When a fight breaks out someplace like a school, it’s known to attract immediate attention – but sometimes, that attention doesn’t just last a day or a week; it can actually take on a new form online.
While starting a new school year can be exciting and fun, it can also be tough for children of any age -- dealing with new teachers and new students, and continuing the friendships (and rivalries) that they formed during the previous year. But these days it’s even more difficult for students as school dynamics and drama have a significant presence online, essentially coming home with the child through digital devices and social media.
Unlike physical bullying, where parental intervention or school intervention can help address the problem, cyberbullying is a bit more complex to deal with. The first question that needs to be answered is: How do you define cyberbullying?
Students who use social networking sites to harass their classmates could face suspension or expulsion if a bill passed by the state Assembly becomes law.
For an hour this morning, starting at eleven o’clock Eastern Time, the US Supreme Court will interrogate lawyers representing the state of Texas, the federal government, and a young woman who recently graduated from Louisiana State University. That woman, Abigail Noel Fisher, is suing the University of Texas in an attempt to recoup a $50 application fee and a $50 housing deposit that she forfeited when she was denied admission to UT several years ago.
It’s a weird case, and it gets weirder. The Supremes last addressed affirmative action in college admissions — the issue at the heart of today’s case — just nine years ago, with Justice Anthony Kennedy fashioning a narrow compromise that allowed campuses to consider race (but not in any quantifiable way) in order to promote campus diversity (but not as redress for past discrimination). Many observers consider it unlikely that Kennedy
Regular readers will remember that a few weeks ago an administrator at CUNY’s Queensboro Community College threatened to eviscerate the college’s English Department — eliminate composition courses at the college, terminate all adjuncts, halt all job searches, fire full-time faculty — in retaliation for the department’s refusal to scale back its comp courses to comply with Pathways, a controversial new CUNY-wide curricular scheme. It was bizarre, and scary.
The administrator in question eventually apologized in the face of criticism from this site and a bunch of other good folks, and the president of QCC walked back — but didn’t quite close the door on — her threats. The story
As a result of many comments on this blog, and in response to a great yearning to raise our voices, many teachers, parents, students, administrators and concerned citizens plan to join together in a mass letter-writing campaign to the President.
We want all letters submitted here to this blog or to Anthony Cody no later than October 17.
You may write to the White House directly, and the mail address is in the instructions link. But if you do, you will be required to disclose your identity in full. Knowing that many educators are fearful these days, you may send Anthony and me your letter without disclosing your name.
Please add as much detail as possible about your concerns. Be clear. Be specific.
Is your state or district planning to create a report card for its public schools?
Advice from New York City: Don’t. Read this debate. You will see some past and former employees of the school system (and the head of the charter association) who believe in the grades. And you will read some eloquent and knowledgeable critics who know that the grades are erratic, meaningless, and serve no purpose other than to set schools up to be closed.
Michigan created an emergency district for schools with low test scores, administered by Broad Academy alum John Covington, who decamped from Kansas City after making no improvements there. The emergency district is about to become the largest district in the state. By adding low-perming districts from across the state, the EAA will have 46,000 students.
The salient feature of the new district is that it is non-union. The assumption of the conservative Rick Snyder
The online for-profit corporation K12 wants to grow its business in Florida but school boards are opposing it. The online charters poach students and funding from public schools while providing a poor quality of education.
They do, however, have one big political advantage. They have the fervent support of former Governor Jeb Bush, who is a political powerhouse in the state.
Independent studies have found high dropout rates, low test scores, low graduation rates, and inflated billing at
Two months into the school year, the head of the Recovery School District abruptly fired the principal of Walter L. Cohen High School as well as several teachers and announced that he was turning the school over to a charter operator called the Future Is Now.
Students reacted angrily and protested the disruption in their school. They issued their own demands, which included the funds to repair the building, reinstatement of the fired staff and a full report from the charter about its record, its test scores, suspensions, police reports, graduation rates, attrition rate and other data about its
The readers of this blog know Katie Osgood as a teacher who works with young people in a psychiatric hospital in Chicago. She writes brilliantly, from her experience. Here, she writes a critique of Paul Tough’s new book How Children Succeed.
Some teens may learn bullying behavior from their parents.
When Wisconsin news anchor Jennifer Livingston was called fat by a viewer, she got a firsthand taste of the kind of bullying manyhigh school students confront on a daily basis.
More than 20 percent of teens report being the target of name calling, 18 percent say they were the subject of rumors, and 17 percent reported either physical harassment—shoving, tripping, or being
Well, it turns out the concept is voluntary, at least for Robert Kennedy, the President of the Board of Regents, and his senior staff.
The CTMirror and Hartford Courant have now added a blockbuster piece of news to the controversy surrounding the $300,000 in raises that were given out to employees who work in the executive offices of the Board of Regents.
According to the news reports, Robert Kennedy, whose salary is $350,000, plus a performance bonus, authorized 21 raises, despite the fact that the Malloy-SEBAC deal eliminated pay raises for all (other) state employees.
In addition, Kennedy and his team are now admitting that they unilaterally gave out the
Jeb Bush is holding his fifth annual national summit on school reform next month in Washington D.C. According to the agenda, one of the
strategy sessions is called “Transforming Colleges of Education,” and the writeup says in part: “Nine out of every ten teachers graduate from traditional teacher prep programs at colleges of education. Should these colleges be held accountable for the caliber of students they admit into their programs and the teachers they send into the classroom?” Read full article >>
It’s not uncommon to hear people say that schools are the best way to transform society. But is this really true? In the following post the issue is considered by Larry Cuban, a former high school social studies teacher (14 years, including seven at Cardozo and Roosevelt high schools in the District), district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA) and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His latest book is “As Good As It Gets: What School Reform Brought to Austin.” This appeared on his blog. Read full article >>
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Wednesday in a case involving a young woman who sued the University of Texas. The woman alleged that she was denied admission to the system’s flagship in 2008 because she is white and the school’s affirmative action policies resulted in the acceptance of African American and Hispanic students with lesser credentials. She was offered admission to a different UT campus with the possibility of transferring later, but she opted to go out of state to attend college. Read full article >>
It’s that time of year again when the Nobel Prizes are bestowed on the world’s brilliant, accomplished and lucky in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economics, literature and peace. Read full article >>
In the out-of-the-mouths-of-babes category, here’s a post about the flaws of modern teacher evaluation that are evidence to an 11-year-old but,
apparently, not to school reformers. It was written by Sean C. Feeney, principal of The Wheatley School and president of the Nassau County High School Principals Association. Read full article >>
Imagine a newly modernized school with a built-in library/media center — but no books to put on the shelves. Actually, you don’t have to imagine.
Read about what’s going on with libraries in D.C. public schools (DCPS) in this open letter to Mayor Vincent Gray from D.C. resident and school library advocate Peter MacPherson. He’s been fighting a move by DCPS to cut funding for dozens of school librarian positions.
It was a slightly less crowded, slightly less emotionally charged LAUSD school board meeting Tuesday — at least compared to the last few, thanks largely to board member Steve Zimmer’s postponed resolutions concerning teacher evaluations and charter schools
That didn’t stop the meeting from lasting more than six hours, though. Here are some of the highlights, which include an arts resolution, some charter renewals, a handful more magnets, ratification of the deal between the Board and the administrators’ union — and an appearance from actor Cheech Marin.
Kayser’s Postpones Proposal To Charge Charter Schools For Over-Allocation Of Space
Every year, charter schools can apply for classroom space from the district. How much space they get depends
Yesterday, I wrote about the anti-education destruction in California being done by billionaire Molly Munger and my hope that her partner, the California PTA, could reign her in.
It doesn’t appear that I’m the only one with those feelings…
Here’s an excerpt from today’s article in Ed Source: State Board of Education President Mike Kirst and Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg joined union leaders Monday in sending a strongly worded letter to Molly Munger, the primary backer of Proposition 38, asking
L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy received broad authority Tuesday to renew or end agreements by which two outside organizations run traditional public schools, including a group of schools under the control of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The Board of Education approved giving Deasy the new authority when it approved extensions of agreements with the mayor’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and L.A.'s Promise.
The teachers union and two school board members called for a delay, seeking a more extensive review of the schools’ performance.
The original five-year contracts were scheduled to expire at the end of the current academic year. The
Controversial charter access provision back before Penna. legislature
October 09, 2012|By Dan Hardy, Inquirer Staff Writer
A controversial proposal that would deny public access to records of private managers of charter schools has surfaced again in the Pennsylvania legislature after it was rebuffed during the summer.
Disagreement over the proposed exemption to the state's Right-to-Know law was one of the reasons that a package of charter law changes submitted in late June was shelved until this fall.
The proposal was part of a 53-page amendment inserted into a special education funding bill in an effort to get the charter changes passed along with the budget.
It says the Right-to-Know law applies to charters, "except records of vendors of local agencies shall not be accessible." Charter schools are listed as local agencies in the Right-to-Know law. "Vendors" would include private management groups that run charter schools.
Story continues below.
Sen. Andy Dinniman (D., Chester) said last week that the House Republican leadership wants to
I recently came across the practice having a “data room“ in schools.
These rooms provide teachers and administrators quantitative information (in graphic form) to facilitate ”informed” decisions.
I have to admit, the site of the “data room” gave me that “something doesn’t feel right” sensation in my stomach.
How has it come to be that, for some, data rooms in school are seen as exemplars in education?
If it’s true that we measure what we value – it might be time to examine our values.
Let me be clear – I am not advocating that we make uninformed decisions. We need good information to make
It's funny. I put up a post saying Skedula sucks, and I got dozens of responses from people who'd never posted on the blog before, most of whom had never used Disqus, a very popular commenting platform. One person would say the technophobes love it, then an hour later someone would post saying, "I'm a technophobe, and I love it."
I got multiple posts calling me a liar, and characterizing those who criticize Skedula as Luddites or worse. I took them down, and I will continue to delete such posts, so please don't even bother.
Last June hundreds of activists knocked on door and gathered enough signatures to put an advisory referendum on the November 6th ballot for an elected school board. Here we are on a hot day in Logan Square.
Only the Illinois legislature can give the people of Chicago their right to elect our own school board.
We get to elect the people who oversee our water supply, so electing our own school board members would seem to be a no brainer.
Yet the Mayor wants to keep hold on to his ability to pick his own million dollar friends to run things down at 125
(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post)
Somewhere between 70 and 100 Compton Unified School District (CUSD) students and 15 parents joined in a school walkout and converged on the CUSD offices at 501 Santa Fe in Compton to voice their frustration in schools they believe do little to educate them or listen to their concerns. Students complained that a shortage of teachers and classes
In the past quarter century, fixing school time has been a popular solution reform-minded policymakers have promoted to improve U.S. schools yet one that is least connected to what happens in classrooms or what Americans want from tax-supported schools.
Since A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, Prisoners of Timein 1994, blue-ribbon commission recommendations in Tough Choices, Tough Times in 2007, and in 2012 high profile leaders formed a new national coalition to add time to the school day and year, reformers have criticized no end how long and how well students spend time in school.
Criticism of school schedules comes from business and civic leaders who see the United States stuck in the middle ranks of nations based on student scores on international tests. These leaders see a link between Asian and European governments requiring more days in school than the U.S. and those foreign students scoring far
There are three reasons why it has been hard for reform-driven policymakers to fix school time.
*Research showing achievement gains due to more time in school are sparse; those few studies most often cited are contested.
*In narrowing the multiple goals Americans expect of their public schools to preparing workers for a globally competitive economy, current policymakers, have seriously underestimated the powerful tug that other non-economic goals (e.g. civic action, socializing children ) have on taxpayers and voters.
*Decision-makers advance proposals to fix time in school to show voters that they are solving economic
It was a slightly less crowded, slightly less emotionally charged LAUSD school board meeting Tuesday — at least compared to the last few, thanks largely to board member Steve Zimmer’s postponed resolutions concerning teacher evaluations and charter schools
It was a slightly less crowded, slightly less emotionally charged LAUSD school board meeting Tuesday — at least compared to the last few, thanks largely to board member Steve Zimmer’s postponed resolutions concerning teacher evaluations and charter schools
It's funny. I put up a post saying Skedula sucks, and I got dozens of responses from people who'd never posted on the blog before, most of whom had never used Disqus, a very popular commenting platform. One person would say the technophobes love it, then an hour later someone would post saying, "I'm a technophobe, and I love it."
(Mensaje se repite en Espaรฑol)