Monday, January 18, 2010 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Gotta take a little time,
A little time to think things over...

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Newbery, Caldecott Award Winners Announced

The winners of the 2010 Newbery and Caldecott Medals were announced yesterday at the America Library Association's midwinter meeting in Boston. The 2010 Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature went to Rebecca Stead for When You Reach Me. The 2010 Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished picture book was awarded to Jerry Pinkney for The Lion & the Mouse.

Like many elementary teachers, I've always relied on finding good books for my students from the Newbery and Caldecott winners. I realized just last weekend how strongly influenced one can be by such books when I remarked to my wife, "Someone needs to do a Harry Cat to "name deleted" and make her calm down and listen." The reference is from George Selden's (pseudonym for George Thompson) delightful series of books, The Cricket in Times Square (1961 Newbery Honor Book), Tucker's Countryside, Harry Cat's Pet Puppy, and others. When Tucker Mouse, an excitable character, would get too wound up, his friend, Harry Cat, would gently pin Tucker with a paw (claws drawn in) until Tucker became more reasonable.

• ALA press release: Rebecca Stead and Jerry Pinkney win Newbery, Caldecott Medals
• Tonic: Newbery, Caldecott Winners Announced by Kathy Ehrich Dowd
• ALA: Newbery Medal and Honor Books list, 1922-Present
• ALA: Caldecott Medal and Honor Books list, 1938-Present

President to Seek $1.35 Billion More for Education

The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama "will ask Congress for $1.35 billion in his 2011 budget proposal to extend" the Race to the Top program. The funds will be for a third round of state grants after the current funds available are expended for the first two rounds of Race to the Top grants.

With applications due today for the first round of Race to the Top grants, there are several related articles online about what states are participating. Sam Dillon writes in Education Grant Effort Faces Late Opposition in the New York Times, "Thousands of school districts in California, Ohio and other states have declined to participate, and teachers’ unions in Michigan, Minnesota and Florida have recommended that their local units not sign on to their states’ applications." Betty Olson-Jones tells of Oakland opting out of the program in Race to the Top - the view from Oakland in the San Francisco Chronicle. The Indy Star headline of Most schools want stimulus cash is a bit misleading, as an awful lot of districts' teachers' unions refused to sign onto the state's plan. And Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, notes that the jury is still out on market fixes for education in Market fixes for California's schools.

Odds 'n' Ends

Talking about children's books, I ran across a funny posting on the Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It blog, Being Bossy. Blogger Jennifer Orr read David Horvath's Just Like Bossy Bear to her first grade class and got some unexpected results.

Another amusing blog posting is John Spencer's A Few Crude Metaphors on Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher. He's battling some of his state-of-the art school's automated eco-friendly devices. He ties his battle with automatic toilet flushers and automatic lights to the classroom in his final paragraph:

It has me thinking about the love of learning and the power of automated teaching.  In many cases, worksheets are automatic flushers with student motivation swirling down the drain and scripted curriculum is the automated dimmer shutting out enlightenment and leading students toward darkness.

Break out the Kool-Aid is Science Teacher's tongue in cheek celebration of his school making AYP. He writes:

Any thrill beyond "Whew, that gets the state off our backs," however, is misplaced. No sense giving the AYP nonsense any more gravitas than what it deserves. The emperor has no clothes. There, I said it.

It is nice, though, not to have to explain to my neighbor why we don't suck.

While that one made me smile, a previous posting, Grasping Life, begins with a little bit about the "sequence of DNA bases." I'm glad I kept reading even though I'd started out way over my head, because he quickly gets to making (and drinking) melomel, something I do understand. "Melomel won't cure anything, but it heals a lot."

And finally, Post-it Parking on Reflections of a Science Teacher has an interesting metaphor about helping kids stay on task. "Somehow we have to communicate to the student how to 'park' the distractions so they can focus on the lesson."

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Race is On

The U.S. Department of Education headline read, Race to the Top: 41 Applications Submitted for Phase 1. The Indiana Department of Education proclaimed Indiana Submits $500 Million Race to the Top Application. But Andy Gammill's Education officials reveal big reforms told the nitty gritty of what a state Race to the Top application will mean. (Well yes, you could go to Indiana's FAST FORWARD: Indiana’s Plan for Race to the Top page and download all the PDF documents there to read the actual application.) But the long an short of Indiana's Race to the Top proposal relies heavily on evaluating teachers with test scores, ranking teachers in the state into four categories, canning teachers in the lowest category, and closing schools that don't make AYP and making them charter schools.

On Duncan's First Year

Michele McNeil does a good job at looking from all sides at Arne Duncan's first year as Secretary of Education in Duncan Carves Deep Mark on Policy in First Year. She unfortunately gives Duncan a pass when she lists his "inner circle...his six-member executive committee," that doesn't include a single, career K-12 educator.

Alexander Russo who writes the This Week in Education blog shares his views on Duncan's first year in Russo on Duncan's Record on the Washington Post. Russo doesn't mince his words:

A year after the fact, this much is finally becoming clear: Arne Duncan (and President Obama) greatly overstated the progress made in the Chicago school system.

Did Duncan lie? If leaving out the truth is lying, then I think he did. But in all fairness, it was nothing new. He’d been doing it for years.

Unless we’re careful, we could soon be looking back at 2009 and early 2010 wondering why we didn’t see what was coming.

Odds 'n' Ends

Other stuff that caught my eye the last few days includes Tamar Lewin's If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online! Teacher With Bible Divides Ohio Town by Ian Urbina gets back to the story about the teacher who was accused of branding a cross on a student's arm. That allegation probably wasn't quite that way, but the teacher's dismissal hearing comes to an end tomorrow. It would appear the teacher made some very bad choices. And Bill Turque has a follow-up story about Michelle Rhee trying to move the Duke Ellington School of the Arts to inadequate facilities next year without even consulting school officials in Ellington principal: "We will not stand idly by".

Friday, January 22, 2010

Retain Third Graders

The Indiana state legislature now has a bill in committee "that would mandate retaining third-graders who are not reading at grade level, based on ISTEP reading scores." The governor and state superintendent of public instruction are strongly supporting the bill. And of course, teachers in the state are going nuts, as related in Vigo educators advocate intervention rather than Daniels’ suggestion of holding students back.

The apparent goal of the bill is to "end the practice of 'socially promoting' third-graders who cannot read adequately enough for the fourth grade," but a Legislative Services Agency fiscal impact statement "estimates it will cost about $49 million a year for additional testing of students and intervention programs for retained students." Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels told reporters yesterday, "It needn't, shouldn't, won't cost one extra cent." Of course, Daniels is the same governor who has strangled funding to Indiana's schools with his property tax cuts and recent $300 million cut in school funding. Fellow Republican Luke Kenley, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, stated, "I think it's going to be pretty hard to go from $49 million a year to zero."

• Kids need help reading, but can state afford it?
• Education bill raises $49 million question

The issues of social promotion and kids' reading problems are worthy of attention. But the bill proposed is basically a simplistic political sound bite for a governor with presidential aspirations and a totally clueless superintendent of public instruction. I wonder if any career teachers were consulted before they started this mess?

Odds 'n' Ends

Ellington arts school staying put for now, Rhee says by Bill Turque relates that Chancellor Michelle Rhee has assured the school that it won't be moved to inadequate facilities as was previously suggested. Interestingly, the article does not include any statement from Rhee that such a move wasn't considered or planned.

Jill Tucker has a couple of good articles in the San Francisco Chronicle concerning school funding in California:

• Recession hits state's poorest kids hardest
• Cuts needed amid S.F. schools' $113 million gap

And the U.S. Department of Education has released a self-serving review of their efforts last year in 2009 Year in Review. The full review (165K) is only available as a downloadable Word document.

Late Update (10:16 pm)

Bill Turque reported this morning in Teachers having sex with students that a Fast Company magazine interview with D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee quoted her as saying about the abrupt fall layoff of over 200 teachers:

I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?

While it sounded like a pretty hot story, I decided to wait to see what comment Chancellor Rhee might have, as Turque noted he had asked for comment by the end of the day and would post the response. The response, Rhee mum on teacher sex flap, was posted this evening. He wrote that "Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee passed on multiple chances Friday to explain her remark that some of the 266 DCPS teachers laid off last October had hit children or had sex with them."

Chancellor Rhee should be compelled to answer Turque's original questions (and a bunch more reasonable questions in the comments section of both blog postings):

• Exactly how many of the laid off teachers had sex with children?
• Exactly how many had hit children?
• Why did it take a budget-driven reduction in force to get rid of them?
• Did the District try to bring criminal prosecution against these educators before laying them off?

If quoted accurately, Rhee's comment paints all of the teachers laid off last fall with an ugly, wide brush. It also raises questions about the Chancellor's state of mind, her veracity, and as one commenter wrote, why "she failed to report sexual abuse of children."

Turque has pulled together the information from his blog postings for a news story in the Post dated Saturday, January 23, 2010, Rhee says laid-off teachers in D.C. abused kids.

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