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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

UPDATE: Author Maya Angelou blasts Obama’s Race to the Top + What gets kids in trouble: ‘Borrow’ from Wikipedia

Author Maya Angelou blasts Obama’s Race to the Top:



Author Maya Angelou blasts Obama’s Race to the Top


Maya Angelou (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Maya Angelou (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Renowned author and poet Maya Angelou was one of more than 120 authors and illustrators who recently signed a letterto President Obama asking him to curb policies that promote excessive standardized testing because  of the negative impact “on children’s love [of] reading and literature.”  Now she has blasted Obama’s signature education initiative, Race to the Top, saying that it is “a contest” that doesn’t help children learn to love to read and get a better understanding of the world.
Angelou, who has been a strong public supporter of Obama’s, appeared Monday on the MSBNC show “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” where she was asked about her opposition to policies that emphasize standardized testing and her view of Race to the Top, a multibillion-dollar competition run by the U.S. Education Department that allowed states and later individual school districts to vie for federal funds by promising to enact favored education  reforms favored by the administration. Critics have charged that Race to the Top has led to increased high-stakes standardized testing because it requires states that win funds to evaluate teachers in part on student standardized test scores.
“Race To The Top feels to be more like a contest,” Angelou said, “… not what did you learn, but how much can you memorize.”
She also said that young people should have the freedom to read the great authors, including Tolstoy and Balzac, because their books help young people learn about the complexities of the world.
“Writers are really interested in forming young men and women,” she said. “… ‘This is


Quotations from Chairman Mark: Every public word of Zuckerberg’s in one file
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Five key strategies to get/keep kids engaged at school
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Rand Paul does what gets kids in trouble: ‘Borrow’ from Wikipedia
Sen. Rand Paul gave a  speech at Liberty University in Virginia on Monday that got a lot of media attention because he said he believes that the combination of abortion and modern scientific advances could lead to the practice of eugenics. But he got coverage for more than just that message: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said […]    
When earning a D is ‘doing well’
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Three ways to listen (and learn) better
Do you ever listen to something only to find your mind wandering? Here’s a piece on how to listen by written by Annie Murphy Paul, a book author, magazine journalist, consultant and speaker who helps people understand how we learn and how we can do it better. She is a contributing writer  for Time magazine, writes a […]