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The stages of your vacation from work and school
The stages of your vacation from work. (Via @phdcomics) pic.twitter.com/VCwJfTYJCo — Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks) July 26, 2014
Students catch school superintendent plagiarizing part of commencement speech
The usual pattern for the detection of plagiarism is for an adult to catch a student copying from someone else’s work. But in Newton, Mass., it was two new high school graduates who discovered that the school district superintendent who spoke at their graduation had “borrowed” phrases from a commencement speech that Massachusetts Gov. Deval […]
Chris Christie to mayor: ‘I’m the decider and you have nothing to do with it’
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is consistent — at least when it comes to espousing total indifference to what Newark residents want for their state-operated public school system. Christie just bragged (see video below) that he told new Newark Mayor Ras Baraka that Baraka’s views on education reform don’t matter a whit — and […]
Actually, practice doesn’t always make perfect — new study
How many times have you heard that “practice makes perfect?” Well, a new meta-analysis of dozens of previous studies shows that it is not always true. In this post, Alfie Kohn explains and talks about the consequences of this when it comes to education. Kohn is the author of 13 books about education and human […]
Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland’s schools improve but that American reformers now ignore
Finnish educator and scholar Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and educational practices. The author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?”and a former director general of Finland’s Center for International Mobility and Cooperation, Sahlberg is now a visiting professor of […]
JUL 24
Pay for veteran teachers ‘painfully low’ in states like Colorado, where truckers earn more — new report
A new report on teacher pay finds that base salaries in some states are so “painfully low” for mid- and late-career teachers that truckers and sheet-metal workers earn more. The report by the nonprofit Center for American Progress, titled “Mid- and Late-Career Teachers Struggle With Paltry Incomes,” says that many veteran teachers must work a […]
The problem with how we talk about poverty and kids
Ellie Herman has had a very interesting career. For two decades she was a writer/producer for television shows including “The Riches,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Chicago Hope” and “Newhart.” Her fiction has appeared in literary journals, among them The Massachusetts Review, The Missouri Review and the O.Henry Awards Collection. In 2007, she decided, “on an impulse,” she […]
Educators who support Common Core call new tests ‘a travesty’
Many parents and educators in New York are awaiting the release of results of controversial Common Core-aligned standardized tests that were given to students this past spring. Here is a letter that a principal and some of his teachers wrote to their state legislator expressing concerns about the exams. These concerns are shared by other […]
JUL 23
Studying Jon Snow: U-Va. offering ‘Game of Thrones’ summer course
If “The Simpsons” can be the subject of a college course (“Simpsons and Philosophy” at the University of California Berkeley), as well as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (at Portland State University), it was only a matter of time before “Game of Thrones” would make it onto some course catalog. And now it has. The University of […]
JUL 22
‘Say this, not that’: A slick PR guide to selling charter schools by key charter group
It appears as if the charter school sector believes that it needs to better hone its public messaging. At its recent annual convention, the National Alliance for Public Charter School handed out an 18-page “Charter School Messaging Notebook” that actually has sections that include, “Say This, Not That,” and “Who Are ‘Our People?’ ” (See […]
New state rankings on how America’s children are faring
A new report on how America’s children are faring, just released by the nonprofit Annie E. Casey Foundation, found that Massachusetts is doing the best job and Mississippi the worst in four areas: economic well-being, education, health and family/community indicators. The KidsCount 2014 Data Book finds that in 2012, 23 percent of U.S. children were living […]
Educator: The many reasons ‘I am ashamed to be part of the system’
Back in May I published a post by a veteran elementary school teacher named Ralph Ratto with this headline: ‘Today was the first day I was ever ashamed to be a teacher.’ What prompted him to write it was his experience administering controversial new Common Core-aligned standardized tests to his students in New York. I […]
JUL 21
What Consumer Reports said about a kids’ tablet that it didn’t mean
The August edition of the valuable Consumer Reports magazine includes a piece titled “Back-to-school bests: Our top picks for tablets and laptops — for all ages.” The piece starts by noting that students today “need a lot more than pencils and notebooks” and then provides short write-ups of five different tablets: *For kindergarten — Samsung […]
Why college remediation needs to be overhauled
Award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York has written here and here about how college remediation rates are often hyped. In in the following post she expands her examination by looking at the purpose and efficacy of the remedial model. Burris has been exposing the problems with New York’s disastrous […]
This is educational ‘innovation’?
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, which brings the world the international testing program of 15-year old students known as PISA, just issued a new report called “Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective, Educational Research and Innovation.” Yes, the OECD is measuring innovation in education. There are, of course, innovation metrics for evaluating […]
JUL 19
Mom: My kindergartner was ‘work-sheeted to death’
This year I have posted a number of pieces (here, here, here and here, for example) about the travesty that is now kindergarten in many public schools. Today, under this school reform in which standardized-test scores are the chief metric for “accountability” of students, schools, teachers, etc., kindergarten has in many classrooms become an academic […]
JUL 18
Mom’s letter to college-bound daughter: Why ‘I have reason to fear’
Vicki Abeles is a filmmaker, attorney and mother of three. She is also the co-director and producer of the education documentary “Race to Nowhere,” which revealed the damage to young people being done by the pressures of school, homework, tutoring and extracurricular activities. In the following letter Abeles tells her daughter Jamey, who will be […]