6/11/2014 – Standards Scolds Get Us Nowhere
June 11, 2014 Subscribe
THIS WEEK: Education Is World’s #1 Priority … Student Engagement In Schools … More Trafficking Of Teachers … Parents Rebel Against Big Data … Why College Tuitions Increase
TOP STORY
Standards Scolds Are Getting Us Nowhere
By Jeff Bryant
“Support for the Common Core is eroding away, and you have to wonder what the Administration and a significant wing of the education establishment are going to be left with … The Obama administration and others who claim to be advocates for public schools do themselves and their cause no favor by listening to the standards scolds and taking the hardline on enforcing a policy that would never have led to the progress that was promised in the first place … What’s needed instead is a pivot to the issue of education inequality.’”
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NEWS AND VIEWS
U.N. Global Survey: Education Top Priority Despite Wealth
MSNBC
“Education is a top priority among developed and third-world nations alike, beating political freedoms and gender equality, according to a new global poll. Of the more than 2 million people who responded to the “My World” survey, a United Nations project, two out of three identified education as their top priority. Topping the list of other priorities was better healthcare and an honest and responsive government … ‘Education has consistently been a top issue for people around the world, no matter their country, sex, age or socioeconomic status … education is a key driver for development issues,’ said Corinne Woods, director of the UN Millennium Campaign … The survey is an ongoing project using crowdsourcing to better understand global development issues and trends.”
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More Than Half Of Students ‘Engaged’ In School, Says Poll
Education Week
“School leaders should not neglect the social and emotional factors that help students thrive, and they should empower teachers so that they are more engaged and effective in the classroom, says the “State of America’s Schools” report, a synthesis of polling data and research from the international Gallup organization … A broad focus on testing and new standards can lead schools to neglect the individualized social and emotional needs of students, the report’s authors say … Emotional engagement at school is the noncognitive factor that most directly correlates with academic achievement … A 1-percentage-point increase in a student’s score on the engagement index was associated with a 6-point increase in reading achievement and an 8-point increase in math achievement scores … Gallup recommends that principals address teacher engagement to help students succeed … The share of workers described as ‘not engaged’ among teachers, however, was slightly larger than it was for the general workforce … Among all occupations tracked in the survey, teachers were the least likely to say that their opinions counted at work.”
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School District’s Use of Worker Visa Program Draws Scrutiny
The Wall Street Journal
“The H-1B visa program allows employers to hire skilled foreigners for hard-to-fill positions … And school districts around the country have used them to hire thousands of foreign teachers … Since 2001, the U.S. Department of Labor has found more than 2,000 H-1B violations by individual schools, districts or boards … In Garland, [Texas] … foreign recruits had been hired not to increase the ranks of Spanish-speaking teachers, as intended, but instead … to enrich a rogue district executive and his associates, who charged immigrants hefty fees for legal and other services … Many of the foreign teachers hired in Garland obtained the promised green card, even as they were allegedly tricked out of thousands of dollars … Employers sponsoring a foreign worker for a green card must prove no Americans are qualified for the job.”
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Big Brother: Meet the Parents
Politico
” A months-long review by POLITICO of student privacy issues, including dozens of interviews, found the parent privacy lobby gaining momentum … The amateur activists have already claimed one trophy, torpedoing a privately run, $100 million database … Now, parents are rallying against another perceived threat: huge state databases … In the past five months, 14 states have enacted stricter student privacy protections … All told, at least 105 student privacy bills were introduced this year in 35 states … The POLITICO review found ed tech entrepreneurs and school reformers both bewildered by and anxious about the backlash – and struggling to craft a response.”
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Colleges Are Full Of It: Behind The Three-Decade Scheme To Raise Tuition, Bankrupt Generations, And Hypnotize The Media
Salon
“The price of a year at college has increased by more than 1,200% over the last 30 years… Beginning in the ’80s, university administrators … blamed utility bills … libraries … professors… government regulations … society … Those who wrote about the higher ed price problem kept expecting the Invisible Hand to assert itself and straighten this thing out … Democrats today worship education, while Republicans today worship the market, neither of which faith has brought us close to a solution … The tuition price spiral is part of the larger history of inequality … That is the offer our ever-more expensive colleges extend to their students: in a world of rich and poor, the only choice before you is whether or not you intend to purchase a place among the haves.”
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