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Bashing Teachers Stephanie Salter takes on the Indiana education "reform" crowd in Bashing teachers in the name of education reform. She does a good job of exposing the agenda of Governor Mitch Daniels and State Super Tony Bennett to "remake it [education in Indiana] as closely as possible in the image of a highly-competitive, ultra-efficient business." She goes on to show how unrealistic such proposals are and how the pair's school bashing is so unfair to Indiana's students, parents, and teachers. While written for a local audience, Steph's piece could easily be applied to the national education debate. Odds 'n' Ends For Moodle users, the open source course management system was upgraded to version 2.0 last week. Generally, classroom teachers don't have to worry about Moodle upgrades, as school system administrators take care of those chores. But if you can't wait to take a peek at the new version the XAMPP package installs in just a few steps. It now appears that approval of Cathie Black as chancellor for New York City schools is a done deal. Mayor and State Reach Deal on a Schools Chief tells the story of how someone who has no education degree and has never taught a day can become the leader of one of the nation's largest school systems. Larry Cuban analyzes how such a thing could come to be in Why non-educator school chiefs aren't the answer. Send Feedback to |
Graduation Rate Up Results vary a good bit geographically, but overall, U.S. high school graduation rates have begun to rise. A study released yesterday by America's Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic (3.9 MB PDF document), found the national graduation rate has gone up from 72 percent in 2001 to 75 percent in 2008.
Gates and Ravitch Newsweek's Jonathan Alter served up a "home team" article this week about Bill Gates ranting against seniority in education in a speech to the Council of Chief State School Officers. In A Case of Senioritis: Gates tackles education's two-headed monster, Alter inadvertently reveals his bias by calling Diane Ravitch "a jaundiced former Education Department official," before quoting Gates as saying:
Ravitch got a chance to respond on The Answer Sheet blog in Ravitch answers Gates. She also has an excellent, related article this week on her Bridging Differences blog, Bill Gates Listens to the Wrong People. LAUSD Lays Off 1,000 More than 1,000 L.A. Unified workers lose their jobs by Rick Rojas relates that over a thousand mostly uncertified support employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District have been laid off effective this week. While no teachers were included in this round of layoffs, those cut included office staff, library aides, and custodians. Rojas writes, "Thousands of others will be shifted to new workplaces, with some taking positions with less pay and fewer hours." Odds 'n' Ends Walt Gardner's The Downside of Mayoral Control of Schools is a good read. Education reform: Have business-savvy officials improved big-city schools is a good recap of the mayoral control issue, but doesn't really answer the question in its headline. And Bill Turque reports that Nathan Saunders won a run-off election to become the next president of the Washington Teachers' Union in Washington Teachers' Union president George Parker loses run-off election. I linked on Monday to Stephanie Salter's excellent opinion piece from the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, Bashing teachers in the name of education reform. While Steph talks about a local school system, its teachers and students, and Indiana officials, her thrust could easily be applied to our national discussion about education "reform." Besides sending Stephanie a quick "thank you" and compliment, I also shared the url for the story with a national education writer for possible reposting. That didn't happen, so I'm going to re-post it here. Bashing Teachers in the Name of Education Reform
Thanks, Stephanie! PBS Student Reporting Labs An eSchool News article this week, PBS NewsHour launches student reporting website, tells of PBS NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs site that "connects students with professional mentors at their local public broadcasting station to produce original news reports on important national issues." Beta tested with just six schools last year, PBS is opening up the program to other schools this year, offering "technical instruction on the use of cameras and editing equipment...meaningful focus on understanding the role of journalism in society and developing broader communication skills, including listening, asking questions, public speaking, and finding, analyzing and evaluating the quality of information." Odds 'n' Ends I like Laura Shumaker's simple Autism: 8 tips to help you survive the holidays and Linda Thomas's Faces in the Crowd: She overcame learning disability to help others like her. Thomas tells about the career of Carol Rosengarten, who knew "the frustration of a learning disability firsthand" and became an outstanding special educator. Nick Anderson's House votes to send child nutrition bill to President Obama tells of the good and bad of the necessary bill. He has another article today that tells that Michelle Rhee has "joined the education transition team of Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott." Have a great weekend!
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©2010 Steven L. Wood