construction flight of the International Space Station and the final of a series of three flights dedicated to the assembly of the Japanese Kibo laboratory complex."

Bennett Watch

In March, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett told superintendents in a memo that starting in 2009-10, he would not approve waivers that allowed schools to fall short of 180 full days of classes. The previous waiver policy allowed Indiana school districts to count half days of student attendance as full days when the remainder of the day was used for parent-teacher conferences or staff inservice. At that time, Bennett said neither is acceptable and that students must be in class for 180 full days each year. As reported here, the late notification played havoc with school calendars already announced and as one school superintendent put it, " could make it extremely difficult — if not impossible — to conduct those inservice sessions and parent-teacher conferences."

On Friday, May 22, Bennett sent out a "SuperMail" directing superintendents to a new memo on a waiver for a middle school conference. Despite Bennett's previous ruling, his department "has approved a waiver for November 6, 2009, for all middle schools to allow for staff attendance at the 2009 National Middle School Association’s 36th annual conference, “Making a World of Difference,” being held November 5-7 here in Indianapolis."

If I wanted to be a bit snarky here (I do.), I might suggest that someone's pet conference endorsed by an Indiana House of Representatives resolution is more important to Dr. Bennett than teacher training and parent-teacher conferences! Or possibly, Bennett just caved in to pressure from the legislature after previously taking a pretty firm stand on a full, 180-day school year.

Having become a somewhat unwilling veteran of the Indiana educational conference circuit in my last job, I found the state affiliate's IMLEA conference to be one of the worst organized events I exhibited or presented at! I also wonder what other excellent organizations, such as the Indiana Council of Teachers of Mathematics (ICTM), may think of this decision. ICTM had to move its annual conference to a Sunday-Monday schedule several years ago because many of its board and other members couldn't get professional leave for their excellent conference and had to take personal leave days.

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Obama Nominates Sonia Sotomayor to Supreme Court

The news today, educational and otherwise, is pretty well dominated by President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Erik W. Robelen looks at the ramifications for education in Sotomayor’s Record on Education Scrutinized on Education Week.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Merit Pay

Daniel Willingham, author of Why Don't Students Like School, posted the YouTube video at right this week on Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures. In its descriptor, he writes, "Value added measures sound fair, but they are not. In this video Prof. Daniel Willingham describes six problems (some conceptual, some statistical) with evaluating teachers by comparing student achievement in the fall and in the spring."

Schools or the Environment

Andy Rotherham had some interesting comments about the recent Harlem Children’s Zone study and a David Brooks Op-Ed piece in Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fryer! He writes, "There is a raging debate right now in education about whether or not and how much schools matter to student learning relative to other variables such as community, race, income and so forth." Rotherham concludes that "this study offers some evidence that despite all the hoopla about HCZ, it’s the schools that actually matter most even in the HCZ model."

Teaching in China

A posting on Andy Gammill's IndyStar blog caught my eye, as he mentioned a familiar name from my teaching days in Indy. In An Indiana administrator in China's schools, Gammill shares an email from former Washington Township (Indianapolis) teacher and administrator Steve Keith about teaching in China. Even more interesting was Steve's blog on teaching there.

Have a great weekend!

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