Friday, June 24, 2011

tomhayden.com - Peace Exchange Bulletin - Sen. John Kerry's Letter to PDA, Hayden's Letter to Kerry

tomhayden.com - Peace Exchange Bulletin - Sen. John Kerry's Letter to PDA, Hayden's Letter to Kerry

No layoffs: Union agrees to concessions in budget deal | GothamSchools

No layoffs: Union agrees to concessions in budget deal | GothamSchools

Funny Man Ed Sec Duncan Challenges Nation to Make Hispanic Ed a Priority - Hispanically Speaking News

US Ed Sec Duncan Challenges Nation to Make Hispanic Ed a Priority - Hispanically Speaking News

White House Denies Funny Man Stephen Colbert’s Request to Document U.S. Citizenship Ceremony

White House Denies Funny Man Stephen Colbert’s Request to Document U.S. Citizenship Ceremony

Political funny man Stephen Colbert had hoped to feature and on-air naturalization ceremony on his Comedy Central show, but the White House has said no to that idea.

“The Colbert Report” was wanting to run the ceremony alongside Colbert’s interview with documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, whose documentary, “Citizen U.S.A.: A 50 State Road Trip” airs on July 4 on HBO.

Pelosi’s documentary revolves around new U.S. citizens across the country who are about to take their oath of allegiance to the Unite States, which is performed by the federal officials. Colbert had hoped to get one of these ceremonies on video.

When the Wrap contacted Pelosi about the government’s refusal to allow the taping, she said, “The government just doesn’t get it. ‘The Colbert Report’ is what America watches. This is Colbert Nation.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released a statement on the matter saying, “The government made a

US Ed Sec Duncan Challenges Nation to Work Together to Make Hispanic Education a Priority

US Ed Sec Duncan Challenges Nation to Work Together to Make Hispanic Education a Priority

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan today urged parents, educators and school leaders at every level of government to make Hispanic educational excellence a national priority. Secretary Duncan’s challenge follows the release of a sobering new report on the Hispanic achievement gap by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the U.S. Department of Education’s statistical center.


Mathematics and reading scores for Hispanic students have increased over time, but the gap between Hispanic students and their white counterparts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress has not changed since the 1990s, according to the comprehensive report by NCES. Over the same period, the gap between non-limited English proficient Hispanic students and their white peers narrowed.


In the knowledge economy, Secretary Duncan said it is more vital than ever that every child in America be able to go as far as his or her potential, talent and energy will allow.


“Race and ethnicity shouldn’t be factors in the success of any child in America,” said Secretary Duncan.


Birth defects linked to pesticides, again « MomsRising Blog

Birth defects linked to pesticides, again « MomsRising Blog

Modern School: Corporate Swill Mills Ripping Off Schools

Modern School: Corporate Swill Mills Ripping Off Schools

Policy makers ignore the teachers — again - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Policy makers ignore the teachers — again - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Policy makers ignore the teachers — again

The Maryland Council for Educator Effectiveness ignored the classroom teachers on the panel when devising a new teacher evaluation system.

It should no longer shock me when classroom teachers are entirely ignored in education policy (there wasn’t a teacher in the big bunch that wrote the No Child Left Behind law, for example). But I expected better from Maryland.

Here’s what happened: Earlier this week, the the Maryland Council for Educator Effectiveness voted on a new way for schools to evaluate teachers and principals that ties 50 percent of each assessment to what are technically called “student growth measures” but which actually are scores on standardized tests.

Read full article >>

Jersey Jazzman: Your Corrupt NJ Democratic Party

Jersey Jazzman: Your Corrupt NJ Democratic Party

Companies Running School Cafeterias Under Eye of USDA « Larry Miller's Blog

Companies Running School Cafeterias Under Eye of USDA « Larry Miller's Blog

Layoffs Could Set Back Schools For Years — Public Advocate | Edwize

Layoffs Could Set Back Schools For Years — Public Advocate | Edwize

Layoffs Could Set Back Schools For Years — Public Advocate

When New York City laid off 15,000 teachers in the 1970s in response to a fiscal crisis, most never returned, even when they were called back. Class sizes swelled, and then became the “new normal.” Even after the economy recovered, the school system found it difficult to recruit new teachers, who were fearful about job security.

Now the city administration is poised to repeat the error-scarred past, according to a new report [PDF] released today from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s office. Only a week remains until the city adopts its next budget, de Blasio warns. We should heed the lessons and not endanger another generation of students.

“[I]t is essential to remember how difficult it will be to shield future students from the damage of those cuts, even well after the onset of a strong economic recovery,” according to the report, “How Teacher Layoffs Could Set

Leaked internal documents shows what Rhee really thinks of some Michigan legislators

Leaked internal documents shows what Rhee really thinks of some Michigan legislators

Is Diane Ravitch a Hayekian? - E.D. Kain - American Times - Forbes

Is Diane Ravitch a Hayekian? - E.D. Kain - American Times - Forbes

Is Diane Ravitch a Hayekian?

Adam Ozemik has a really good piece on Diane Ravitch up at The Atlantic, noting the common thread between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Diane Ravitch. Dana Goldstein sums up the two:

Once a vocal proponent of No Child Left Behind, charter schools, vouchers, and merit pay for teachers, Ravitch decided sometime around 2006 that there was actually no evidence that any of those policies improved American education. She now believes that the "corporatist agenda" of school choice, teacher layoffs, and standardized testing has undermined public respect for one of the nation’s most vital institutions, the neighborhood school, and for one of society’s most crucial professions: teaching.

Adam notes this old City Journal piece Diane wrote back in 1999. In it, she wrote:

Friedrich A. Hayek explained long ago that centralized "command-and-control" regulation seldom is efficient, because the people at headquarters always have a crucial deficit in information; they never know as much as the many thousands of people who are out in the field. Hayek’s analysis

ASCD Inservice: Klein Hypes Rad and Fab Reformers

ASCD Inservice: Klein Hypes Rad and Fab Reformers

NYC Public School Parents: Ivan Smalley, third grader, and his letter to Mayor Bloomberg

NYC Public School Parents: Ivan Smalley, third grader, and his letter to Mayor Bloomberg

School Tech Connect: Do Something For Whittier

School Tech Connect: Do Something For Whittier

Do Something For Whittier

Fred's got an update from Whittier. I'm stuck here today, but I can get on the horn. So can you, actually. Brizard's phone number is (773) 553-1500 and his fax number is (773) 553-1501.


I like to fax, and if you want me to send in your message, then just shoot it over to me in an email. For a little background on the Whittier situation, check out this.


Here's the fax I sent. Seriously let's not let these Whittier parents get crushed by Rahm.

Schools Matter: Please test us too: A bad solution to a non-existent problem

Schools Matter: Please test us too: A bad solution to a non-existent problem

The Difference Between Testing and Test-Based Accountability - Dana Goldstein

The Difference Between Testing and Test-Based Accountability - Dana Goldstein

The Difference Between Testing and Test-Based Accountability

Matt Yglesias writes that there is no contradiction between a rich curriculum and standardized testing. This is true. But there very well might be a contradiction between a rich curriculum and accountability tied to student standardized test scores. There is overwhelming evidence that when school funding and teacher/principal evaluation and pay are tied to scores on such exams, incidences of teaching-to-the-test, curriculum-narrowing, and even outright cheating and fraud go up.

Consider the example Matt and I have discussed, on the benefits of reading and reciting poetry. After NCLB was instituted and third through eighth graders across the country were required to be tested annually in reading and math, ace education reporter Linda Perlstein wrote Tested, about a Maryland third-grade classroom struggling to achieve proficiency. Here's how poetry was taught to those students:

The third-grade teacher I followed for my book Tested had a good sense of what was going to be on the Maryland School Assessment. The exam, and the benchmark tests designed in its image, didn’t change a whole lot from year to year—there were certain constructs that showed up again and again, and certain questions too. One question she’d come to expect was, “How do you know such-and-such is a poem?” The standard tested was identifying the elements of a poem. We all know that the best way to ingrain an

This Week In Education: Thompson: Duncan Can Shoot -- But Can He Rebound?

This Week In Education: Thompson: Duncan Can Shoot -- But Can He Rebound?

Thompson: Duncan Can Shoot -- But Can He Rebound?

image from www.csmonitor.comElementary teachers make .7 decisions per minute of teaching, according to research cited recently by Larry Cuban. A teacher has 1200 to 1500 interactions with students per day. The numbers are significant because, as Cuban explains, they show the "astonishing amount of cognitive labor" that goes into both teaching and rebounding, the "cascade of instantaneous micro-decisions" that teachers and successful rebounders make. He concludes "effective teachers, then, like top jazz musicians and basketball rebounders improvise–decide on the spot–as they deal with both the routine and unexpected in the art of teaching." It's a must-read response to postsJohn Merrow and I have written in the Huffington Post about how Duncan is over-focused on a narrow set of statistics and not enough on subtle classroom basics that can


Video: "Bad Teacher" Mocks Teachers - And Incentive Pay

Popout

There's more than enough to amuse or offend everyone in the latest Cameron Diaz / Justin Timberlake vehicle (which from the trailer looks like "Bridesmaids" remade in a middle school setting): Uncaring teachers, ridiculous test score bonuses, and a lot of swear words and dirty jokes.



The Return of ZombieX: Rob Gaudette Teaches Outside the Test

The Return of ZombieX: Rob Gaudette Teaches Outside the Test

The Return of ZombieX: Rob Gaudette Teaches Outside the Test

by CYNTHIA on JUNE 24, 2011

ZombieX is a 12-year old public school 7th grader.

Greetings all students. Are you dreadfully bored with school? When your teacher lectures and blabbers about God knows what, what do you do? Do you sleep the period away or space out? Or do you pretend to listen, pretend to take serious notes and learn to play the game?

I have been reading “The Zombie Survival Guide” and I enjoy imagining the teachers as zombies attempting to infect our innocent minds. I daydream about the movie “Shaun of the Dead” and I recall a hilarious scene where Shaun wrestles an old zombie in a bar while his girlfriend tries to help him by chucking darts at the zombie, but she misses and hits Shaun square in the head! I sometimes feel that schools have become test taking prisons and are making mindless zombies out of us. What we needis to be hit in the head with darts to wake up. That’s what I want to do with this blog.

If schools have become prison-factories, then principals have become

Free Minds, Free People: 7/7-7/10

Free Minds, Free People: 7/7-7/10

Free Minds, Free People: 7/7-7/10

Just a quick note to let you all know about a great opportunity coming up on July 7 through July 10: the Free Minds, Free People Conference in Providence, Rhode Island! Presented by theEducation for Liberation Network, the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, the Chicago Freedom School, and Youth in Action, the Conference is an opportunity to learn and connect with others interested in solving some of the most pressing issues in education. There are workshops, cultural events, networking opportunities and more, all in the service of promoting social justice by creating better learning opportunities both in and out of school. It promises

School Based on Universal Human Rights? | Lefty Parent

School Based on Universal Human Rights? | Lefty Parent

School Based on Universal Human Rights?

FYI… this piece is way more initial rumination and not yet a polished argument… but here goes!

Israeli teacher Yaacov Hecht, one of the founders of the “democratic education movement” says that he was inspired to reinvent schools in a democratic paradigm, a paradigm that “sees as its main goal the education towards human dignity” as set forth in the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. In his book, Democratic Education: A Beginning of a Story, Hecht says…

Democratic education considers the protection of human rights in school as a necessary and basic condition for the beginning of work on education towards human dignity… The basic assumption of a democratic school is that a young person, living in an environment which respects

Breaking the Code on Buzzwords « Failing Schools

Breaking the Code on Buzzwords « Failing Schools

Breaking the Code on Buzzwords

JUNE 24, 2011
by mariasallee

Money helps campaigns succeed and so do strong messages, especially when the messages are adopted and promoted by large sectors of the public. Consider sound bites such as the following: “Take back America”, “Yes we can”, “Drill, baby drill”–all uttered by public figures with publicly stated agendas. Like them or not, the above statements are clearly presented for approval– to debate or to support. However, there are more insidious campaigns taking place through coded messages, many of them sponsored by people with big money and big agendas. People aren’t really aware that a campaign is occurring because the money goes quietly into multiple sources, spreading the message through media and through apparently well-meaning “grassroots” movements, often preying on sincerely good-intentioned people. Such messages start to emerge in a seemingly spontaneous manner, like a pop song that’s played everywhere you go. Often we

Remarks by the President at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center | The White House

Remarks by the President at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center | The White House

Remarks by the President at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center

Release Time:
For Immediate Release
Location:
Carnegie Mellon University, National Robotics Engineering Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

11:02 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, hello, hello! (Applause.) Thank you very much. Everybody, please have a seat. Thank you. Hello, Pittsburgh! (Applause.) It is good to be back. Thank you, Senator Casey, and Mayor Ravenstahl, County Executive Dan Onorato, State Auditor Jack Wagner, and all of you for having me back here at Carnegie Mellon. It is good to be here.

And it seems like every time I'm here I learn something. So, for those of you who are thinking about Carnegie Mellon, it's a terrific place, and you guys are doing just great work.

I just met with folks from some cutting-edge companies and saw some of their inventions here in your National Robotics Engineering Center. But that’s not the only reason I’m here. You might not know this, but one of my responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief is to keep an eye on robots. (Laughter.) And I’m pleased to report that the robots you manufacture here seem peaceful -- (laughter) -- at least for now.

This is a city that knows something about manufacturing. For generations of Americans, it was the ticket to a middle-class life. Here and across America's industrial heartland, millions clocked in each day at foundries and on assembly lines to make things. And the stuff we made -- steel, cars, planes -- was the stuff that made America what it is. The jobs were good. They paid enough to own a home, to raise kids, send them to college, to retire. They were jobs that told us something more important than just how much money we made, what was in our paycheck. These jobs also told us that we were meeting our responsibilities to our family and to our neighborhoods, and building our communities, and building our country.

But for better and worse, our generation has been pounded by wave after wave of profound economic change. Revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live and the way we work. Businesses and industries can relocate anywhere in the world, anywhere that there are skilled workers, anywhere that there is an Internet connection. And companies have learned to become more efficient with fewer employees. In Pittsburgh, you know this as well as anybody –- steel mills that once needed a thousand workers now do the same work with a hundred.

And while these changes have resulted in great wealth for some Americans and have drastically increased productivity, they’ve also caused major disruptions for many others. Today, a high school diploma no longer guarantees you a job. Over the past 13 years, about a third of our manufacturing jobs have vanished. And meanwhile, the typical worker’s wages have barely kept up with the rising costs of everything else. And all this was even before a financial crisis and recession that pounded the middle class even more.

Now, we’ve made some tough decisions that have turned our economy in a positive direction over the past two years. We’ve created more than 2 million new jobs in the private sector over the past 15 months alone, including almost 250,000 in manufacturing. But we still have to confront those underlying problems. They weren’t caused overnight, and we won’t solve them overnight. But we will solve them. And we’re starting to solve them right here in Pittsburgh, and right here at Carnegie Mellon. (Applause.)

And by the way, that’s why I ran for President. Not just to get us back to where we were -- I ran for President to get us to where we need to be. I have a larger vision for America –- one where working families feel secure, feel like they are moving forward and that they know that their dreams are within reach; an America where our businesses lead the world in new technologies like clean energy; where we work together, Democrats and Republicans, to live within our means, to cut our deficit and debt, but also to invest in what our economy needs to grow –- world-class education, cutting-edge research, and building the best transportation and communication infrastructure anywhere in the world. That’s what it’s going to take for us to win the future. And winning the future begins with getting our economy moving right now.

And that’s why we’re here. Carnegie Mellon is a great example of what it means to move forward. At its founding, no one would have imagined that a trade school for the sons and daughters of steelworkers would one day become the region’s largest -- one of the region’s largest employers and a global research university. And yet, innovations led by your professors and your students have created more than 300 companies and 9,000 jobs over the past 15 years -– companies like Carnegie Robotics.

But more important than the ideas that you’ve incubated are what those ideas have become: They’ve become products made right here in America and, in many cases, sold all over the world. And that's in our blood. That's who we are. We are inventors, and we are makers, and we are doers.

If we want a robust, growing economy, we need a robust, growing manufacturing sector. That’s why we told the auto industry two years ago that if they were willing to adapt, we’d stand by them. Today, they’re profitable, they’re creating jobs, and they’re repaying taxpayers ahead of schedule. (Applause.)

That's why we’ve launched a partnership to retrain workers with new skills. That’s why we’ve invested in clean energy manufacturing and new jobs building wind turbines and solar panels and advanced batteries. We have not run out of stuff to make. We’ve just got to reinvigorate our manufacturing sector so that it leads the world the way it always has –- from paper and steel and cars to new products that we haven’t even dreamed up yet. That’s how we’re going to strengthen existing industries; that's how we’re going to spark new ones. That’s how we’re going to create jobs, grow the middle class, and secure our economic leadership.

And this is why I asked my Council of Advisors on Science and Technology -- what we call PCAST -- a while back to look at the state of American manufacturing and the promise of advanced manufacturing. The concept of advanced manufacturing is not complicated. It means how do we do things better, faster, cheaper to design and manufacture superior products that allow us to compete all over the world.

And so these very smart folks, many of whom are represented here, wrote up a report which is now up on the White House website. But we didn't want to just issue a report, we wanted to actually get something done. So we’ve launched an all-hands-on-deck effort between our brightest academic minds, some of our boldest business leaders, and our most dedicated public servants from science and technology agencies, all with one big goal, and that is a renaissance of American manufacturing.

We’re calling it AMP, A-M-P -– the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. It’s made up of some of the most advanced engineering universities, like Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan; some of our most innovative manufacturers, from Johnson & Johnson to Honeywell, Stryker to Allegheny Technologies. I’ve asked Susan Hockfield, the President of MIT, who is here -- there’s Susan -- (applause) -- and Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical -- (applause) -- to lead this partnership, and to work with my own advisors on science, technology and manufacturing.

Throughout our history, our greatest breakthroughs have often come from partnerships just like this one. American innovation has always been sparked by individual scientists and entrepreneurs, often at universities like Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech or Berkeley or Stanford. But a lot of companies don’t invest in early ideas because it won’t pay off right away. And that’s where government can step in. That’s how we ended up with some of the world-changing innovations that fueled our growth and prosperity and created countless jobs -- the mobile phone, the Internet, GPS, more than 150 drugs and vaccines over the last 40 years was all because we were able to, in strategic ways, bring people together and make some critical investments.

I’ll take one example. The National Science Foundation helped fund Stanford’s Digital Library Project in the 1990s. The idea was to develop a universal digital library that anybody could access. So two enterprising Ph.D. students got excited about the research that was being done at Stanford -- this is funded by NSF. So these two Ph.D. students, they moved from campus to a friend’s garage, and they launched this company called Google. And when the private sector runs with the ball, it then leads to jobs, building and selling, that is successful all over the world.

This new partnership that we’ve created will make sure tomorrow’s breakthroughs are American breakthroughs. (Applause.) We’re teaming up to foster the kind of collaborative R&D that resulted in those same early discoveries, and to create the kind of innovation infrastructure necessary to get ideas from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor to the market more rapidly –- all of which will make our businesses more competitive and create new, high-quality manufacturing jobs.

Now, to help businesses operate at less cost, the Energy Department will develop new manufacturing processes and materials that use half as much energy. That will free up more money for companies to hire new workers or buy new equipment.

To help businesses discover, develop, and deploy new materials twice as fast, we’re launching what we call the Materials Genome Initiative. The invention of silicon circuits and lithium-ion batteries made computers and iPods and iPads possible –- but it took years to get those technologies from the drawing board to the marketplace. We can do it faster.

To help everyone from factory workers to astronauts carry out more complicated tasks, NASA and other agencies will support research into next-generation robotics. And I just met with folks from a local company, RedZone Robotics, who make robots that explore water and sewer pipes. And I have to say, it is fascinating stuff, when you watch -- the robot is about this big. It can go through any sewer system. It’s operated remotely by the municipal worker. It’s got a camera attached so it can film everything that it’s seeing. It then transmits the data. It goes into a citywide database, and can enhance the productivity of these workers by three or fourfold, and help the city make even better decisions. Potentially this can save cities millions in infrastructure costs. Companies also are training new workers to operate the robots, and analysts to pore through the data that’s being collected.

To help smaller manufacturers compete, federal agencies are working with private companies to make powerful, often unaffordable modeling and simulation software easier to access. And I just saw an example. A few years ago, Procter & Gamble teamed up with the researchers at Los Alamos National Labs to adapt software developed for war to figure out what’s happening with nuclear particles, and they are using these simulators to dramatically boost the performance of diapers. (Laughter.) Yes, diapers. Folks chuckle, but those who’ve been parents -- (laughter) -- are always on the lookout for indestructible, military-grade diapers. (Laughter and applause.)

But here’s what’s remarkable: Using this simulation software that was developed at Los Alamos, Procter & Gamble has saved $500 million -- half a billion dollars -- as a consequence of this simulator. Now, through the new partnership that we’re setting up, Procter & Gamble is offering its powerful fluid dynamics simulator to smaller manufacturers, and it’s doing it for free.

Now, this is not just because Procter & Gamble wants to do good. It’s also they’ve got thousands of suppliers, and they're thinking to themselves, if we can apply this simulation technology to our smaller suppliers they're going to be able to make their products cheaper and better, then that, in turn, is going to save us even more money. And it has a ripple effect throughout the economy.

Starting this summer, federal agencies will partner with industries to boost manufacturing in areas critical to our national security. I just saw an example backstage. The Defense Department scientists –- we call it DARPA -- the folks who brought us stealth technology and, by the way, who brought us the Internet –- wanted to see if it was possible to design defense systems cheaper and faster. So they found a small company in Arizona called Local Motors, and they gave them a test: You have one month to design a new combat support vehicle, and you’ve got three months to build it.

Their CEO, Jay Rogers, is here today, and as an ex-Marine who lost a couple of buddies in combat, understood the importance of increasing the speed and adaptability and flexibility of our manufacturing process for vehicles that are used in theater.

So Local Motors solicited design ideas on their website, chose the best out of 162 that it received, built and brought this new vehicle here ahead of schedule. We just took a look at it. Not only could this change the way the government uses your tax dollars -- because think about it, instead of having a 10-year lead time to develop a piece of equipment with all kinds of changing specs and a moving target, if we were able to collapse the pace at which that manufacturing takes place, that could save taxpayers billions of dollars. But it also could get products out to theater faster, which could save lives more quickly, and could then be used to transfer into the private sector more rapidly, which means we could get better products and services that we can sell and export around the world. So it’s good for American companies. It’s good for American jobs. It’s good for taxpayers. And it may save some lives in places like Afghanistan for our soldiers.

So that’s what this is all about. As futuristic and, let’s face it, as cool as some of this stuff is, as much as we are planning for America’s future, this partnership is about new, cutting-edge ideas to create new jobs, spark new breakthroughs, reinvigorate American manufacturing today. Right now. Not somewhere off in the future -- right now.

It’s about making sure our workers and businesses have the skills and the tools they need to compete better, faster, and smarter than anybody else. That's what we’re about. We are America, and we don’t just keep up with changing times, we set the pace for changing times. (Applause.) We adapt; we innovate; we lead the way forward. (Applause.)

It’s worth remembering, there was a time when steel was about as advanced as manufacturing got. But when the namesake of this university, Andrew Carnegie -- an immigrant, by the way -- discovered new ways to mass-produce steel cheaply, everything changed. Just 20 years after founding his company, not only was it the largest, most profitable in the world, America had become the number one steelmaker in the world.

Now, imagine if America was first to develop and mass-produce a new treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched; or solar cells you can brush onto a house for the same cost as paint; or flexible display soldiers -- flexible displays that soldiers can wear on their arms; or a car that drives itself. Imagine how many workers and businesses and consumers would prosper from those breakthroughs.

Those things aren’t science fiction –- they’re real. They’re being developed and deployed in labs and factories and on test tracks right now. They sprang from the imagination of students and scientists and entrepreneurs like all of you. And the purpose of this partnership is to prove that the United States of America has your back, is going to be supporting you -- because that’s the kind of adventurous, pioneering spirit that we need right now. (Applause.)

That’s the spirit that’s given us the tools and toughness to overcome every obstacle and adapt to every circumstance. And if we remember that spirit, if we combine our creativity, our innovation, and our optimism, if we come together in common cause, as we've done so many times before, then we will thrive again. We will get to where we need to be. And we will make this century the American century just like the last one was.

Thank you very much, everybody. (Applause.) God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

END 11:20 A.M. EDT

Shanker Blog » New Teaching Resource Highlights Voices of Leading Pro-Democracy Muslims

Shanker Blog » New Teaching Resource Highlights Voices of Leading Pro-Democracy Muslims

New Teaching Resource Highlights Voices Of Leading Pro-Democracy Muslims

The Albert Shanker Institute has released “Muslim Voices on Democracy: A Reader“—a free, downloadable publication that highlights the speeches, articles, and ideals of pro-democracy Muslims. It is designed as a resource for high school teachers to use in American classrooms, as they seek to help students make sense of the complex forces at work in the Muslim world.

You can download the publication (PDF) here.

The individuals featured in this collection include intellectuals, union activists, dissidents, and journalists. Although the voices of women are featured throughout the publication, it contains a special section devoted to their unique challenges and contributions to the democratic political dialogue. The publication also features a