Not so long ago, people pointed to Michelle Rhee in the District and me in New York as the major “reform superintendents.” When we left those positions in the past year, some asked whether it was the “end of an era” and questioned the future of education reform. What a difference a few months can make! -- WaPo, "School Reform's New Generation"
Teacher Jim Owens was chosen by the 435 graduating seniors at Gainesville High School to address them and their families, and delivered this speech to an audience of 5,000 on June 5, 2011.
Testing. Testing 1,2. Just like school, no? Always testing. Can you hear me in the cheap seats? Look at you! You're radiant. You look brighter than ever today. You look like you've learned something. It must be the cap. What do you think, should we make it and the gown the SCHOOL UNIFORM for next year? Think of the photo ops. That would show the rest of the world what education looks like in America.
I am deeply, deeply honored to be speaking to you today, to have been invited BY YOU, the students, on this very special occasion. There is no honor that this humble profession of mine offers that I would ever, or could ever, value more ...not even ... Merit Pay!
My name is Owens. Not Mister Owens. Not Jim. Just PLAIN Owens. That's what the kids call me and have for years. I must confess, it felt a little brisk at first, like an enthusiastic slap on the back. Until I realized it was a gesture of cordiality, whereupon I embraced it with affection. Should you too, in the future, feel inclined to call me Owens, by all means, do so.
I teach thinking skills. I do not teach to the test. I'm the guy who teaches your children to think outside-of-the-box. I do not teach your children howto think. Would that not be indocrination? Would that not bebrainwashing? I provoke thought, at least I try to. I rather suspect that's
Marc Tucker and his National Center on Education and the Economy made a big splash back in 2006 with the publication of “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” a provocative manifesto calling for a radical overhaul of public education in the U.S. Tucker’s central argument was that we are falling far behind other nations because we are stuck in old paradigms about how education should look.
Now, in an update of sorts, Tucker has released “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants,” a 47-page paper that lays out two major and fundamental steps he believes the U.S. must begin taking immediately. Characteristically forceful and provocative, Tucker lays it out in stark terms:
The nations we have described (Finland, Japan and Singapore, along with Ontario and Shanghai) are either already very high wage countries or want to be very high wage countries. They have all recognized that it will be impossible to justify high relative wages for skills that are no greater than those offered by other people in other parts of the world who are willing to work for less, because we are all competing with each other now. Only those who can offer the world’s highest skill levels and the world’s most creative ideas will be able to justify the world’s highest wages. These nations
Let's leave aside the fact that public workers already have mandatory contributions to their pensions. Let's leavHere’s where we stand: The governor and Sweeney have already agreed to a tough reform that would save huge sums of money by trimming benefits and requiring public employees to contribute more.The new terms would apply not just to state workers, but to the much larger army of teachers, cops and firefighters whose obscenely generous benefits are a key driver of property taxes. [emphasis mine]
Unless Congress acts by this fall to overhaul No Child Left Behind, the main federal law on public education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan signaled that he would use his executive authority to free states from the law’s centerpiece requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
The Obama administration has been facing a mounting clamor from state school officials to waive substantial parts of the law, which President Bush signed in 2002, especially its requirement that states bring 100 percent of students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014 or else face sanctions. In March, Mr. Duncan predicted that the law would classify 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools as failing
Stand up comic and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan went on a homophobic tear last weekend during a show in Nashville. At one point he stated, “if his son was gay he better come home and talk to him like a man…or he would pull out a knife and stab that little [n-----] to death.”Now, here’s the context in which Morgan made his remarks. For decades, queer kids have been killing themselves in response to the lethal homophobia they encounter at home, at school, in their places of worship, and in their neighborhoods. Furthermore, queer children whose parents bully and demean them are at 8 times the risk of suicide than other children. And finally, the city of
I say, it’s bold of Joel to write this piece, pointing out how billionaires have managed to influence the politicians to finally represent their point of view in education. For too long, it’s been, “Oh, how can we help the rabble?” and “Oh, we aren’t spending enough on the bootless and unhorsed.” Now, finally, we’re seeing a return to traditional values, favoring the rich, and showing the little urchins how to best serve our needs.
Joel Klein knows that good old 19th century values are what America needs today. That’s why he’s willing to stand up against wasteful pensions and benefits. Do health benefits make better teachers? Does a pension make a better teacher? Of course not! Nonetheless, low salaries certainly save dollars that can go to tax cuts for important people like me, Muffy, Michael Bloomberg and Eli Broad.
We have made great progress in our quest. I thank you, my loyal readers, and pledge to bring a chain of
Students explore their world with an expectation of choice and control that redefines traditional notions of learning and literacy. Educators are discovering that they can motivate students with a PBL approach that engages their students with the opportunity to behave like STEM professionals while solving real-world problems.
I was pleased to read an interesting piece in the NY Times on yesterday's flight. "Computer Studies Made Cool, on Film and Now on Campus" (6/11/11). While the focus is on the growing popularity of computer science, it make a strong case for the project based approach to learning.
The new curriculums emphasize the breadth of careers that use computer science, as diverse as finance
By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times
June 12, 2011
If Congress fails to approve changes to a key school accountability bill, federal officials will consider waiving some mandates for states that agree to educational reforms.
Federal education officials said they would prefer that Congress approve a substantially revised version of No Child Left Behind, a package of mainly testing reforms that was the Bush administration's signature education law, approved in 2001. President Obama has asked Congress to reauthorize the bill by this fall. But lawmakers may miss that deadline, Education Department officials said.
If an agreement cannot be reached, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, his department is prepared to offer states that undertake reform efforts some flexibility on federal requirements.
"The worst-case scenario is Congress does nothing and we do nothing," Duncan said in a conference call with reporters last week.
Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who heads the education and workforce committee, said he hopes that Congress will take action this legislative session.
"It's a moral imperative, an economic necessity and simply the right thing to do for our children and the future of this country," he said in a statement.
Leaders from key civil rights organizations gathered on a national telephonic press conference this afternoon to denounce Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law as a radical departure from American values and to announce a court challenge. The legislation Governor Bentley signed this morning is notable for its cruelty. It turns Alabama school officials into immigration agents as they are now required by the new law to verify the immigration status of students and report them to the state. It contains the same problematic “reasonable suspicion” provisions as Arizona’s SB 1070. It allows police to arrest and detain a person when there is a “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the country illegally. It forces landlords to verify the immigration status of their tenants and prohibits all people from transporting or “harboring” of any undocumented immigrant. It institutes stiff penalties for anyone, not just the undocumented, who breaks the law. This is of special concern to mixed status families – children could be arrested for transporting their undocumented parents, for example.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union announced that they will be challenging the
Bill Gates and the other wealthy philanthropists throwing their money on unproven projects in public education could learn a thing or two from my friend Leonard Turkel.
Len, who died last week at the age of 80, led a double life in Miami. He did exceptionally well in business, creating a number of successful concerns (early in his life, in just one of his pursuits, he became Florida’s pioneer condominium builder, and in an area where condos were king, that is saying something).
But his animating principle wasn’t about making money but about helping people. And he did this in a most unusual way: He saw a human problem and he found a practical way to fix it. Then he worked to cut through red tape and rally the people in the community to help themselves.
Read full article >>
For all the efforts to improve education that are made in classrooms, school board meetings, research institutions, congressional chambers and elsewhere, one factor has in many ways eclipsed them all: an intense focus on standardized testing. High-stakes tests—flaws and all—seem to be driving everything from what subjects are taught, to how they are taught, to whether schools are closed, to how teachers are evaluated and compensated. Schools have even experimented with paying kids for higher test scores. Sadly, the pressure to measure has even diverted schools from implementing strategies known to improve student outcomes.
Beginning with the No Child Left Behind law and continuing today with Race to the Top, the federal emphasis on standardized assessments has become so excessive that it has modified state and district behavior in troubling ways. Curricula have been narrowed, test preparation has eaten into time for other instruction, and developing higher-order competencies has been sacrificed to fostering memorization and test-taking skills.
Appropriate assessments are a crucial part of effectively educating students. But they only measure a narrow segment of what kids need to learn. So before the testing police rush in to defend their position, let’s ask ourselves: What if this extreme focus on testing is driving us away from what students need? What if the current test-driven mania in the United States is wrong?
A constellation of recent reports suggests that this approach is, indeed, deeply flawed. A report released in May by the National Research Council of the National Academies found that “test-driven incentives have not consistently generated positive effects on student achievement.” It concluded that, in many cases, the effects “tend to be small and are
I originally posted a report on this on EDUCATION WATCH, on 9th. I headed the story: “CA: An education Dept. SWAT raid???”. I added the subhead: “SWAT teams have become America’s Taliban. They can brutalize you without trial and on suspicion only. Now even the Education Dept. is deploying them”
Clearly, what troubled me was the fact of the raid, not its justification. I did note the official claim that the raid was “not related to student loans”.
Earlier today on DISSECTING LEFTISM, I posted a wide-ranging post about the steady transmogrification of the USA into a police state. In that report the claim was repeated that the raid was related to student loan repayments. I included that despite the official denials. Anybody who takes official denials at face value is naive, in my opinion. The claim that student loans were the issue apparently came from the
Staff Reports
Sunday, June 12, 2011
I found it unsettling that while 95 credentialed vo-tech teachers are losing their jobs, Memphis City Schools hired 100 fast-track-trained Teach For America corpsmen (June 3 article).
This is the new education reality not just in Memphis but across the country. Destroy collective bargaining for teachers -- Tennessee legislators did a good job of that -- and replace the most experienced and specialized career teachers with cheaper, albeit well-meaning students who view teaching like a stint in the Peace Corps.
Real teachers have been repeatedly bashed in the media, and many believe colleges of education fail to create good teachers. Perhaps these schools need to improve, but is America better served by teachers who have less, not more training? Is it not dangerous to de-professionalize teachers? We would never think to create a Doctors for America. Would we?
Most TFA recruits leave after a year or two in the classroom. They come from fine universities, but many cannot find work in their real majors. We must question the teaching commitment of students who cannot find work compared to students who willingly choose teaching as a full-time career.
If TFA were set up as an assistantship program much like student teaching, real
