Between January and April of 2011, [Rhee's] StudentsFirst groupemployed Robert Klaffky, the president of firm Van Meter, Ashbrook & Associates and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) to help push various aspects of education policy. In particular, the group, established by Rhee
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This was written by Yvette Jackson, chief executive officer of the National Alliance for Effective Education in Syosset, N.Y., which works with schools and districts to deliver professional development and school improvement plans that integrate culture, language and cognition. She is the former director of gifted programs in New York City as well as past executive director of instruction and professional development for the New York City Board of Education. Jackson is also the author of the recently published “Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools.”
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Erin Ferrantino helps Bernard Alexander, 5, at Rawson Elementary School in Hartford. Ms. Ferrantino says she has seen firsthand the challenges for kindergartners who start at 4 years old.
Erin Ferrantino rarely has to consult the birthday chart in her kindergarten classroom to pick out the Octobers, Novembers and Decembers. This year, there was the girl who broke down in tears after an hour’s work, and the boy who held a pencil with his fist rather than his fingers.
Those two, along with another of Ms. Ferrantino’s pupils who were 4 when school started, will be repeating kindergarten next year.
“They struggled because they’re not developmentally ready,” said Ms. Ferrantino, 26, who teaches in Hartford. “It is such a long day and so draining, they have a hard time holding it together.”
Soon, Ms. Ferrantino may not have to be on the
As painful as the recession has been onschool districts, it provides a usefulopportunity to reexamine how money is spent.
When negotiating new teacher contracts, most districts, no doubt, are focusing discussions on avertingwage freezes and massive layoffs. But prudent districts—those looking for long-term solutions to budgetproblems as well as those seeking to more fairly compensate the most effective teachers—are reconsideringthe traditional salary schedule, which rewards teachers for years of experience and graduate credits.
Yesterday more than a dozen new members of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics were announced at the White House and later sworn-in at an official ceremony with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Smithsonian Institution Castle. These historic events mark the next step in improving the academic achievement of Latino students and the lives of all Hispanics nationwide according to the White House.
Hispanic success in education and the labor market is important to America’s economy. At more than 54 million strong – including nearly 4 million in Puerto Rico—Hispanics are both the largest and fastest-growing minority group, yet they have the lowest education attainment levels of any group in the country. In addition, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the public education system, with more than 1 in 5 students in our elementary, middle and high schools; however, it this group that has the lowest education attainment levels overall, according to the report recently released by our office.
This two-day inaugural meeting brings together a group of well-respected individuals from the education,
In a recent visit to Boston, New England Patriot tight-end, Aaron Hernandez, participated in two events to raise awareness of the need for more mental health providers to care for the Latino population and a unique program to train such professionals—Lucero Latino Mental Health Program at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (MSPP).
Hernandez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, has taken up the cause because of his own childhood in an underserved community in Bristol, Connecticut and because of the growing crisis in Latino mental health nationwide. Nearly one in eight people in the United States are Latino, but only approximately two percent of psychologists are linguistically and culturally capable of caring for them.
As one of the few Latinos in the National Football League and with a great rookie campaign this year, Hernandez has a unique platform from which to speak to fans and the public. At age 20, he caught 45 passes for 563 yards
In his speech Thursday, Scott omitted many of the serious-sounding programs he cut: homeless veterans, meals for poor seniors, a council for deafness, a children’s hospital, cancer research, public radio,
Spoken-word musician Gil Scott-Heron dies in NYC | ||||||||||||||||
 NEW YORK (AP) -- Musician Gil Scott-Heron, who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry on songs such as "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," died Friday at age 62. A friend, Doris C. Nolan, who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company, said he died in the afternoon at St. Luke's Hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip. "We're all sort of shattered," she said. Scott-Heron's influence on rap was such that he sometimes was referred to as the Godfather of Rap, a title he rejected. "If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating `hooks,' which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," he wrote in the introduction to his 1990 collection of poems, "Now and Then." He referred to his signature mix of percussion, politics and performed poetry as bluesology or Third World music. But then he said it was simply "black music or black American music." "Because Black Americans are now a tremendously diverse essence of all the places we've come from and the music and rhythms we brought with us," he wrote. Nevertheless, his influence on generations of rappers has been demonstrated through sampling of his recordings by artists, including Kanye West. |
MAY 27, 2011
Terrible headwind today. A windstorm of 40 mph gusts was blowing out of the East impeding our progress. In spite of that we moved ahead 61 miles.
Much of Nevada is within the region called the Great Basin where rivers flow from mountain tops and evaporate in the valleys below. In contrast to our slow movement across the terrain fighter jets from a nearby military installation screamed overhead seemingly skimming the sandy desert floor.
Now past Eastgate to almost Eureka. Heading across Nevada is a roller coaster ride, at slow speed, of course.
News item: Gil Scott-Heron dies at the age of 62.
Looking for a way
Out of this confusion
I’m looking for a sign
Carry me home
Let me lay down by a stream
And let me be miles from everything
Rivers of my Fathers
Can you carry me home
Carry me home
Rub your soul against the concrete
And the concrete is my smile
Got to change my way of living
Got to change my style
Let me lay down by a stream
Miles from everything
Rivers of my fathers
Could you carry me home
Carry me home
Looking for a way
Got to find a way out of this confusion
Looking for a sign
Point my way home
Let me lay down by a stream
Miles from everything
Rivers of my fathers, rivers of my fathers
Carry me home, please carry me home
Carry me home, carry me home
Carry me home, carry me hom
Megan McArdle points to more infuriating news out of Massachusetts:
There’s a measles outbreak in Massachusetts, probably thanks to low vaccination rates.
It’s hard to believe, but we’re sliding backwards on two of the three public health achievements of the 20th century: vaccination, antibiotics, and clean water. Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem, one that we’re partly inflicting on ourselves by rampant overuse. And now vaccine resistance is spreading among parents who want to free ride on the herd immunity of
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