A T-Shirt for Arne Duncan
Sent to the NY Daily News, May 30, 2011
The Daily News mentioned that school officials at the East New York Middle School are requiring children to wear a T-shirt saying "Not Yet" for children considered unprepared for regular classes ("Parents say administrators are siccing ACS on them to retaliate for complaints," May 30).
I would like to order a "Not Yet" T-shirt to be sent to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, whose total lack of real
Are Books Obsolete? An Analysis of Data from Titles Printed
Stephen Krashen
A common view is that books are obsolete, and for two reasons: People just aren't interested in reading these days, and for those who are, ebook readers, such as the Kindle, are taking over.
Not according to at least one indication. The number of new book titles printed each year continues to increase, and the increase over the last decade is dramatic. Bowker, an information service company, reported that 215,138 book titles were published in 2002. This increased to 302,410 in 2009, and the projected total (based on preliminary data) for 2010 was 316,480.
The increase in titles published holds even when we consider the increase in the population of the US. The population in 2002 was estimated to be about 288,600,000. In 2010 it was estimated to be about 318,750,00
When I was a kid growing up in Iowa, my Uncle John and my dad taught me how to shoot. I fired rifles, shotguns, and pistols. The first time I fired my dad's twelve gauge shotgun, it felt like my shoulder had run into a car. The recoil was tremendous. While I never went hunting, I did do a fair amount of target shooting. Guns were present throughout my formative years. I've always been fascinated with the mechanics of firearms. Why am I bringing this up? I think it's important for folks to know a little about my history with guns if I'm going to write about anissue that is all about guns and student affairs. I'm not anti-gun, I'm anti-conceal-and-carry-on-campus.
The prohibition of conceal and carry on college campuses is once more in the news. Recently, a conceal and carry bill passed in the Nevada State Senate. The bill would "authorize a person who holds a permit to carry a concealed firearm to carry a concealed firearm while on the property of the Nevada System of Higher Education unless the person is attending an event held at a sporting venue with a seating capacity of 1,000 or more." The current law states that conceal and carry permit holders can only carry their firearm on
If Governor Christie is sincere about wanting to improve New Jersey's education system for everyone then supporting successful afterschool programs has to be part of the solution. Yet after cutting its original funding from $10 million to $3 million for the current school year, the state's proposed budget fails to include any money at all for a popular and successful educational initiative.
New Jersey After 3, a statewide non-profit, uses public and private resources to fund afterschool programs. Some of the activities kids get at these centers include help with homework, health and safety lessons, arts, recreation, chess, community service projects and learning studying skills. The cuts in funding means that among other local programs, the Bergen Family Center's afterschool center inEnglewood is in jeopardy of being eliminated.
We've all heard the Governor's standard "there's no money for anything, share the sacrifice, etc, etc, etc." Yet the state announced that it collected at least an additional $500 million in tax revenue. The surplus could actually be hundred of millions higher than that estimate.
So there is apparently some money somewhere. And part of it should be invested in improving the state's education system by funding afterschool programs. If the original $10 million can't be restored then at
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| Gov. Christie toasts Arne Duncan. |
A Republican strategy memo laid out Friday in an e-mail from Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. to his caucus asked fellow GOP senators for feedback on a three-pronged education plan after Tuesday's Supreme Court order requiring the state to invest $500
Make no mistake about what was going on here.
When GOP House Leader Tom Cross and House Speaker Michael Madigan issued their statement saying they were pulling the pension killer bill off the floor, Ty Fahner, head of the corporate union-hating Civic Committee, signed it as well.
May 30, 2011
STATEMENT REGARDING PENSION REFORM
We are absolutely committed to reforming Illinois’ public pension system for current employees. It must be done to stabilize our systems and address long term financial issues for both the public employee pension systems and state government.
We believe passage of legislation addressing this issue is essential to the state’s well being.
It was made very clear during the May 26th hearing in the Personnel and Pensions Committee that both those who support pension reform and those who are opposed to Senate Bill 512 acknowledge we have a problem and something must be done.
Our goal is to enact reforms to our pension systems that provide a long term solution for both those who are members of the pension systems and those who fund them.
We will convene meetings over the summer to address the issues and concerns that have been raised and work toward a solution in this year’s Fall Veto Session. [Emphasis added]
-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan
-Illinois House Republican Leader Tom Cross
-Tyrone Fahner, President, Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago
 Vielka McFarlane, whose upbringing in Panama taught her the value of education, is passionate about charter schools. Her newest is set to open in Compton after a battle with Los Angeles County schools officials.. (Francine Orr, Los Angeles Times / May 26, 2011) |
I offer here a short list of five things that have become obvious, from my position as a teacher. If only our education policies might be constrained by the requirement that they honor the obvious!
1. Children do not learn well when they are under stress. This single fact is enough to explain so many things. If we were to design an ideal learning environment, there would be great attention paid to relieving all involved of unnecessary tension. A recent study found that first grade students in classrooms affected by budget cuts suffer because of the stress their teacher experiences in trying to meet their needs. Children who live in poverty experience stress at home due to insecurity around food, housing, and violence in their neighborhoods and homes. The very least we should do to address their needs is to make their schools a refuge from stress.
2. Tests, and high stakes attached to them, are very poor levers for increasing learning. We have exit exams that have reduced graduation rates, especially for minority students, but failed to increase real learning.
This study from the National Academy of Sciences found that when there are high stakes attached to tests, the
This just in at 2PM.
Michael Madigan and Tom Cross, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Illinois House, have pulled their teacher pension killer bill off the floor.
They promise to bring it back for the Fall Veto Session.
But they cannot hide the fact that a massive, grass-roots effort of teachers, bloggers, activists, retired teachers and the state’s public employee unions beat them bad. At least for the time being.
Never in Illinois history has there been such a mobilization around a piece of legislation.
Over 100,000 emails and 100,000 phone calls to legislators were delivered by teachers, both retired and active.
We’ll have more analysis in the days ahead.
Enjoy the victory.
Light the grill!
I have witnessed this sort of transition in family life (among the other families I interact with) and religious life (in the Unitarian-Universalist religious organizations I participate in). But what I have been most focused on lately is this transition in the work world, particularly my own place of work. I work as a business analyst for a large corporation in the insurance industry, not what you might think as the leading edge of social change. But I am pleased to report that in my team of some 20 people (and other internal teams that are our “customers”) the
besides the fact that I won a DFA scholarship to help pay my way, and a member of this community generously has paid for my transportation, etc.
Please note that last - a member of this community, because s/he thought I needed to be there.
I was given similar offers for Pittsburgh in 2009, with people offering to pay my expenses, or let me stay in their homes, even though they only knew me from my writing here.
This is about community. This is about connections. This is about more than that.
But let me back up. In 2006 and 2007 the event was called Yearly Kos. We can thank Pastor Dan Schultz for coming up with the idea originally, and the likes of Gina, and Nolan, and others for making it happen.
I want to explore my own participation in the past, before I explain why I am going this year.
Let me back up to the planning for Las Vegas in 2006 . . .
Happy unofficial beginning to summer 2011 from steamy Chicago! I think I have read more in this past school year, than in any of my previous years as a teacher. But with summer, comes new opportunities for rejuvenation through literature, and I hope to get some recommendations in the comments below. In turn, I recommend the following three books for summer reading:
For a better education system: The Death and Life fo the Great American School: How Testing a Choice are Undermining America (Diane Ravitch)
For a better understanding of ourselves: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D)
For a better, stronger, community: Dynamics of Organizing: Building Power by Developing the Human Spirit(Shel Trapp)
If the above titles are any indication, I am not much for fiction reading, yet all three authors are vivid story-tellers in their own right and keep the readers attention as they intertwine personal story with global relevance. While I leave the praise and scorn to the paid literary critics, but provide a little taste below as to why each of these
Last year, socialism lost to austerity in the polls – that is, in Merriam-Webster’s Top Ten Words of the Year.
“Austerity clearly resonates with many people,” Merriam-Webster’s Editor at Large Peter Sokolowski observed, noting that it was the most-searched word of 2010 on their web site. This was no spontaneous grassroots effort for the public to brush up on long-forgotten SAT words to impress mom, but rather, austerity was dragged from its dusty, forgotten linguistic closet and into the limelight by the unrelenting conservative messaging machine(which, incidentally, revived socialism to McCarthy-esque stature).Austerity blanketed the corporate airwaves like a thick, intellectual-sounding fog, cloaking every major public discussion on our serious budget problems in a haze of severe-sounding vagaries, thus shielding pundits and politicians from detailing in any specific way what services or benefits the American public would lose.
The problem with austerity, however, is that it requires a trip to the
