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| Ohio Tea-Party Gov. John Kasich and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson hug after Jackson talked about the agreement that was reached on the Cleveland reform plan. (Plain Dealer) |
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| ACT assesses kindergartners for college/career track so they can reach full potential? |
Local control also allows for some pretty different and interesting curricula options. Our local high school, a rural school in California, has a vineyard, an orchard, pigs, and sheep. The program is very successful at this school. I daresay if I proposed this as a statewide standard and suggested that LAUSD implement it at all their highChaos in 24 NYC Turnaround SchoolsOn Friday, an independent arbitrator issued a binding ruling to stop the “turnaround” of 24 schools, where some 3,500 teachers lost their jobs so that the city could claim federal School Improvement Grant funding. The federal program requires that the principal and at least half the teachers be fired; the school gets a new name, and voila! All is transformed, turned around due to the magic of mass firings. But the arbitrator agreed with the union that its contract had been violated. Mayor Bloomberg, however, is not one to be easily deterred. So he announced not only that he is suing to More on Local ControlI have always had mixed feelings about local control. On one hand, I think it is very important for people to feel a sense of pride, belonging, ownership, and engagement in their local school. On the other, I don’t want the school to reflect nothing more than what the local people already know and believe. That way, no one every learns anything new or is challenged to rethink what they know. Education is about tradition but it is also about encountering and grappling with new ideas. So, I don’t want to seem wishy-washy, but I recognize that there is merit to both sides of the argument and that, as in so many things, a sensible balance is needed between the forces of localism and those who push against localism. I should add that, these days, I find no case to be made for federal control of curriculum, as the federal bureaucrats are even less thoughtful, less imaginative, and more rule-bound than their local counterparts. At |
The combination of changes to Florida’s accountability system will cause a temporary drop in some school grades. However, we can also expect student performance to improve as it did in 2007 when Florida made revisions to the school grading formula. At first, the number of A and B schools fell from about 2,000 to 1,952, but, in the two years that followed, A and B schools rose to
Still don’t believe in climate change? Then you’re either deep in denial or delirious from the heat.So begins Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson in Eugene Robinson: Feeling the heat, an opinion piece in today's Washington Post.Like me, Robinson lives in Arlington County, right across the Potomac from the District of Columbia, and I periodically see him in a local supermarket. It has power from a generator truck, but as I write this, the rest of that strip mall remains dark, now into a 4th consecutive day.
By John Thompson
We all know there are plenty of people who are eager to offer advice — or worse, try to impose their ideas on our profession. Bloggers, columnists, elected officials, and self‑proclaimed reformers, they are constantly weighing in about public education. I mean, they have an opinion on everything — the who, the what, the when, the where, and the how — all of that about public education. Always opinions.
The “who” they love to talk about and blame are teachers. As if this disjointed and underfunded system is somehow the fault of those who teach and the people who work in those schools. But the real problems are the profiteers and mega-rich Wall Street folks who created an economic crisis that has our country and the world reeling.
And the solution isn’t to attack educators, it’s to give respect. That’s what will attract talented young people to become teachers and education support professionals and college professors.
The other part of the “who” in education is the students, and the
