Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - Rocky Mountain Edition

My wife, Annie, and I attended the wedding of one of our nephews over the weekend in Estes Park, Colorado. While we got to see some incredible scenery, I didn't get to spend much time looking for education news online.

We had great lodgings for our visit in the Stonehaven House. It has a gorgeous view right out the front door, and some interesting passers-by that I'll share a bit about below.

So we'll start our week of Educators' News a day late, but with our usual Monday warm, fuzzy human interest story.

A Bureaucrat Making a Difference

Michael Winerip's A Bronx Bureaucrat Gets Things Done by Leaving His Desk tells of Bob Cohen, whose job is to help principals. Winerip writes:

He has a job that cannot be explained over a beer but is vital to the professional survival of many worthy people. Good principals protect teachers, and good network leaders protect principals. If Mr. Cohen is doing his job, he will be the only bureaucrat a principal needs, which in the case of New York City is exactly the right number of bureaucrats.

Winerip, who is a savvy writer about the silliness of the current educational "reform" movement, adds:

Having been a teacher for 11 years, he knows how to play the test-prep game. "You teach in the same language as the state test; you give weekly tests in the form of state tests; you build their vocabulary to match the tests," Mr. Cohen said. "Then, once you pull up your numbers and the state and city take their eyes off you, you do what’s necessary so children are learning."

That last quote is a sad commentary on what folks must do to game the system while trying to do what is right by their students.

Occupy Wall Street

I linked last Friday to an Associated Press report by Terance Chea about teachers picketing Rupert Murdoch's keynote speech at Jeb Bush's National Summit on Education Reform. Chea continued his coverage with Rupert Murdoch heckled at California education forum. Chea quotes Murdoch as saying in his Friday morning address, "We need to tear down an education system designed for the 19th century and replace it with one suited for the 21st." To the uninitiated, that might sound like a viable plan for improving public education in America, when it really translates into tearing down public education and replacing it with for -profit educational institutions that primarily benefit moguls such as Murdoch.

Miracle Schools

If you've drunk the kool-aid of the education "reformers" about miracle school turnarounds, maybe you should rewrite the lyrics to Mike and the Mechanics 80s hit, All I Need is a Miracle, to read "All I need is a miracle, all I need is you Arne, Bloomberg, for-profit charter schools, high stakes testing to rate teachers and close schools," etc. See if you can make it rhyme.

For those of us living in the real world, Diane Ravitch's Bridging Differences blog posting, If You Believe in Miracles, Don't Read This, relates Gary Rubinstein and Noel Hammatt's efforts to investigate miracle turnaround schools highlighted by the Obama Administration and education "reformers." Not surprisingly, the writers have found in almost every case that their isn't a magic bullet or miracle in the cases highlighted, but usually some chicanery with the numbers or students involved to create the appearance of success for turnaround strategies.

Diane writes:

The lesson in all this debunking is not that poor kids can't learn. Of course, they can. Let me say that again, slowly: Yes, poor kids can learn and excel. But whether or not children are poor, education is a slow, incremental process. While it is true that a student may have a remarkable change in attitude and motivation and demonstrate large test-score gains in a short period of time, it is rare indeed when an entire school or district experiences a dramatic increase in test scores. Any huge change in scores for a school or a district in a short period of time ought to provoke skepticism and a demand for evidence, not a willing suspension of disbelief.

Odds 'n' Ends

• Maryland Schools Insider blog on The Washington Post: Question for Nitpickers: What’s the best way to eradicate lice? by Michael Alison Chandler
• Reality Check blog on Education Week: Taking Standardized Tests to an Extreme by Walt Gardner
• The New York Times: In Cheating Cases, Teachers Who Took Risks or Flouted Rules by Sharon Otterman

Clouds and Elk

Our plan to spend some time in Rocky Mountain National Park yesterday crashed and burned when the gorgeous weather we had for the wedding on Sunday quickly changed to rain and snow on Monday. The mountain peaks were pretty well obscured by clouds and snow. It turned out that the best view of the mountain peaks for us were through the windshield as we drove to the wedding on Sunday afternoon!

But...

Just as we were hauling our stuff out to the car to check out of Stonehaven Monday morning, a herd of around 50 elk passed through the "yard." The dominant male seemed to be herding his ladies away from several single males following the herd.

The elk seemed neither afraid of us nor terribly interested in our nearness, but were intent on browsing. They made their way through the "yard" of Stonehaven and out onto the highway. The locals, being wise to large animals in the roads, simply drove (and in one case, walked!!) slowly through them.

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Server Ate My Homework

Alan Schwarz gets the award for best line of the day, "When teachers started hearing that 'the server ate my homework,' they knew a new era had begun." Schwarz was writing in Out With Textbooks, in With Laptops for an Indiana School District about the School Town of Munster, Indiana, "removing all math and science textbooks for its 2,600 students in grades 5 to 12," and going digital. He writes briefly about the challenges of such a changeover.

Another Robot to Aid Children with Autism

I linked in March to an article about KASPAR, a British experimental robot designed to help children with autism "to read facial expressions and become more comfortable with touching people." Chris Woolston recently wrote about an American version of such a robot in Robots built to help autistic children on the Los Angeles Times. Bandit the robot has been under development at the Robotics Research Lab at USC since 2007. Unlike KASPAR which is run by remote control by a researcher, Bandit is automatic, with "a pleasant, inviting face with a movable mouth, archable eyebrows and camera eyes that let him 'watch' his playmates. He also has proximity sensors to gauge whether kids are backing away or moving in. If they get too close, he can wheel away." Bandit is also designed to be used eventually as a take-home unit...when researchers find enough funding and participants to complete its development.

Odds 'n' Ends

While "the server ate my homework" line linked above may get the award for best line of the day, Indianapolis Public Schools' Superintendent Eugene White may get today's foot-in-the-mouth award. During a recent radio interview, White attempted to show the unfair playing field between private and public schools, saying, "We take everybody that come through the door, whether they are blind, crippled, crazy." Members of the IPS board and the special education community were not amused at his use of an "inappropriate colloquial expression." White promised not to use the expression again...but he was right!

• Library of Congress: Remembering Armistice Day: "I Did My Bit for Democracy" by Stacie Moats
• Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog on The Washington Post: Will new NCLB law be less test-obsessed? by Monty Neill
• AP: Education makes a political comeback in Washington by Kimberly Hefling
• NPR: Tennessee Teachers Find It Hard To Make The Grade by Blake Farmer

Short Week

With our trip to the Rockies last weekend for a family wedding, I'm still way behind on lots of non-Educators' News stuff. I spent about six hours on Tuesday editing wedding photos (retouching, redeye removal, correcting my 1.5 degree list to the left on most shots, etc.) and a few more hours yesterday finishing up and getting DVDs ready to go out in the mail. It clearly reminded me of why I left wedding photography behind over thirty years ago. But it was an incredible setting for a wedding, and we had great weather for the outdoor ceremony.

BTW: The image at right along with several others has been added to our Desktop Photos page.

We returned to a rainy, cold Indiana late Monday night and are just now getting over our jet lag. I finally got an update posted late yesterday afternoon to my other web site, Senior Gardening, so my readers there won't think I died. But with all I've had to do and the nasty weather, I really haven't done any gardening this week.

So I think I'll just let this week go with Tuesday-Thursday postings.

Have a great weekend!

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