Monday, November 2, 2009

From a Distance

As I looked over the education items that were making news the last few days and weeks, the refrain from Julie Gold's song, From a Distance (link opens Bette Midler version in iTunes), came to mind. I wonder what the Lord thinks about all the hubbub over the Washington, D.C. schools.

You don't have to guess about what the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss thinks about the situation from The feuding is getting in the way. She's pretty mad at the truth getting bent and "adults...sounding a lot more childlike than the kids."

Here are links to other posts that are dominating the Washington education scene:

• Education reform long troubled in District by Bill Turque
• Rhee is right - summer learning is vital by Jay Mathews
• Rating D.C. teachers no easy task by Jay Mathews
• Rhee's pride could trip up admirable effort by Robert McCartney
• Infighting and lawsuit likely consequences of mass firings
• Does Not Play Well With Others by Mike DeBonis
• Ms. Rhee on trial - Post Editorial
• Putting children first - Post Editorial

And then there's the related Mad Members by someone who should know better than to say, "First, at the elite level people get what’s going on..." Snobbery won't help the situation.

While not directly related to the D.C. controversy, William G. Ouchi's Accept No Substitutes for Real Decentralization on Education Week gives some pretty reasonable alternatives to the current merit pay/test score/charter school syndrome that seems to grip the attention of education leaders.

And yeah, I'm about with Ms. Strauss over the whole education reform discussion and the D.C. mess when she says, "I just might scream if I hear one more person invoke what is 'best for the kids' in the growing conflict between D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and her critics."

Odds 'n' Ends

Now that I've spent almost all of my available time for this post on the D.C. situation, let me add a few other pertinent links.

Educational Video Games Mix Cool With Purpose by Stefanie Olsen talks about kids and computer games and programming. She mentions some current and future educational games that might be useful in the classroom.

Nicole Santa Cruz tells the success story of A remarkable turnaround at Pasadena's John Muir High School in the Los Angeles Times.

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

NASA Images

An article on eSchool News led me this week to the NASA Images site. NASA Images is a relatively new site created by a partnership "between NASA and the Internet Archive to bring public access to NASA's image, video, and audio collections...to promote education and facilitate scholarship in the math and sciences at all levels, and to build general interest and excitement around space exploration, aeronautics, and astronomy."

The Internet Archive is the group that maintains the Wayback Machine, their effort at preserving internet content that can pull up many long lost web sites.

When I tried the site this week, I found its organization and presentation to be excellent. Searches returned large thumbnails of images with popup descriptions. Choosing an image displayed a good description of the item and photo with download options.

Do note that the site is very busy at times and performance may be a bit slow.

Obama Pushes Race to the Top in Wisconsin

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan traveled yesterday to Wright Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, to spotlight the Race to the Top Award. In his remarks the President reiterated his determination "to push for recruitment of better teachers, better pay for those who succeed and dismissal of those who let their students down." He again emphasized that sates with laws prohibiting tying test scores to teacher evaluations would not be eligible for the award.

• ABC News: President Obama Touts Education Reform on Anniversary of Election
• Los Angeles Times: Obama calls for end of 'firewall' rules that shield teachers by Christi Parsons
• The White House Blog: High Expectations

Andy Rotherham had an interesting observation in Elections on his Eduwonk page. He noted that recent election results, "skittish" bluedog Democrats, "delays on health care and all the oxygen Race to the Top is sucking up," could make reauthorization of ESEA a bit more difficult than originally thought.

Another Report

A report issued this week by Strategic Management of Human Capital (SMHC), Taking Human Capital Seriously: Talented Teachers in Every Classroom, Talented Principals in Every School, "calls for states and school districts to overhaul how they recruit, prepare, evaluate, and compensate teachers." It calls for:

• At the state level, require districts to use the results of performance-based teacher and principal evaluation systems to identify professional development needs, career leadership opportunities, and specific emphases in ongoing professional development.
• At the district level, systematically develop new teacher intensive induction and mentoring.
• At the district level, provide intensive, ongoing and high quality professional development. A critical element of any reform effort is an intensive, targeted and sustained professional development program that brings consistency to teaching and assessment.

In National Panel Urges Upgrades to Teacher Workforce, Education Week's Lesli Maxwell relates that the report from the task force drew stern opposition from within the ranks of the group. AFT President Randi Weingarten criticized it as “top-down” and disrespectful of the profession. David C. Ring Jr., a superintendent in Delmar, Delaware, said, “In our profession, not everyone can teach regardless of how smart they may be. We need people who can relate to children.”

Members of the task force beyond Weingarten and Ring included Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. In response to all of the task force members who had little to no K-12 teaching experience, member Francine Lawrence, the president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, said, "There weren’t many of us on the task force speaking for teachers, and I think the report reflects that, especially in the lack of emphasis on principal effectiveness. It doesn’t speak to the professionalization of teaching at all, which is a real disappointment.”

Indiana's Teacher Licensing Gets National Press

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett's proposals to overhaul teacher training in Indiana have gotten national attention. The Associated Press's Rick Callahan tells of the dustup over licensing changes in Schools chief defends teacher licensing proposals. Education Week's Licensing Debate Pits Indiana Chief vs. Teacher Colleges also covers the story.

The proposals for new teacher licensing were formulated with little to no input from state universities and other educators. Only after an outcry from the state's Professional Standards Board were they somewhat modified to include some teacher input. Even so, the revised proposals have drawn "scathing criticism" from representatives of several education colleges at public hearings on the matter.

Bennett dismissed criticisms of the proposals as a turf war from higher education opponents who worry how the proposed changes will affect them. Daniels, a governor often mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2012, backed up the state super as "absolutely headed in the right direction." I'm sure the national press didn't offend Daniels at all, either.

Related links:

• Is it necessary to learn to teach? by Dan McFeely
• Schools chief expects vote on reforms by year's end by Bill Ruthhart

Odds 'n' Ends

Stephanie Salter has a good book review of The Water Giver: The Story of a Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance by Joan Ryan in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. Ryan tells in the book of her ADHD son’s massive head injury and recovery. Salter writes:

The miraculous thing about “The Water Giver” is that, as the author describes her little family’s grueling journey, the details do not repulse or numb. Years of newspaper writing have honed Joan Ryan into an expert storyteller who is spare with her adjectives but rich with facts and observations that matter. Along with its poignancy, the account of her son’s cataclysmic accident and its aftermath is a medical thriller.

We've added Asiago Cheese & Tortellini Soup as a new recipe feature on Senior Gardening. It became "necessary" after a local grocery deli stopped selling one of our favorite soups. My wife, Annie, and I decided to try our hand at replicating the delicious soup. There were some spectacularly nasty failures on my part along the way, but we finally came up with something very close to what we used to buy. It's certainly not a health food (recipe calls for a pint of heavy cream!), but it is absolutely delicious.

The current star of our kitchen counter is a gorgeous double brocade gloxinia we grew from seed. I got into growing gloxinias years ago, and they became a big hit in my classroom when we studied plant pollination. Gloxinias are similar to african violets in their growth requirements and just about as easy to grow (other than their required period of dormancy once a year). They make a great, long-term, classroom project.

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