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The Indianapolis Star's Robert King is on a year-long assignment "to write about four kindergarten classes at Indianapolis Public School 61." Through King's eyes and words in articles such as What our children need: a quick hug, shoes tied, role models, readers have been treated to an unfiltered look at some of what is right and wrong with schools in our country. A piece by Liz Dwyer, Should Schools Go Back to 1983 Technology, is a quick an interesting read about a sixth-grade class in Chicago that gave up newer technologies for a week with surprising results. The idea of using video to help teachers improve instruction isn't new. We did it back in the sixties in my college education block. Teacher-blogger Larry Ferlazzo tells how he was able to include his students in the "debrief" part of the activity to help improve instruction and student engagement in the classroom in My Students Help Assess My Teaching. Winnie Hu tells in More Autism Schools Proposed in New Jersey in The New York Times that New Jersey Governor As I read Hu's article about the Christie proposal, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if the resources required for the new countywide schools were applied to existing schools and classrooms in New Jersey (and elsewhere). Sadly, inclusion gets a bad name amongst many classroom teachers because that name is used to simply dump special ed kids into regular classrooms with little or no extra staff, training, and/or resources for the classroom teacher to help educate the student. If I had to choose between a poorly supported and executed inclusionary program and an old fashioned pull-out program, I'd generally go for the latter (and did when dumping called inclusion was being considered at my school). Send Feedback to |
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Testing Governor Daniels' Education Plan Reader Ed Harris sent along a link to Tracy Warner's excellent Policing the rush to charter schools. Warner, editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, suggests one apply the education policy of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels "to Indiana’s city police departments" to see how unworkable it is. Among other things, Warner states that our "police departments clearly are failing" and suggests the government should "give every Hoosier who wants one a voucher financed with our tax dollars to purchase their own security if they choose." The importance of editorials such as Warner's go far beyond the borders of Indiana. Daniels, who has presidential aspirations in 2012, is using what appears more and more to be the 2012 Republican candidate playbook for education "reform." Portraying all schools as failing and by association, all teachers as bad teachers, endorsing more charter schools and outright support for private schools via vouchers, and support for business oriented reforms such as evaluation systems based on student test scores, Daniels hopes to eviscerate public education and replace it with a privatized model more suitable to his big business masters. Such a move would have the pleasant side effect for Daniels of neutralizing teachers' unions which traditionally support candidates of the other party. Several slightly related links that may be of interest to readers are:
On School Lunches A CNN article today, She ate 162 school lunches -- and blogged it, tells of an anonymous school cafeteria worker and blogger. Her Fed Up with Lunch blog tells of her mixed experiences eating school lunches. While Mrs. Q relates that school lunch wasn't always bad, her blog and the CNN article make for interesting reading about "mystery meat and puddles of beans" served as part of school lunches. For balance, it was almost a year ago that I linked to Daniel Weintraub's interesting article about Revolution Foods in Making a Healthy Lunch, and Making It a Cause. |
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©2011 Steven L. Wood