Monday, October 26, 2009

NASA app for iPhone

You've probably already heard this one, but NASA has released a free app for the iPhone. It's pretty cool!

Fixing a Piece of the Dropout Problem

Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham's Solution for dropouts tells about efforts in Massachusetts to address pregnant and parenting teen dropouts. The group represents about a quarter of all Massachusetts high school dropouts. Abraham writes, "Giving teen mothers access to child care so they can graduate high school may just be the simplest and most sensible solution to a big part of our dropout problem."

Generation Schools

A posting on Education Sector, Improving Teacher Quality Through School Design by Elena Silva, tells of the organizational changes employed by the Brooklyn Generation School to improve use of teacher time.

In the mornings, all teachers teach 90-minute academic classes that average 14 students; afternoons are divided into shorter, larger elective courses and two hours of daily planning. Twice a year, grade-based teaching teams get a four-week break—three weeks to rest and one week to meet, plan, and observe colleagues. The breaks are staggered throughout the year, and while one group of teachers is on break, another team of their colleagues steps in to teach their students "intensive" monthlong literacy courses focused on career and college planning. The result is a school year that is extended to 200 days for students—20 more than the national average—without having to extend work time (and pay) for teachers.

The Moon Has an Atmosphere?

Dr. Tony Phillips tells about the moon's scant atmosphere and plans to study it in NASA Mission to Study the Moon's Fragile Atmosphere. Postings on Science@NASA are written in vocabulary appropriate for middle through high school students. They also have audio files and other language versions available as well as being downloadable as podcasts on iTunes.

Gates Influence on Race to the Top

Libby Quaid and Donna Blankinship have an interesting article in The Influence Game: Bill Gates' sway on ed policy. They tell of the influence the Gates Foundation is having on Race to the Top applications by offering states $250,000 apiece to help apply, "so long as they agree with the foundation's approach." That approach includes "paying teachers based on student test scores, among other measures of achievement; charter schools that operate independently of local school boards; and a set of common academic standards adopted by every state."

Teacher Training in Indiana

Andy Gammill sums up the current teaching training "reform" effort in Indiana in How do you want teachers trained? The reform was initiated by the governor and superintendent of public instruction with little or no prior consultation with area universities or educators.

What Gammill and others just don't get is that elementary teachers need to know how to effectively teach kids to read and compute. The changes proposed in licensing in Indiana will cut back on those good, old "M&M" (materials and methods) classes in favor of content area majors and minors (science, math, etc.). It is important to know the subject matter being taught, but it's equally important to know how to teach it.

Portuguese Kale Soup

We made another big batch of Portuguese Kale Soup this weekend. Kale is a little known vegetable, other than often appearing as garnish on salad bars in restaurants. That's too bad, as it's a tasty green that has fabulous health benefits.

My fondness for kale came from it being served frequently at home when I was growing up. My mother served it boiled and seasoned with bacon bits or drippings. When I started gardening as an adult, kale was one of the first vegetables I tried. I found that it produced abundant crops in our area and had far more of it than I could use as boiled greens. Then I happened upon a simple recipe in Crockett's Victory Garden (1977):

Kale is an all but unknown vegetable these days, so let me do my part to publicize its cause by passing along the bare outlines of a delicious recipe for Portuguese kale soup. There are dozens of variations of this recipe, but my favorite includes kale (or collards), garlic-seasoned smoked pork sausage, chopped onions and garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, and freshly cooked kidney beans in a chicken stock. Short of making the soup for you myself, I can do no more.

While Portuguese Kale Soup has nothing to do with education, it's a great recipe for the fall. Also, mentioning kale gives me a chance to post a shot of some ornamental kale that didn't and won't go into the pot. But it's really pretty.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Off-year Elections and Education

Education Week tells of Education Issues Bidding for Voters' Attention in off-year elections. Erik W. Robelen looks at the New York and Boston mayoral races, cities where the mayor controls the school system. He also reviews education ballot initiatives in Maine and Washington state along with gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.

Rhee Wants to Regain Teachers' Trust

It appears a couple of D.C. principals have spilled the beans about what was said by Chancellor Michelle Rhee in a leadership meeting. The Washington Post's Bill Turque tells in Rhee has asked how to regain teachers' trust, principals say that "Rhee expressed concern that even her best teachers have been shaken by the turmoil surrounding the Oct. 2 layoffs of 266 educators and the introduction of a rigorous evaluation system." Rhee denies the statement, but one administrator indicated how bad the situation is when she related that her teachers believe, "Rhee is all show, has already made all the decisions, and sharing feedback with her is pretty pointless. They don't ever see her regaining their trust." The principal also said that her teachers, "especially the experienced ones, see this new regime as a type of cult of the true believers. Don't question what they do since they have all the answers."

NASA's Ares I-X Launch Rescheduled for Today

I tuned in to NASA TV yesterday morning just in time to hear the flight director scrub the launch of NASA's new Ares I-X booster. Space.com's Bad Weather Delays Launch Test of NASA's New Rocket tells of the frustrating and unusual events that caused the delay. NASA will try again this morning (launch window begins at 8 A.M. EDT) with at least one more launch date available this week if weather or a malfunction delays the launch.

The NASA Image of the Day site yesterday carried the first really good photo I've seen of the new booster. Ares I-X is part of the Constellation program that is intended to replace the space shuttle fleet and enable exploration to the moon and beyond.

Odds 'n' Ends

The Indy Star's Survey finds many schools making cuts gives an idea how bad things are in education in Indiana. The Indiana Department of Education did launch their new The Learning Connection site for Indiana students, parents, and teachers. The site allows registered teachers to view students' test results over a period of years and other SIS functions.

Dr. Tony Phillips published another Science@NASA article yesterday, The Sun's Sneaky Variability. I found it sorta cool as it talks about our sun being a variable star! Phillips quotes Tom Woods, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, as saying, "All stars are variable at some level, and the sun is no exception. We want to compare the sun's brightness now to its brightness during previous minima and ask ourselves, is the sun getting brighter or dimmer?"

Saturday, October 31, 2009

State Standards

A NAEP study released this week has brought varying and changing state standards into the education spotlight. Mapping State Proficiency Standards shows that "nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years."

• New York Times: Federal Researchers Find Lower Standards in Schools by Sam Dillon
• Christian Science Monitor: Which states have the highest standards for students? by Judy Nichols Douglass

D.C. Teacher Layoff Controversy Continues

The controversy about hiring over 900 new teachers over the summer and then letting go over 200 this month in Washington, D.C. continues to be in the news. Rhee ignored instructions about cuts, council says tells of allegations that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee may have known layoffs would be coming when hiring the new teachers. But at this point, it appears that there isn't a "smoking gun" that proves Rhee had the "goal of forcing a layoff of older employees."

Ares I-X Launch Successful

The first flight test of NASA's new Ares I-X booster that is planned to carry astronauts to earth orbit and the moon went off on Wednesday without a hitch. The launch had been delayed by weather and a few other weird things on Tuesday. The Ares I-X used components that "flew on 30 different shuttle missions ranging from STS-29 in 1989 to STS-106 in 2000." Data collected from the test flight will be used to refine the design of the booster.

• Space.com: Liftoff! NASA Launches Moon Rocket Prototype on Test Flight by Clara Moskowitz
• NASA: NASA's Ares I-X Rocket Completes Successful Flight Test

Odds 'n' Ends

Report Questions Duncan’s Policy of Closing Failing Schools is an interesting read about Arne Duncan's effectiveness as a school superintendent in Chicago. L.A. Unified to allow parents to initiate school reforms tells that "parents will be able to initiate major reforms at low-performing individual schools, rather than waiting for the school district to make changes." How to be a leader with assistive technology from eSchool News gives the good news that the "most commonly recommended solutions are technologies that already can be found in most classrooms."

Today's posting is a quick and dirty cleanup of news from the last few days. I got caught in a perfect storm of family responsibilities and subbing that cut my time and energy for this endeavour to zero until this morning. It was good to get back into the classroom for a few days, and I enjoyed seeing our adult kids, but I'm definitely ready for some downtime this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

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