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Alternative Testing for that 1% Ed Harris sent me a link over the weekend to an interesting story about alternative testing in Maryland for students with severe disabilities. Margarita Raycheva's Parents, teachers tackle federal No Child Left Behind testing laws tells of some of the craziness of academic testing under NCLB for disabled students who may be experiencing "seizures, gastrointestinal issues, orthopedic issues and simple breathing issues," and need to be working on functional skills such as basic communication, feeding themselves, etc., instead of academics. It appeared NASA was going to dodge several bullets and get the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its final mission on Friday. Space.com reported and ran a photo of a brush fire that was all too near the Launch Pad 39A on Wednesday. On Thursday, strong thunderstorms swept across Florida.
Skies cleared on Friday with the President and his family arriving in Florida to watch the launch. The STS-134 astronauts were on a van headed for the launch pad when word came that "the launch was postponed because of a heater issue associated with the shuttle's hydraulic power system." According to Space.com, two heaters on one of Endeavour's auxiliary power units failed. The units power hydraulics systems on the shuttle during its return to Earth.
Sunday afternoon, NASA issued a press release that moved the launch back to no earlier than Sunday, May 8. The shuttle Endeavour was originally scheduled to launch on mission STS-134 on April 19, but a scheduling snafu involving an unmanned, Russian supply ship that was to be docked at the International Space Station around that time, caused a ten day delay.
In a related story, NPR's Michele Norris talks to John Logsdon, a member of the NASA Advisory Council Exploration Committee, in For NASA, What Comes After The Shuttle Program? On Science@NASA I hadn't looked in on Dr. Tony Phillips' Science@NASA postings for a while and was pleased that I did so over the weekend. Recent postings include a story about a minor meteor shower that will occur on Friday morning and two stories about the Voyager spacecraft leaving our Solar System.
Odds 'n' Ends
While we're currently experiencing "rain fade," I was able to get enough of a connection to see the White House Blog posting, Remarks by the President on Osama bin Laden for confirmation of the story.
Here are a couple of objective articles about the changes coming to public schools in Indiana. Note that neither come from the Indianapolis Star.
And I'll offer Arne Duncan's Open Letter to America's Teachers (alternate link) commemorating Teacher Appreciation Week without comment (for now). Send Feedback to |
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - National Teacher Appreciation Day Random Thoughts on Teacher Appreciation Day A link to Join Secretary Duncan in Thanking a Teacher on National Teacher Appreciation Day greeted me today on Ed.gov's RSS feed. Yesterday, our Secretary of Education issued an Open Letter to America's Teachers (alternate link) commemorating Teacher Appreciation Week.
Here in Indiana, the only thing close to a statement of appreciation for our teachers from state government is State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett's April 30 gloat about merit pay becoming law when he wrote, "It's time to recognize and reward our best teachers...Senate Enrolled Act 1...treats educators like the talented professionals they are." Senate Enrolled Act 1 also allows "schools to withhold salary increases due to poor performance ratings" and "exempts charter schools from due process requirements for educators." The IDOE site today continues to ignore Teacher Appreciation Day and Week, but continues its "Rhee-like" self-aggrandisement by our State Super with items such as the "Putting Students First" graphic shown at left. When I was in the classroom, our small school corporation left recognizing Teacher Appreciation Day and Week pretty much to our teacher's association. We didn't do it up big, as all of us were way too busy doing our jobs of "putting students first." Usually, something nice would appear in each teacher's mailbox during the week. Pencils, pens, apples and other fruit were often used along with brief messages of appreciation. I hope something nice occurs or is said to you today or this week to make you feel special for your efforts. Odds 'n' Ends It's obviously a very slow day for education news. That probably is a good thing, as most of the national news on education is pretty negative these days. Diane Ravitch's contribution on the Bridging Differences blog this week, The Outrage of the Week, is a good read as always, but won't make you feel any better about being a teacher. Danielle Sullivan's A Shout-Out To Our Fabulous Teachers on the Strollerderby blog may lift your spirits a bit.
More on Alternative Testing After linking to an article on Monday that exposed some of the craziness about alternative tests of academic standards for students with moderate and severe disabilities, Education Week's Nirvi Shah yesterday had a related article, States Pressured to Curb Test Exemptions for Disabled Students. The piece begins, "Pressure from the U.S. Department of Education has led some states to curb a testing exemption that applies to only the 1 percent of students with the most severe disabilities..." The writer goes on to describe the 1% exemption rule, but falters toward the end, seemingly approving of academic testing for kids who actually need a functional skills program. College For Every Student Walt Gardner writes today on his Reality Check blog about a little known charity, College For Every Student (CFES). In Unsung Heroes for Poor Students, Walt tells about a low profile organization that "has helped more than 100,000 impoverished young people in 540 schools in 22 states and the District of Columbia raise their educational aspirations." Walt asked Rick Dalton, the founder of the non-profit CFES, "about the risks of assuming that all students should go to college." He found Dalton in agreement with many educators "that tertiary education does not necessarily mean a four-year college or university leading to a bachelor's degree. Many students are far better served going to a community college and earning a certificate." Walt also notes that CFES serves not only urban "students from impoverished backgrounds to continue their education," but "correctly recognizes that rural communities have their share of disadvantaged students." For a Smile To brighten an otherwise pretty drab Educators' News posting, let me direct you to comedian Carolyn Castiglia's End of the Year, First Day of Kindergarten: My Red-Shirting Surprise on the Strollerderby blog. Missing Blog Posting Valerie Strauss had a tart posting yesterday, President Obama, Matt Damon, and America's Teachers (Bing cache link), that I thought was interesting, but not really worthy of posting here. Then, the story disappeared overnight! Valerie had taken the President to task for a comment he made about Matt Damon in his speech to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. Damon had expressed his disappointment with the President's education policy on an appearance on Piers Morgan in March. Speeches at the correspondents' dinner are often biting and funny, so really, no harm there. Matt's a big boy and can take it, and the President (and the country) will have to live with the Obama Administration's current, misguided education "reform" plan. What gets this story into print here is that the story was there on Valerie's The Answer Sheet blog, and now it isn't. I supposed Valerie could have pulled the short piece for one reason or another. I'd ask her, but she doesn't answer my emails anymore! But I also remember the Washington Post censoring a story by Bill Turque in January, 2010. That one shook out in just a day, to the shame of the Washington Post. So, I'm just wondering what happened, but won't lose any sleep over it. (Note: The article reappeared midday without any reference to its previous disappearing act.) Odds 'n' Ends The skies have finally cleared here in Indiana. (Did I just see a dove with an olive leaf?) I finally have a mower that works and lots of very tall grass to cut. See you tomorrow. Thursday, May 5, 2011 - Cinco de Mayo Middle School Chemistry Curriculum
When I briefly delved into the site, I found well-developed, age-appropriate lesson plans that were easy to understand and included a number of online and downloadable videos to illustrate concepts. The plans include all the usual parts of a good lesson plan, and clearly denote necessary demonstration and activity preparations and safety precautions. Note that the teacher's guide lacks both a table of contents and an index. If you wish to cherry pick lessons or lesson parts, searching the guide in the Adobe Reader or browsing are your only options. The site's lesson plans and multimedia are very well organized with the online equivalent of a table of contents. As I looked through the information provided, I was reminded of the original AAAS Science: A Process Approach we used in the 70s, minus the materials kits (which we often had to combine and augment to make work for our classes). The AAAS Archive notes, "Despite evidence that SAPA was more effective than traditional teaching methods, the program never achieved the market penetration that had been hoped." Frankly, the program scared some teachers to death, so it got watered down a bit and heavily scripted in its SAPA II iteration. But hey, we had kids using hydrogen generators in sixth grade and doing the classic chemistry experiment of identifying oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen!
My perusal of the site was limited, but what I saw looked very useable. Odds 'n' Ends I didn't practice very good time management last night, spending all my writing time on the Middle School Chemistry site. So some of the other items I had planned to take a better look at and possibly write about just get a link here.
Testers Needed
"A small compensation...is offered" for classes participating in the test.
From NASA's Shuttle page: "NASA managers will meet today to evaluate the progress of repairs and select a new launch date for the STS-134 mission to the International Space Station." Space.com's Clara Moskowitz reports in NASA Tests Space Shuttle Repairs for Endeavour's Last Launch that engineers have been testing the power distribution box that failed and caused the postponement of Endeavour's final launch, "trying to determine what caused a circuit inside the power box to short out." A new Load Control Assembly 2 (LCA-2), the power distribution box, was installed on the shuttle on Wednesday. Odds 'n' Ends Larry Ferlazzo's Finishing the School Year Strong (requires free registration) on Education Week Teacher is a good read for this time of year. Walt Gardner discusses "the absurdity of applying the business model to public schools" today in Are Public Schools Supermarkets? After over 18,000 people "liked" the "Bump Trump" Facebook page, We Don't Want Donald Trump to Drive the Indy 500 Pace Car, The Donald cited "time and business constraints" that would prevent him from driving the pace car for this year's Indy 500. The media are having a ball with Trump's quick rejection by racing fans:
For someone who claims not to know yet if he's running for President, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has managed to keep his name in the national news. Fresh from his legislative victories that could eviscerate public education in Indiana, Daniels continues to hit the speaker circuit of conservative organizations, generating lots of press. Education Week's Michele McNeil, a former Hoosier, writes in Mitch Daniels: Pro-National Standards, Anti-More Money, that "aside from vouchers, this agenda looks very much like the Obama administration's." The Indy Star's Daniels keeps the focus on 2011, not 2012 by Maureen Groppe tells of Daniels' speech on Wednesday to "policy wonks and others at the American Enterprise Institute" where he said, "I'm just here for a meal." I'd pretty well shut down writing for today when I remembered I hadn't checked Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement recently. His treatise for this week, I Felt Bloated on Saturday, makes (reading about) salmonella funny.
He also gets a funny shot in on school administrators, but I won't give that one away here. 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. |
My spellchecker choked on "Strollerderby." What a great name for a blog! 
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©2011 Steven L. Wood