Thursday, July 15, 2010

School aims to re-teach civics with focus on faith - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

School aims to re-teach civics with focus on faith

By JEFFREY McMURRAY
Associated Press Writer

Published: Thursday, Jul. 15, 2010 - 2:38 am

Last Modified: Thursday, Jul. 15, 2010 - 3:43 am

GEORGETOWN, Ky. -- Call it vacation Bible school, Glenn Beck-style.

Some three dozen kids ages 10 to 15 are spending five nights this week learning what organizers - some with tea party ties - say they won't hear in school about the Constitution, the founding fathers and the role of faith in the birth of the United States.

"If we're going to take our country back, we've got to remember where we came from - not only as adults, but we need to teach our children," said Tim Fairfield, one of the teachers, who wore a three-cornered hat at the opening class of Vacation Liberty School. It's held in a church basement in Georgetown, a city just north of Lexington that is the site of a major Toyota assembly plant.

The curriculum includes lessons like "equal rights, not equal results," "recognize men don't create rights - only God," and "understanding falsehoods of separation of church and state."

And organizers say the program has drawn interest from people looking to start new chapters in Ohio, Colorado, New York, Florida and other communities in Kentucky.

It's is an offshoot of the 9/12 Project, inspired by Beck, the conservative commentator, who had no direct role in the planning of the Kentucky school. Beck declined comment.

What K-12 Can Learn from For-Profit Higher Ed � The Quick and the Ed

What K-12 Can Learn from For-Profit Higher Ed

by Bill Tucker

Good Education Week overview on the growth of for-profit virtual learning companies in K-12 education. Predictably, the article quotes a detractor focused on the tax status of those providing the courses:

“I haven’t seen anything in this industry that is special in terms of its pedagogy or its delivery,” said Alex Molnar, the director of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University in Tempe….”What benefit does a for-profit entity provide over and above what could be readily provided at a university extension?” he said. “Why wouldn’t you use a nonprofit publicly supported university that’s transparent and politically accountable?”

Well, I’m pretty sure that nonprofit university does not automatically equal accountable. And I’m certain it’s not a guarantee of quality. Just north of Molnar in Utah sits Brigham Young University, a fully accredited, national nonprofit university with a high school online independent study program so poorly regarded that its courses are no longer accepted by the NCAA for athletic eligibility.
The real issue is quality, not tax code. In higher education, we have seen innovative ideas to make college more accessible and affordable come from the for-profit sector. And, we’ve also seen a lot of abuse — all from institutions that are fully-accredited. Key to much of the abuse has been weak regulation and the difficulty of

Blog U.: Are we witnessing denationalization of the higher education media? - GlobalHigherEd - Inside Higher Ed

BlogU

Are we witnessing denationalization of the higher education media?
By Kris Olds July 15, 2010 12:38 am

The denationalization of higher education – the process whereby developmental logics, frames, and practices, are increasingly associated with what is happening at a larger (beyond the nation) scale continues apace. As alluded to in my last two substantive entries:
- ‘Bibliometrics, global rankings, and transparency’
- ‘The temporal rhythm of academic life in a globalizing era’
this process is being shaped by new actors, new networks, new rationalities, new technologies, and new temporal rhythms. Needless to say, this development process is also generating a myriad of impacts and outcomes, some welcome, and some not.
While the denationalization process is a phenomenon that is of much interest to policy-making institutions (e.g., the OECD), foundations and funding councils, scholarly research networks, financial analysts, universities, and the like, I would argue that it is only now, at a

Rise & Shine: Misbehavior and punishment in four boroughs | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Misbehavior and punishment in four boroughs

by Philissa Cramer

The city and union agreed to a plan for housing new schools. (GothamSchools, Daily News, NY1, Times)
A state court rejected the city’s plea to fire a Staten Island teacher who flirted with a student. (Post, AP)
The city punished those who ran Nicole Suriel’s field trip. (GothamSchools, Times, NY1, Post, DN, WSJ)
News of fiscal wrongdoing at Kennedy HS are part of a long history of trouble there. (Riverdale Press)
The former principal of IS 141 in Queens says he was forced out on false charges. (Queens Gazette)
Chancellor Klein and his Ed Equality Project co-chairs oppose potential Race to the Top cuts. (WSJ)
Parents at PS 41 created a community service program for their children. (The Villager)
Civil rights groups quit working with Boston schools over community engagement efforts. (Boston Globe)
Changes to teacher evaluation laws mean teachers in many states will face a new reality this year. (NPR)

Culver City Patch, CA - School Enrollment Capped, Permits Limited

School Enrollment Capped, Permits Limited

Despite severe budget cuts, the Board of Education has decided to curtail their permit policy for the upcoming school year.

By Meghan Stettler | Email the author | July 14, 2010

Zoom

Your photos, videos & PDFs: Add

The Board of Education approved an enrollment cap Tuesday night that limits the number of incoming permit students, taking a step to curbCulver City Unified School District's swelling numbers at the secondary schools and decrease the district's dependence on permit student revenue.

The new policy, which was approved at the Board of Education meeting and is effective for the 2010-2011 year, states that students on permit at the schools can continue their Culver City education, but prospective students who need permits will not receive them if a 500-student cap is reached for the applicant's particular grade.

The new rule is not applicable for Culver City residents, whose children will be admitted regardless of the number of enrolled students.

"This is not our goal, this is a cap," said Scott Zeidman, Board of Education vice president. "We don't want to shove 500 people in a class. As economic times get better, we will continue to lower and lower that down to a point where we can survive and get our schools back to a manageable level."

During the meeting, board members wrestled over the implications of the enrollment cap. Parent

Education is 'civil-rights issue of our generation,' Cabinet official tells NAACP - KansasCity.com

Education is 'civil-rights issue of our generation,' Cabinet official tells NAACP

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS

The Kansas City Star

Seth Wenig

Duncan.

“The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve it in the classroom,” Duncan told NAACP delegates meeting in Kansas City for the group’s annual convention.

“This is not just a moral obligation; it is our economic imperative,” he said. “Everyone has a responsibility. Everyone can step up. Education is our national mission. Education is our best hope.”

He said community leaders “must be at the table when decisions are made about how to improve struggling schools.”

The Obama administration is making $4 billion available to improve the worst-performing 5 percent of schools in the country, Duncan said.

“But what our resources cannot buy is courage,” he said.

Rudy Crew, professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California and president of Global Partnership Schools, said struggling schools can’t be corrected with money alone.

“If people don’t know what to do with the money they already have, I don’t know what they are going to do with the money they are going to get,” said Crew, who

Your family 'type' can affect your kids at school - USATODAY.com

Your family 'type' can affect your kids at school

Updated 11h 28m ago | Comments 28 | Recommend

E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |


Enlarge	NBC

The Huxtable family from the 1980s-era TV sitcom 'The Cosby Show' would be an example of a cohesive (happy) family marked by warm and emotionally close relationships with individual autonomy.


Enlarge	CBS

The Barone family from the sitcom 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' which ran until 2005, would be an example of an enmeshed family marked by conflict and emotion,w ith modest amounts of warmth, high levels of hostility, destructive meddling and a limited sense of family as a team.


Enlarge	Paramount Pictures

The family in the 1980 Oscar-winning movie 'Ordinary People,' where the parents retreat emotionally after the death of their oldest son, would be an example of a disengaged (unhappy) family marked by rigid, cold, controlling and emotionally withdrawn relationships.

Subscribe
myYahoo
iGoogle

By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

The way your family interacts at home can affect how your kids do in school, a study suggests today in the journal Child Development.

Researchers at the University of Rochesterin New York and the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind., spent three years looking at the relationship patterns in 234 families with 6-year-olds and found a distinct family-school connection, with certain family types predicting problems in school.

Researchers evaluated each family annually, in two visits of two to three hours each. "We have a marital assessment, a parent-child assessment for moms and dads separately, and we have the whole family together," says lead author Melissa Sturge-Apple, assistant professor of psychology at Rochester. "It gave us a much broader look at the family system per se."

The team found data that support the theory of three distinct psychological types of families:

Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, July 15, 2010