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Interesting Reads on a Slow Monday Delaine Eastin, a former California superintendent of public instruction, writes of The tragic loss of reduced class size in California. Winnie Hu tells about Making Math Lessons as Easy as 1, Pause, 2, Pause ... and the Singapore math approach. John Spencer shares one of those satisfying moments in teaching on his Spencer's Scratch Pad: Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher blog in Can We Read More? Send Feedback to |
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Discovery Awaits Last Launch
Space.com reports on Congress passing a bill last week "that authorizes NASA to embark on a new direction outlined by President Obama" in NASA in Transition as Congress OKs New Direction. Diane is Furious. We Should Be, Too! Diane Ravitch says in her latest Bridging Differences blog posting, "In this week after NBC's one-sided slam against teachers, unions, and public education, I am furious And it keeps me running." She writes in The Problems With Value-Added Assessment:
Noting the continued prodding by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Race to the Top principles to use and sometimes release value-added rankings of teachers based on "flawed, dubious, inaccurate measures," she concludes:
Odds 'n' Ends I was glad yesterday to see that Walt Gardner shares my skepticism of the Bush initiative to recruit new principals from outside education in Recruiting Outside Education to Improve Education. Walt appropriately brings up a quote from the Atlantic, "Good leaders can make a small positive difference; bad leaders can make a huge negative difference." Natalie Angier takes issue with the STEM acronym in STEM Education Has Little to Do With Flowers in the New York Times. She notes that former astronaut Sally Ride, who now travels the country promoting science education to girls and other interested parties, consciously avoids using the term. She quotes Ride as saying, "With my NASA heritage, I'm perfectly capable of speaking entirely in acronyms, including the verbs. But this is not very helpful when talking to the public." Valerie Strauss has reposted a good article by Dan Brown, What public school teachers really need, on her The Answer Sheet blog. Brown teaches at SEED Public Charter School in Washington D.C., which was featured in the movie Waiting for Superman. He writes about the things that help make him successful in teaching English at SEED and "are replicable en masse in the public system." Court Agreement Limits Los Angeles Teachers' Seniority Protection A settlement announced yesterday by the LAUSD school board will "protect up to 45 LAUSD schools from suffering any teacher layoffs during budget cuts" and "also cap the number of teachers that can be laid off from any one campus so that no school loses more teachers than the district average." The agreement must still be approved by the courts, but is not subject to negotiation with the teachers union. The LA Daily News reports:
Great Idea for Recirculating Books Library media specialist Rosann Fox shared a great idea for recirculating books on the NEA Works4Me site. In Circulating Books with Funny Money, she relates:
On the Blogs Jenny Orr tells in The Rabbit Hole about spending "a good amount of our morning taking a standardized test. At the age of six. Sigh." She also relates on her Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It blog of modeling questions on the smartboard previous to teach her first graders "how to bubble their answers." Things in education must be getting curiouser and curiouser, as David B. Cohen titled a recent posting on the InterACT blog, Down the Education Rabbit Hole. Cohen looks at the recent announcement by the George W. Bush Institute to recruit from outside the education field and train (or influence the training) 50,000 principals in the next decade. He writes:
Also on InterAct is Kelly Kovacic's Why I Teach…In a Minute-and-a-Half. With all the national discussion of teacher evaluation, education "reformers," or "deformers," as Norm Scott calls them, should take a look at John Spencer's Student Surveys: Why I'm a Not-So-Master Teacher. It's an excellent exercise in teacher self-evaluation. Rubber Chickens, Mr. Bones & the New Normal on Bellringers is an enjoyable read about hall duty with a skeleton wearing a pink tiara! Mrs. Lipstick's Wait, Teachers Working Together on Organized Chaos talks about the press recently discovering that teachers collaborate and actually learn some of our craft by watching one another. Do We Have the Stomach for this Fight on Tuttle SVC has some revealing observations about Waiting for Superman. Jim Horn asks in Duncan Decries Segregation While Rewarding Apartheid Charters on the Schools Matter blog:
Sandra G. McCarron's The Quality of Science Labs on Reflections of a Science Teacher tells of students recording "qualitative and quantitative data in terms of the labs that they did" and includes a couple of interesting responses from students. Sabrina Stevens Shupe's brief Students vs. The Tests on the Failing Schools blog tells about a student who "has chosen to skip the SAT and the ACT because she feels those numbers can’t represent who she is" and the Bartleby Project that encourages students "to peacefully opt out of the tests required under NCLB." Also on the Failing Schools blog is Maria Sallee's tweet that could well be the quote of the day every day for many teachers:
Don't be mislead by the title of Mike Doyle's "Breast Cancer Awareness Month" is Obscene on his Science Teacher blog. The former pediatrician turned educator shares a piece he wrote "several years ago for a friend, who is still fighting, and for my mother, who lost." He makes a powerful argument against the polluters who trigger so many cancers. Odds 'n' Ends The AFT news service reports in Obama slams Republican budget hawks on education that "President Barack Obama Tuesday warned that Republican plans for vast spending cuts would disadvantage students in a manner akin to disarming troops as they headed to the front lines." An Easy Way to Contact Your Senators and Representative While doing some research on Nick Anderson's NEA to spend $15 million on midterm campaign ads, I wound up on the NEA web site. I never found what I was looking for on the site (a full list of the candidates and states NEA was funding), but in rummaging around the site found a very cool way to contact my senators and representative. The NEA's Tell the House and Senate: Craft an ESEA reauthorization bill that will help all students succeed link takes you to a simple page that asks for your zip code. After entering your zip, you'll be taken to a very slick Legislative Action Center page that has talking points you may modify or use unchanged. Since you entered your zip code, your legislators are already shown on the page with the option to send to one or all of them, either an email or a printed letter.
Here's the message NEA ended up sending for me:
While I have no illusions that my email will make a major difference in the legislators' stance on reauthorization of ESEA or education reform, I believe it is important to add my voice to the protest over what is now passing as education "reform." If enough teachers and parents protest, it might make a difference. And senators and congressmen are much more likely to have someone in their office respond to constituents' concerns than are the President or Secretary of Education, especially during an election cycle. It might just open a dialog. BTW: You don't have to be an NEA member to use the form. Odds 'n' Ends Rupert Murdoch Says Education ‘Failure Factories’ Imperil Middle Class, so stay tuned to Fox News for a ratcheting up of teacher and union bashing. Campaigning on Education: Democrats Target GOP, Tea Party isn't nearly as descriptive for me as is the sub-head: Democrats' Campaign Ads Target Republican Calls to Eliminate the Education Department. Just a Few Links The Huffington Post has opened up an education page with Paramount Pictures, which released Waiting for "Superman", as its inaugural sponsor (sigh!). Kenneth Bernstein's How Would Teachers Like to be Evaluated? What do They Think is Fair? is featured there this week. HuffPost Education is also running a continuing series on Classroom Heroes. I'm not sure what to make of Candi Peterson's Reduction In Force: Rhee's Final Curtain Call on the Washington Teacher blog. Candi speculates that the recent wage and hiring freeze in D.C. could also extend to the new teacher contract there. When I entered teaching, I never imagined we might have national, education superstars. We seem to have them now, but none of them work in the classroom with kids! Bill Turque wrote yesterday about one of those superstars in Michelle Rhee likely to have pick of top education jobs, but would she want one? Walt Gardner's What If Teachers Unions Were Outlawed and Teacher Seniority On the Ropes are both good reads. And if you, like me, are a bit weary of all the teacher bashing and "reform" from non-teachers, Deborah Meier writes in Beyond Anger Lies Hope that a recent trip to Philadelphia reminded her "that we have many, many allies among teachers, academics, reporters, and lawyers. I think, in fact, that we may be on the eve of an opening." Have a great weekend! Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Ads shown on archive pages may not represent the ads displayed in the original posting on Educators' News. |
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©2010 Steven L. Wood