Monday, May 23, 2011

From The Onion

The Onion, where everyday is April Fools' Day, reports a Budget Mix-Up Provides Nation's Schools With Enough Money To Properly Educate Students. It's a good read, although the parts about performance pay show how pervasive the idea of market based "reforms" have gone in our society.

Mike Rose's Blog

Mike Rose shares an excellent article he wrote for the Spring issue of Dissent magazine, The Mismeasure of Teaching and Learning: How Contemporary School Reform Fails the Test, on his blog. He focuses on the whole of teaching and how teaching is a craft, not easily measured by tests in a long piece he divided into to parts for posting (Part I and Part II).

While looking around on Dissent, I ran across an interesting (free) article by Murray Hausknecht, Cathie Black and the Education Business.

Not Daniels

In some very good news for our country and education, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has announced that he will not run for President in 2012. Daniels cited family concerns for his decision. While I believe dredging up he and his wife, Cheri's, divorce of over 20 years ago is out of bounds, Daniels should not deserve consideration for any further public office because of his mismanagement of Indiana's welfare program, cutting support for the elderly and disabled, and his attacks on public education and teachers.

In related news, I ran across a piece by Indiana poet Doug Martin that appeared in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett Sold Out, Refused to Follow His Own Ed.D. Research. Martin dug up Tony Bennett's doctoral thesis and found that Bennett refuses to even follow the results of his own research in guiding education in Indiana.

Odds 'n' Ends

Valerie Strauss's Missing the point on poverty and reform - again on her The Answer Sheet blog last Friday is a good read.

For a long time, I thought Sam Dillon did a pretty good job of objectively reporting on education for The New York Times. Over the last few months, I've seen a shift in his writing towards supporting market based education "reforms." His Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates yesterday in the Times begins by clearly distorting and misrepresenting the overall views of teachers in Indiana about Governor Daniels and State Super Tony Bennett's misguided education "reforms" in the state. Shame on you, Sam!

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

ESEA Reauthorization

In an interview for the Associated Press last week, House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline said of reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), "I've been very, persistently clear that we cannot get this done by summer. It is just not going to happen." Despite Kline's pronouncement, President Obama focused his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday on reauthorization...soon...of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the current version of ESEA.

Odds 'n' Ends

• The Octopuses in School Reform by Walt Gardner
• Why Attention Will Return to Non-School Factors by Jeffrey R. Henig and S. Paul Reville
• 10 Reasons Your Educators Are Resisting Your Change Initiative by Scott McLeod
• The Trouble with "Innovation" in Schools by Gregory Michie

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

With so many people suffering from the weather disasters that have swept across the south central United States, I decided to forego our usual content today and share something beautiful that I observed yesterday. I came upon this scene while mowing a somewhat remote area that we take care of for our neighbor. From some of the material on the ground, I can only guess that the fawns pictured below had been born only a few hours earlier. The doe ran off a few yards and stood in the woods watching as I snapped several shots of her fawns from the mower. And then I left them their privacy.

I've added the photo to our free Desktop Photos page and also shared it on Pics4Learning, a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. (Note: It takes a few days before uploads become available at Pics4Learning.)

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Race to the Top...Again

Michele McNeil reports on Education Week that "Education Secretary Arne Duncan will divvy up the $700 million in additional Race to the Top money Congress gave him this year between a new contest focused on early education and the nine runners-up that lost in last year's high-profile state competition, the Education Department announced today." In New Race to Top: $500M for Early Ed., $200M for Round 2 Runners-Up, she relates that losing states in Round 2 may "compete for a share of $200 million to implement a small piece of their old, second-round Race to the Top proposals." The announcement also included preliminary information on another contest, the Early Learning Challenge competition. "According to the department, this competition will reward states that create comprehensive plans to transform early learning systems with better coordination, clearer learning standards, and meaningful workforce development."

Odds 'n' Ends

Pics4Learning has already processed and posted the fawns photo I ran here yesterday. Ed Harris also sent along a link to a related video of some very tame fawns approaching a cameraman. He also updated me on the library media specialist (LMS) situation at Prince George's County Schools for next year. Schools with over a 1000 students will have a full-time LMS. Schools with enrollment of 700-999 will have an LMS for 2.5 days a week, and schools with less than 700 will have an LMS for 2 days a week. Ed will end up serving three schools with library classes that may run just 20 minutes...enough time to exchange books and that's about it.

eSchool News has a disturbing report about an upcoming attempt at indoctrination in Tea Party targets schools for Constitution Week.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Law

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued a permanent injunction yesterday afternoon against Wisconsin's new collective bargaining law. She ruled that state lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law by failing to give proper 24-hour notice before holding a special committee meeting March 9 where financial provisions were removed from the law to allow passage without state senate members who had walked out to prevent a quorum. An appeal of the decision is all but certain. "The state Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on June 6 over whether to take the case immediately in response to an earlier request by the state Department of Justice and state Department of Administration challenging Sumi's authority to act in the case."

• The Capital Times: Open meetings law violation halts collective bargaining law by Jessica Vanegeren
• Wisconsin State Journal: Judge strikes down Walker's collective bargaining law by Ed Treleven and Mary Spicuzza

Looking Ahead

I'm not sure I've ever felt the need to do a looking ahead section for June in the past, but with the number of schools with extended calendars running well into June, I'm doing it this year. I also have switched our calendar image to Scholastic's June Teacher Planning Calendar, not because it's any better than The Teachers' Corner calendar, but because the latter added a nasty pop-down ad that obscures part of the page, sucks resources, and is generally annoying.

Flag Day (14) and Father's Day (19) appear to be the only biggies for the month, although The Teacher's Corner does have many other listings such as Donut Day (3), Fly a Kite Day (15 - in honor of Ben Franklin's kite experiment), and Camera Day (29).

And of course, whether you go with the Scholastic, Teacher's Corner, or even the Crayola June calendars, they all have links to teaching resources for special days.

School "Reform" Funding

I ran across a couple of good articles today about who is funding the current push for privatization of America's schools:

• Think Progress: Meet The Billionaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools And Kill Public Education by Zaid Jilani
• Forbes: The Deep Pockets Behind Education Reform by E.D. Kain

Odds 'n' Ends

Here are some articles and postings I found interesting this morning:

• Reality Check: What Constitutes a Free Education? by Walt Gardner
• Bridging Differences: A Heritage of Disrespect? by Deborah Meier
• Science Teacher: A Fish Story by Mike Doyle
• Science Teacher: Ice Cream Man by Mike Doyle
• Mr. Teachbad's Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement: Teachers: Should We Stand Up? by Mr. Teachbad
• Education Week: U.S. Reforms Out of Sync With High-Performing Nations, Report Finds by Stephen Sawchuk
• Education Week: Panel Finds Few Learning Gains From Testing Movement by Sarah D. Sparks

Have a great holiday weekend!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

An Incredible Speech by Linda Darling-Hammond

A posting by Valerie Strauss, A pull-no-punches commencement speech for teachers, led me to the full text of Linda Darling-Hammond's commencement speech for Columbia University's Teachers College, The Service of Democratic Education. The Stanford education professor and former education adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign spoke plainly about what is right about teachers and what is wrong with the current education "reform" movement in this country. Her scathingly accurate criticisms of "the new scientific managers" show why her views should have driven President Obama's Department of Education's school improvement efforts.

Speaking to the factors that so frustrate teachers' determined efforts to help their students in the face of overwhelming poverty, she said:

Our leaders do not talk about these things. They simply say of poor children, "Let them eat tests."

And of the the new "reformers," she said:

And the new scientific managers cleverly construct systems that solve the problem of the poor by blaming the teachers and schools that seek to serve them, calling the deepening levels of severe poverty an “excuse,” rewarding schools that keep out and push out the highest-need students, and threatening those who work with new immigrant students still learning English and the growing number of those who are homeless, without healthcare or food security. Are there lower scores in under-resourced schools with high-need students? Fire the teachers and the principals. Close the schools. Don’t look for supports for their families and communities, equitable funding for public schools or investments in professional learning. Don’t worry about the fact that the next schools are—as researchers have documented—likely to do no better. This is the equivalent of deciding that if the banks are failing, we should fire the tellers. (And whatever you do, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)

Linda Darling-Hammond should have been Obama's Secretary of Education. Maybe she didn't want the job, but her views should have guided the President's plans for improving education in this country, rather than Arne Duncan's plan of closing schools, privatizing public education, making essential funding a series of contests with winners and losers, and firing principals and teachers. Darling-Hammond's words are inspiring, but the reality of the current climate of disrespect for teachers and what they do rests squarely on a President and Secretary of Education who lacked the wisdom or will to address the underlying factors that frustrate true education reform.

Odds 'n' Ends

Today's posting is the first Saturday posting I've done this year. I really didn't intend to put anything up today, but Darling-Hammond's speech was so compelling that I had to share it with others.

Again, have a great holiday weekend!

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