http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/23250/What_matters_is_what_parents_do
Dennis Van Roekel President, National Education Association Testifies on the Reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions
Obama has signaled that he wants a rewrite of No Child Left Behind on his desk this year—and proposed a $1 billion bonus for education should that happen.
. . . .As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.
Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.
Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead,
Happy Pi Day, everyone! Today I have a special treat. I had the opportunity to interview Pi poet, Mike Keith. Mike is into constrained writing and Pi, among other things. Mike recently published a book,Not A Wake, that demonstrates the constrained writing:
A collection of short stories, poetry, plays, puzzles, and other surprises, all constructed according to the rigid rules of “Pilish”, that peculiar variant of English in which the number of letters in successive words is required to follow the digits of the number Ï€ = 3.14159265358979…, in this case for a truly grand total of 10,000 decimals. The perfect book for fans of the number Pi, constrained writing, wordplay, puzzles, or experimental prose and poetry.
Mike sent me a copy of “Not a Wake” to review. In case it’s not obvious, the three words of the title of the book have 3, 1, and 4 letters. And, the pattern continues with the subtitle “A Dream Embodying Pi’s Digits Fully for 10000 Decimals.”
This is a fun book. The challenge in writing such a book is to have the writing be natural in the face of a pretty serious constraint! The book accomplishes that beautifully! Mike is clearly a poet as he is able to pluck the right words out of the ether to make the poetry flow. And, he does it for 10,000 words!
President Obama (AP).
