Girl dies after getting sick at school without nurse
A 12-year-old girl got sick late last month while she was at her Philadelphia school — a school without a full-time nurse. She died later that day. Here’s a piece on what happened to Laporshia Massey from the website of the nonprofit Parents United for Public Education in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia school district has been in a state of crisis for years in large part because of under-funding by the state. Drastic budget cuts this year led to what was referred to as a “grim new normal” that included the closure of two dozens schools, layoffs of more than 3,800 personnel and other cuts that left some schools without money for paper and new books.
Here’s the post from Parents United:
Our hearts are breaking over the death of beautiful 12 year old Bryant Elementary student Laporshia Massey, who died following an asthma attack that apparently started at school. We grieve for her entire family and the Bryant community.
Ratings madness: NO ‘highly effective’ elementary/middle-school teachers in Syracuse?
The teacher ratings madness continues. In this piece, Aaron Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, asks and answers this question: Are there really no highly effective elementary or middle-school teachers in Syracuse? Pallas writes the Sociological Eye on Education blog — where this post appeared — for The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, non-partisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.
By Aaron Pallas
What the heck happened in Syracuse?
About 10 days ago, Superintendent Sharon Contreras briefed the city’s Board of Education on the results of the first year of implementation of the “Annual Professional Performance Review” (APPR) plan, a fancy phrase for the new statewide teacher and principal evaluation system in New York. The APPR process sorts teachers into the
Why Malala should have won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize
Congratulations to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for winning the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a worthy winner. As would have the other people thought to be leading contenders, including Russian human rights activists and a physician in Congo who has long fought against sexual violence. But there was another nominee who would have […]
OCT 10
Malala Yousafzai picks Bethesda teen’s essay as contest winner
Sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai selected an essay written by a Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School senior named Julia Fine, 17, as the winner of a CNN contest for teens to write about being inspired by the young Pakistani. Malala, an advocate for education for girls, was shot by a Taliban gunman on Oct. 9, 2012, as she was returning home from […]
School district says ‘no’ to Walmart
Why did a small school district in suburban Chicago just tell Walmart that it would not provide major tax breaks for the company to build a 300,000-square-foot store? The school board of Summit Hill District 161 in Tinley Park, 25 miles southwest of Chicago, voted unanimously Wednesday night to reject the request by Walmart for […]
Students at ‘overachieving’ school getting anti-stress lessons
The 2005 book called “The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids” was written about students at the prestigious Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md., where kids are known to try to out-achieve themselves and each other with something of a passion. Now, my Post colleague Robert McCartney writes in this column that some of […]
Why the ‘GREAT Teachers and Principals Act’ is not great
(Correction: An earlier version incorrectly said Jonathan Schorr worked at the White House. He works at the Education Department.) Legislation in Congress called the GREAT Teachers and Principals Act sounds good but is anything but great in its proposal for new educator preparation programs, according to this post by Kenneth Zeichner, the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at […]
Why reading test scores flatten out in 12th grade
Why do reading scores on standardized tests flatten out in 12th grade? Here’s a post that explains it by E.D. Hirsch, founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education issues, including the best-seller “Cultural […]
OCT 09
The bottom line on SAT scores in one chart
Here, in one chart, is pretty much everything you need to know about who does and doesn’t perform well on the SAT. Kids from the wealthiest families do the best, and the kids from the poorest families do the worst. This pattern applies to virtually every high-stakes standardized test that is given to kids. The […]
The first sentence says it all
Here’s the first sentence of a story in The Buffalo News about a forum where several thousand parents, teachers and school administrators attended to talk about education: Reform of high-stakes testing for schoolchildren, a groundswell movement of lawn signs and small-scale protests, became an earthquake Wednesday evening. Here’s the second and third paragraphs, and […]
The amazing Malala Yousafzai talks about education with Jon Stewart
Malala Yousafzai was on a bus returning home from school exactly one year ago, Oct. 9, 2012, when she was shot in the head by a gunman from the Taliban, which had earlier banned girls from going to school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where Malala lived. She blogged anonymously against the edict and later came […]
OCT 08
Georgia Tech investigating ‘rapebait’ e-mail
Georgia Tech university officials are investigating reports that an undergraduate member sent an email to fellow fraternity members that provided a lewd, detailed guide on “luring rapebait.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that that Georgia Tech officials gave the newspaper a … Continue reading →
‘An average school I would want my children to attend’
Schools across the country are being “graded” for their academic performance in ways that don’t appropriately judge the institutions or their educators. Parents then seek out the “A” schools, believing that the metric by which they are largely being judged … Continue reading →
Yes, you do have time to read
Wish you had more time to read? Well, you probably already have the time, says cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” … Continue reading →
OCT 07
Shutdown forces cancellation of student environmental ed trips
Add this to the toll that the government shutdown is taking on people: Several environmental education programs in the greater Washington region have been canceled or altered because they were set in national parks that are now closed. Thousands of … Continue reading →
OCT 06
Is Fairfax’s new sleep-in program for some students fair?
Suppose you heard about a special program for students who get to go to school late so they can sleep in a little longer, but it is only for teens who can get the required permission and have the ability … Continue reading →
A teacher’s troubling account of giving a 106-question standardized test to 11 year olds
Here’s a detailed account from a teacher about the troubling experience she had giving her middle-school class of 11-year-old students a standardized reading diagnostic test, with both oral and written questions. This appeared on Jessie B. Ramey‘s Yinzercation blog. She teaches women’s … Continue reading →
OCT 05
The influence of new philanthropy on democracy
Education reform has been heavily influenced in recent years by massively wealth philanthropists who fund their own favored school reforms and then bring public policy along with them. How this is affecting the democratic process is the subject of a piece in Dissent … Continue reading →
OCT 04
How Congress flunked basic Schoolhouse Rock lesson
With the federal government shut down because Congress failed to fund it, it seems reasonable to ask just how far astray our lawmakers have gone from doing what school children learn as being its basic job. In this post, Stuart Kasdin, assistant … Continue reading →
Good student Laela Gray held back over 1 point on test
The story of an 8-year-old girl in Orlando offers a perfect illustration of what “high stakes” standardized testing means. Bay News 9 reported that Laela Gray was held back in third grade this fall — despite a fine report card … Continue reading →
The civics test native Americans flunked — but immigrants passed
The failure of Congress to accomplish the basic task of funding the federal government — thus forcing it to close down this week — provides us with a new opportunity to look at the miserable state of civics literacy in … Continue reading →
The failures of for-profit K-12 schools
Here’s a smart look at the spotty record of for-profit schools, by Larry Cuban, a high school social studies teacher for 14 years, a district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA), and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where … Continue reading →
Case study: The false promise of value-added teacher assessment
Value-added assessment is all the rage in school reform these days. It involves the use of complicated formulas that plug in student standardized test scores to try to determine how much “value” a teacher has added to that result. Assessment experts … Continue reading →