Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Jupiter Loses a Stripe

The May 20, 2010, Science@NASA posting, Big Mystery: Jupiter Loses a Stripe, began with the line:

Lost: A giant belt of brown clouds big enough to swallow Earth twenty times over. If found, please return to Jupiter.

Science@NASA reports that Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt (SEB), a brown cloudy band twice as wide as Earth and more than twenty times as long, has completely disappeared. Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Australia, famous for his discovery of a comet hitting Jupiter in 2009, and other astronomers noticed the belt fading late last year. Wesley, who took the photos at right, remarked:

In any size telescope, or even in large binoculars, Jupiter's signature appearance has always included two broad equatorial belts. I remember as a child seeing them through my small backyard refractor and it was unmistakable. Anyone who turns their telescope on Jupiter at the moment, however, will see a planet with only one belt--a very strange sight.

Glenn Orton of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab "thinks the belt is not actually gone, but may be just hiding underneath some higher clouds." And this isn't the first time the SEB has faded out. John Rogers, director of the British Astronomical Association's Jupiter Section, is quoted as saying, "The SEB fades at irregular intervals, most recently in 1973-75, 1989-90, 1993, 2007, 2010." The expected return of the SEB may be dramatic with "a spectacular outburst of storms and vortices...even for amateurs eyeballing the planet through medium-sized telescopes." It may reappear almost anytime in the next 2 years.

I obviously missed the Jupiter posting last month. I also missed their How Captain Kirk Changed the World posting about ion propulsion and NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid belt. I'd sorta stopped watching Science@NASA when the iTunes RSS feed for it petered out during what turned out to be a reorganization of the site. Since I think many of the postings on Science@NASA are ideal motivators for middle and high school students, you may imagine my relief when I found the posting below from Science@NASA creator Dr. Tony Phillips:

You may have noticed that the "look and feel" of Science@NASA stories has changed. There's no cause for alarm. Our core product, simply- and clearly-told stories about NASA science, remains the same. The changes are a sign of progress. Recently, the Science@NASA team joined forces with the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. Working together, we'll be able to cover a broader range of NASA discoveries and develop "citizen science" opportunities for our readers, while still producing old favorites such as Apollo Chronicles and "looking up" stories about backyard astronomy events. The sky's the limit.

Feedback is welcomed. Submit your suggestions and comments at http://science.nasa.gov/contact/, or send them directly to me at .

I'm really pleased to see that Science@NASA is "back." It's what one science teacher I admire called "fun food for the mind."

Memorial Day in School

Valerie Strauss tells of schools staying open on Memorial Day on her The Answer Sheet blog in Kids spend Memorial Day in school. She relates that in most cases the day was added to the calendar to make up for time missed due to bad winter weather. Other schools simply have changed their calendar to use the day but have added emphasis "about Memorial Day and what it means."

Has the Tide Turned?

Sam Dillon is one of the few credible education writers still appearing on The New York Times. He isn't based in New York, but his articles often appear first on the Times. His current States Create Flood of Education Bills seems to assume that a tipping point has been reached and passed on merit pay based on student test scores. He bases his story on the passage of a bill "overhauling Colorado’s tenure and evaluation rules" that he notes was called the “teacher scapegoat bill."

I think Dillon is right in noting that there have been a flood of anti-teacher and anti-public education bills introduced by Republicans in state legislatures across the nation. But I don't think the battle to save public education from the so called reformers is lost yet. Here in Indiana, teachers' unions torpedoed Governor Mitch Daniels and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett's Race to the Top proposal that the elected officials insisted unions approve without ever having seen the final version. While many states have buckled under to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's misguided reform policies, others are rejecting his seemingly unending game of contests for critical funding.

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Thursday, June 3, 2010

Common Core State Standards Released

The Common Core State Standards for K-12 English-language arts and mathematics were released yesterday. The release marks the final version of the standards that have been under development for over a year with the purpose of establishing "clear and consistent goals for learning that will prepare America’s children for success in college and work." 

• National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers Press Release
• The New York Times: States Receive a Reading List: New Standards for Education by Sam Dillon
• The Washington Post: What Common Core State Standards are -- and aren't by Valerie Strauss

Individual states will now consider adoption of the standards.

DC Teachers Ratify New Contract

Bill Turque relates in D.C. teachers' union ratifies contract, basing pay on results, not seniority that Washington Teachers' Union members approved the new Washington, D.C. Schools contract yesterday. The D.C. Council is expected to approve the agreement soon. The contract "dramatically expands Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's ability to remove poor educators and places Washington on a growing list of cities and states that have established classroom results, not seniority, as the standard by which teachers are paid."

Interestingly, Stephen Sawchuk's Performance-Pay Model Shows No Achievement Edge notes that "preliminary results from a Chicago program containing performance-based compensation for teachers show no evidence that it has boosted student achievement on math and reading tests." The study also found that Chicago's version of the Teacher Advancement Program "did not improve the rates of teacher retention in participating schools or in the district."

When frequent contributor Ed Harris saw the posting above, he sent me a couple of links to teachers' first hand experiences with merit pay. An educator’s letter to the new president by Erica Jacobs on the Washington Examiner tells why she thought Fairfax County's Pay for Performance plan was a fiasco. The second link is to a comment on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog about Prince George's County's merit pay plan. You'll need to scroll down to " I participated in the PG pay for performance program called FIRST last year. I am not doing it this year for several reasons" to read Bramblerose's posting. Both items reveal some of the problems inherent in school merit pay systems.

Odds 'n' Ends

Obama’s 'Race to the Top' Education Fund Draws Fewer States relates that "nine states, including Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming did not apply for the second round of funding." Teachers union chief chides state Education Department notes AFT President Randi Weingarten's observation, "State officials in Minnesota and Indiana failed to include teachers in the application process -- and then scapegoated teachers to deflect attention from the decision not to file applications."

A story that won't get national press, Clarksville school board lays off 20 of its 91 teachers, actually may tell the story of many school systems for next year. After drastic cuts to education spending in Indiana and a failed funding referendum in the school district, "the Clarksville Community School Board voted on Tuesday to eliminate 20 of its 91 teaching jobs to reduce a nearly $1 million budget deficit." Superintendent Kimberly Knott commented that the system's $980,000 deficit in a $10 million general fund budget was the result of an already-existing budget shortfall made worse by Gov. Mitch Daniels' decision in January to cut the state's public education budget by $300 million.

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