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Common Core chaos: NY state website sends kids to offensive test prep
The rollout of the Common Core State Standards in New York state has been riddled with problems that just keep on coming. Here are some of the latest, from award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in Nassau County, who has been chronicling New York’s standardized test-driven school reform on this blog for […]
Single university president signs school contract restricting her love life
How’s this for an unusual agreement between a school and its president? Gwendolyn Boyd, the new president of Alabama State University, signed a contract with the school’s trustees that forbids her from allowing a lover to “cohabitate” with her in the presidential home being provided to her by the historically black university in Montgomery. The […]
YESTERDAY
America’s oldest working teacher turns 100
America’s oldest teacher celebrates 100th birthday with her NJ students http://t.co/6Z9hwLN0HT pic.twitter.com/WMe2piSFiz — NJ.com (@njdotcom) January 10, 2014 Agnes “Granny” Zhelesnik, believed to be the country’s oldest working teacher, turned 100 on Friday and celebrated, of course, at the private Sundance School in New Jersey with her students. This story in the Newark Star-Ledger […]
Eric Cantor threatens new NYC mayor over school reform (update)
(Update: Response from Majority Leader’s office) House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a conservative Virginia Republican, has long supported local control of education — except, apparently, in New York City, when the newly elected Democratic mayor there promises to do something Cantor doesn’t like. In an address this week at the Brown Center on Education Policy […]
Why teachers think Gov. Christie is a bully
And the rally ends, inevitably, with Christie arguing with a teacher pic.twitter.com/YyLsoJVTWQ — daveweigel (@daveweigel) Nov. 2, 2013 New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he’s not a bully, but there are plenty of teachers in New Jersey who would disagree. Here’s a small part of the transcript from the press conference that New Jersey […]
JAN 08
Should principals stop visiting classrooms?
Principals are above all supposed to be “instructional leaders” but exactly what that means — or how to be effective in that role — isn’t entirely clear. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham looks at the research on what makes for an effective instructional leader in the post below. Willingham is a professor and director of graduate […]
JAN 07
A sobering way to start 2014
In the current issue of The American Prospect, Richard Rothstein reviews Patrick Sharkey’s “Stuck in Place,” a 2013 book that helps explain the persistent failure of educational policy to spur the upward mobility of low-income African American youth. Here’s a piece on the findings in the book by Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit organization […]
JAN 03
Student privacy concerns grow over ‘data in a cloud’
Privacy concerns have been growing over a $100 million student database – largely funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and operated by a nonprofit organization, inBloom Inc. — that contains detailed information about millions of students. Most of the states that had signed up to participate in a pilot program have pulled back, and […]