Monday, March 8, 2010

Amazon.com: The Death and Life of the Great American School System eBook: Diane Ravitch: Kindle Store

The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Kindle Edition)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

Digital List Price:	$26.95 What's this?
Print List Price:	$26.95
Kindle Price:	$9.99 & includes wireless delivery via *Amazon Whispernet*
You Save:	$16.96 (63%)

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Kindle Books

Kindle Books include wireless delivery - read your book on your Kindle within a minute of placing your order.
Don't have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Formats	Amazon Price		New from	Used from
Kindle Edition	$9.99		--	--
Hardcover	$15.75		$15.69	$41.99

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book of warning and wisdom, February 17, 2010

By	a non-flibbertigibbet - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book. With precision and soul, Diane Ravitch shows why our present-day education reforms are likely to do more harm than good: they are based on ideas extraneous to education and too often ignore its content. Closure, breakup, privatization of schools, rigid pedagogical models, teacher evaluations based on test scores--none of these reforms addresses why and what we are teaching in the first place. No Child Left Behind gave us accountability without substance; worse, it gave us "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Charter schools in themselves are no solution; they vary widely in quality and as a whole have not outperformed public schools. Small schools are no solution; they may lack many of the resources of larger schools, and some small-school initiatives have proven disastrous.

In chapter 1, Ravitch writes, "School reformers sometimes resemble the characters in Dr. Seuss's Solla Sollew, who are always searching for that mythical land `where they never have troubles, at least very few.' Or like Dumbo, they are convinced they could fly if only they had a magic feather. In my writings, I have consistently warned that, in education, there are no shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly."

Through fascinating analyses, narratives, interviews, and descriptions, Ravitch shows how our education reformers miss the mark again and again. But the book is far from despondent. There is much we can do, Ravitch argues, if we honor the substance of education and give our schools the support they need. This book should long outlast the reforms criticized in its pages. Its prose and principles stand strong against the times.

Notes from the news, Mar. 8 | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Mar. 8

by Erika Owens on Mar 08 2010 Posted in Notes from the news

Adults' missteps detailed in S. Phila. High violence The Inquirer
This front page story examined the report on the violence and how school administrators reacted.

See also: Confusión y errores de adultos en South Philly High Al Día
Things that make me want to go . . . . UGH Young Philly Politics

Only six providers approved for 'turnaround' The Notebook blog
Of 28 lead applicants to run Renaissance Schools, six were approved including ASPIRA, Johns Hopkins, Mastery Charter, and others.

See also: 6 applicants qualify to run Renaissance schools Daily News
Candidates to run Phila. schools cut to 6 The Inquirer

Still time to apply for Renaissance councils The Notebook blog
The deadline for parents, teachers, and others to join the school councils has been extended to tomorrow.

Editorial: Reaching for a dream The Inquirer
Congress is urged to pass the DREAM Act to help undocumented students go to college.

Allegheny/Strawberry Mansion: After a Century, Library Still Serves its CommunityPhiladelphia Neighborhoods

Danza says class act isn't just for show The Inquirer

Local Kids Sharpen Decision-Making Skills in Class KYW

Please email us if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.

Click here to get Notes from the news in your inbox every day.

Notes from the news

The Other Government Takeover - WSJ.com

Everyone knows Democrats are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to get ObamaCare through the Senate. Less well known is that Democrats are plotting add-ons to that bill to get other liberal priorities enacted—programs that could never attract 60 votes.

One of these controversial measures rewrites the Higher Education Act to ban private companies from offering federally guaranteed student loans as of this July. Congress has already passed laws in recent years discouraging private lenders from making loans without a federal guarantee. But most college financial-aid departments still want private companies to originate and service the guaranteed loans. That's because the alternative—a public option run by the Department of Education—has been distinguished by its Soviet-style customer service.

The Democratic plan is to make this public option the only option mere days before colleges send out their financial aid packages to incoming students. The House and Senate budget committees issued instructions last year to look for savings in the student-lending program, so the Democrats have prepared in advance their excuse to jam these changes through the reconciliation process.

View Full Image

Associated Press

Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan portrays the changes as eliminating subsidies to private companies, but no one should misinterpret these comments to mean that taxpayers will benefit. The plan that passed the House includes $67 billion in "savings," according to a Friday estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. But the bill also has more than $77 billion in new spending.

The net loss to taxpayers isn't limited to $10 billion. After inquiries from Senator Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) and Rep. John Kline (R., Minn.) last year, CBO explained that "savings" estimates are artificially high because of government accounting rules that undercount the risks of default when the government is originating the loans, while the new spending estimates are artificially low. This could be significant. Many colleges oppose the government plan specifically because the feds don't make the same effort to prevent defaults that the private lenders do.

Taxpayers have even more reason than academics to fear the impact, in part because the public may not learn the details before this plan becomes law. Democrats aim to bring their education revolution to the floor without a committee vote or even a hearing in the Senate.

Drupal Edu Initiative | Everything you need to know about using Drupal in higher education

Announcing the Drupal Edu Initiative

Posted by jazzslider

NOV182009

Welcome to the Drupal Edu Initiative, a new Drupal site designed to help you share your experiences, thoughts, and advice about using Drupal in higher education.

The Initiative was born out of discussions at DrupalCamp Austinregarding the uniqueness of the higher ed web content management situation. Colleges and universities often face unusual challenges in keeping their websites up-to-date, well-organized and easy to use; we here at the Drupal Edu Initiative believe that Drupal is a key component in solving those problems, and that's why we've launched this site.

At the moment, the site simply provides a link-sharing and blogging mechanism; anyone can register, log in and share a Drupal education-related link, and users with additional privileges will be able to post articles here as well. All of this user-contributed content is then voted on by our users, so that the most helpful content floats to the top of the home page where it's easy to find.

Please feel free to let us know if you have any suggestions for features or improvements you'd like to see; meanwhile, we look forward to seeing where this initiative takes us in years to come.

Where Does Reform Go From Here? Perdaily.com

Perdaily.com

Where Does Reform Go From Here?

We have about as much chance of fixing public education in this country with the mass firing of teachers and administrators in Rhode Island and elsewhere as we would if we threw a virgin into a volcano. This type of post hoc fallacy thinking would rather create a causal relationship between teachers and student failure, then look at the immutable structure of all public education reform over the last 100 years that fails to address the underlying student problems and deficits that are brought to the system. In listening to President Obama's endorsing of Rhode Island's simplistic pogrom-like solution to solve its public education problem, he fails to take into account that the town of Central Falls, like many of our educational failing communities in Los Angeles, was "one of the poorest districts in Rhode Island" long before the teachers did their level best to try and fix it.

Why The ACLU Lawsuit Misses The Mark

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on February 24, 2010 against LAUSD and the State of California for budget cuts that have disproportionately affected 3 predominantly schools of color."The lawsuit was filed in superior court by the ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel Law Center and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, on behalf of students at the three schools." While there is no question that the education offered to predominantly students of color at these and other schools within LAUSD has been impacted by budget cuts, there are many other factors as to why these cuts are more detrimental to inner city schools. To understand this requires people put together a sequence of circumstances that for some reason the ACLU and its associates in this case seem unwilling to address...

Tags: LAUSD, Lawsuit, Social Promotion, Try Harder

MEA staffers' salaries rise as local teachers sacrifice | lansingstatejournal.com | Lansing State Journal

MEA staffers' salaries rise as local teachers sacrifice

ALAN MILLER AND KATHLEEN LAVEY • ALANMILLER@GANNETT.COM • KLAVEY@LSJ.COM • MARCH 7, 2010

Lansing teachers got a half-percent pay increase last fall and took a hit on health care

to help the cash-strapped school district.

After two years without a contract, Leslie teachers settled last fall for a 50 percent cut in so-called step increases, or annual raises for increasing seniority.

And some staffers and officials of the Michigan Education Association got pay boosts last year ranging from 6.8 percent for the mailroom coordinator to nearly 15 percent for President Iris Salters.

At a time when local teachers' unions are struggling to maintain salary and benefits and the union's statewide membership is declining, many MEA negotiators and executive director Luigi Battaglieri also got hefty pay increases.

That's the cost of doing business, said Doug Pratt, MEA director of communications.

"Do we compensate our officers well? Do we compensate our managers well? Yes," he said.

"We believe in attracting and recruiting the best possible candidates."

Pratt said the size of pay increases for some staffers can be attributed to a deferred-compensation deal union employees agreed to several years ago.

"They're one of the most powerful teachers' unions in the country, and that's probably what those salaries tell you," said Michael Van Beek, director of education policy for the Mackinac Center, a conservative Midland-based think tank.

He said the MEA, like the United Auto Workers or any other union, is responsible for its members' best interests. But there's a key difference.

Latest News and Comment from Education