Thursday, February 21, 2013

UPDATE: Evidence? They Can’t Handle the Evidence – @ the chalk face

Evidence? They Can’t Handle the Evidence – @ the chalk face:



I have little sympathy for the defense department #sequester

There’s a great deal of hand-wringing over this upcoming sequester which, according to most news outlets, could lead to around $85 billion in across-the-board cuts. The defense department is particularly upset, mentioning on CNN the possibility of furloughs.
It’s hard to say who would ultimately be affected:
But Hale said Defense Department civilian foreign employees would be exempted from pay cuts. There are about 50,000 foreign worker employees overseas employed on U.S. military facilities.
“They’re governed by status-of-forces agreements and probably would require some negotiation,” 



Sitting next to teachers doing some planning at a coffee shop…

When did teaching become so boring? Right now, I’m writing a book chapter for a social studies methods text. Working on the part about having schools build vegetable gardens. We’re planning side by side, oddly enough. But man, what they’re doing is so freaking boring that I might want to kill myself right now. I’m hearing PowerPoints and handouts. Oh, and a little task analysis thrown in there. Brilliant!



Thanks to @rexcharger for posting our show with Nancy Carlsson-Paige

The radio station that we were broadcasting Sunday shows in Wisconsin went through a bit of a program or format change over the holidays that I think is still being settled. In the meantime, the great shows we’ve recorded are trickling out. For now, you can listen to one on Sound Cloud here. If you have an hour, I highly recommend it.


Evidence? They Can’t Handle the Evidence

In the spring of 2005 several months before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, I attended the annual ASCD conference in that city—for my first and only time. Sessions at ASCD were not only sponsored by vendors, but vendors themselves were presenting. That conference was a disturbing lesson in the commodification of education.
Fast-forward to the December 2012/January 2013 issue of Educational Leadership, the flagship journal of ASCD: Common Core: Now What? The entire issue consists of primarily articles scrambling to implement Common Core State Standards (CCSS), all wrapped in a series of advertisements touting the requisite materials educators must have to make that implementation work.
During the stampede to out-implement others in regards to CCSS, I have confronted the failure of unions and particularly professional organizations to reject the move to CCSS and the eventual battery of national high-