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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.















VALERIE STRAUSS
The Answer Sheet
A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else)

Posted at 6:30 AM ET, 04/13/2010

Tennessee’s Vocabulary Project--Do you know these words?

It has long been known that children from high-poverty families start school at a disadvantage, in large part because they have less than one-third of the vocabulary than better-off children. To try to address this, the state of Tennessee is implementing what it calls the Academic Vocabulary Project.
JAY MATHEWS
Class Struggle
What's Right and Wrong With Our Schools

Posted at 10:00 PM ET, 04/11/2010

Should high schoolers read aloud in class?

Recently I visited a history class at a local, low-performing high school where students read in turn from the autobiography of a famous American. The teacher was bright and quick. He interrupted often with comments and questions. The 18 sophomores and juniors seemed to be into it, but it was such an old-fashioned--and I suspect to some educators elementary--approach for that I decided to see what other educators thought of it.

D.C. Schools Insider


Does contract math add up?

Although it's been less than a week since Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee rolled out their tentative contract agreement with the Washington Teachers' Union, bumps are starting to appear on the path to closing the deal. Disputed math, election-year tensions and the complexities of marrying private dollars to public budgets are all part of what's becoming a problematic mix.
Rhee said last week that the total cost of the new contract was $140 million. But at Monday's D.C. Council hearing, where Fenty spent more than three hours at the witness table in front of his September primary opponent, Chairman Vincent C. Gray, a different picture emerged. By Gray's calculations, there's not nearly enough money in Fenty's proposed FY 2011 budget to pay for what the contract promises. Gray puts the price tag for the contract at $161 million, including $100 million for retroactive and current year salary increases.
"It's an enormous amount of money. I can't find it," Gray said.

Fenty said he'd get it for him later.
Gray placed District Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi, city administrator Neil Albert, acting DCPS chief financial officer George Dines and Gandhi deputy Gordon McDonald under oath to ask whether there was currently money in the budget to underwrite the contract. Dines said no. Gandhi and McDonald said they didn't know. And Albert said he hadn't looked.
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Ed Buzz: The Nation



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