Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, March 15, 2014

3-15-14 the becoming radical EMPATHYEDUCATES! | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness by P. L. Thomas, EdD


THE BECOMING RADICAL

Radical Scholarship

EMPATHYEDUCATES!


the becoming radical 
 A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness 
by 






Status Quo at Elite New York Schools: Few Blacks and Hispanics
Photograph; Hill Street Studios/Getty By Al Baker | Originally Published at The New York Times. March 11, 2014 Seven black students have been offered a chance to start classes at Stuyvesant High School in September, two fewer than received offers last year. For Hispanics, the number has […]

YESTERDAY

Study Shows Huge Income, Education Gaps Among Races in Metro Detroit
Photograph; A report released today by New Detroit showed there are significant racial gaps in education and income across metro Detroit, with Latinos and African Americans lagging behind whites and Asian Americans. / January photo by Kimberly P. Mitchell/Detroit Free While the study reveals the situation is […]
Rocketship’s Rich Patron, Reed Hastings, Drops a Bombshell: “Get Rid of School Boards”
Photograph; Reed Hastings, Credit: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Incorporated Dr. Raynard Sanders, is an education expert. In New Orleans he is known for having and sharing the true story. The New Orleans Miracle; there is none. The host of New Orleans Imperative has over thirty years of […]
Room for Debate: The Risk of Playing Down Racism
By Imani Perry | Originally Published at The New York Times. MARCH 12, 2014 The My Brother’s Keeper initiative is a response to a terrible social reality. Black boys and men are suffering mightily in this nation. The cause is important. However, this endeavor raises serious concerns. […]

MAR 13

Rahm Backs CPS on Warning to Teachers Over ISATs
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Friday that CPS boss Barbara Byrd-Bennett “made the right call” in warning teachers of the repercussions of refusing to administer an achievement test next week. | DNAInfo/Ted Cox By Ted Cox @tedcoxchicago| Originally Published at DNA Info. February 28, 2014 EDGEWATER — The […]

MAR 12

Students with Disabilities Encounter Discrimination in New Orleans Schools
Photograph by Matthew Hinton | Kelly and Noah Fischer Originally Published at Southern Poverty Law Center. | March 12, 2014 Kelly Fischer’s hopes were quickly dashed last fall. She was attending a High School Fair in New Orleans, a chance for parents to meet representatives from the […]
Charter School Closure: Supply and Demand?
Photograph; John McDonogh High School Principal Marvin Thompson attends the first Future Is Now Schools charter board meeting since administrators learned the school would close at the end of the current academic year. (March 11, 2014.) (Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) Over the last few decades, […]

MAR 11

Tense Moments in de Blasio’s TV Interview
The war on teachers, unions, and public education, if it exists, is evidence in an interview, or more so in the message, ‘trend on the tax relief our charter schools receive and we will retaliate.’ Close any charter schools or do not give these institutions the option […]

MAR 09

Teaching Students, Missionary Zeal, and the Cult of Personality
By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published The Becoming Radical. March 9, 2014 As a teacher educator, I now spend much of my spring visiting schools and observing my seniors who are learning to teach in extended field experiences (my university’s version of student teaching). What […]

MAR 07

SAT Reboot 2016: “Nonsense It All Is”
Photograph by Angel Franco/The New York Times By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. March 6 , 2014 In the often cited scene near the end of Notting Hill when Anna Scott stands in William Thacker’s shabby book store and asks him […]


AlterNet: Now That the SAT’s Writing Section is Gone, It’s Time to Rethink How We Teach Composition
Now That the SAT’s Writing Section is Gone, It’s Time to Rethink How We Teach Composition

MAR 13

“The truth is…” James Baldwin
Beyond “Doubly Disadvantaged”: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Schools and Society
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) established the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing program in the mid-1990: MTO recruited more than 4,600 families with children living in severely distressed public housing projects in five cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City). HUD offered some MTO families the opportunity to use a housing voucher
Segregation and Charter Schools: A Reader
In The link between charter school expansion and increasing segregation, Iris C. Rotberg highlights that problems exist in both re-segregation of schools in the U.S. and the rise of charter schools as separate and interrelated forces. Schools in the U.S. are re-segregating, regardless of type—public, private, and charter. And charter schools are not creating the education reform charter advocates

MAR 12

Revisiting “Cliches and Abstractions” in the Context of Race, 2014
Writing in 1949 in the wake of World War II, Lou LaBrant opens a consideration of cliche and abstractions by focusing on a student essay, in which the student discussed her assumptions instead of the text she was examining: Only after inch-by-inch progress was she able to see that from “orphan,” for which the novelist was undoubtedly responsible, my student had jumped to the whole cliche “poor, de
Analysis of Cliches and Abstractions (1949)
Analysis of Cliches and Abstractions (1949).

MAR 11

Writing Is a Journey: Thoughts on Writing, College, and the SAT
A writer’s writer often ignored is James Baldwin, who examines his drive to write in the context of race: INTERVIEWER If you felt that it was a white man’s world, what made you think that there was any point in writing? And why is writing a white man’s world? BALDWIN Because they own the business. Well, in retrospect, what it came down to was that I would not allow myself to be defined by other p
James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78
James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78 INTERVIEWER Do you think painters would help a fledgling writer more than another writer might? Did you read a great deal? BALDWIN I read everything. I read my way out of the two libraries in Harlem by the time I was thirteen. One does learn a great deal about writing this way. First of all, you learn how little you know. It is true that the more one learn
American Hustle: Ignoring Poverty in U.S. Needs More than 50-Year Anniversary
It is 2014, and publications such as Education Week are offering 50th-year anniversary looks at the War on Poverty. It is 2014, and race and racism remain words that shall not be spoken, lingering scars on the American character [1] that are routinely concealed beneath a heavy foundation (something in a Caucasian, please) and a bold but not too flashy shade of red lipstick. It is 2014, and almost

MAR 10

Common Core: Why Money Trumps Evidence
Originally posted at Visualized – How Bill Gates Bought the Common Core and drawn from work done my Mercedes Schneider: Visualized – How Bill Gates Bought the Common Core

MAR 09

Teaching Students, Missionary Zeal, and the Cult of Personality
As a teacher educator, I now spend much of my spring visiting schools and observing my seniors who are learning to teach in extended field experiences (my university’s version of student teaching). What I have learned over more than a decade of making these visits and providing new teachers productive feedback is that one aspect of becoming and being a teacher is a complex but clear combination of

MAR 07

David Coleman’s Latest Khan
Maybe we need a Khan Academy video series to help the public in the U.S. understand the term “free.” When you are driving late at night, and you are in unfamiliar rural America in need of a hotel, you see a relatively rundown hotel with a sign announcing “FREE CABLE!” Well, of course, if you stop and pay for the room, that cable is not “free” (the honest term would be “included”); the cost of that