Monday, March 3, 2003

All Else Equal

The New York Times Timothy A. Hacsi reviews All Else Equal, a new book comparing public and private education by Luis Benveniste, Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein. The authors of All Else Equal: Are Public and Private Schools Different? (first chapter) present case studies of eight public and eight private schools in California over two years. While Hacsi notes that he found the book "dry and repetitive" in part, he writes that "Anyone who cares about public education should read 'All Else Equal'.''

I found an answer I'd been seeking for some time in Hacsi's review. Richard Rothstein has been one of my favorite commentators on the education scene for some time. He regularly contributed to the Times Lessons column series, but his work disappeared in the last few months. Hacsi notes that Rothstein no longer is a columnist for the Times.

I found the online segment of All Else Equal to be an interesting read. The book is available in paperback from Amazon.com for $13.97. It qualifies for free shipping, if ordered with other items to make a total order of $25 or more. If you're looking for a good item to round out your $25 Super Saver Shipping, I used this opportunity to pick up Joy Hakim's Freedom: A History of US, the companion book to the current PBS Series based on her ten part history series.

I also checked out something I'd discovered some time ago about New York Times column links. If you go to the Lessons page, you'll find the Rothstein column, How U.S. Punishes States That Set Higher Standards, is offered for $2.95. Go to the week 75 archive of Educators' News and use the links there (two Rothstein columns are linked) and the column is still free!

More Inequities of No Child Left Behind

 

Richard Rothstein writes this week about the inequities in the No Child Left Behind law in How U.S. Punishes States With Higher Standards. Rothstein relates that many states and school systems that score well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress also have some of the highest numbers of students eligible for school transfer away from "failing schools."

Pledge Ruling Upheld

The controversial ruling that saying the Pledge of Allegiance in schools was unconstitutional because of the phrase "under God" was upheld by the full U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday. Los Angeles Times writer Henry Weinstein reports in Controversial Ruling on Pledge Reaffirmed that the ruling "sets up a likely confrontation before the U.S. Supreme Court later this year."

Head Start Changes Opposed

Boston Globe Correspondent Karla Kingsley writes in Advocates: Don't touch Head Start that Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Christopher Dodd "are rallying for support in the Senate to oppose changes that would move the Head Start program to the Department of Education from the Department of Health and Human Services and provide block grant funding to states." Dodd stated in a teleconference last week, ''Let there be no doubt that this is an effort to dilute or destroy this program.''

Another Wrinkle of the No Child Left Behind Law

John McElhenny writes that lawyers for six students "suspended for distributing candy canes with religious messages" think that new federal NCLB regulations strengthening protections for prayer in public schools will strengthen their lawsuit against the Westfield Public Schools in Westfield, Massachusetts. McElhenny writes in Federal rule aids student lawsuit that Westfield superintendent of schools, Thomas McDowell, "has said the issue has nothing to do with the students' religious views. He said they were prohibited from passing out the candy canes because students are not allowed to distribute anything on school grounds that is unrelated to the curriculum." Groups from widely (and maybe wildly) varying camps have weighed in for the students, including the Jerry Fallwell related Liberty Counsel and the American Civil Liberties Union! If found in violation of the recently outlined prayer regulations of the No Child Left Behind Act, the Westfield Schools could be ineligible for federal funds distributed under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Take a look at In the Center of the Trapezium from the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive for Sunday. It's a gorgeous Hubble Space Telescope shot of the Trapezium in M42 just below Orion's belt.

Moving to OS X

With some big improvements in the way the Classic box of Mac OS X handles applications and sound, we've finally made the switch to OS X in my classroom for our cart of "24" iBooks. (Unfortunately, the funky iBook keyboard and the weak tip of the chargers has necessitated sending four in for repair. When they return, several more must go in for lousy Airport [wireless] performance.) We'd held off going to X because SpellTutor and SpellTools (and other readback functions) just didn't work under OS 10.2. Our mainstay writing assistant, Don Johnston's Co:Writer 4000, also didn't perform well under X's classic box. With the 10.2.3 (and 10.2.4) updates, the problems with sound went away. In the meanwhile, Don Johnston's Bob Keller contacted me and asked if I'd like to try a beta of their upcoming 4.1 release of Co:Writer. The beta addressed and corrected many of the problems on the Mac side I'd noted in the otherwise positive review of their product, Co:Writer 4000.

I finished the last five iBooks to be cloned to OS X 10.2.4 with Mike Bombich's excellent Carbon Copy Cloner last Thursday evening. (Can you imagine how heavy my laptop bag and book bag were with six iBooks in them?) My teaching assistant and the kids are having a merry time finding out that the Shut Down command has now moved under the blue apple from its previous center position under special and the Connect to Server command is now centered under Go rather than under the multicolored Apple's Chooser at the left of the OS 9 screen. Once through the changes, the kids have taken to the dock like ducks on a pond. They love it. They just wish it were bigger so we didn't have to use the OS 9 Launcher at all!

Columns...Maybe...

I'm working hard in spare moments on a series of columns for this month entitled Computers in the Classroom. I hope to get the first installment, Fourth Year Classroom Tour, posted this week, maybe as early as tomorrow. Other parts of the series will include Configuring and Setting Up iBooks, How and Why We Use Them, and an update on our computer take-home program, A Gaggle of...

The "Maybe..." part of the heading is because March is a difficult month. I'll be doing most of my 40 required annual case reviews for my special education students this month. During that time, I'll need to write a new IEP for each student and schedule, coordinate, and conduct a conference that includes the parent(s), an administrator, the child's homeroom teacher, and myself. My teaching assistant will have to cover the classroom by herself for the week I'm locked into conferences. We still have 28 kids for whom we're responsible for their reading and/or total language arts program, so we'll be busy.

Performa 475 Needs a Home

Malcolm Dyer writes from the United Kingdom that he has "a Performa 475 with 16 MB and a Colourwriter 2500. I wonder whether you are aware of anybody in the UK who is using Macs in a similar way to yourself and who might therefore be interested in another. It just doesn't seem right to consign the machine to a skip when it still works - just no longer does what I need it to do."

If you're interested, drop Malcolm an email.

Devotion for February March 2-8, 2003

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is We Add Our Own Trouble. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

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From a Reuters posting: "Portland teachers have overwhelmingly ratified a contract that includes an unprecedented offer to work 10 days for free, accept a 1 percent pay raise and other concessions to stave off cuts in education spending and health benefits." See Teachers avert strike, agree to work for free.

A Murray State University study has found that longer high school classes with longer classes scored "about the same on state standardized tests as schools with traditional schedules." See Longer school classes have little effect on test scores.

A stop at Scienceman.com last evening led me to the OpenOSX.com site. They now offer WinTel 1.0.0, an alternative to Virtual PC, that "is a Aqua graphical user interface to control the popular and powerful open-source Bochs software."

Jeff Adkins was kind enough to include Educators' News in his recent Lite Side, "Meander" Kahney Reveals Cult of Mac Journalists. It was nice to be included with the "big boys," even if in a very funny spoof. Thanks to Jeff for the include and the smiles the column brought.

Sorry for the brief posting. I'm well into preparation for annual case reviews. I blew my spare minutes today working on a column for this next week month:-).

Friday, March 7, 2003

Winding Down

As I wind things down here on Educators' News, I find that I'm a lot more prone to just post columns that catch my fancy, rather than pounding the web in search of all or most of the pertinent educational news. Sarah Mahoney's Laptops Win Over the Skeptics, Even in Maine on The New York Times is just such a column. Ms. Mahoney tells that attendance is up and detentions are down in Maine junior highs since the introduction of laptop computers. Good things seem to be happening as a result of former Governor Angus King's Maine Laptop Initiative. It will be interesting if research backs up these findings. If so, it will be one of the first to actually document the positive effects of technology in the classroom.

Billions for War, But Not Enough To Keep the Doors Open at Public Schools

Bob Herbert weighs in with another excellent op-ed piece on The New York Times, The War on Schools. Herbert begins

There's something surreal about the fact that the United States of America, the richest, most powerful nation in history, can't provide a basic public school education for all of its children.

 

Actually, that's wrong. Strike the word "can't." The correct word is more damning, more reflective of the motives of the people in power. The correct word is "won't."

Education Is the Key

The Indianapolis Star's Tim Evans in Education is answer, says report on blacks tells of a "report issued today by the Indiana Commission on the Social Status of Black Males" that "education is the key to overcoming obstacles that prevent many African-American males in Indiana from having successful, productive and healthy lives."