Monday, April 5, 2010

Monday, Monday

The fallout from last Monday's announcement of Race to the Top winners (and losers) continues. Sam Dillon has a good article about the reactions of various governors in States Skeptical About ‘Race to Top’ School Aid Contest. Dillon writes that "a string of other states...say they have not yet decided whether to keep participating" in the federal education funding contest. Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Jr. said of the previous round's scoring, "It was like the Olympic Games, and we were an American skater with a Soviet judge from the 1980s." (I always thought it was the East German judges who torpedoed our skaters.) And Rick Miller, who guided California’s first-round Race to the Top effort, said, "There’s a serious conversation going on here about whether it makes sense to put all that time and effort in again to reapply."

Nick Anderson's Input of teachers unions key to successful entries in Race to the Top covers the teachers' unions' buy-ins as part of the Race to the Top scoring. He quotes one judge as writing, "The lack of union buy-in at this stage raises serious concerns about the ability of the state to implement the Race to the Top reforms." Anderson writes that the Obama Administration "built the $4 billion Race to the Top contest in a way that rewarded applications crafted in consultation with labor leaders." While not noted in Anderson's article, here in Indiana, teacher associations and school districts often didn't endorse the Hoosier Race to the Top proposal because they weren't allowed to see it in its entirety before being asked to endorse it!

You really couldn't blame the nation's governors, well, at least the Race to the Top losers, from humming a few verses from the The Mamas and The Papas classic as they consider last Monday's results:

Monday Monday, can't trust that day,
Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way

Shuttle Discovery Launches

The Space shuttle Discovery lit up the Florida sky before sunrise this morning with its launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-131. The flight to the International Space Station "will deliver science experiments, equipment and supplies to the station." Three spacewalks are scheduled "to switch out a gyroscope on the station's truss, or backbone, install a spare ammonia storage tank, and retrieve a Japanese experiment from the station's exterior."

The shuttle's dish-shaped "Ku-Band antenna did not successfully complete its standard initial activation sequence and is not operational at this time." It is "used for high data rate communications with the ground, including television, and for the shuttle's radar system that is used during rendezvous with the International Space Station. Discovery can safely rendezvous and dock with the station and successfully complete all of its planned mission objectives without use of the Ku-Band antenna, if needed," as it is just "one of several shuttle communications systems that can be used for transmission of voice and data to and from the ground. The other systems -- S-band and UHF -- are operating normally."

   • Shuttle Home Page
   • STS-131 Image Gallery

Remaining Shuttle Missions:

   • STS-132 (May, 2010)
   • STS-133 (September, 2010)
   • STS-134 (February, 2011)

NEA on ESEA Reauthorization

With all the fun last Thursday with April Fool's Day, I missed the National Education Association sharing its proposals (851K PDF document) for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act with Congress. Stephen Sawchuk has a good summary and analysis of the proposals in NEA Presents Congress With ESEA Wish List.

Science Nation

After laying dormant for several months, the National Science Foundation's online magazine, Science Nation, was updated today with a new issue, Wind Powers Careers in Wyoming. While the irregularity of updates to the site doesn't bring one back to it very often, I do like the site content and its format of a print version online with video and a downloadable version that can be saved and used when needed without web access.

Odds 'n' Ends

Apple Computer began distributing its new tablet device, the iPad, on Saturday. Stories of the Apple faithful (fanboys?) standing in long lines to pony up $500 and more for the new slate computer made the national news. Writers fell all over themselves pumping out articles about the iPad, some of which focused on its potential for use in the classroom:

• The iPad will Change Education Forever
• Apple iPad could be an A+ for schools

Others took a more circumspect view of the new product:

• The Real Cost of Apple iPad
• What Your iPad Will Really Cost You - Hope You're Sitting Down

Christopher Dawson probably penned the best article of the bunch, Damn you, Apple Salesperson! He leaps beyond the iPad in looking at how it, the iPod Touch, and Macs in general might help teachers be more effective in integrating technology into their classrooms.

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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Florida Teacher Law Advances

The Florida teacher law debacle continues as a the measure was approved yesterday by a Florida House education committee. The Associated Press's Bill Kaczor reports in Florida House panel approves teacher pay bill that despite "vehement opposition from school officials and educators," the Education Policy Council approved the bill "that would make it easier to fire teachers and tie their pay to student test scores." Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss summarized the key elements of the bill that has already passed the Florida Senate last week in Teachers fighting back in Florida:

• School systems to evaluate and pay teachers primarily on the basis of student test scores. (Testing experts say this is unfair and unworkable.)
• School systems to ignore a teacher’s experience, advanced degrees or professional credentials in any evaluation or pay.
• School systems to put newly hired teachers on probation for five years and then give them annual contracts for the rest of their careers.
• The creation of more standardized tests for students, to cover subjects not already assessed.

Passage by the full Florida House will send the bill to Governor Charlie Crist for signature into law. Crist has previously expressed his support for the measure.

iPad Wi-Fi Problems

A CNN report, iPad has Wi-Fi problems, some users say, and Samara Lynn's Apple Confirms iPad Wi-Fi Problems; Try These Fixes on PC Magazine don't bode well for the new device. Lynn relates that an Apple Knowledge Base article suggests "that having a third-party Wi-Fi router that supports both the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands may be subject to a connectivity problem."

Dennis Carter's Developers seek to link iPad with education on eSchool News tells a bit about some apps that may prove useful in the classroom with Apple's new iPad. David Pogue purposely straddles the fence on the iPad in Looking at the iPad From Two Angles in The New York Times. He includes a review for techs and another for consumers with very different conclusions for each. Both Carter and Pogue's columns suggest that the iPad probably isn't going to be an adequate replacement for laptops for content creation.

Odds 'n' Ends

Bill Turque's Mayoral hopeful Gray taking a wait-and-see approach to Rhee that appeared last Friday on the Washington Post looks at the D.C. mayoral race that may be shaping up as a referendum on Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Spring!

While spring break may have come and gone for many readers, one of our first true signs of spring appeared this week: Apple blossoms. Our apple trees may be a bit early this year, as we've had a week or so of glorious, warm weather. We're back to normal temperatures now, but oh my, was it nice.

During the warmup, I pretty well ignored Educators' News and got out and did a bit of gardening while the weather was good. We already had peas that were planted in early March up about six inches, but I planted another row of them and got our brassicas transplanted as well.

To city folks, our main garden may look as if we're growing T-posts and dixie cups. The T-posts hold up our trellis for the peas to climb. The dixie cups serve as cutworm collars for our tender, young broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts.

When I left my last full-time job two years ago, I waited a whole weekend before resuming regular publication of Educators' News. Since the site's original launch in 2001, there have been many references to gardening, sometimes thinly linked to plants in the classroom or biology. Since I seemed to need an outlet for my garden related postings, I opened a new site, Senior Gardening, in 2008 and generally try to refrain from pure gardening posts here. But...the apple blossoms were just so pretty, or maybe it's just that I'm thrilled spring is really here.

Contract Settlement in D.C.

The Washington Teachers' Union and the D.C. Schools have finally reached a tentative agreement on a new contract for the District. If approved by teachers and the D.C. Council, the contract would increase teacher salaries, establish a voluntary merit pay system, and will give administrators "more latitude in deciding which teachers to retain in the event that budget cuts or enrollment declines force the closure of some schools." Some serious private funding will be used to help finance the new contract.

• The New York Times: A Tentative Contract Deal for Washington Teachers by Sam Dillon
• The Washington Post: D.C. schools, teachers union reach tentative deal by Bill Turque
• The Washington Post: Fenty, teachers union lobby on behalf of proposed contract by Bill Turque
• The Washington Post: Rhee funds contract with Houston connection D.C. Schools Insider blog post by Bill Turque
• The Washington City Paper: DCPS Teacher Contract to Be Unveiled; Big Raises Funded By $65M in Private Money by Mike DeBonis

An Interesting Discussion

The Debate on Andy Rotherham's Eduwonk is an interesting discussion on school reform. It kicks off with commentaries from authors Paul Peterson and Diane Ravitch and continues with some pretty thoughtful comments by readers. It's worth a look.

Odds 'n' Ends

Here are a few more items I found interesting:

• ScienceDaily: Autism Study Reveals a 'DNA Tag' (Methylation) Amenable to Treatment
• The New York Times: Teaching About the Web Includes Troublesome Parts by Stephanie Clifford
• The Washington Post: Obama ed "blueprint" will widen achievement gaps by Lisa Guisbond and Monty Neill on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog

Have a great weekend!

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