Monday, April 19, 2010

Trust Me

Andy Gammill's Bennett, teachers take fight outside tells of Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett's now public squabble over getting the leaders of that state's teachers' unions to sign on in support of Indiana's new Race to the Top proposal. Indiana's first round proposal for the competition lacked support from many school districts and teachers' associations. According to Gammill, Bennett recently issued an ultimatum for the leaders of the Indiana State Teachers Association and the Indiana Federation of Teachers "to sign on to such reforms by this week, or the state would not bother to apply."

In recent meetings with union leaders, Bennett tried to sell Indiana's Race to the Top proposal, "but declined to allow them to see the proposal for the federal grant, saying that other states might steal the more innovative ideas. Both unions were then asked to write letters of support -- for a proposal they had not seen." Bennett also issued a very public press release announcing the ultimatum.

Indiana's first Race to the Top proposal included a provision that at least 51% of teacher evaluations be based on student test scores, something the state teachers' unions abhor. School systems were asked to sign onto that proposal without having seen it in its entirety with the logical result that many systems chose not to sign on to something they'd not seen. Many local teacher associations chose not to buy in to the first round proposal as well because of some of the provisions made public and the incredible refusal of the state to let them see what they were "signing." Bennett now claims the proposal has been available online for months, but what is there appears to be the original application, not the new one the unions are being pushed to support.

What may be more to the point on the Indiana education situation is a continuing practice of Superintendent Bennett and Governor Mitch Daniels springing reform proposals and changes on the state education community without prior consultation or cooperation. While I'm not a supporter of the Obama/Duncan Race to the Top competition, one of its better provisions is that states have the support of teachers' unions for their proposals. That, of course, requires some level of input and cooperation. Bennett and Daniels both have a history of ignoring the need for cooperation, much less input, from the state's teachers in their education reform proposals.

Kindle Reader Apps

I managed to totally miss Amazon's release of several Free Kindle Reading Apps last month. Amazon now offers its Kindle Reader for Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Blackberry. For schools supplying students with laptops, it could be a good source of free reading material.

Odds 'n' Ends

Walt Gardner has a good posting today on his Reality Check blog on Education Week in Teacher Tenure and Performance Pay in Florida. Walt notes that while tenure "is given too soon in a teacher's career" in many states, "it provides teachers with due-process rights." He then gives some examples of what might happen without tenure for those who haven't had their careers justly protected by tenure from hostile administrators. He also addresses performance pay for teachers and teacher morale a bit.

With the Florida teacher bill beaten back for now, the assault on good teachers still continues in Indiana (see above) and elsewhere. Minnesota Public Radio notes that Governor Tim Pawlenty will be holding a press conference tomorrow to announce his "comprehensive education reform bill." It's sure to be right up there with Florida and Indiana's "measure and punish" proposals. It's too bad the Obama administration didn't listen to common sense voices such as Walt Gardner and Diane Ravitch in crafting its education reform direction.

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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Discovery Lands

After a one day weather delay, the space shuttle Discovery landed yesterday morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. "The STS-131 mission to the International Space Station delivered science racks, new crew sleeping quarters, equipment and supplies. During three spacewalks, the crew installed a new ammonia storage tank for the station's cooling system, replaced a gyroscope for the station's navigation system and retrieved a Japanese experiment from outside the Kibo laboratory for examination on Earth."

• Shuttle Home Page
• STS-131 Image Gallery

Layoffs

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post are carrying stories today about massive teacher layoffs across the country. Tamar Lewin and Sam Dillon tell in Districts Warn of Deeper Teacher Cuts that pink slips have or are going out to 22,000 teachers in California, 17,000 in Illinois, and possibly 15,000 in New York. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan estimated Monday that "state budget cuts imperiled 100,000 to 300,000 public school jobs" for next fall. The Post's Nick Anderson writes in Recession could result in deep school staff layoffs, larger class sizes that Secretary "Duncan said President Obama's campaign to shake up perennially low-achieving schools and promote effective teaching could be undermined if class sizes rise, summer school is cut and other education programs are jettisoned."

Peter C. Gorman, the superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year said, "We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider. This may be our new economic reality."

While Senator Tom Harkin proposed a $23 billion school bailout bill a week ago to help stave off the looming wave of school layoffs, Lewin and Dillon report that "senior Democratic aides said that because Mr. Harkin’s bill would add to the deficit, it was unlikely to pass." A similar measure passed in the House last year died in the Senate due to lack of support from Republicans.

Florida Fallout

There's still a lot of ugliness online about Florida Governor Charlie Crist vetoing the Florida teachers law. Examples include The Wall Street Journal's Crist Crossing Kids: A governor puts his political ambitions ahead of school reform, Jeanne Allen's Education reform sunset in the Sunshine State in The Daily Caller, and Larry Thornberry's Crist, Party of One in The American Spectator. The rhetoric in all is similar, speaking of an "antiquated teacher tenure system," basing "teacher pay on student performance rather than on seniority and number of degrees in education attained,"firing "incompetent teachers," and even "veto a landmark education reform." Obviously to the writers, America's problems with education would be solved with an end to teacher tenure, basing teacher pay on student test scores, and giving school administrators life and death power over teachers' future employment. Hmm, did you ever buck the system to protect and help one of your students?

Diane Ravitch's The Lesson of Florida tells of the relief of teachers in that state and elsewhere at the failure of the Florida measure. But the sad truth is that killing tenure instead of creating or enforcing effective teacher evaluation systems, making the untested and in my view, counterproductive, performance pay and teacher evaluations based on student test scores have become part of the conservative play book encouraged by the Obama/Duncan school reform proposals.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is going on the road across that state to sell his education proposals that aren't much better than what was vetoed in Florida last week. Pawlenty proposes education bill gives a few details of dubious "reforms" to help the state garner Race to the Top funding. I've previously written about similar efforts here in Indiana. And the same thing is now going on in Vermont, as told by Dave Gram in Teachers' union, state spar over federal grant bid. And, I fear, it will be coming to your state soon if you haven't already faced it.

Odds 'n' Ends

A couple postings from Valerie Strauss's always excellent blog, The Answer Sheet, deserve a link. Guest blogger Daniel Willingham, concludes An analysis of pay-for-grades schemes, "If teachers have tried all other methods, I’m with Fryer. I don’t know what else to try." Scary!

Valerie relates in Obama repeals Bush-era Title IX policy that "The Obama administration is throwing out a Bush-era policy under the Title IX gender equity law that critics said made it easy for schools and colleges to avoid offering equal opportunities for women in athletics."

Tree Kits

I'd written in February and March about some tree kits I'd picked up from GenericSeeds.com. I saw some potential for a little different kind of classroom plant project with the kits. While Generic Seeds doesn't offer volume discounts, the kit source, The Jonsteen Company, offers their Life Cycle of a Tree 24-pack for around $70 (or about $3 per student). I'd ordered a Red Maple Arbor Day Tree Kit and a Colorado Blue Spruce Tree Kit to see what I'd get. The kits come as pictured left, right, and below, and do include everything one needs.

As I wrote in March, I was a little dubious about the blue spruce, as many coniferous tree seeds require stratification and even scarification to germinate. But after four weeks of stratification in our refrigerator and a couple of weeks sitting on a windowsill, the blue spruce seeds produced 8 seedlings. The Red Maples were a total washout for me, however.

In the process of untangling the mass of seedlings, repotting them into individual plant cells, and growing under our plantlights in the basement, the number of seedlings was halved. But with what appears to be the end of our spring frosts, I moved the last of our garden transplants outside this week, including a pack of very healthy blue spruce seedlings.

Trees grow very slowly. We also have some acorns germinating in flower pots on our back porch, but it appears it will be some time before the blue spruce will be ready to set in the ground. I'm not sure what happened with our Red Maple kit, but from what I've seen so far, these kits could prove to be an interesting classroom project.

Full disclosure: GenericSeeds.com is an Educators' News and Senior Gardening affiliated advertiser. The Jonsteen Company is not.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Education Summit Needed

Mark Phillips, professor of secondary education at San Francisco State University, suggests in a guest blog on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet, that President Obama should call an education summit to rethink his Blueprint for Reform. Dr. Phillips presents a credible rationale for his recommendation, and states, "It is not too late to reshape his policies, but this must happen soon." This column is a well written argument for change in the Obama/Duncan education plan.

Driven in part by the Race to the Top and other Department of education "contests," states continue to push ahead with merit pay and teacher evaluations based on student test scores. The current level of negativity towards teachers in the press is incredible.

• Ritter throws support behind changes in teacher evaluation
• Schwarzenegger backs bill that would change teachers' dismissal standards: Proposed legislation would base decisions on teacher effectiveness and streamline dismissals.
• Oklahoma House Approves Teacher Performance Pay Bill
• Unions don't learn: Teachers' role in education

Earthworm Photo and Pics4Learning

As I walked back to the house from our main garden yesterday, I noticed a couple of earthworms mating on the grass. Since I had my camera with me, I snapped a shot. Later, I realized that such a photo might be useful for science teachers and uploaded it to the Pics4Learning site. From their site descriptor:

Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection.

I like the idea of a site of free images for teachers that doesn't require login or requests for permission to use images. Teachers developing materials don't need one more thing to do when preparing materials for their classes. Of course, fair use allows us to use a lot of copyrighted material, but can sometimes raise legal questions that we often lack the expertise to solve.

One can just browse the site, search by keyword, browse their 100 Most Popular, or even find all the images by one contributor. My page of contributions is shown at left. It will be a week or so until the earthworm photo is posted, as they do screen images for appropriateness. I also shared the shot of a mourning dove that I posted here last week, since Pics4Learning didn't as yet have any mourning dove images.

Sharing images on the site doesn't invalidate copyright claims you may have on photos, other than allowing students and teachers to use the images you share "in print, multimedia, and video productions. These could include, but are not limited to, school projects, contests, web pages, and fund raising activities for the express purpose of improving student educational opportunities." (See image use statement.) If you lack a web site or are limited on bandwidth, Pics4Learning can provide an outlet for your images for other educators to use.

Have a great weekend!

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