On Tuesday, April 26—the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster—one image of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant

Dave Webb

DAVE WEBB

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• On Tuesday, April 26—the 25^th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster—one image of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant will be posted here every 20-30 minutes. All images were captured and manipulated entirely on an iPhone. Rancho Seco was decommissioned as a nuclear power plant by a vote of the Sacramento (CA) electorate in 1989.
  
  
  
  Rancho Seco #48
  Posted on April 26, 2011
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  Rancho Seco #49
  Posted on April 26, 2011
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  Rancho Seco #50
  Posted on April 26, 2011
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  On Tuesday, April 26—the 25^th anniversary of the Cher—one image of the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant will be posted here every 20-30 minutes. All images were captured and manipulated entirely on an iPhone. Rancho Seco was decommissioned as a nuclear power plant by a vote of the Sacramento (CA) electorate in 1989.

  
  

Breaking Up Public Higher Education in Wisconsin? « Student Activism

Breaking Up Public Higher Education in Wisconsin? « Student Activism

Breaking Up Public Higher Education in Wisconsin?

by Angus Johnston

This story is the best short introduction I’ve yet seen to the “New Badger Partnership” — University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin’s proposal to split Madison, the UW flagship, off from the rest of the University of Wisconsin system.

Martin’s plan, negotiated in secret with Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor Scott Walker, would lop $125 million off of UW Madison’s budget, but give it far more operational flexibility on issues ranging from how to spend state money to how much to charge for tuition. The plan, opponents say, is a recipe for privatization of one of the nation’s great public universities.

The plan needs to be approved by the Wisconsin state legislature, and the prospects of that seem have dimmedrecently — battles over the state budget and collective bargaining have battered the governor’s standing in the

The Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions | Defend Wisconsin

The Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions | Defend Wisconsin

The Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions

by Defend Wisconsin

From New Hampshire to Alaska, Republican lawmakers are waging war on organized labor. They’re pushing bills to curb, if not eliminate, collective bargaining for public workers; make it harder for unions to collect member dues; and, in some states, allow workers to opt out of joining unions entirely but still enjoy union-won benefits. All told, it’s one of the largest assaults on American unions in recent history.

Behind the onslaught is a well-funded network of conservative think tanks that you’ve probably never heard of. Conceived by the same conservative ideologues who helped found the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network (SPN) is a little-known umbrella group with deep ties to the

Teaching Assistants’ Association – Defend Wisconsin Fund Request for Proposals, April 2011

by cwynar

Statement

The occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol revitalized the Wisconsin labor movement and inspired citizens from around the state to loudly protest the attacks on public sector workers and workers’ rights by Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate. Walker launched the opening salvo with his budget repair bill, a piece of legislation which proposed to all but eliminate collective bargaining for public sector employees, make Wisconsin a right-to-work state, and debilitate public employee unions. The bill also contains provisions to eliminate major funding for Badger Care and enable no-bid sales of power plants, a potential threat to environmental health. In response, tens of thousands of state workers – including teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, and graduate employees – descended on the Capitol to protest the bill. Those

Poor Teaching for Poor Children

Poor Teaching for Poor Children

Poor Teaching for Poor Children …
in the Name of Reform

By Alfie Kohn

[This is a slightly expanded version of the published article.]

Love them or hate them, the proposals collectively known as “school reform” are mostly top-down policies: divert public money to quasi-private charter schools, pit states against one another in a race for federal education dollars, offer rewards when test scores go up, fire the teachers or close the schools when they don’t.

Policy makers and the general public have paid much less attention to what happens inside classrooms -- the particulars of teaching and learning -- especially in low-income neighborhoods. The news here has been discouraging for quite some time, but, in a painfully ironic twist, things seem to be getting worse as a direct result of the “reform” strategies pursued by the Bush administration, then intensified under President Obama, and cheered by corporate executives and journalists.

In an article published in Phi Delta Kappan back in 1991, Martin Haberman, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, coined the phrase “pedagogy of poverty.” Based on his observations in thousands of urban classrooms, Haberman described a tightly controlled routine in which teachers dispense, and then test students on, factual information; assign seatwork; and punish noncompliance. It is a regimen, he said, “in which learners can ‘succeed’ without becoming either

Pressing 'Pause' on a Major Change in School Funds - voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled: The Education Blog

Pressing 'Pause' on a Major Change in School Funds - voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled: The Education Blog

Pressing 'Pause' on a Major Change in School Funds

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State of Preschool Yearbook - NIEER

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The State of Preschool 2010

by W. Steven Barnett, Ph.D., Dale J. Epstein, Ph.D., Megan E. Carolan, Jen Fitzgerald, Debra J. Ackerman, Ph.D., Allison H. Friedman, Ed.M.

The 2010 State Preschool Yearbook is the eighth in a series of annual reports profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest Yearbook presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2009-2010 school year. The first report in this series focused on programs for the 2001-2002 school year and established a baseline against which we may now measure progress over nine years. Tracking these trends is essential, since changes in states' policies on preschool education will influence how successfully America's next generation will compete in the knowledge economy.

Full Report (8MB PDF)	Executive Summary (400KB PDF)
Table of Contents	State Data
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Limited time offer: Receive a free printed copy of the Yearbook
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A new national survey gives the District of Columbia high marks for enrollment and spending on preschool education programs at a time when some states have cut back because of tight budgets.

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: At Chicago's Shakespeare Theater last night

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"The world's a stage" -- W.S.

No, it wasn't theater in the round. No rowdies crowding the stage, yelling epithets at King Henry V (Rahm?). The beautiful Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier was instead, the scene of a surprisingly subdued panel discussion,"Chicago in These Times: What's Next for Chicago Public Schools?" sponsored by the good folks at National Louis University. I sat near an exit door as I am wont to do at events with 7 speakers, just in case boredom overwhelms me. But I managed to make it through last night's discussion, still wide awake, though a bit