T.C. Williams 'persistently lowest achieving'
Feds mark Alexandria high school for overhaul that could include instructional reforms and new staff
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Alexandria Superintendent Morton Sherman.
Do you remember Equity 2000?
Dianne Pors found it hard to believe what she was seeing when she took her first job in 1975 as a ninth grade math teacher at Yerba Buena High School in the East Side Union High School district of San Jose. The school district seemed to be trying to remove that messy but essential element of math education, teaching, from her class.
Her students would come to class each day, take a quick quiz and then be handed a worksheet. That would be the extent of her professional involvement. They were told to complete the worksheet, hand it in and get another. They could ask her questions, but that was it.
Such simplified ninth grade math classes were standard throughout the country. Most were not as extreme as the one at Yerba Buena. They allowed teachers to teach, but not much. It was assumed that most high school freshmen were not ready for algebra or anything that had even a hint of algebra. They reviewed elementary school math. Many people thought that was all they were capable of understanding.
But in the 1980s a group of educational researchers, encouraged by frustrated math teachers like Pors, began to present evidence that many more ninth graders were ready for algebra, if school districts could be persuaded to teach it to them. Social scientists Sol H. Pelavin and Michael Kane published a landmark paper, “Changing the Odds: Factors Increasing Access to College”. It showed that many minority children, even those with disadvantaged backgrounds, could succeed in Algebra I if given a chance to take the course.
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Why Obama, Duncan should read Linda Darling-Hammond’s new education book
Educator Linda Darling-Hammond told me that her publisher gave her one hardback copy of her new paperback book, “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future.”
She gave it to President Obama. After all, the Stanford University education professor had headed his education policy team during the transition, and she wrote the book during that period.
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Eastern relaunch pushed back a year
D.C. school officials have postponed the re-opening of Eastern High School until fall 2011 to allow more time for planning the revival of the long-troubled Capitol Hill school.
Under federal mandate to overhaul its program because of consistently poor academic performance, Eastern has been closed to new students for the last two years while it undergoes a $76 million reconstruction and reboot of its programs. Juniors and seniors are currently attending classes in temporary trailer-like classrooms on the school site
The school was scheduled to begin admitting freshmen again this fall, but Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said in astatement released Thursday evening that they wanted to allow more time for the new school leadership to plan.
Va. college leaders weigh in on discrimination
After Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell issued a directive reaffirming that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not allowed in the state workforce, college leaders lost no time clearing the air on their own campuses.
For anyone who has been off-planet, Virginia's attorney general stirred things up on the state's public college campuses by advising the collegiate community last week that they did not have a right to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
College students mobilized across the state. The protest would have reached a much higher pitch had most of the colleges not been on spring break, a bit of timing that some students contend was intentional on the part of AG Ken Cuccinelli II.
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