Monday, July 18, 2011

Firings

The Washington, D.C. school system "fired 206 teachers for poor performance" on Friday. Bill Turque reports in 206 D.C. teachers fired for poor performance that the teachers were dismissed under the IMPACT evaluation program developed under Michelle Rhee before she resigned in October.

Reader Ed Harris sent along a link to Lisa Gartner's "Highly effective" teachers still clustered in rich, white D.C. on the Washington Examiner. He also pointed out that it appears that most District teachers who had been identified as "highly effective" were not teaching in areas where student test scores figured into their evaluation. He added that "DCPS has not released that information this year nor last year."

In Atlanta, "interim Superintendent Erroll Davis sent letters home to all 178 employees implicated in an ongoing cheating scandal with a short, pointed message: Resign next week or face termination." Davis has already removed or accepted resignations from several central office and administrative personnel involved in a massive cheating scandal on the state-mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Test uncovered by a state investigation. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Kristina Torres tells the story in APS to teachers in scandal: Resign or be fired.

Dawn and Vesta

The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around the second largest object in our solar system's asteroid belt on Saturday, the asteroid Vesta. Time's Jeffrey Kluger provides an interesting look at why investigating Vesta might prove important in A Very Cool Spacecraft Visits a Very Cool Asteroid. He writes:

Vesta was discovered in 1807 and it immediately intrigued astronomers. About 360 mi. (578 km) across - or roughly the size of Arizona - it is nearly spherical, with a large crater gouged out of its south pole. Later, more-powerful telescopes have shown that the surface of Vesta is covered with basalt - or hardened lava - suggesting that the asteroid was once geologically active. The crater at the pole is presumed to be the result of a collision with a chunk of cosmic debris not long after Vesta's formation 4.5 billion years ago. The giant whack cost the asteroid about 1% of its mass, and the rubble blasted into space may account for up to 5% of the meteorites that have ever reached the surface of Earth. Much more important, the crater provides a peek deep into Vesta's interior, which is the same as peeking into the asteroid's - and the solar system's - past.

The mission has multiple home pages, with the best right now looking to be from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and their Vesta by Dawn Image Gallery. The NASA Dawn page may also add some helpful information.

Tariq Malik's NASA Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Asteroid Vesta - A Space First on Space.com is also an informative read on the subject.

Not in Our Town

I read with dismay Brian Boyce's report in the Sunday Tribune-Star, Westboro Baptist to Protest at Officer's Funeral. Terre Haute isn't actually my town, although I did live there for a short while. Annie and I live in the country some 20-30 miles south of Terre Haute. But Annie's job site shares its building with the Terre Haute Police Department, and she has seen first hand the grief of the officers and the community over the untimely death of Officer Brent Long. Long was shot and killed in the line of duty last week while helping serve a fugitive warrant. The community has repeatedly come out and respectfully lined the streets each time Long's body was moved. Annie bought a wreath of white roses to lay on the officer's patrol car that has served as a memorial for the man and his family.

The community in Terre Haute is mourning one of its own, and the intrusion of a group that causes further sadness with its disrespect for the community and the dead is less than welcome. It's the kind of thing you read about always happening somewhere else...until it comes home to your community. I find myself struggling with my beliefs of freedom of expression, almost hopefully wondering if some good ole boys might dissuade the Westboro folks from tarnishing the laying to rest of the slain policeman. Maybe some non-violent action such as was reported in Brandon, Mississippi could be employed.

Sgt. Joe Watts of the Indiana State Police told the Terre Haute Tribune-Star that authorities are aware of the planned demonstration. He stated, "We want to concentrate on honoring Brent, not the negativity of the Westboro Baptist Church. We would hope that if it happens it would be peaceful, but we are prepared to deal with it."

I won't be in Terre Haute for the funeral, but hope Sgt. Watts is correct and the protest somehow turns into a non-event. While some form of vigilante justice for the Westboro crowd sounds like a good thing, where does it stop? Hopefully, you won't hear about us on the national news this evening.

At the Zoo

With the classic Simon & Garfunkel song, At The Zoo, floating through my head, we did a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo on Saturday as part of a birthday celebration for two of our grandchildren. We had a great day seeing friends, kids, and grandkids.

When I processed the zoo and birthday photos yesterday, I ran across one I'd gotten a bit artsy with that turned out good enough to hit our free Desktop Photos page. Unfortunately, there's not a slot for it yet in the table groupings I use on the page, so I stuck the photo on our Cutting Room Floor page until I accumulate enough acceptable shots to add a new table of photos to the main page.

Odds 'n' Ends

Today's posting is really the Sunday morning edition, as we still have our porch roof and satellite internet dish in place this morning. We're into reroofing the porch where the dish sits and also changing over from satellite internet to DSL.

Here are some other postings I found interesting:

• The Anchorage Daily News: Education: Our shining path out of indigence by Shannyn Moore
• The Answer Sheet: Principal: When Arne Duncan called to talk by Carol Corbett Burris
• NPR: Post-Shuttle, NASA To Keep Students Looking Up by Larry Abramson
• Education Votes: All Six “Fake” Candidates Defeated in Wisconsin Primaries
• The Capital Times: How "fake Democrats" strategy blew up on GOP by John Nichols

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Disappointing Geography Results

Winnie Hu writes in Geography Report Card Finds Students Lagging:

Even as schools aim to better prepare students for a global work force, fewer than one in three American students are proficient in geography, with most eighth graders unable to explain what causes earthquakes or accurately describe the American Southwest, according to a report released Tuesday morning.

Yeah, but they sure know how to fill in the bubbles on test sheets.

Shuttle

The space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to land tomorrow morning, with landing opportunities at 5:56 A.M. and 7:32 A.M. (EDT). A NASA press release, Space Shuttle Scheduled to Return to Earth for Final Time Thursday, relates:

The final flight of NASA's 30-year-old space shuttle program is scheduled to end on Thursday, July 21, when Atlantis and its STS-135 crew return to Earth. The landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida marks the completion of a 13-day mission to supply the International Space Station for the post-shuttle era.

Odds 'n' Ends

There's not really any earthshaking news in education today, but a lot of interesting stuff as listed below.

• Organized Chaos: Interesting Article from NPR
• Education Week: New Details Emerge on Duncan's NCLB Waiver Plan by Alyson Klein
• NASA Image of the Day: Vesta Sizes Up
• The Columbus Dispatch: Ethics accusation fired at new state schools chief by Catherine Candisky
• Science Nation: Decoding Disasters: Are We Prepared for Another 9-11? by Miles O'Brien and Marsha Walton
• Education Week: 36 States, D.C. to Apply for Race to Top Early Ed. Money by Michele McNeil
• San Jose Mercury News: Using touch screens and apps to treat autism by Brandon Bailey

Our transition from satellite internet to DSL is complete. It turns out that I'm getting a bit more download speed for a lot less money. Upload speed is absolutely abysmal! In other words, I'm a bit disappointed with Frontier's high speed internet, but happy with the savings.

Friday, July 22, 2011

With any apologies due to Monte Python's Flying Circus, I found a couple of truly unique, well, okay, sorta interesting and different postings last night that I just can't resist posting here.

Carmel Clay (IN) Schools Superintendent Jeff Swensson absolutely blew a gasket yesterday about virtual schools in Virtual gold? Virtual education? Really?

The second is a poem published on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog written by Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District (TX) Superintendent, John Kuhn, "Reform Me" - a poem by a superintendent.

Odds 'n' Ends

I was absolutely thrilled last night to find the two items posted above, as I didn't have anything of merit to post today other than Tamar Lewin's Training of Teachers Is Flawed, Study Says and a shot of a crop duster who inexplicably showed up over a couple of fields next to us. I really wonder if the crop duster wasn't reprising Randy Quaid's role as crop duster Russell Casse from Independence Day in which Casse dusts the wrong field while drunk. The crop duster sprayed both the field next to us and one across the road. Interestingly, the fields are farmed by two different farmers.

Have a great weekend!

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