Full Standards System in States Several Years Away
A survey of states' plans to implement common standards and accompanying reforms shows that few will be fully realized before 2013. (January 6, 2011)
Study Finds Special Educators Get Less Mentoring
While teacher mentoring programs are widespread, a study finds such opportunities are not as available to beginning special education teachers. (January 6, 2011)
Tucson Officials Stand by Ethnic-Studies Classes
(January 4, 2011) | Comments (1)
Policy, Fiscal Challenges Confront State Officials
(January 4, 2011) | Comments (1)
Virtual Students Are Used to Train Teachers
Computer-generated "students" give aspiring teachers the opportunity to test their strategies without doing harm to real ones.(January 5, 2011) | Comments (4)
Point Loma seems like an unlikely place for a parent revolution. Its scenic hills are dotted with elementary schools a real estate agent could crow about, funded by a muscular foundation.
Still, some parents in this seaside burg are quietly considering how to stake out more independence for their schools — or whether to secede from San Diego Unified and form charter schools. A new law could give their push new power, letting parents force dramatic change at some schools.
San Diego City Council President Tony Young wants to tackle a big issue city leaders have long avoided: Schools.
This year, he said, the council will discuss a proposed ballot initiative that adds appointed members to the San Diego Unified school board and imposes term limits. Young laid out his ideas in a written address on city priorities sent to the media this week.
Yesterday we fact checked a signature collector named Jeff Smith, who was quoted in the Union-Tribune telling Target shoppers that a plan to expand the San Diego Unified school board would add "more teacher voices" to the board. That statement ismisleading, since anybody could be added to the board.
Turns out that the name he gave to a U-T reporter was even more than misleading. It was false. When we tried to track down Jeff Smith for the fact check, the consultant in charge said they didn't have a Jeff Smith working for them.
The release of the 2009 PISA results this past week has created quite a stir and has provided ample fodder for public school bashers and doomsayers who further their own philosophical and profit-motivated agendas by painting all public schools as failing. For whatever reason, these so-called experts, many of whom have had little or no actual exposure to public schools, refuse to paint an accurate picture of the state of education.Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, should be providing the nation with a proper vision and focus for public education. He knows our challenges all too well. He confirmed that he gets it when he
Dear Diane,
There was one invaluable course I took at the University of Chicago that still sticks with me. The professor, historian Louis R. Gottschalk, gave everyone some historical facts to which most history books attested and asked us to explore them. We pretty quickly figured out that something must be wrong with them. In fact, they were all fictions that had crept into history books as facts. Mine had something to do with Napoleon's Navy and the Caribbean.
Richard Rothstein's wonderful The Way We Were? is a must-read on educational facts and fictions. If anybody who reads our exchanges hasn't read it—shame on them. I keep it close by whenever I start to write about schooling in America.
A very smart lady whose blogging I sometimes read asserts, for example, that, until a few years ago teachers in New York City didn't "do reading" until 2nd or 3rd grade. Actually, maybe she read that about Finland's schools. Or Rudolf Steiner schools. The latter claim they hold off until the first adult tooth appears. I think it's mostly so they have a chance to imbed their other ideals in kids before they get immersed into reading on their own. The
