Big Education Ape: Jan 17, 2010

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Educated Guess � Common-core standards under fire

When the man overseeing the common-core standards initiative in math admits that the deadlines for completing the work are “insane,” you know we may be headed for trouble.
And if a panel discussion at a national mathematicians conference in San Francisco over the weekend is an indication, William McCallum and a group of 45 mainly mathematicians drawing up K-12 national math standards are in for withering criticism.The panelists, who included two elementary school teachers and an author of two college textbooks on elementary math, were blunt. They complained that the draft standards were obtusely written, that they expected too much of students in early grades, that they would encourage the same kind of bureaucratic enforcement of state standards that has already damaged math education.
Most of all, they pleaded with McCallum not to rush the standards into

Google Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

Google Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

Free Google Voice Calls to Haiti
To help US families reach relatives in Haiti, for the next two weeks, Google Voice is offering free calls to Haiti.
If you don't have a Google Voice account, you can request an invitation at www.google.com/voice.

Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

Donate via Google Checkout
Other ways to help
News and Updates
Post-earthquake imagery
Upload/View Haiti videos

On January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities. Google will also donate $1 million to help organizations provide relief.

Watch Michelle Obama on Haiti Relief

Donate to UNICEF

UNICEF is deploying clean water and sanitation supplies, therapeutic foods, medical supplies and temporary shelter to Jacmel and Port-au-Prince. UNICEF will also be focusing on children who have become separated from their families to protect them from harm or exploitation.

DONATE TO CARE

CARE plans to start food distributions using stocks of high-protein biscuits from CARE warehouses in Haiti. CARE has 133 staff who are on the ground coordinating with U.N. agencies and other aid organizations to gather more detailed information about the damage and will rapidly scale up response based on those assessments.

Free Technology for Teachers: 15 TED Talks for Teachers to Watch Before 2010

15 TED Talks for Teachers to Watch Before 2010

TED Talks provide viewers with insightful and thought-provoking commentary and ideas. The contents of many TED Talks can be directly or indirectly applied to your classroom practices. While you're on holiday break, you may want to watch one or all of these TED Talks. If you're interested in learning more about using TED Talks in your classroom, check out Teaching With TED.

TED Talks directly about education.
1. John Wooden on Winning vs. Success.
What strikes me most about Coach Wooden's talk is his emphasis on teaching and developing character over winning. One of his three most important rules, "no criticizing of teammates, I'm paid to do that," is a great rule that translates well to the classroom and the workplace.

2. Clifford Stoll Teaches Physics to Eighth Graders.
Clifford Stoll has done many cool things in his life including catching a KGB spy, but the coolest thing he's done is teaching college level physics to 8th graders. What I like about Clifford Stoll is that instead of just talking about ways to teach and improve education he is actually getting on the front line and trying his ideas. (Stoll has definitely done enough things and made enough money to sit back and be a "consultant" but instead he's actually teaching, something I have tremendous respect for). In this talk he gave at TED in February 2006 Stoll talks about and demonstrates measuring the speed of sound with an 8th grade class. Stoll also makes a very profound, but somewhat obvious, statement about the future. He says, "if you want to know what the future generation will be like, ask a Kindergarten teacher."

NYC Educator: Close Public Schools, Fire Teachers, Open Charters and Make Big Bucks!

Well, when they told Jed Clampett Cali-for-nee-ah's the place you oughta be, they weren't kidding. Movie star/ politician Arnold Schwarzenegger's got a deal for parents in La-La Land, giving them all sorts of options to "improve" their schools:

Some of the options parents would have to choose from include: replacing the existing administration with a charter school, closing schools and replacing some or all of the existing staff.

What the other options may be I have no idea, as the article didn't deem them worthy of mention. I can't help but notice that there's nothing there about supporting or improving the schools. Apparently they must either be closed, replaced, or the staff must be gotten rid of. I have to also assume that when the schools are closed or replaced with charters, it's bye-bye staff. There is no possibility, therefore, that the school's problems could emanate from anywhere but the schools unionized employees.

So this makes being a parent much easier. If my kid flunks out, there's clearly something wrong with the school and it must be closed or replaced by a charter. At the very least, we need to fire all the staff.

The Washington Teacher: The Washington Teachers' Union Can Do Better ! Nathan Saunders Runs For WTU President 2010

Last Saturday, 120 people gathered together at the invitation of Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) General Vice President Nathan A. Saunders to celebrate his graduation from the National Labor College in Baltimore, Maryland. What was significant about this event was that Nathan announced that he would run for the WTU President seat when elections are held in May 2010.

With a campaign slogan of "We Can Do Better," Nathan shared his vision of building an organizing union that is proactive and embraces members ideas, encourages the participation of teachers, parents and community working collectively to improve teaching and learning conditions.

The gathering included not only community members, parents, and teachers/school personnel many of whom remarked throughout the night that there were excited and interested in working collaboratively to fight for meaningful education reform that doesn't exclude critical stakeholders. Nathan's speech focused on the obvious that teachers have not had a contract for three years and many of our members have lost their jobs in part due to our union's being reactive to Chancellor Rhee's education plan which seeks to terminate a significant share of the teaching force. In a recent press release, Nathan A. Saunders stated "Teachers are more besieged today than ever," The collective bargaining agreement is expired by three years, working conditions have deteriorated, and teachers are working harder for less money under greater pressure."

Nathan's announcement for WTU President 2010 was covered by Washington Post writer Bill Turque on the DC Wire blog in which he wrote"Saunders' candidacy raises at least the possibility that if Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee fails to secure a new contract with the WTU before spring, she could be dealing with a union president who qualifies as her worst nightmare. " After all many remarked at the recent campaign

This Week In Education: Millot: Where I'm Headed With These Series On Abuse in the Charter Market

Millot: Where I'm Headed With These Series On Abuse in the Charter Market

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Markets don’t work very well for society if participants can’t trust the information provided by research, sellers are prepared to bend and then break the law in pursuit of their business plans, buyers lack the capacity or motivation to pursue quality outcomes, regulators can’t be expected to base decisions on objective facts, and the people managing the hundreds or thousands of market actors don’t take their duty of loyalty seriously. Public markets, funded by the taxpayer and even more reliant on good faith and transparency, work even less well.

The market for public charter schools isn't working well enough to scale.

Most people, most firms, most institutions in the charter market are not bad actors. They may not succeed as well as we would like, but they are trying to balance their own interests with those of students, teachers, taxpayers and society. Most people - yes, even most in the for-profit sector - lean towards students.

This is good, but not good enough. The financial crisis taught us that if bad actors are tolerated too long, they gain a competitive edge that forces everyone else to follow suit, creating an ethical race to the bottom that will eventually, inevitably destroy the market. There are reasons to believe the highly fragmented “national” charter market is poised to follow suit.

Over the last several months, I've used academic fraud at think tank Education Sector and CMO Imagine's disregard for the statutory independence of charter schools to draw attention to serious shortcomings in the charter market's research and provider sectors. Monday, I'll begin to analyze how political pressure from Massachusetts' Secretary of Education led its Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education to see that a charter was approved by a state board "in violation of the provisions of law, regulation, and procedure.... never validly awarded and should be deemed void ab initio."