Wednesday, December 29, 2010
“best of” list for education reformers
To Fix Education: Fire Human Teachers, Hire Holograms | Dailycensored.com
To Fix Education: Fire Human Teachers, Hire Holograms
Written by Adam BessieBusiness, EducationDec 29, 2010“50 years later, our generation’s Sputnik moment is back,” President Obama declared at a recent speech at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; this time, however, we aren’t just losing to the formidable U.S.S.R., but now are being beaten senseless by wimpy little nations like Finland, for cripes sake.
Thankfully, in Shanghai we have a far more scary-looking foe than Finland, one actually worthy of replacing the Red Scare. Fifty years after Sputnik, we still have a healthy fear of a communist takeover of our country, which has been fed not only by Glen Beck’s chalkboard conspiracy theories, but also by the reality that China owns most of our debt, a fact feverishly exploited by both liberals and conservatives to grab votes in the midterm election. Now, in outperforming us in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), these communist children have given us a “wake-up call,” as Obama concludes, demonstrating that we are “in danger of falling behind,” and waking up to a Red Dawn.
Our imploded economy, and the subsequent Red Scare, has led to a
New law requires whooping cough vaccination for middle school students - Medical News - sacbee.com
New law requires whooping cough vaccination for middle school students
California middle and high school students will be required to be vaccinated against whooping cough after a new law takes effect next year.
The law, which goes into effect July 1, will apply to both public and private school students from 7th through 12th grades.
There has been a major uptick in the cases of pertussis, known as whooping cough, with more
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/29/3287642/new-law-requires-whooping-cough.html#ixzz19XxSxen7
UC Execs Demand More Money « occupy california
UC Execs Demand More Money
According to Nanette Asimov (SF Chronicle), 36 top UC executives are demanding better pensions (and threatening the UC with lawsuits), including a $5 million increase in pension liability and what would effectively be another $51 million in retroactive changes for the UC. The list of executives that signed the demand letter:
UC system’s central offices
Satish Ananthaswamy, CFA senior portfolio manager, Office of the Chief Information Officer
Marie Berggren, chief investment officer
William Coaker Jr., senior managing director of equity investments, Office of the Treasurer
Queens Teacher: The amazing truth about PISA scores
The amazing truth about PISA scores
The amazing truth about PISA scores: USA beats Western Europe, ties with Asia.
What I have learned recently and want to share with you is that once we correct (even crudely) for demography in the 2009 PISA scores, American students outperform Western Europe by significant margins and tie with Asian students. Jump to the graphs if you don't want to read my boring set-up and methodology.
The main theme in my blog is that we shouldn’t confuse policy with culture, and with demographic factors.
For instance, education scholars have known for decades that the home environment of the kids and the education levels of the parents are very important for student outcomes. We also know that immigrant kids have a more difficult time at school, in part because they don’t know the language.
Take me as an example. The school me and my brother attended was in a basement in Tehran, had no modern
Who Needs an Education Secretary? Maybe Not California - State EdWatch - Education Week
Who Needs an Education Secretary? Maybe Not California
Expect lots of announcements in the coming weeks from newly elected governors naming their handpicked education secretaries, usually described as impassioned champions of "reform" (meaning the policies favored by their bosses).
New Mexico's governor named one last week. Iowa's gov picked his own today.
But that post-election tradition may not play out in California. That's because Democratic Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the job he held a couple decades ago, promised during his campaign that he would eliminate the
Ilana Garon: Teach For America's 'Highly Qualified' Is Highly Misleading
Ilana Garon
Seven years ago, when I began teaching high school in the Bronx as a NYC Teaching Fellow, I had every expectation of being the next Socrates. I had just completed a rigorous summer training program that I naรฏvely assumed would give me all the skills I needed to connect with my young charges and open their minds to the lyricism of Robert Frost's poetry or the pathos of Shakespearean tragedy. Through my determination, tenacity, and love of learning, I would not only ensure that my students passed their Regents exams; I would teach them to love English, and by extension, to take the whole of their studies more seriously.
The students had other ideas. My most vivid memory of those first two years involves a group of kids known by their teachers as the "sunshine class." (The kids traveled in blocks, so several teachers had the same group at different points during the day.) That season, the cafeteria served

