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Seems yesterday was a busy day at the State Capitol. Legislators tackled school choice, ACT testing, common core standards, and the use of data systems in school districts.
I'll withhold any judgment about the supposed school choice deal because there appears to be a heck of a lot about it I don't know. The biggest thing I've learned about school choice programs is that design matters. A lot. The boring specifics of funding and school and student eligibility are the difference between a program with a chance to succeed and one that is doomed to fail. This morning's Journal Sentinel article is too vague to make a judgment on those specifics. But don't worry, when it comes to school choice I am like Bob Seger and songs about the nostalgia of youth, I'll eventually write about the issue whether it's needed or not.Joint Finance's approval of universal ACT testing is great news. I 've been arguing since 2011 that the ACT suite of tests is a simple way to give students and teachers comparable student performance data that can be used to aid instruction and measure Wisconsin student performance against other states. It's a no-brainer.
I find the vote to delay the implementation of thecommon core standards a bit more perplexing. I support local control but wonder if having national standards regarding what students ought to know is an infringement on local control. Districts would still have the freedom to teach how and what they want, just with the expectation that students will be proficient in certain subject manner at certain times. I guess I am ambivalent about the common core, I don't think it will dramatically improve our nation's education system, but nor do I find it a significant threat.
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Walter had been depressed for a long time, he said, and when he finally decided to identify publicly as female, his depression waned. Though he did not have gender reassignment surgery, he began introducing himself as Wynonna in public.Most people might call Wynonna a transgender woman. The DSM, until last week at least, categorized him as having Gender Identity Disorder, a mental illness. If the court sided with Kelsey, that categorization could separate Wynonna permanently from her only child.
While the DSM's text is introduced with a caveat that it's only to be used for clinical, educational, and research purposes, the book has another key application: It's often used as a way to make decisions within governing bodies, in court, and in the criminal justice system. A 2011 paper by Dr. Ralph Slovenko, a professor emeritus of law and psychiatry at Detroit's Wayne State University, found that the DSM had been cited in some 5,500 court opinions and 320 pieces of legislation.
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Novelist Elif Shafak urges authors to write the book they want to read and to cut their work mercilessly.Much more on Elif Shafak, here.1. Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability. Writers might enjoy a good gossip or a crazy party once in a while, but the act of writing and the nexus of our lives is pure solitude.
2. The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is "luck" or "zeitgeist" - in short, things that are not in our hands.
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A leading U.S. provider of online college courses on Thursday announced plans to expand into introductory level classes such as algebra and composition, marking a shift for a fledgling industry that has until now focused on specialized material.
Coursera, a popular for-profit provider of massive online open courses - known as MOOCs - will host a series of basic general education classes to be developed in partnerships with 10 state university systems across the United States."If we really want to move the needle, we can't just stick with offering continuing education to lifelong learners," said Daphne Koller, the Stanford computer scientist who co-founded Coursera. "We have to help people achieve degrees that will help them get a better life."
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After cutting spending on public colleges and universities during the economic crisis, many state governments have begun to boost higher-education budgets once again.Lawmakers in Indiana recently approved a $500 million funding increase over two years for state colleges and universities, a 14.6% increase, following four years of cuts. New Hampshire's governor has proposed increasing the university budget for the coming academic year by $20 million, or 37%. And state lawmakers in Florida recently approved a budget that increases higher-education funding by $314 million, or 8.3%, following seven years of cuts.
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The Georgia Institute of Technology's plan to offer a low-cost online master's degree to 10,000 students at once creates what may be a first-of-its-kind template for the evolving role of public universities and corporations.
When it agreed to work with Udacity to offer the online master's degree in computer science, Georgia Tech expected to make millions of dollars in coming years, negotiated student-staff interaction down to the minute, promised to pay professors who create new online courses $30,000 or more, and created two new categories of educators -- corporate "course assistants" tasked with handling student issues and a corps of teaching assistants hired by Georgia Tech who will be professionals rather than graduate students.
New details about the internal decision making and fine print of Georgia Tech's revolutionary effort are based on interviews and documents, including some that the university provided to Inside Higher Ed following an open records request.
Georgia Tech this month announced its plans to offer a $6,630 online master's degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors. Georgia Tech and Udacity, a Silicon Valley-based startup, will work with AT&T, which is putting up $2 million to heavily subsidize the program's first year. The effort, if it succeeds, will allow one of the country's top computer science programs to enroll 20 times as many students as it does now in its online master's degree program, and to offer the degree to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its existing program.
A contract between Georgia Tech's research corporation and Udacity spells out the time that Udacity staff members are to spend helping students, though representatives of both the company and the university say their understanding of how much time students will need is likely to evolve.
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Once in a while I come across an animated debate on health benefits of sugar vs. high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It is enzymatically produced mixture of glucose and fructose that approximately matches the chemical composition of sucrose, aka sugar. It is not this debate that is my concern; rather, it is the following question: why do American companies use HFCS so obsessively? There is presently as much HFCS produced as the sucrose.The obvious answer is that HFCS is cheaper than refined sucrose, but this does not quite answer the question. Making of HFCS is a costly operation that involves chromatographic purification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup#Production
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ALEC is still at it, Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, cautions in "School Boards Beware," (PDF) a commentary in the May issue of Wisconsin School News.Related:The model legislation disseminated by the pro-free market American Legislative Exchange Council's national network of corporate members and conservative legislators seeks to privatize education and erode the local control, Underwood says.
"The ALEC goal to eliminate school districts and school boards is a bit shocking -- but the idea is to make every school, public and private, independent through vouchers for all students. By providing all funding to parents rather than school districts, there is no need for local coordination, control or oversight," she writes in the magazine of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Underwood, who says that Wisconsin public schools already face unprecedented change, last year co-authored a piece about ALEC's grander plans, a "legislative contagion (that) seemed to sweep across the Midwest during the early months of 2011."
In her recent piece, Underwood argues that a push to privatize education for the "free market" threatens the purpose of public education: to educate every child to "become an active citizen, capable of participating in our democratic process."
Although Underwood says she generally backs most of these changes, she's no fan of the decision announced last month that makes it easier for a person to become a public school teacher -- even as those who are studying to become teachers must now meet stiffer credentialing requirements. Instead of having to complete education training at a place like UW-Madison en route to being licensed, those with experience in private schools or with other teaching backgrounds now can take steps to become eligible for a public teaching license.
"I think that's really unfortunate," says Underwood, who first worked at UW-Madison from 1986-95 before coming back to town as education dean in 2005.Related:
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Long term disastrous reading scores are the existential threat to our local public school "status quo" structure.Stop the latest ploy by the WIGOP to destroy our public schools!The time to act is now: bit.ly/18zyVJW
— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) May 30, 2013
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Of the 85 kids who have won the National Spelling Bee, only one became an instant movie star.For the millions who watched back in 1999, her face is frozen in time. She'll always be the 14-year-old girl from Tampa, Fla., with the glasses and dark shoulder-length hair, her arms raised while leaping for joy.
But that was a half-life ago for Nupur Lala. Like all bee winners, she's since had to deal with the perks, drawbacks and stereotypes that come with the title -- all magnified because she won the same year the competition was featured in an Oscar-nominated documentary.
She became a role model for those who realized it's OK to be nerdy. She became a trend-setter, starting a run in which 10 of 14 national bee winners have been Indian-American, including the last five.
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In a radical policy change, Australia's Tertiary Education Minister, Craig Emerson, is this week releasing a new approach to quality control that meets university demands for a lighter regulatory burden and could gut Labor's own creation, the Tertiary Education Quality Assurance Agency.While Emerson is announcing only a regulatory review, measures included in the announcement make it clear he has heard and understood the concerns of Universities Australia and the Group of Eight, and accepts that an estimated $280 million in annual compliance costs for universities to report to government is unacceptable. "The review will ensure more of the government's record investment is directed at student tuition than administration," he planned to say.
In immediate measures Emerson will announce rationalizations of reports required by his department and says the departmental secretary, Don Russell, will write to the chief commissioner of the quality assurance agency, Carol Nicoll, to "seek advice about any immediate actions that can be taken to ameliorate concerns in the sector about red tape."
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Dark clouds are forming over America's public universities as the Wall Street mindset spreads across more of our institutions. A decade of excessive spending based largely on unlimited student loans is looming dangerously over a major national asset.In January 2013, Moody's, the nation's premier credit rating organization, issued a report titled "U.S. Higher Education Outlook Negative in 2013." Moody's evaluation was based on the hundreds of billions of dollars in institutional debt incurred by America's public universities, including exotic non-traditional financial schemes.
And Moody's evaluation did not include the trillion dollars of debt currently owed by college and university students and former students. Today, more than 35 million Americans owe an average of $28,000 in college loans and half have not earned and are not likely to earn a four-year degree.
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So we are coming up on three years with the iPad 1. I thought it would be interesting to look back at our damage rate and see how things went.I've kept a log of when devices were replaced and why. These numbers are based on a deployment of 115 iPads and all the repairs were handled through the Genius Bar at our local Apple Store.
1 Sep 2010: Dead Digitiser
A pupil reported that her iPad was not responding to touches in one area of the screen. I checked and there did appear to be a 'dead band' the width of the screen about one fifth of the way up where drags across the affected area would not be recognised. The iPad acted as if the user had lifted their finger from the screen.
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Adrion Howell has strong connections to the Prince George's County public school system. The 43-year-old lobbyist's mother taught in the schools for 35 years, and Howell attended school there and worked as a substitute teacher in the county before going to Howard University Law School.Princes George's taxpayers spent $1,664,442,000 for 124,000 students, or $13,422 per student during the 2013 school year. Madison spends about $14,451 per student (latest 2012-2013 budget is about $394,000,000) for 27,095 students (including Pre-k).But, like many other middle-class parents in Prince George's and in urban school districts across the country, when the time came for Howell's daughter, Aaliyah, to attend Glenn Dale Elementary School, he instead enrolled her in a private school.
With Maryland's second-largest school system poised for a leadership overhaul and a reconfigured school board next week, one of the major challenges facing County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D) is how to convince the county's middle class that his approach to fixing the schools will be successful enough to lure their children back into the public schools. Parents, particularly those who have opted out of the public schools for what they think is a better education elsewhere, say they are closely watching the transition.
Prince George's has experienced middle-class flight before, when white families departed as the black population grew. But in what is now one of the wealthiest predominantly black counties in the country, more and more affluent black families have turned away from the public schools. Experts say the trend in Prince George's is similar to what has happened in other large school systems that have struggled academically: The loss of middle-class families has led to a higher percentage of poor students using the public school system, less local accountability and waning community involvement.
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Gov. Scott Walker's plan to create a statewide charter school board has hit a roadblock as lawmakers are considering removing it from the next two-year budget.Republicans are also backing away from using new school report cards to expand the state's voucher program, though a broader agreement on the voucher expansion remained elusive Wednesday.
Republicans said they might introduce separate legislation to establish a statewide board to authorize nonprofits to open charter schools in certain school districts, including Madison.
"We think that's highly popular around the state and we need to talk about it a little more," said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, co-chairwoman of the Joint Finance Committee, which is rewriting Walker's 2013-15 spending plan.
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The high-school sophomore overcame a crippling case of social anxiety as a patient in the Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Therapists there use an innovative approach early in treatment, gradually exposing children to things they fear most and teaching parents to act as "exposure coaches" rather than enable their children to avoid things and situations as a protective measure.Georgiann Steely, 16, is developing confidence doing things she once would have avoided, such as ordering in a coffee shop.
When parents help children to escape from feared situations, anxiety symptoms may worsen and children frequently become more impaired, says Stephen Whiteside, a Mayo pediatric psychologist.
"Kids who avoid fearful situations don't have the opportunity to face their fears and don't learn that their fears are manageable," he says.
Anxiety disorders, comprising a dozen diagnoses including phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder, are among the most common mental health issue in youth yet they often go undetected or untreated, experts say. They can prevent a child or teen from developing skills necessary for success later in life.
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Massachusetts student test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and SATs were unremarkable in the early 1990s. Then, after a landmark educational reform in 1993, state SAT scores rose for 13 consecutive years. In 2005, Bay State students became the first to score best in the nation in all grades and categories on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The students have repeated the feat each time the tests have been administered.How to explain this turnaround? The state's educational success hinged on rigorous academic standards, teacher testing and high-quality tests that students must pass to graduate from high school. All locally developed, these three factors aligned to produce amazing results.
Unfortunately, Massachusetts dropped its own standards in 2010 to join 44 other states (and the District of Columbia) in adopting the flawed standards of the Common Core. This is an educational program sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers that has been championed by the Obama administration.
Common Core recycles a decades-old, top-down approach to education. Its roots are in a letter sent to Hillary Clinton by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, after Bill Clinton's presidential victory in 1992. The letter laid out a plan "to remold the entire American system" into a centralized one run by "a system of labor-market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum and "job matching" will be handled by government functionaries.
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The Alabama State Department of Education has launched a study that could lead to reform of the state's system for distributing funds to public schools.Public records provided by the department show it has contracted the Colorado-based consulting firm Augenblick, Palaich and Associates Inc. to evaluate the adequacy and equity of Alabama's current method for distributing public education dollars.
The study, which will cost $338,950 and take more than a year to complete, is intended to determine how the state can better distribute education dollars to meet the objectives set by Plan 2020.
Plan 2020 is the department's comprehensive plan to achieve a 90 percent graduation rate and ensure all high school graduates are adequately prepared for college or career by the year 2020.
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Dear Justin,Thank you for the response. I'd also like to thank Duncan for setting up the discussion, along with the many people, on both sides of the debate, who have contributed their ideas and experiences. Whatever our differences, I think all of us share a conviction that decent quality education has the power to transform lives, expand opportunities, and break the cycle of poverty. There is no greater cause, or more important international development challenge, than delivering on the promise of decent quality education for all children.
Before I forget, let me add one personal note. Just between you and me, I never really suspected you of being a fifth-columnist for the Pearson Corporation, though you were a little over-exuberant in your treatment of their private school program. I also never had you down as chapter head of your local Milton Friedman revival society. My criticisms were directed at your advocacy for an education reform model based on vouchers, the transfer of public funding to for-profit private providers, and charter school-type arrangements for poor countries.
Unfortunately, your response reinforces many of my initial concerns.
Same Goals - Different Roadmaps
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A charter school operator named in a report from The Education Trust-Midwest as running underperforming schools has fired back, accusing the advocacy group of misrepresenting test scores.The Leona Group, which operates 25 charter schools in Michigan, has been approved to add an additional K-5 campus to its Cesar Chavez Academy in Detroit this fall, operating under authorization from Saginaw Valley State University. The report from The Education Trust-Midwest criticized the addition, citing poor performance on the 2012 MEAP compared to Detroit Public Schools students, especially among Hispanic pupils.
Madalyn Kaltz, a spokesperson with The Leona Group, issued a statement Friday calling the report from The Education Trust-Midwest "grossly irresponsible and slanted" and questioning the report's use of statistics from the MEAP.
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Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:
Base wages, in all MTI/MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreements, have not increased since the passage of Act 10 in 2011. Act 10 also removed the benefit for the members of all MTI bargaining units of the District paying the employee's share of the mandated deposit in the Wisconsin Retirement System. This in itself caused a 6.2% reduction take-home wages. MTI had negotiated in the early 1970's that the District pay the WRS deposit. This part of Act 10 caused a loss in earnings of $11.7 million last school year and another $12.9 million this school year for District employees.Related:All employees do not automatically move up on the salary schedule each year. Members of the clerical/technical bargaining unit, for example, receive a wage additive based on months of service. These "longevity" payments begin at the 49th month of service, with the next one beginning at the 80th month of service.
There are similar increments between the increases in longevity payments. Last year, 199 individuals remained at the same salary, while this year, there were 70 who received no increase in wage.
Members of the educational assistant and school security assistant bargaining units, for example, receive a longevity increase after three years of service, but not anotheroneuntilafter12yearsofservice. Lastyear,282 individuals remained at the same salary, while this year there were 321 who received no increase in wage.
The teachers' salary schedule requires that a teacher earn six credits each four years and receive his/her principal's recommendation to be able to cross the salary barrier. This is at each four-year improvement level. For incentive levels, beginning at level 16, one progresses only every two years, and then only if he/she earns three credits and receives his/her principal's recommendation. Last year, 941 individuals remained at the same salary, while this year, there were 701 who received no increase in wage.
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A Batavia High School teacher's fans are rallying to support him as he faces possible discipline for advising students of their Constitutional rights before taking a school survey on their behavior.They've been collecting signatures on an online petition, passing the word on Facebook, sending letters to the school board, and planning to speak at Tuesday's school board meeting.
Students and parents have praised his ability to interest reluctant students in history and current affairs.But John Dryden said he's not the point. He wants people to focus on the issue he raised: Whether school officials considered that students could incriminate themselves with their answers to the survey that included questions about drug and alcohol use.
Dryden, a social studies teacher, told some of his students April 18 that they had a 5th Amendment right to not incriminate themselves by answering questions on the survey, which had each student's name printed on it.
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The future of higher education online is, at present, clear as mud. Do Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs -- college-level classes offered online through a number of corporate providers -- offer students better tools for study, increased opportunities at lower cost? Can they provide access to higher education to those who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it? Or do these canned classes portend the selling out of American education to Silicon Valley profiteers?I took the best MOOCs I could find over the last several weeks in order to try to answer these questions, as well as the one perhaps too seldom asked: Are even the best of these classes any good, or not? Are the best ones now, or could they one day be, as rewarding, informative and useful as a real class?
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I am in a relationship with a lady who has a 3 year old son. I've grown to love him like he's my own child.It's clear that he's behind in terms of development due to lack of attention in the first two years of his life, for reasons I don't completely blame his mother but reasons I don't feel are appropriate to disclose.
I'm currently focusing on helping his speech and potty training as a priority, with helping in other areas and being a general father figure. I believe my efforts have paid off because I've been told his rate of development has been remarkable since I became involved.
I was just wondering if anybody who has a child or has studied this area has any extra ideas for my to try? Are there any techniques or methods I can employ to help his development along further?
I'm asking here because this is hacker news and its going to take a seriously effective and elegant hack to get this kid where he needs to be a d further. I can't stand to see a clearly intelligent child locked behind a wall of impeded speech and behaviours typical to a 1 year old.
I eventually want to to teach him the wonders of computers and how to tell them what to do. It will be very hard if we can't communicate effectively.
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Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board:
Nationally, the education establishment has loved to hate the federal No Child Left Behind act since it was adopted in 2001. More than a decade later, the same attitude unfortunately applies to New Mexico implementing the necessary reforms to make NCLB's rigid standards go away in favor of new ways to boost and measure student achievement.Despite federal waiver requirements to adopt a new school rating system, teacher evaluations linked to student achievement and Common Core standards, unions, many New Mexico legislators, and some educators and their administrators have fought the reforms tooth and nail. Even though the reforms are teacher-designed, student-focused and data-driven.
And even though New Mexico:
- Has fourth-graders ranked 49th in reading and 48th in mathematics, according to the Nation's Report Card from the U.S. Department of Education;
- Ranks 47th in K-12 achievement according to the Quality Counts survey;
- Gets barely half of its students able to read at grade level and just 43 percent proficient in math, according to the most recent Standards-Based Assessment; and
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Massachusetts universities and colleges that say they're trying to hold down costs have increased their number of administrators three times faster than their number of students, according to federal data analyzed by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.The pace with which administrators have been added at Massachusetts higher-education institutions has also outstripped the increase in the number of research and teaching faculty and other instructional employees, by a margin of two-to-one.
Over the last 25 years, the universities' enrollments have collectively grown by 26 percent, while their ranks of full-time administrators have risen 75 percent. This has happened not only at private universities, but also at some public ones.
It's a large part of why tuition is going up, said Andrew Gillen, research director at the nonpartisan Washington think tank Education Sector, which collected the federal data and supplied it to the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
During the same 25-year period, tuition at four-year universities nationwide has increased an inflation-adjusted 85 percent, federal figures show.
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On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of Annals of Mathematics, one of the discipline's preeminent journals. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field -- a 50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang Zhang -- the paper claimed to have taken a huge step forward in understanding one of mathematics' oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.Editors of prominent mathematics journals are used to fielding grandiose claims from obscure authors, but this paper was different. Written with crystalline clarity and a total command of the topic's current state of the art, it was evidently a serious piece of work, and the Annals editors decided to put it on the fast track.
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Dennis Abudho and his family of five children live in a one-bedroom house without electricity in Bandani, an informal settlement in Kisumu, Kenya. Abudho is active in the PTA at Bridge International Academy in Bandani, where his four oldest children (three boys and a girl) are in baby level, first, third and fifth grade. You might not expect someone like Abudho -- who said he is a casual laborer, operating a bread machine at a local mill and bakery -- to have four children in private school. But he can afford it -- the cost of school for each child at Bridge, including books and materials, is the equivalent of $5.16 a month.Why doesn't Abudho send his children to public schools? One reason is that there aren't enough of them in Bandani. Informal settlements in Kenya, and many other places, have few public schools because their inhabitants are unregistered; legally, there are few children who need school.
But even when public school is available, learning may not be. Public schools in poor countries are mostly overcrowded -- there can be 100 or more children in a class. While there are heroic teachers, there are many others for whom teaching is more a sinecure than a vocation -- they are absent half the time, and not actively teaching when present. Since they have no supervision, this behavior incurs no penalty. Materials may consist solely of a chalkboard. Coursework usually consists of rote learning and memorization.
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When you first hear disruptive economics guru Clayton Christensen's prediction that by 2019 half of all K-12 classes will be taught online, it's easy to wonder if brick-and-mortar schools as we know them are on their way out.
But a new study released Thursday from his think tank, the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, depicts a future of education, particularly at the elementary school level, that isn't nearly as stark as that. The paper, which refines theories on blended learning Christensen and his colleagues have laid out in the book "Disrupting Class" and other studies, introduces the idea of hybrid innovation. While Christensen's famous theory of innovation mostly focuses on disruptive and sustaining innovations, the new paper offers the concept of the hybrid.Often, the researchers argue, sectors experiencing disruption go through an extended phase in which old and new technology exist side by side, providing "the best of both worlds." In education, many approaches to blended learning, which combine online instruction with traditional classroom learning, fall into this hybrid category.
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It is that time of year when famous people put on baggy black capes and peculiar hats in order to hold forth on university lawns to thousands of students and their parents.
But this time something strange has happened. Each of the big-name speakers seems to have hit on the identical homily for their commencement addresses: they are all telling graduates to make the world a better place.So there was Arianna Huffington at Smith College saying "what I urge you to do is not just take your place at the top of the world, but to change the world".
The actress Kerry Washington told students at her alma mater George Washington University (after telling them she loved them, twice): "The world needs your voice. Every single one of you."
And then this, from Jeff Immelt, head of General Electric, at the University of Connecticut: "Graduates should be optimistic; believe in better. The world awaits your leadership."
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Catherine Weismann-Arcache and Sylvie Tordjman:
This paper proposes to analyse the relationships between depression and high intellectual potential through a multidisciplinary and original approach. Based on their respective experience in psychology and child psychiatry, the authors will focus their analysis on creative potential. First, relationships between creativity (literary, artistic, or scientific creativity) and melancholy ("melancholy" comes from the Greek words for "black" ("melas") and "bile" ("khole")) will be examined from antiquity to modern times. Aristotle introduced a quantitative factor, asserting that levels of melancholy and black bile are positively correlated; however, under a given threshold of black bile, it can give rise to an exceptional being. Second, the case study of Blaise Pascal (scientific and philosophical creativity associated with major depressive episodes from childhood) will be presented and discussed. This case study sheds light on the paradoxical role of depression in the overinvestment in intellectual and creative spheres as well as on the impact of traumatic events on high intellectual potential. Third, observations will be reported based on a study conducted on 100 children with high intellectual potential (6-12 years old). Finally, based on these different levels of analysis, it appears that heterogeneity of mental functioning in children with high intellectual potential is at the center of the creative process and it has related psychological vulnerability.
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This idea that the tech we place inside us is to be feared, unlike all the tech swirling outside of us, is a dated and dying relic of our fading, twentieth-century upbringing.
We are all already replicants.Wikipedia defines "replicant" as "a bioengineered or biorobotic being created in the film Blade Runner. (Replicants) are virtually identical to an adult human, but have superior strength, agility, and variable intelligence depending on the model. Because of their physical similarity to humans, a replicant must be detected by its lack of emotional responses and empathy to questions posed in a Voight-Kampff test."
What test could we use today to detect a replicant? Should we? Probably, it's too late to discern. Rather than optimizing artificial intelligence tests, we may ultimately need to design tests to determine what is really real - assuming our future technology affords us one "true" sanctioned reality.
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EASLEY, S.C. -- When the terrorists struck on 9/11, Barrett Austin was in Mrs. Spearman's second-grade class here. Weeks later, he'd wear a Ninja costume with a red headband for Halloween.Tristan Wade was a middle-school practical joker with an endearing crooked smile who told everyone he wanted to be in the Army like his dad, a military policeman stationed near Tacoma, Wash.
Zack Shannon was playing Army in a cul-de-sac where his family lived in Florida. He'd break his ankle later that fifth-grade year on a neighbor's trampoline across the street.
They were little boys oblivious to the beginning of America's war in Afghanistan. Any notion they might be caught up in the violence to come was the furthest thing from their parents' minds.
But this would be the nation's longest war.
All three children -- Barrett, 8, Tristan, 11, and Zack, 9 -- would reach manhood as fighting churned on. Barrett's desire to challenge himself, Tristan's drive for excitement and Zack's love of all things military would draw each on separate paths toward war.
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Among the most common rationales offered for the Common Core State Standards project is to eliminate differences in the definition of student proficiency in core academic subjects across states. As is well known, the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) required states to test students annually in grades 3-8 (and once in high school), to report the share of students in each school performing at a proficient level in math and reading, and to intervene in schools not on track to achieve universal student proficiency by 2014. Yet it permitted states to define proficiency as they saw fit, producing wide variation in the expectations for student performance from one state to the next. While a few states, including several that had set performance standards prior to NCLB's enactment, have maintained relatively demanding definitions of proficiency, most have been more lenient.Wisconsin's oft-criticized WKCE is similar to Alabama's proficiency approach, rather than Massachusetts. Yet, Alabama has seen fit to compare their students to the world, something Wisconsin has resisted.The differences in expectations for students across states are striking. In 2011, for example, Alabama reported that 77 percent of its 8th grade students were proficient in math, while the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests administered that same year indicated that just 20 percent of Alabama's 8th graders were proficient against NAEP standards. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, roughly the same share of 8th graders achieved proficiency on the state test (52 percent) as did so on the NAEP (51 percent). In other words, Alabama deemed 25 percent more of its students proficient than did Massachusetts despite the fact that its students performed at markedly lower levels when evaluated against a common standard. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has gone so far as to accuse states like Alabama of "lying to children and parents" by setting low expectations for student performance.
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College freshman suffering from separation anxiety, take heart: The federal government says universities have an obligation to admit "emotional support" animals into school housing.Unlike service animals, which are trained to perform tasks to assist people with disabilities, emotional support animals (dogs, mostly) provide therapy through companionship and affection.
Housing providers must offer people with disabilities a "reasonable accommodation" for emotional support animals under both the Fair Housing Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1974, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said in a notice to its regional offices late last month.
The laws apply to a range of public and private housing, including dwellings "associated with a university or other place of education," the notice says. The term "disability" is defined broadly as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities."
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The big news out of the latest Public Education Finances Report is official confirmation that school districts spent less money per student in 2010-11 than they had the year before, the first one-year decline in nearly four decades. It's worth taking some time to reflect on that fact, but the full report is also a valuable source of data on state and district revenues and expenditures and the entirety of the $600 billion public K-12 education industry. One key takeaway is that employee benefits continue to take on a rising share of district expenditures.The table below uses 19 years of data (all years that are available online) to show total current expenditures (i.e. it excludes capital costs and debt), expenditures on base salaries and wages, and expenditures on benefits like retirement coverage, health insurance, tuition reimbursements, and unemployment compensation. Although it would be interesting to sort out which of these benefits have increased the most, the data don't allow us to draw those granular conclusions. But they do tell us that teachers and district employees are forgoing wage increases on behalf of benefit enhancements.
From 2001 to 2011 alone, public education spending increased 49 percent, but, while salaries and wages increased 37 percent, employee benefits increased 88 percent. Twenty years ago, districts spent more than four dollars in wages to every one dollar they spent on benefits. Now that ratio has dropped under three-to-one. Benefits now eat up more than 20 percent of district budgets, or $2,262 per student, and those numbers are climbing.
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Education researchers have paid a lot of attention to the sorting of teachers across schools. For example, it is well known that schools serving more low-income students tend to employ teachers who are, on average, less qualified (in terms of experience, degree, certification, etc.; also see here).Far less well-researched, however, is the issue of sorting within schools - for example, whether teachers with certain characteristics are assigned to classes with different students than their colleagues in the same school. In addition to the obvious fact that which teachers are in front of which students every day is important, this question bears on a few major issues in education policy today. For example, there is evidence that teacher turnover is influenced by the characteristics of the students teachers teach, which means that classroom assignments might either exacerbate or mitigate mobility and attrition. In addition, teacher productivity measures such as value-added may be affected by the sorting of students into classes based on characteristics for which the models do not account, and a better understanding of the teacher/student matching process could help inform this issue.
A recent article, which was published in the journal Sociology of Education, sheds light on these topics with a very interesting look at the distribution of students across teachers' classrooms in Miami-Dade between 2003-04 and 2010-11. The authors' primary question is: Are certain characteristics, most notably race/ethnicity, gender, experience, or pre-service qualifications (e.g., SAT scores), associated with assignment to higher or lower-scoring students among teachers in the same school, grade, and year? Although this analysis covers just one district, and focuses on a specific set of student and teacher characteristics, it's a big step forward.
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As an education advocate, I'm asked regularly how we fix our public schools. After six and a half years of advocacy, I'm no longer confident we can. Solutions exist, and they're neither difficult nor expensive to implement. But most board directors and education administrators won't do those things, and no one can make them. Absolute failure brings them more money, sympathy and power. They're nearly immune now to any consequences, and most seem allergic to accountability or self-introspection. Naturally, this kind of power can go to one's head.The situation could be rectified, with proper oversight from citizens, legislators and the law. But many school districts spend much time, energy and taxpayer money cultivating uncritical friends - in the legislature, the courts, public agencies, private organizations, small businesses, large corporations and the media. They keep publicly funded lawyers on retainer, and they can spend a bottomless pit of tax dollars, suing for more in the midst of plenty. They wield their considerable power with impunity, and they answer to almost no one. In the midst of their self-interest and lack of humility, most refuse to properly educate or protect the children.
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The nation's colleges and universities are churning out master's degrees in sharply rising numbers, responding to a surge in demand for advanced credentials from young professionals who want to stand out in the workforce and earn more money.
From 2000 to 2012, the annual production of master's degrees jumped 63 percent, federal data show, growing 18 percentage points more than the output of bachelor's degrees. It is a sign of a quiet but profound transformation underway at many prominent universities, which are pouring more energy into job training than ever before.The master's degree, often priced starting at $20,000 to $30,000, is seen by some universities as a moneymaker in a time of fiscal strain. It is seen by students as a ticket to promotions or new careers. For them, the lure of potentially increasing their salary by many thousands of dollars a year outweighs the risk of taking on large tuition bills and possibly debt.
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In 2006, Amherst College made a decision that administrators at some other schools considered radical. The critics said it would dent the value of the school's degree, or force it to "lower its standards." The school's then-president pushed back by saying that Amherst needed to reach a broader group of students.What was the decision? Today's readers might be forgiven for guessing it must have had to do with online courses, also known as MOOCs. But Amherst wasn't debating online courses. (That would have been quite early for the online course debate. In fact, this April the Amherst faculty voted down a proposal to join the nonprofit MOOC coordinator EdX.) Rather, in 2006, Amherst decided to reserve the majority of its transfer slots for students coming from community college. In some ways, the decision represented potentially a more radical commitment to underprivileged students than online courses -- as it came at an actual cost to the school, while online courses are highly profitable.
Seven years later, Amherst president emeritus Anthony Marx argues claims the program has worked brilliantly, just as his administration had expected. Broadening its search for transfers to the roughly one million students who graduate from community college every year, "we could find amazing jewels that no one else is looking for," he told an audience at a panel hosted by The Century Foundation on Thursday.
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When Kaci Taylor Avant got caught cheating on a test a few months back, the teacher called her mother, who was nothing less than stunned. After all, Kaci always does her homework and gets mostly As in school. Mother and daughter had already had "the talk" about how cheating was wrong. And then there's Kaci's age."I had to ask myself, 'Wow, really? She is only 8!' " says her mother Laina Avant, a Paterson, N.J., network engineer.
As school-testing season heats up this spring, many elementary-school parents are getting similar calls.
The line between right and wrong in the classroom is often hazy for young children, and shaping the moral compass of children whose brains are still developing can be one of the trickiest jobs a parent faces. Many parents overreact or misread the motivations of small children, say researchers and educators, when it is actually more important to explore the underlying cause.
A growing body of research suggests responses for parents, adjusting strategies in subtle ways by each age.
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About two years ago, the folks at Google released a database of 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. You can type a search word into the database and find out how frequently different words were used at different epochs.The database doesn't tell you how the words were used; it just tells you how frequently they were used. Still, results can reveal interesting cultural shifts. For example, somebody typed the word "cocaine" into the search engine and found that the word was surprisingly common in the Victorian era. Then it gradually declined during the 20th century until around 1970, when usage skyrocketed.
I'd like to tell a story about the last half-century, based on studies done with this search engine. The first element in this story is rising individualism. A study by Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile found that between 1960 and 2008 individualistic words and phrases increasingly overshadowed communal words and phrases.
That is to say, over those 48 years, words and phrases like "personalized," "self," "standout," "unique," "I come first" and "I can do it myself" were used more frequently. Communal words and phrases like "community," "collective," "tribe," "share," "united," "band together" and "common good" receded.
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(Wisconsin) Public school advocates have intensified their efforts to sway Republican lawmakers on the biggest K-12 education issues in the state budget, which are scheduled for debate Wednesday.Heading into the holiday weekend, Republicans hadn't reached an agreement about the most controversial proposal in Gov. Scott Walker's 2013-15 budget proposal -- the expansion of private school vouchers to Madison and other school districts around the state.
But Walker told reporters Friday he was optimistic.
"I think we're down that path," he said. "We haven't got it out there to announce yet, but I think we're going to get that into the next week."
At least three Republican senators have said they oppose Walker's voucher expansion, while three others say they won't vote for the budget unless a voucher expansion is included.
Republican leaders didn't respond to requests for comment Friday.
John Forester, a lobbyist for the School Administrators Alliance, sent a message Friday to school officials across the state to contact Republican leadership. He called the message the most urgent in his 12 years lobbying for school districts.
"The feedback I'm receiving inside the Capitol clearly indicates that our pressure is having an impact on this budget process," Forester said.
At a news conference last week, Democrats announced that they had collected more than 16,000 signatures on a petition to remove the voucher expansion from the budget.
Madison School Board members sent out appeals to constituents asking them to contact members of the Joint Finance Committee, the lawmakers revising Walker's budget proposal before it goes to the full Senate and Assembly.
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As I wind up another semester of teaching at Notre Dame, I've been thinking about what I'm actually accomplishing in the classroom. The standard view is that teaching imparts knowledge, either knowing how (skills) or knowing that (information). Tests seem important because they measure the knowledge students have gained from a course. But how well would most of us do on the tests we aced even just a few years ago? Discuss the causes of the Thirty Years War. Mary is 20 years old, which is twice the age Ann was when Mary was the age Ann is now: how old is Ann? How do Shakespeare's early comedies differ from his late romances? Give a quick summary of Mendel's Laws.Overall, college education seems a matter of mastering a complex body of knowledge for a very short time only to rather soon forget everything except a few disjointed elements. (To return to the test questions above: it was about religion; you would need to set up an equation; the comedies were supposed to be funny, the romances not so much; something about the genetics of peas). Of course, almost everyone eventually learns how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic--along with the rudiments of other subjects such as history and geography. But that's because such knowledge is constantly reviewed as we deal with e-mail, pay bills and read newspapers-- not because we learned it once and for all in, say, third grade.
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Louisiana's schools chief vowed on Friday to push ahead with a plan to let students take classes from private firms and nonprofits at taxpayers' expense, despite a legal setback and objections from some educators.The Course Choice plan, which goes far beyond any other U.S. school program in letting families customize a child's education, had been thrown into doubt after the state Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Louisiana could not divert money meant for public schools to private organizations.
State Superintendent of Education John White said he would fund the program - which was passed by the Republican-dominated legislature in 2012 - from his department's general budget instead, squeezing out an estimated $2 million by cutting back expenses such as staff travel.
Under the program, kindergarten through 12th grade students can sign up for free classes on scores of topics, ranging from remedial reading to heavy equipment operation. The classes, both online and in person, are offered by an eclectic lineup of unions, nonprofits and for-profit companies. The state picks up the tab, which averages $700 per class.
"The purpose of Course Choice is to provide every family in Louisiana with an education that meets the exact needs and interests of their child," White said.
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What if Larry Siewert is right?Or to put the question differently, what if things that actually work in the education of students from disadvantaged backgrounds require more than the education system generally is able to provide?
But before we get into that, let me say this: Thank you, Larry Siewert, for dedicating your life to helping thousands of young Milwaukeeans along paths that lead to success and positive values. Siewert, 72, is retiring after 49 years in two rather contrasting settings.
He was a teacher and administrator at prestigious Marquette University High School for 28 years, the last 11 of them as principal. The work presented a lot of challenges, but it mostly involved boys on their way to success. The school had resources and high expectations. The families had resources and high expectations.
Twenty-one years ago, Siewert switched gears in a big way. He and Father Bill Johnson co-founded Nativity Jesuit Middle School on the south side. Like Marquette High, the students were all boys. Otherwise, it was very different. The kids were low-income and Hispanic, from families with little academic or economic success. When it came to, say, standardized test scores, they were well behind those Marquette High kids. The school had very modest facilities and finding money was a constant effort.
Nativity started with 14 students in sixth grade and a distinctive approach: To focus the lives of the students around school to a much greater degree than is conventional. The school day was long. There were evening sessions several nights a week. There were programs on many Saturdays. Going to summer camp in northern Wisconsin was required.
Kids are shaped by the schools they go to, but Nativity wanted to exert that shaping influence a lot more than most schools. At the same time, the school made a priority of encouraging parents and their support of education.
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When self-driving cars reach the masses, thanks may be due to a 19-year-old high-school student from Romania who developed an artificial intelligence that slashes the cost of the technology. He took top prize -- a $75,000 scholarship -- Friday at an international science and engineering fair.Self-driving cars are nothing new. Tech giant Google, for example, has been working on one since 2010. But Google's uses technology that was developed without thinking about cost, prize winner Ionut Budisteanu explained.
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Thomas Sohmers, 17, of Hudson, Mass., has been working at a research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13, developing projects ranging from augmented reality eyewear to laser communications systems. This spring, his mom, Penny Mills, let him drop out of 11th grade. She says she "could see how much of the work he was doing at school wasn't relevant to what he wanted to learn."On Monday, Thomas and his mom learned that he is in esteemed company as a high-school dropout with a knack for computers: David Karp, 26, sold Tumblr, the online blogging forum he created, to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.
Examples of tech geniuses who lack college degrees are well-known -- Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg among them. But Karp left high school after his freshman year, with his mother's blessing, at the tender age of 14.
Critics say dropping out of school to pursue a dream is a terrible idea. Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford Law School who teaches and advises startup companies, says it's like "buying a lottery ticket -- that's how good your odds are here. More likely than not, you will become unemployed. For every success, there are 100,000 failures."
But what about kids who are so good at computer programming that schools can't teach them what they need to know? "That's what internships are for; that's what extracurricular activities are for," says Wadhwa, who has founded two companies.
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Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the third World Conference on Research Integrity in Montreal, bringing together thought leaders on research integrity and responsible conduct in research. The Conference covered issues including the contributing factors of fabrication and systemic dishonesty, potential solutions in better training and support for whistleblowers, and larger incentives to changing the research culture.
Aggregating these respective themes, I felt it important to review the different opinions offered at the Conference. Consolidating the various themes and propositions presented can in turn allow for discussion of potential strategies to build more effective solutions to the problem of research integrity.The Problem: Fabrication or Dishonesty?
In discussing the issue of "Research Integrity", it was first essential to define the parameters of the discussion.
For many of the attendees, the problems surrounding research integrity were narrowly defined as those conducive to misconduct, including fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP). At one point Jim Kroll, the Head of Administrative Investigations at the NSF Office of Inspector General, contended that the NSF was solely focused on examining research misconduct, not research quality.
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Seated recently in the special collections room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology library, Anders Fernstedt raced through an imposing set of yellowing articles and correspondence.
Several years ago Mr. Fernstedt, an independent Swedish scholar who is studying the work of the 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper and several of his colleagues, would have scratched out notes and set aside documents for photocopying.Now, however, his tool of choice is the high-resolution camera on his iPhone. When he found a document of interest, he quickly snapped a photo and instantly shared his discovery with a colleague working hundreds of miles away. Indeed, Mr. Fernstedt, who conducts his research on several continents, now packs his own substantial digital Popper library on the disk of his MacBook Air laptop computer -- more than 50,000 PDF files that he can browse through in a flash.
In just a few years, advances in technology have transformed the methods of historians and other archival researchers. Productivity has improved dramatically, costs have dropped and a world distinguished by solo practitioners has become collaborative. In response, developers are producing an array of computerized methods of analysis, creating a new quantitative science.
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The Wisconsin Legislature's Joint Finance Committee continues its review of Governor Scott Walker's budget with varying degrees of success. There are some baffling policy proposals in the budget that need a lot of work. But the proposal that would unquestionably do the most damage to Madison is the one to expand the school voucher program. In fact, if the $73 Million expansion is approved, and public school spending is frozen, one could argue it would damage the entire state.Vouchers are not a existential threat to our local schools. Rather, ongoing disastrous reading scores merit endless attention and action.Even worse, passage of a voucher expansion to include Madison would come at a time when Madison is poised to support the broadest, most inclusive and thoughtful dialogue about public schools and the achievement gap in decades. Vouchers and not only completely unnecessary, they inject unneeded politics into an important education conversation. We ask lawmakers to please reject this proposal so the people of Madison can go about this critical work.
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Ultimately, every school is the same in one critical way: Rural, suburban or urban; private, public or charter; high-performing or in crisis, every school allocates about 75% to 80% of its resources to staff salaries and benefits. In the end, a school buys people's time, effort and expertise and, you could argue, not much else. Every school is a collection of people with the shell of a building around it.
Which is why the current state of training and development for teachers is so important -- and troublesome. Professional development is too often an afterthought.This is costly in more ways than one. The Milwaukee Public Schools, which has just over 4,600 full-time-equivalent teachers, spent more than $3 million on "districtwide professional development" and more than $5 million on what the budget identifies as "teacher quality" programs in fiscal year 2011.
"It's very ineffective if you ask me...It's just a big huge room, a bunch of teachers in a room, one person up there trying to talk, and sometimes it's nothing to do with nothing, talking about the reading that day. I hate to say it, it's almost a waste of time; I'd rather be working in the classroom," said one Milwaukee teacher who was part of a focus group put together by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute as part of its yearlong examination of education in the city.
The key to turning that around is a new commitment to practice that can improve teacher performance, build a positive school culture marked by collegiality, help make incentive systems more productive and result in higher rates of teacher retention. In short, though it is humble and may seem unspectacular at first, the idea of practice can improve teacher quality dramatically.
In using the word "practice," I am referring to the word in a limited and (to some) mundane sense. Practice is a time when colleagues meet together and participate in exercises that encode core skills. That is, the thing you would see a basketball team or an orchestra do as a matter of course but that teachers are rarely asked to consider. Among teachers it might involve teaching parts of their lessons to one another, revising lesson plans in groups, or even role playing interactions with disruptive students. High-performing schools routinely approach training in this manner with outstanding results.
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With the future of school funding still up in the air at the Capitol some local districts are making sure they're prepared for changes that could have them competing for state money and students.Tuesday's ground breaking at Todd Elementary School is one of nine projects the Beloit School District will be working on this summer.
"We are so proud of what we're doing above and beyond the new buildings," says Superintendent Steve McNeal.
McNeal says approval of a $70 million referendum is evidence families in the district still have confidence in their public schools.
"We're a state model in RTI, the Response to Intervention, we're a state model in how we coach our teachers, we have shown tremendous gains academically so we're very proud and we'll compare to anybody," says McNeal.
The redevelopment is in part to compete with possible changes in state funding, McNeal says.
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Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, was one of the first autistic people to chronicle her life with the condition-- and is now a bestselling author and well known for her innovative designs for handling livestock. Recently portrayed by Claire Danes in an Emmy-winning HBO movie about her life, Grandin spoke to TIME about her latest book, The Autistic Brain.What most concerns you about the way we work with autistic children today?
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Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Heather Staker:
The Clayton Christensen Institute, formerly Innosight Institute, has published three papers describing the rise of K−12 blended learning--that is, formal education programs that combine online learning and brick-and-mortar schools. This fourth paper is the first to analyze blended learning through the lens of disruptive innovation theory to help people anticipate and plan for the likely effects of blended learning on the classrooms of today and schools of tomorrow. The paper includes the following sections.Introduction to sustaining and disruptive innovation
There are two basic types of innovation--sustaining and disruptive--that follow different trajectories and lead to different results. Sustaining innovations help leading, or incumbent, organizations make better products or services that can often be sold for better profits to their best customers. They serve existing customers according to the original definition of performance-- that is, according to the way the market has historically defined what's good. A common misreading of the theory of disruptive innovation is that disruptive innovations are good and sustaining innovations are bad. This is false. Sustaining innovations are vital to a healthy and robust sector, as organizations strive to make better products or deliver better services to their best customers.Disruptive innovations, in contrast, do not try to bring better products to existing customers in established markets. Instead, they offer a new definition of what's good--typically they are simpler, more convenient, and less expensive products that appeal to new or less demanding customers. Over time, they improve enough to intersect with the needs of more demanding customers, thereby tranforming a sector. Examples in the paper from several industries demonstrate the classic patterns of both types of innovation.
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The nation's community colleges are serving poorer and increasingly more African-American and Latino students, but getting a smaller piece of the federal aid pie, according to a new report by the Century Foundation.The resulting separate and unequal higher education system is not working any better than the racially stratified and resource-poor public school systems outlawed by Brown v. Board of Education, the report says.
Between 1999 and 2009, the budget at public research universities -- like the University of Wisconsin-Madison -- increased by nearly $4,000 per student, while community college budgets increased by $1 per student, the report says. That's even though 66 percent of community college students need some kind of remedial training.
Federal and state educational polices haven't kept pace with the growing enrollment at community colleges, where lower tuition may mean students are not eligible for existing aid programs, the study points out.
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There was a time, not so long ago, when anyone with a proper education spoke French. Diplomacy and business were conducted in French. Knowledge was spread in French. Travelers made their way in French, and, of course, lovers traded sweet nothings in French.Viewed from France, the trouble with modern times is that many of those activities are now conducted in English, even by the French. In a country that cares so much about its language it maintains a whole ministry to promote it, that alone is enough to stir passionate debate in Paris -- in French, naturally.
But there is more.
Higher Education Minister Genevieve Fioraso this past week introduced a bill that would allow French universities to teach more courses in English, even when English is not the subject. The goal, she explained, is to attract more students from countries such as Brazil, China and India where English is widely taught but French is reserved largely for literature lovers.
"Ten years ago, we were third in welcoming foreign students, but today we are fifth," she said in a Q&A in the magazine Nouvel Observateur. "Why have we lost so much attraction? Because Germany has put in place an English program that has passed us by. We must make up the gap."
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Although Common Core state standards for public schools were adopted in Wisconsin back in 2010, they by no means have been readily accepted by groups with an interest in education.That was vividly apparent Wednesday when voices from the right joined teachers unions in questioning the "reform" standards and how they are being implemented.
It's not surprising that questions about Common Core are emerging now, Daniel Thatcher, a policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures, told a joint session of the committees on Education, which held an informational hearing at the Capitol.
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I recently read an article on the Kafila blog--more like an angry, reflective rant--written by some students from St. Stephen's College in Delhi. To quickly summarize, the piece criticized the draconian views of the principal of St. Stephen's College regarding curfews on women's dormitories and his stymieing of his students' democratic ideals of discussion, protest, and open criticism. More broadly, though, the article's writers seemed to be speaking about the larger stagnant institution of Indian higher education, overseen by a class of rigid administrators represented by this sexist and bigoted principal, as described by the students. The students' frustration was palpable in the text and their story felt to me like a perfect example of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Except Indian students are not an unstoppable force. Not even close.In 2007, I was a student at St. Stephen's College for seven months as part of a study abroad program offered by my home institution, Brown University. In as many ways as possible, I tried to become a Stephanian: I joined the football (soccer) team, acted in a school play written and directed by an Indian peer, performed in the school talent show, was a member of the Honors Economics Society, and went to several student events on and off campus. More importantly, though, I was a frequenter of the school's cafe and enjoyed endless chai and butter toasts with my Indian peers under the monotonous relief of the fans spinning overhead. Most of my friends were third years, like me, and all of them were obviously very bright. I was curious about their plans after they graduated. With only a few exceptions, they were planning on pursuing second undergraduate degrees at foreign universities.
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Robert Ghrist, a professor of mathematics and electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, knows that wielding vast networks on behalf of nonuniversity benefactors can be tricky business.Mr. Ghrist specializes in applied topology, an abstract math field. In practice, topological math can help someone harness huge collections of sensory inputs--like those collected by cellphones, for example--to model large environments and solve problems.
The Department of Defense has enlisted Mr. Ghrist to do research along those lines. The Penn professor knows he has little power over how the Pentagon might use his insights. But he says that no longer bothers him.
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On June 4, 1991, Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson signed into law a bill that set in motion one of the most significant--and controversial--education reform movements in modern history. Minnesota's charter school law allowed educators and other concerned individuals to apply to the state for permission to operate a government-funded school outside of the public education system. In order to obtain and keep their licenses, these new schools needed to show they were serving their students effectively, based on goals laid out in the school's "charter." City Academy, America's first charter school, opened in St. Paul the following year. Its mission was to get high-school dropouts on track to vocational careers, and it is still operating today. One early enrollee, Demetrice Norris, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 1992 that he had spent years, "being lazy - not doing nothing" before he "got a life back here in school" and "got a chance to be something."Whether charter schools have actually lived up to their initial promise is a hotly contestedtopic in the education reform debate. An entire field of education research aims to assess whether students are better off at charter schools than in the public system. The latest findings, based on six well-regarded charter schools in Boston, released Wednesday by theBoston Foundation and MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative, adds to the accumulating evidence that at least a subset of high-performing charters are measuring up to the movement's early aspirations of giving disadvantaged kids a shot at a better life. The study shows that the Boston schools' students did better on SAT and Advanced Placement tests and are vastly more likely to enroll at four year colleges--and to do so on scholarship--than otherwise identical students in the Boston public school system.
What makes a charter school different from other public schools? While they're funded with public money, they generally operate outside of collective bargaining agreements (only about one-tenth of charter schools are unionized) and other constraints that often prevent principals in public schools from innovating for the good of their students (so the argument goes). In exchange for this freedom, they generally get less funding than public schools (though they're free to look for private donations, and many do) and have to prove that they are making good on the promises set out in their charters, which often means showing that they improve their students' performance on statewide standardized tests.
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"I definitely see myself as being a highly accessible superintendent. Every person I meet, they're getting my contact information," says new Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham. "I'm easy to find and very open to hearing from everyone. [I'm] not just open, but seeking out those opportunities [to interact]."
Cheatham, who was recently the chief of instruction for Chicago Public Schools, started her job as MMSD superintendent on April 1 and is in the midst of a structured 90-day entry plan that includes three phrases -- transitioning, listening and learning, and planning. In the coming months, she will be gathering community input and developing a multi-year strategy with measurable goals."I want authentic opportunities to talk with the people that we serve --parents, community members, families," Cheatham tells The Madison Times from her office in the Doyle Administration Building in downtown Madison. "What are less important to me are opportunities for people to just hear me talk like at public appearances. I will do them on occasion, because I want to get the word out on what we're up to in response to what I'm hearing from people. But I really want to know what people are thinking and feeling. I'm really seeking out those two-way conservations during my entry phase."
Cheatham is currently in the listening and learning phase where she is meeting with a variety of stakeholders to discuss the district's goals and to better understand the district's strengths, challenges, and opportunities for improvement. This phase is critical in that it will be the time period in which she hears broadly from students, teachers, staff, principals, parents, community members, and others.
Cheatham is in the process of holding four "community days" (see sidebar below) as part of her ongoing entry plan. The first one was held April 18 at Madison East High School. The community day includes meetings with teachers and staff, discussions with students, a student-led tour, a neighborhood walk, and a forum for parents and community members. "Over the next couple of months, I want to learn more about and fine tune a strategy on how we can get parents more involved with the students," Cheatham says. "I want to learn more about how parents have engaged in the past -- what has worked and what hasn't worked. I'm not quite sure what our strategy is going to be yet, but I know that we're going to need one."
Cheatham has visited 14 schools in a little over 2 weeks, and is planning on keeping up that pace.
"I've had some really substantial visits to schools -- not just meet and greets. I've been really pleased with the honesty and frankness of those conversations with teachers, staff, and principals," Cheatham says. "On the positive side, I'm learning that there are extremely committed people in the district. The quality of principals, by and large, has been strong. I've talked to teachers and seen them in action in their classrooms and have been pretty pleased with what I've seen. I've seen the willingness to do the hard work it will take to address our challenges."
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Lili Gu recalls his initial trepidation at the flood of white faces in his Massachusetts high school when he came to America for 10th grade. There was the hulking football player who noticed that Gu was lost one day and said--here, Gu speaks in a guttural half-grunt--"'Hey, you want to go to the gym?' And I'm like, dude, is this guy going to rob me?" He struggled with English, too. The writing skills he arrived with, he says, would be at home in the fourth grade. But an English-as-second-language program made him comfortable after a semester. Then his formidable Chinese secondary education kicked in.Gu (ENG'13) says he breezed through high school, especially math, sprinting through the curriculum and into Harvard night school for advanced calculus. The easy ride ended at BU, however. If Chinese high schools are more rigorous than those in the United States, the reverse is true for universities, Gu says. Back home, "as soon as you step in the front door of a great university, it's almost like your motivation ends, because in China, GPA is not a big deal. Whether I'm a C student or D student, as long as I have that diploma, I'm awesome. If I wanted to graduate from BU with Cs, I'd probably have had a very good time."
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ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research--a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master's degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.
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Karen Lewis, the fiery leader of the Chicago Teachers Union who led a strike last year and became a nationally known anti-school reform figure, has been elected to another three-year term as president. Today she will lead the first of three days of protests against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to close 54 public schools.The Chicago Sun-Times reported that according to preliminary results, Lewis won about 80 percent of the votes, soundly defeating a candidate representing a coalition of groups that used to run the union until Lewis took office three years.
Last fall, Lewis's combative governing style won near-unanimous support from rank-and-file members when they voted to strike to protest Emanuel's reform plans, which included heavily linking teacher evaluation to student standardized test scores and extending the school day. After seven days of canceled classes, the strike ended with both sides claiming some success. Teachers won pay raises and were able to knock down the percentage that evaluations would be linked to scores, while Emanuel got his extended day.
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Five years ago, I thought I was going to catch Miriam Hughey-Guy, principal of Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington County, making an excuse for her school's failure to reach federal proficiency targets three years in a row.I didn't see why she had to take the blame. Her students were mostly from low-income families. Many parents spoke little English. That year the school just missed the mark, needing only seven more limited-English students to pass the state reading test.
When I asked about this, she began a sentence with the word "because." She seemed on the verge of blaming somebody or something else. But she cut herself off and started again.
"No because," she said. "There is no excuse!" Failing to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law was "mind-boggling," she said, "but it is something we have to work on."
Which is what she, and a team of teachers who hold her in awe, did. They brought the school back into compliance. More importantly, they demonstrated how good a school full of poor kids can be if it has a smart, energetic principal who gives teachers unwavering support for their best ideas.
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A resolution supporting the recommendations of the Columbus Education Commission passed a divided Columbus school board last night, after a lengthy debate that centered largely around whether " support" was too strong a word.
Also, the board handed member Gary Baker the task of chairing a citizens' panel that he will select to come up with a millage amount for a property tax issue, signaling that a levy likely will be on the November ballot.Three of the seven school board members voted unsuccessfully to strike any mention that the board "supports the final report and recommendations" of the education commission, and to remove references that it appreciates the vision "demonstrated by Mayor Michael B. Coleman, City Council President Andrew Ginther, and the Columbus Education Commission."
After that move failed, the board voted 6-1 to approve the resolution, which also joined Coleman in opposing a proposed state law that would allow the state to take over any school board that presided over a student-data scandal, which would include the Columbus board.
The commission recommended, among other things, sharing up to $50 million of local property taxes with certain high-performing charter schools through a newly, appointed panel; creating an independent auditor to investigate district operations, with the auditor appointed by Columbus city officials, a county judge and the school president; and a wide variety of teaching and technology changes.
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Among the most common rationales offered for the Common Core State Standards project is to eliminate differences in the definition of student proficiency in core academic subjects across states. As is well known, the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) required states to test students annually in grades 3-8 (and once in high school), to report the share of students in each school performing at a proficient level in math and reading, and to intervene in schools not on track to achieve universal student proficiency by 2014. Yet it permitted states to define proficiency as they saw fit, producing wide variation in the expectations for student performance from one state to the next. While a few states, including several that had set performance standards prior to NCLB's enactment, have maintained relatively demanding definitions of proficiency, most have been more lenient.The differences in expectations for students across states are striking. In 2011, for example, Alabama reported that 77 percent of its 8th grade students were proficient in math, while the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests administered that same year indicated that just 20 percent of Alabama's 8th graders were proficient against NAEP standards. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, roughly the same share of 8th graders achieved proficiency on the state test (52 percent) as did so on the NAEP (51 percent). In other words, Alabama deemed 25 percent more of its students proficient than did Massachusetts despite the fact that its students performed at markedly lower levels when evaluated against a common standard. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has gone so far as to accuse states like Alabama of "lying to children and parents" by setting low expectations for student performance.
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The Chronicle of Higher Education tells us the median salary of public university presidents rose 4.7 percent in 2011-12 to more than $440,000 a year. This increase vastly outpaced the rate of inflation, as well as the earnings of the typical worker in the U.S. economy. Perhaps, most relevant for this community, it also surpassed the compensation growth for university professors.Moreover, the median statistic masks that several presidents earned more than double that amount. Pennsylvania State University's Graham Spanier, best known for presiding over the worst athletic scandal in collegiate history, topped the list, earning $2,906,721 in total compensation. (He was forced to resign in November 2011 and was indicted in November 2012 on charges related to the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal.)
Spanier's package will get the attention. But the outrage should be spread around. University presidents are becoming ever more plutocratic even as the students find it harder and harder to pay for their studies. University leaders claim institutional poverty as they enrich themselves. A perennial leader of the highest-paid list, Gordon Gee of Ohio State University (more than $1.8 million last year), paid $532 for a shower curtain for the presidential mansion.
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In mid-May 1933, Americans learned that students in German universities planned to burn a long list of books deemed "un-German." Helen Keller, whose How I Became a Socialist was on this list, wrote this open letter to the students a day before the burning took place.Keller, who's now remembered as a gentle, uncomplicated symbol of persistence in the face of lifelong deafness and blindness, was a radical thinker and activist in her time. While Keller was born into an influential and wealthy Southern family, her activism on behalf of blind people, many of whom lived in poverty, caused her to turn to the writings of H.G. Wells and Karl Marx. She eventually became a socialist, a women's rights activist, an early supporter of the NAACP and the ACLU, and an advocate for free availability of birth control.
This first draft carries hand-written annotations by Polly Thomson, who was, along with Anne Sullivan, one of Keller's primary aides. The paragraph added at the bottom of the page, which was eventually incorporated into the version sent to the Associated Press for publication, professes understanding for the causes of German discontent, while roundly condemning the response.
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When Parker Sheffy, a first-year teacher in the Bronx Leadership Academy II, a high school in the South Bronx, talks shop with friends who are also new teachers, he often hears about the problems they are facing: students not showing up to class on time, not understanding their work, not doing homework. "I'm thinking: I don't have that problem... I don't have that problem..." Sheffy recalled. In his ninth grade integrated algebra class, he estimates that 80 to 90 percent are on track to pass the Regents exam, more than double last year's figure."But I have to remind myself that this is not just because of me," Sheffy said. "I'm one of six people who have created this class."
Sheffy's school is one of three New York City public schools working with an organization called Blue Engine, which recruits and places recent college graduates as full-time teaching assistants in high schools, helps teachers shift to a small-group classroom model with a ratio of one instructor for roughly every six students, uses data tracking to generate rapid-fire feedback so problems can be quickly addressed, and provides weekly instruction in "social cognition" classes, where students are introduced to skills and concepts -- such as the difference between a "fixed" and a "growth" mind-set -- that can help them grasp their untapped potential.
Blue Engine also targets algebra, geometry and English language arts in the ninth and 10th grades because performance in these so-called "gateway" courses is associated with college success.
Despite its modest size and short track record, Blue Engine has already seized the attention of educators and attracted notice from President Obama. Last year, in its schools, as a result of the program, the number of students who met the "college ready" standard -- scoring above 80 on their Regents exams in algebra, geometry or English language arts -- nearly tripled, from 49 to 140.
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Although the school board elections are over, education-related issues still weigh on parents' minds.For Suzanne Swift, the president of Franklin-Randall Elementary School's parent-teacher organization, the issues are the same as they have always been, despite certain ones being used by candidates to "hang their hats on."
Several PTO leaders from around the Madison Metropolitan School District hit on four common topics that concern them: the achievement gap, the Common Core State Standards, the state budget, and the allocation of resources across MMSD's schools.
According to Swift, the issues have shifted since her oldest child started at Franklin Elementary six years ago. At that time, the increasingly large classroom sizes dominated the discussion. Now, that issue comes up less often than the achievement gap and changing curriculum.
The achievement gap
The academic achievement disparity between white and minority students remains one of the top concerns in education.
Jill Jokela is a past PTO president who remains actively involved in the East Attendance Area PTO Coalition. The group aims to include voices from all schools that feed into East High School.
The achievement gap has been an issue for a long time, she said, but became more pronounced as Madison's demographics have changed. She spent about eight years as a PTO leader on Madison's east side until 2010.
Shelby Connell, PTO president at Van Hise Elementary School, and Ann Lacy, co-coordinator of the parent-staff group at East High School, said that although they haven't personally seen much of the achievement gap in their schools, it's still a big issue for MMSD.
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In his proposed budget, Governor Walker recommends setting aside a portion of education funding to distribute to schools based on their performance. While this proposal might sound attractive on the surface, it will result in significant funding increases for schools with few low-income students, disabled students, or English language learners. Schools with larger percentages of those students would be allocated a much smaller share of funding.The Governor is advocating allocating the following amounts for schools over the coming two-year budget period, based on a school report card accountability measure developed by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:
$24 million for schools that score in the highest category in DPI's school report cards;
$30 million for schools that improve their score on the school report cards by at least three points over the previous year; and
$10 million for schools that score in the category of "fails to meet expectations," if the school submits an improvement plan that is approved by DPI.
The disparities in the student population in the schools, and the higher dollar amount allocated for high-rated schools means that low-income students get relatively little out of this deal. Only one year of school report card data has been published so far, so it's hard to know what kind of schools would be eligible for the money allocated for schools that improve their score. But we can make some generalizations on how the money would be distributed among the best- and worst-rated schools based using 2011-12 school report cards.
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Parents in Michigan, like those across the country, want their children to have the tools they need to excel in school and beyond. The Common Core national curriculum standards were sold as the way to give students those tools. But with the standards now being implemented, a growing number of Michiganians -- as evidenced by the recent House vote to withhold state funds from Common Core -- are having buyer's remorse. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder's support for the Core notwithstanding, they're right to be wary, especially since Core supporters have too often ridiculed dissenters instead of engaging in honest debate.Supporters of the Core tout the fact that 45 states have adopted the standards, but don't mistake that for enthusiastic support. Before the standards had even been published, states were coerced into adopting them by President Obama's Race to the Top program, which tied federal dough to signing on. Even if policymakers in recession-hobbled states like Michigan would have preferred open debate, there was no time. Blink and the money would be gone; which is why most people hadn't even heard of the standards at adoption time.
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Here's my wild-ass guess for today: Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto is really Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki. Let's examine the evidence:
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Most recent discussion about economic inequality in the United States has focused on the top 1 percent of the nation's income distribution, a group whose incomes average $1 million (with a bottom threshold of about $367,000). "We are the 99 percent," declared the Occupy protesters, unexpectedly popularizing research findings by two economists, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, that had previously drawn attention mainly from academics. But the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is only half the story.Granted, it's an important half. Since 1979, the one-percenters have doubled their share of the nation's collective income from about 10 percent to about 20 percent. And between 2009, when the Great Recession ended, and 2011, the one-percenters saw their average income rise by 11 percent even as the 99-percenters saw theirs fall slightly. Some recovery!
This dismal litany invites the conclusion that if we would just put a tight enough choke chain on the 1 percent, then we'd solve the problem of income inequality. But alas, that isn't true, because it wouldn't address the other half of the story: the rise of the educated class.
Since 1979 the income gap between people with college or graduate degrees and people whose education ended in high school has grown. Broadly speaking, this is a gap between working-class families in the middle 20 percent (with incomes roughly between $39,000 and $62,000) and affluent-to-rich families (say, the top 10 percent, with incomes exceeding $111,000). This skills-based gap is the inequality most Americans see in their everyday lives.
Conservatives don't typically like to talk about income inequality. It stirs up uncomfortable questions about economic fairness. ... Liberals resist talking about the skills-based gap because they don't want to tell the working classes that they're losing ground because they didn't study hard enough.
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SAINT GORAN'S hospital is one of the glories of the Swedish welfare state. It is also a laboratory for applying business principles to the public sector. The hospital is run by a private company, Capio, which in turn is run by a consortium of private-equity funds, including Nordic Capital and Apax Partners. The doctors and nurses are Capio employees, answerable to a boss and a board. Doctors talk enthusiastically about "the Toyota model of production" and "harnessing innovation" to cut costs.
Welcome to health care in post-ideological Sweden. From the patient's point of view, St Goran's is no different from any other public hospital.Treatment is free, after a nominal charge which is universal in Sweden. St Goran's gets nearly all its money from the state. But behind the scenes it has led a revolution in the relationship between government and business. In the mid-1990s St Goran's was slated for closure. Then, in 1999, the Stockholm County Council struck a deal with Capio to take over the day-to-day operation of the hospital. In 2006 Capio was taken over by a group of private-equity firms led by Nordic Capital. Stockholm County Council recently extended Capio's contract until 2021.
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Almost fifteen years ago, in a book called "Chance, Development, and Aging," the gerontologists Caleb Finch and Thomas Kirkwood described a truly elegant study of biology: a batch of roundworms, all genetically identical, raised on identical diets of agar. Despite having identical genetics and near-identical environments, some worms lived far longer than others. The lesson? The classical equation of "life = nature + nurture" had left out chance.Of course, that was just worms. This week, a team of German researchers, led by Gerd Kempermann, built on a similar logic and announced in Science that they had raised forty inbred mice that were essentially genetically identical in a single complex environment, and used radio-frequency identification (RFID) implants to track every moment of their lives. Nobody could ever ethically run that sort of controlled experiment with humans, but Kempermann's study provides convincing evidence that--in a fellow mammal with which we share a basic brain organization--neither genetic identity nor a shared environment is enough to guarantee a common fate. Different creatures, even from the same species, can grow up differently, and develop significantly different brains--even if their genomes are identical, and even if their environments are, too.
Because of the care with which Kempermann and his colleagues tracked the individual mice, the study provides considerable new insight into how we become who we are. It speaks to what the psychologist Sandra Scarr once called "niche-picking": the idea that each individual develops a different set of talents, in order to carve out his or her own identity. Two people with initially slight differences might develop radically different skills, because they follow different paths. One child likes basketball, another painting; at first hardly anything distinguishes the two: both struggle to make baskets, and neither one can yet draw a credible house. But, from the outset, the first is slightly better at basketball, the second at art. Over time, the first child devotes herself to basketball, spends thousands of hours playing the game, and eventually becomes a professional athlete; the other applies herself equally to her chosen pursuit, and becomes a great artist. Tiny initial differences in talent, or simply in desire, become magnified over time. By tracking in detail the learning curves for forty individual mice, genetically identical and with essentially equal environmental opportunity, Kempermann and his colleagues show how the same kind of magnification can happen under carefully observed laboratory circumstances.
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Robin Lake, via a kind Deb Britt email:
One of the main goals of the charter school movement at its founding was to provide new school options for families that wanted and needed them. Another was to foster innovation, for charter schools themselves and traditional public schools around them. Are charters living up to those promises?Edited by Robin Lake, the 7th edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality focuses on growth and innovation and presses charter leaders to consider whether they are fully using their flexibility and autonomy on behalf of students. Experts assess the national landscape and provide possible guidance for the charter sector in light of the demand for better schools, impending Common Core standards, and tight budgets:
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Professor Nicholas Tampio, via a kind Rebecca Wallace-Segall email:
The multinational software giant, Microsoft, once bundled its Explorer search engine with Windows, and refused, for a time, to have Windows run WordPerfect, a competitor to Microsoft Word. As head of Microsoft, Bill Gates wanted everyone to use the same program. As funder of the Common Core, I believe he wants to do the same with our children.The Common Core is one of the most effective educational reform movements in United States history. Gates is a financial backer of this movement. Looking at this connection enables us to see why the United States should be wary of letting any one person or group acquire too much control over education policy.
Launched in 2009 and now adopted by 45 states, the Common Core articulates a single set of educational standards in language arts and mathematics. Although the Common Core claims not to tell teachers what or how to teach, school districts must prove to state legislatures or the federal government (via the Race to the Top program) that they are complying with the Common Core. The simplest and most cost-effective way for a school district to do that is to purchase an approved reading or math program.
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Why is EAGnews, the website for a Michigan-based "education reform" group -- proudly pro-voucher, pro-charter school, anti-union and basically anti-public schools -- blasting local Madison media outlets with alarming press releases about spending in the Madison School District?"Wisconsin Wave" appears to be active on governance issues as well, including education, among others.To galvanize Madison citizens into demanding accountability from school district officials, says Steve Gunn, communications director for the group.
To promote EAG's pro-voucher agenda, say critics.
"Maybe we'll whet some taxpayers' appetite, and they'll march down there and ask, 'What are you spending my money on?'" Gunn said in a phone interview Thursday. The website is part of Education Action Group, a private nonprofit organization out of Muskegon, Mich.
The headline of the press release EAGnews sent to local media Thursday proclaims: "Madison schools spent $243,000 for hotels, more than $300,000 for taxis and more than $150,000 for pizza in 2012."
Well, actually it's $232,693 in hotel expenses in 2012 that EAG cites in the body of its press release and associated article. Beyond the discrepancy between headline and text, both press release and article mash together credit card expenses for travel by district employees with expenditures for routine district functions. In citing more than $300,000 in taxi cab charges paid to three local companies, EAG does not mention that the companies are hired to transport special needs, homeless and Work and Learn students to school and job placement sites.
Gunn admits that the taxi charges or the "cool $4.8 million" in payments to bus companies might be for transporting children, but says he doesn't know for sure because the school district did not deliver promised details about the spending list it released in response to an open records request.
Long-term disastrous reading scores are an existential threat to our local schools not vouchers
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Sharon Lerner, via a kind Rebecca Wallace-Segall email
Kathleen Knauth has had a rough school year. The principal of Hillview Elementary, near Buffalo, New York, has spent so much time typing teacher evaluations, entering data, and preparing for standardized testing, she barely had a minute to do what she used to do in her first 12 years of being a principal--drop in on classes, address parents' concerns, or get to know students. When a school social worker stopped by her office a few months back to get Knauth's take on which children might need her help, she realized she had hit a new low."Normally I'd say, 'This one's grandma is seriously ill. This child is going through a huge custody battle. This one has clothes that are too small. I could reel off six to eight things," says Knauth. "But this year, I had nothing."
Two weeks ago, after she was asked to raise the standards her students would be expected to meet for a fifth time this year, Knauth decided to resign and sent a public letter explaining that the educational reforms she's been asked to implement are at odds with what's important for kids.
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This article contends that every American law school ought to substantially eliminate C grades by settings its good academic standing grade point average at the B- level. Grading systems that require or encourage law professors to award a significant number of C marks are flawed for two reasons. First, low grades damage students' placement prospects. Employers frequently consider a job candidate's absolute GPA in making hiring decisions. If a school systematically assigns inferior grades, its students are at an unfair disadvantage when competing for employment with students from institutions that award mostly A's and B's. Second, marks in the C range injure students psychologically. Students perceive C's as a sign of failure. Accordingly, when they receive such grades, their stress level is exacerbated in unhealthy ways. This psychological harm is both intrinsically problematic and compromises the educational process. Substantially eliminating C grades will bring about critical improvements in both the fairness of the job market and the mental well-being of our students. These benefits outweigh any problems that might be caused or aggravated by inflated grades. C marks virtually always denote unsatisfactory work in American graduate education. Law schools are the primary exception to this convention. It is time we adopted the practice followed by the rest of the academy.
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Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner email
Combined service of 2,687 years are departing the District, as 119 employees retire. Their pending June retirement was cause for celebration at the annual joint MTI-MMSD reception at Olbrich Gardens on May 15. Topping the list of MTI represented employees in years of service to Madison's children are:Teachers (MTI): Julie Riewe (40); Lori Hamann (39); Carol Kindschi (39); Julie Weis (37); George Marks (36); Margaret Schaefer (36); Steve Towne (36); Colleen Pfister (35); Janice Gavinski (34); Constance Kane (33); Celestine Richards- Gannon (33); Jane Mitchell (31); Diane Hawkins (30); and William Rodriguez (30).
Educational Assistants (EA-MTI): Cathy Bohnenkamp (26); Ann Feeney (24); Barbara Figy (24); Cynthia Secher (24); David Soward (22); and Gwen Peirce (22).
Supportive Educational Employees (SEE-MTI): Gay Huenink (32); Cynthia Michels (30); Anita Staats (30) and Deb Skubal (28).
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The state's largest teacher's union has formed a new political advocacy group that can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors during the upcoming campaign season, according to federal and state filings.Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.The move by the New Jersey Education Association underscores a growing trend in the state as donors and interest groups turn to the federal tax code to avoid the state limits on campaign contributions.
The New Jersey Education Association formed Garden State Forward in March of this year, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. The NJEA already has a state political action committee, but a spokesman said the new group will allow the union to focus more on issues, less on specific elections.
"We established it so, if we wish, we can express issue advocacy with our members," NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said.
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I've been curious about Gottfried Leibniz for years, not least because he seems to have wanted to build something like Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, and perhaps A New Kind of Science as well--though three centuries too early. So when I took a trip recently to Germany, I was excited to be able to visit his archive in Hanover.Leafing through his yellowed (but still robust enough for me to touch) pages of notes, I felt a certain connection--as I tried to imagine what he was thinking when he wrote them, and tried to relate what I saw in them to what we now know after three more centuries:
Some things, especially in mathematics, are quite timeless. Like here's Leibniz writing down an infinite series for √2 (the text is in Latin):
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By Javier Hernandez and Al Baker:
Charter schools would no longer be allowed space in traditional school buildings. Neighborhood school boards would be given more oversight over superintendents and principals. Cellphones, long considered contraband in schools, would again be permitted past the door.The Democratic candidates for mayor have promised, in varying degrees, to revamp the city's school system by undoing some of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's signature policies.
The attacks have put City Hall on the defensive, leaving aides worried about the future of one of the most ambitious efforts in the nation to overhaul education.
Fearing a sea change, the city's Education Department has worked over the past few months to lock in critical components of Mr. Bloomberg's agenda. Education officials have reserved space for charter schools more than a year in advance, called for a permanent system for evaluating teachers and sought new contracts for school bus routes, saving money in part by eliminating union job guarantees.
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The Forward Institute of Wisconsin released a new study of education policy in the state.This is a statement made by the Institute's Chair, Scott Wittkopf:
Wisconsin has always been a leader in K-12 public education because we have long valued the right of every child to receive a quality public education. The fundamental nature of our values is reflected in the State Constitution, which guarantees all children equal access to educational opportunity in our public schools. That constitutional right is now being systematically eroded and defunded. The research presented in this report shows that current fiscal policy and education funding are depriving our poorest students access to a sound public education. Public schools are not failing our children, Wisconsin legislators and policymakers are failing the public schools that serve our children.
Our comprehensive report documents in detail that the resources being afforded schools and students of poverty are insufficient, and facing further reduction. Moreover, the resources being diverted from schools of poverty into non-traditional alternative education programs are producing questionable results with little to no accountability for the state funding they receive.
The following seven points highlight critical findings of our study:
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Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham (PDF):
his report presents high school graduation rates for the Madison Metropolitan School District. For additional information on graduation rates, see the Appendix.For this report, we focus on a cohort of students expected to graduate at the end of the 2011-12 school year. For additional context and to track changes over time, we provide a three-year history for some measures. This report uses publicly available data from Wisconsin's Information Network for Successful Schools (WINSS). Additional data is available
through http://winss.dpi.wi.gov/. Key findings include the following:1. Overall graduation rates improved almost one percent from 2011 to 2012, from 73.7% to 74.6%.
2. African American and Hispanic students have improved their graduation rates by five percent and almost seven percent over the last three years.
3. Graduation rates for students with Limited English Proficiency have improved about four percent over the last three years.
4. MMSD high schools have similar graduation rates, ranging between 74.7% and 82.8%.
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HMCO:
The four-year college experience is as American as apple pie. So is the belief that higher education offers a ticket to a better life. But with student-loan debt surpassing the $1 trillion mark and unemployment of college graduates at historic highs, people are beginning to question that value.
In College (Un)bound, Jeffrey J. Selingo, editor at large of the Chronicle of Higher Education, argues that America's higher education system is broken. The great credential race has turned universities into big business and fostered an environment where middle-tier colleges can command elite university-level tuition while concealing staggeringly low graduation rates, churning out graduates with few of the skills needed for a rapidly evolving job market.
Selingo not only turns a critical eye on the current state of higher education but also predicts how technology will transform it for the better. Free massive online open courses (MOOCs) and hybrid classes, adaptive learning software, and the unbundling of traditional degree credits will increase access to high-quality education regardless of budget or location and tailor lesson plans to individual needs. One thing is certain--the Class of 2020 will have a radically different college experience than their parents.
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A major study of children born with serious heart defects suggests that at least 10% of cases result from genetic mutations that weren't inherited from their parents.Instead, the genetic anomalies arise spontaneously early in prenatal development. Researchers said some of the mutated genes play a critical role in activating or deactivating other genes responsible for the development of the heart.
"This for the first time really establishes that these new mutations account for a significant fraction of this disease," said Richard Lifton, head of the department of genetics at Yale University School of Medicine and a senior author of the study. The findings were published online Sunday by the journal Nature.
About 40,000 babies, or nearly one in 100, are born in the U.S. each year with congenital heart disease, making it the most common birth defect. About one-third of cases involve life-threatening structural defects to the organ. Surgical advances over the past few decades have enabled the majority of such kids to live well into adulthood, though the repairs often wear out by their 20s and 30s, leading to additional procedures.
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Few mothers are likely to get more cards, flowers and phone calls this Sunday than Joyce Dumont.Mrs. Dumont, 77 years old, a Native American of the Chippewa tribe, is at the root of a family tree so tangled that it seems more like a forest. By her reckoning, she has had 69 kids--including six through childbirth, five stepchildren, 11 who were adopted, several dozen foster children and a few who simply moved in when they had no better place to go.
Her latest three were adopted by Mrs. Dumont and her husband, Buddy, also 77, over the past few years. They range in age from 7 to 10. "They're really rambunctious," she told a recent visitor to her home near the Canadian border, where a washing machine chugged and a chubby Chihuahua named Peewee scoured the floor for Cheerios.
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Conventional wisdom says that synesthesia is innate -- you're either born with the condition or you're not, end of story. If you happen not to have been born that way but would really, really love to experience numbers as colors, or colors as sound ... then you, my sense-straight friend, are pretty much out of luck.Except ... maybe not? A group of psychologists at the University of Amsterdam have been testing whether synesthesia might, actually, be learned. Synesthetes' innate cognitive wiring leads them to augment their perception of the physical world; the researchers wanted to see whether the reverse could take place -- whether an augmented physical world could lead to synesthetic perceptions in people who weren't born with "crossed senses." And the researchers have now published their findings in the journal PLoS One.
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Gregory Nagy, a professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, is a gentle academic of the sort who, asked about the future, will begin speaking of Homer and the battles of the distant past. At seventy, he has owlish eyes, a flared Hungarian nose, and a tendency to gesture broadly with the flat palms of his hands. He wears the crisp white shirts and dark blazers that have replaced tweed as the raiment of the academic caste. His hair, also white, often looks manhandled by the Boston wind. Where some scholars are gnomic in style, Nagy piles his sentences high with thin-sliced exposition. ("There are about ten passages--and by passages I simply mean a selected text, and these passages are meant for close reading, and sometimes I'll be referring to these passages as texts, or focus passages, but you'll know I mean the same thing--and each one of these requires close reading!") When he speaks outside the lecture hall, he smothers friends and students with a stew of blandishment and praise. "Thank you, Wonderful Kevin!" he might say. Or: "The Great Claudia put it so well." Seen in the wild, he could be taken for an antique-shop proprietor: a man both brimming with solicitous enthusiasm and fretting that the customers are getting, maybe, just a bit too close to his prized Louis XVI chair.Nagy has published no best-sellers. He is not a regular face on TV. Since 1978, though, he has taught a class called "Concepts of the Hero in Classical Greek Civilization," and the course, a survey of poetry, tragedy, and Platonic dialogues, has made him a campus fixture. Because Nagy's zest for Homeric texts is boundless, because his lectures reflect decades of refinement, and because the course is thought to offer a soft grading curve (its nickname on campus is Heroes for Zeroes), it has traditionally filled Room 105, in Emerson Hall, one of Harvard's largest classroom spaces. Its enrollment has regularly climbed into the hundreds.
......
Rather than writing papers, they take a series of multiple-choice quizzes. Readings for the course are available online, but students old-school enough to want a paper copy can buy a seven-hundred-and-twenty-seven-page textbook that Nagy is about to publish, "The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours."
...
At one extreme, edX has been developing a software tool to computer-grade essays, so that students can immediately revise their work, for use at schools that want it. Harvard may not be one of those schools. "I'm concerned about electronic approaches to grading writing," Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of the university and a former history professor, recently told me. "I think they are ill-equipped to consider irony, elegance, and . . . I don't know how you get a computer to decide if there's something there it hasn't been programmed to see."
...
The answer is c). In Nagy's "brick-and-mortar" class, students write essays. But multiple-choice questions are almost as good as essays, Nagy said, because they spot-check participants' deeper comprehension of the text. The online testing mechanism explains the right response when students miss an answer.
...
It is also under extreme strain. In the mid-nineteen-sixties, two economists, William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, diagnosed a "cost disease" in industries like education, and the theory continues to inform thinking about pressure in the system. Usually, as wages rise within an industry, productivity does, too. But a Harvard lecture hall still holds about the same number of students it held a century ago, and the usual means of increasing efficiency--implementing advances in technology, speeding the process up, doing more at once--haven't seemed to apply when the goal is turning callow eighteen-year-olds into educated men and women. Although educators' salaries have risen (more or less) in measure with the general economy over the past hundred years, their productivity hasn't. The cost disease is thought to help explain why the price of education is on a rocket course, with no levelling in sight.
...
King rattled off three premises that were crucial to understanding the future of education: "social connections motivate," "teaching teaches the teacher," and "instant feedback improves learning." He'd been trying to "flip" his own classroom. He took the entire archive of the course Listserv and had it converted into a searchable database, so that students could see whether what they thought was only their "dumb question" had been asked before, and by whom.
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Michael A. Woodley, Jan te Nijenhuis, Raegan Murphy :
The Victorian era was marked by an explosion of innovation and genius, per capita rates of which appear to have declined subsequently. The presence of dysgenic fertility for IQ amongst Western nations, starting in the 19th century, suggests that these trends might be related to declining IQ. This is because high-IQ people are more productive and more creative. We tested the hypothesis that the Victorians were cleverer than modern populations, using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study. Simple reaction time measures correlate substantially with measures of general intelligence (g) and are considered elementary measures of cognition. In this study we used the data on the secular slowing of simple reaction time described in a meta-analysis of 14 age-matched studies from Western countries conducted between 1884 and 2004 to estimate the decline in g that may have resulted from the presence of dysgenic fertility. Using psychometric meta-analysis we computed the true correlation between simple reaction time and g, yielding a decline of − 1.23 IQ points per decade or fourteen IQ points since Victorian times. These findings strongly indicate that with respect to g the Victorians were substantially cleverer than modern Western populations.
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I suggested in my first article that our education system is not broken but has simply become obsolete. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do but unfortunately, our needs have changed. We can't just make incremental improvement to the current education system to somehow make it work for the next century. It's like changing the screen or making incremental changes to an old Nokia phone and somehow expecting it to become an iPhone.It's time for us to go back to the drawing board and redesign the education system for the next century. Let me give you my thoughts on the functional specifications of the education system for the next century.
Adaptive - Student Centric Learning
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As NJSBA's semi-annual Delegate Assembly approaches (Saturday, May 18 is the meeting date), it's a good time to recount the Association's progress on key initiatives during the past six months.Special Education Task Force: In January, NJSBA formed a task force to review our state's current process for funding and providing special education services. The study group will recommend changes to state and federal statute and regulation. The goal is to reduce special education costs to local school districts without diminishing the quality of needed services. In addition, the task force will identify best practices.
As I've previously stated in this column, I began my career in education as a special education teacher. The education of children with special needs will always be close to my heart. However, there is a dire need to develop strategies that will maintain quality services, without negatively affecting resources for general education programming.
The Task Force is working under the guidance of Dr. Gerald Vernotica, Montclair State University associate professor and former assistant commissioner of education. The group has been involved in data collection and research, has consulted with experts, and is seeking information from New Jersey's local school districts. Earlier this month, it issued a survey on special education trends to superintendents and special education directors. For more information on the survey, please contact John Burns, NJSBA counsel, at jburns@njsba.org.
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Editor's Note: The controversial fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-5 (a.k.a. the manual formerly known as "DSM-V") is being released tomorrow - after a 14-year revision process to update its criteria for defining mental disorders. This opinion is from the former taskforce chairman and leader of previous DSM editions.Nature takes the long view, mankind the short. Nature picks diversity; we pick standardization. We are homogenizing our crops and homogenizing our people. And Big Pharma seems intent on pursuing a parallel attempt to create its own brand of human monoculture.
With an assist from an overly ambitious psychiatry, all human difference is being transmuted into chemical imbalance meant to be treated with a handy pill. Turning difference into illness was among the great strokes of marketing genius accomplished in our time.
All the great characters in myths, novels, and plays have endured the test of time precisely because they drift so colorfully away from the mean. Do we really want to put Oedipus on the couch, give Hamlet a quick course of behavior therapy, start Lear on antipsychotics?
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It's a sign of just how deep tensions are around parenting today that, over two years after Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" was published, its combination of shocking revelation, serious reflection and tongue-in-cheek exaggeration still sends T. Rex-scale ripples skittering across the surface of our sociocultural Dixie cups.Two weeks ago, novelist Kim Wong Keltner's "Tiger Babies Strike Back" was published -- her nonfiction account of growing up under the paw of her authoritarian Tiger parents. Last week, the web was abuzz over the release of UT Austin psychology prof Su Yeong Kim's longitudinal study tracking the parenting styles and social outcomes of over 400 Chinese American families in the Bay Area, which seemed to show that children of Tiger Parents had both poorer emotional health and lower GPAs than those of parents who embraced warmer and fuzzier child-rearing strategies.
Up until now, Chua herself has assiduously stayed out of the fray. "I really didn't want to get into the middle of this," she told me by phone from New Haven. "People keep trying to pit me against Kim Wong Keltner, or to ask me to comment on that parenting study, and I keep telling them 'Look, all I did was write my personal family story. I'm not a social scientist, I'm not a parenting expert. So all this is like asking apples to comment on oranges.'" (Keltner isn't keen on being positioned as the Anti-Chua either: "I really see my book as an alternative, not a rebuke to 'Battle Hymn,'" she says. "And frankly, [Chua] seems like she's smart and funny and highly accomplished and very beautiful, and we'd probably have a great time hanging out.")
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For decades companies have faced the conundrum of how to ensure managers can implement what they have learnt at business school when they are back at work. Management guru Henry Mintzberg, scourge of business school complacency, sums it up succinctly: "You should not send a changed person back into an unchanged organisation, but we always do."Now Mintzberg's Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, among others, is addressing the issue of how to ensure the dollars invested in the classroom convert into dollars for the corporate bottom line.
One idea gaining currency is that of "cascading", in which every manager who has been on a campus-based course has to teach a group of more junior colleagues back in the workplace. It has been more than a decade since Duke CE, the corporate education arm of Duke University, North Carolina, US, promoted the concept, but advances in workplace technology are accelerating its adoption.
"The leader as teacher is very effective," says Ray Carvey, executive vice-president of corporate learning at Harvard Business Publishing. "The leader goes back and cascades [what he or she has learnt]."
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Damien Valentine was suspended from school for the first time as a seventh-grader in South Central Los Angeles, after arguing with a math teacher who had asked him to change seats.Mr. Valentine, now a 16-year-old sophomore, said he was sent home for a day-and-a-half for "willful defiance," a term encompassing a variety of misbehavior that California schools can use as reason to remove students from the classroom.
This week, the Los Angeles Unified School District--the second-largest in the nation--decided to end the practice of suspending or expelling students for "willful defiance," starting this fall. District officials said the practice disproportionately affects minority students' education and leads to more disciplinary problems for students down the line.
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When Kaci Taylor Avant got caught cheating on a test a few months back, the teacher called her mother, who was nothing less than stunned. After all, Kaci always does her homework and gets mostly As in school. Mother and daughter had already had "the talk" about how cheating was wrong. And then there's Kaci's age."I had to ask myself, 'Wow, really? She is only 8!' " says her mother Laina Avant, a Paterson, N.J., network engineer.
As school-testing season heats up this spring, many elementary-school parents are getting similar calls.
The line between right and wrong in the classroom is often hazy for young children, and shaping the moral compass of children whose brains are still developing can be one of the trickiest jobs a parent faces. Many parents overreact or misread the motivations of small children, say researchers and educators, when it is actually more important to explore the underlying cause.
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Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational "death valley" we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. Full bio »
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Civil servants are to walk off the job on Tuesday in a bid to express solidarity with secondary school teachers after the government issued a civil mobilization order to force teachers to work on Friday when they had planned an anti-austerity strike.Civil servants are to hold a rally on Tuesday, starting at 10 a.m. outside the main entrance to Athens University, following a small demonstration in the city center on Monday by teachers. ADEDY has also joined forces with the main private labor union, GSEE, in planning a work stoppage for Thursday, from noon until the end of the workers' shifts.
The government on Monday issued civil mobilization papers to some 88,000 teachers who face arrest and possible dismissal if they fail to turn up for work from Wednesday, when the order comes into effect.
The Education Ministry reportedly made a concession, however, withdrawing a presidential decree foreseeing thousands of compulsory transfers of teachers - one of the key points of contention of protesting teachers - for revision.
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California has proved to be a land of opportunity where hard work delivers prosperity and nurtures innovation. Its human capital has helped the state develop into the world's ninth-largest economy, which attracts nearly half of the venture capital in the nation.But this opportunity and success have not reached everyone, and the California dream is in danger of slipping away.
Today, California ranks first in the country in the number of working low-income families. "Working Hard, Left Behind," a new study conducted by the Campaign for College Opportunity, found that millions in the state are working hard but are increasingly left behind. More than a third of California's working families are considered low income, earning less than $45,397 a year for a family of four.
There is a solution. The study also found that higher education is a proven pathway from poverty to prosperity for working Californians. And it can work, even in these difficult economic times, if there is a will for reform and investment in the state's higher education system.
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Security Blog "Strife" out of Kings College in London recently published Mattis' words with a short description from the person who found it in her email.Their title for the post:
With Rifle and Bibliography: General Mattis on Professional Reading
[Dear, "Bill"]
The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men's experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others' experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.
Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.
With [Task Force] 58, I had w/ me Slim's book, books about the Russian and British experiences in [Afghanistan], and a couple others. Going into Iraq, "The Siege" (about the Brits' defeat at Al Kut in WW I) was req'd reading for field grade officers. I also had Slim's book; reviewed T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"; a good book about the life of Gertrude Bell (the Brit archaeologist who virtually founded the modern Iraq state in the aftermath of WW I and the fall of the Ottoman empire); and "From Beirut to Jerusalem". I also went deeply into Liddell Hart's book on Sherman, and Fuller's book on Alexander the Great got a lot of my attention (although I never imagined that my HQ would end up only 500 meters from where he lay in state in Babylon).
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One of the bigger names in Canadian technology has come forth to speak out on a highly controversial topic. Frank Clegg, who worked at Microsoft for 15 years and was president of Microsoft Canada from 2000 to 2005, is opposed to wireless internet in schools."There are already children who can't go to school because of headaches, nausea and heart problems from the wireless systems," says Clegg. "Some of these kids have a doctor's note to prove it. This is a real hazard."
On Wednesday the American Academy of Environmental Medicine announced that medical doctors are treating patients who have fallen ill from school wireless systems. Clegg plans to address parents and teachers at a public meeting in Mississauga tonight at 7pm.
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Madison teachers are eager to nail down another labor contract -- through June 2015 at least -- while the door to legally do so is open.But it's going to be a while before Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham is ready to consider sitting down with them.
Madison Teachers Inc. hopes to negotiate a contract beyond the one-year pact quickly approved by School Board members last fall after a local judge ruled parts of Act 10 unconstitutional, delaying implementation of the state law curbing collective bargaining rights.
"I'm just starting" on the job, Cheatham told a crowd of 150 gathered at West High School last week to talk with the superintendent, who took the helm of the Madison School District on April 1. "I need to finish this entry plan before I would be willing to consider, with (MTI Executive Director John Matthews) and our colleagues at MTI, entering into negotiations."
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Are taxpayers really getting their bang for their buck when it comes to funding school vouchers?Much more on vouchers, here.The short answer from the Forward Institute is no.
The new, progressive public policy research organization released its comprehensive report today on Wisconsin's education funding and poverty and it's well worth a close read.
A portion of the report examines taxpayer funding for voucher schools and their performance.
Now, this isn't easy to do since schools that accept vouchers don't have to provide the kind of data that fully public schools provide, even though the state has enhanced some of the voucher schools' accountability measures.
That said, the Forward Institute chose to look at state aid per pupil and the percentage of students that test proficient or advanced on state tests. (You'll find all of this on page 46 of the report.)
Let's just acknowledge here that both public schools and voucher schools take in money from other sources. Both types of schools typically spend more per pupil than what they receive from state taxpayers.
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JASON RICHWINE, a co-author of the widely trashed Heritage Foundation study on the the costs of immigration, "resigned" his post at Heritage Friday after his doctoral dissertation on immigration and IQ fell under a shadow of suspected racism. Harvard awarded Mr Richwine a PhD in 2009 for work arguing that Hispanic immigrants are less intelligent than non-Hispanic white Americans, that this gap has a genetic basis, and that immigration policy should discriminate against less intelligent groups of people, albeit under the cover of the language of "low skill" and "high skill" immigrants. Is this really racist?Following a useful summary of Mr Richwine's thesis, Robert VerBruggen of National Review makes a plea for letting science, rather than social opprobrium, settle scientific questions:
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David BornsteinWhen Parker Sheffy, a first-year teacher in the Bronx Leadership Academy II, a high school in the South Bronx, talks shop with friends who are also new teachers, he often hears about the problems they are facing: students not showing up to class on time, not understanding their work, not doing homework. "I'm thinking: I don't have that problem... I don't have that problem..." Sheffy recalled. In his ninth grade integrated algebra class, he estimates that 80 to 90 percent are on track to pass the Regents exam, more than double last year's figure.
"But I have to remind myself that this is not just because of me," Sheffy said. "I'm one of six people who have created this class."
Sheffy's school is one of three New York City public schools working with an organization called Blue Engine, which recruits and places recent college graduates as full-time teaching assistants in high schools, helps teachers shift to a small-group classroom model with a ratio of one instructor for roughly every six students, uses data tracking to generate rapid-fire feedback so problems can be quickly addressed, and provides weekly instruction in "social cognition" classes, where students are introduced to skills and concepts -- such as the difference between a "fixed" and a "growth" mind-set -- that can help them grasp their untapped potential.
Blue Engine also targets algebra, geometry and English language arts in the ninth and 10th grades because performance in these so-called "gateway" courses is associated with college success.
Despite its modest size and short track record, Blue Engine has already seized the attention of educators and attracted notice from President Obama. Last year, in its schools, as a result of the program, the number of students who met the "college ready" standard -- scoring above 80 on their Regents exams in algebra, geometry or English language arts -- nearly tripled, from 49 to 140.
Katherine Callaghan, the principal of the Bronx Leadership Academy II, who has worked in the school for more than 10 years, said: "Blue Engine has moved a huge number of our students in a way that nothing else that we've ever tried has been able to do." She added: "Last year we had a 44 percent pass rate on the integrated algebra Regents, with two kids scoring above an 80. This year, we're on track for 75 or 80 percent passing, with 20 kids hitting the college-ready mark. We're close to doubling our pass rate and multiplying by a factor of 10 our college-ready rate."
Gains like this are not often seen in education. So it's worth taking note. What's happening?
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Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly, Saad Rizvi:
'Our belief is that deep, radical and urgent transformation is required in higher education as much as it is in school systems. Our fear is that, perhaps as a result of complacency, caution or anxiety, or a combination of all three, the pace of change is too slow and the nature of change too incremental.''Should we fail to radically change our approach to education, the same cohort we're attempting to "protect" could find that their entire future is scuttled by our timidity.'
David Puttnam, MIT, 2012This wide-ranging essay aims to provoke creative dialogue and challenge complacency in our traditional higher education institutions.
'Just as globalisation and technology have transformed other huge sectors of the economy in the past 20 years, in the next 20 years universities face transformation.'
With a massive diversification in the range of providers, methods and technologies delivering tertiary education worldwide, the assumptions underlying the traditional relationship between universities, students and local and national economies are increasingly under great pressure - a revolution is coming.
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"To prepare young people for a more competitive economy, our school systems must have less competition."Related: MTEL 90: Teacher Content Knowledge Licensing Requirements Coming To Wisconsin.....Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract "the best and the brightest" into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.
"Teacher effectiveness" is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.
In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers.
Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.
In recent years the "no excuses"' argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children's learning in school.
Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.
For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being.
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An undergraduate having to pay off $120,000, and a university that has more than $165 million in debt? Paying adjuncts less but having them teach more, and instructors who give As 43 percent of the time? Nick Romeo on a new book that critiques how higher education has changed, and what needs to be done to save it.
Ask a 17-year-old about college and you'll probably hear the word "fit." It's the most pervasive and elusive metaphor of the college search: a quasi-religious, quasi-romantic sense of rightness that descends on students as they tour the manicured lawns of the perfect school, the one that feels, in some mystical way, like a good fit.The hazy imprecision of this notion is a triumph of college marketing. Many colleges hope that whims and intangibles will guide student decisions. It's simply not in their interest to encourage students to think closely about the economics of their choice.
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Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy's determination to build on his signature legislative achievement last year--an education package worth about $100 million--now faces hurdles as the state's leaders address a $1.5 billion budget shortfall.Last year's legislative package set up several initiatives including a network to aid underperforming schools, statewide teacher evaluations and more spending on new state charter schools.
Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, wants to spend another $61 million to further expand those programs over the next two fiscal years. But the appropriations committee, controlled by the governor's fellow Democrats, wants to reduce that amount by $47 million and shift that money to other education pursuits such as after-school programs and health clinics based at schools.
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I often despair over the sorry state of writing and research in our high schools. Only private schools and public schools with the International Baccalaureate diploma program require research papers of significant length. Two million new high school graduates head to college every year -- but only 10 percent, by my reckoning -- have had to write a long paper or do a major project.The only traditional public school in this region requiring that for all students is Wakefield High School in Arlington County. It is a remarkable feat for a school in which half the students are from low-income families.
Recently I discovered that two public charter schools are doing this in the District, providing more encouragement to those of us who think working through a complex, long-form research problem is the essence of a good education.
The Capitol Hill and Parkside campuses of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy require all seniors to write a 12- to 15-page paper on a policy issue of their choice and then defend it before a panel of outside experts. Eighty percent of students at the two schools are from low-income families.
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There's an ongoing debating about the actual value of higher education. Countless articles and studies depict the declining return on investment for students and families. Simply put college graduates are not generating enough income to justify their expensive degrees.In the same way, some universities are also struggling to manage their finances. To highlight the universities having some of the biggest issues, we took a look at those with the lowest credit ratings... and we were pretty surprised by who we found.
What's in a credit rating?
A university is just like a large company, or country. It borrows money frequently to cover its operating costs like salaries of the professors, maintenance, maintaining the dormitories, making sure the library is stocked, and keeping the sports program in tip top shape.
In order to finance these and new projects like the addition of new buildings or the development of new curriculum, universities issue bonds. The bonds are then traded on public markets to raise capital. For investors and lenders to know how worthy (or unworthy) the institution is, credit rating companies like Moody's and Standard & Poors issue them a score.
Moody's is the current leader in the university credit rating industry. It examines the finances of nearly all the 4,495 title-iv degree granting universities in the United States. According to its estimates only 11% (500) of the total number of universities are currently financially stable enough to stave off economic, demographic and technological shifts.
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Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University wrote the following letter to make a direct appeal to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor whose MOOC on "Justice" they were being encouraged to use as part of the San Jose State curriculum. (See a related article and a response from Mr. Sandel.)San Jose State University recently announced a contract with edX (a company
associated with MIT and Harvard) to expand the use of online blended courses.The SJSU Philosophy Department was asked to pilot your JusticeX course, and we
refused. We decided to express to you our reasons for refusing to be involved with this course, and, because we believe that other departments and universities will sooner or later face the same predicament, we have decided to share our reasons with you publicly.There is no pedagogical problem in our department that JusticeX solves, nor do we have a shortage of faculty capable of teaching our equivalent course.
We believe that long-term financial considerations motivate the call for massively open online courses (MOOCs) at public universities such as ours. Unfortunately, the move to MOOCs comes at great peril to our university. We regard such courses as a serious compromise of quality of education and, ironically for a social justice course, a case of social injustice.
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AT THE beginning of April, Research Councils UK, a conduit through which the government transmits taxpayers' money to academic researchers, changed the rules on how the results of studies it pays for are made public. From now on they will have to be published in journals that make them available free--preferably immediately, but certainly within a year.In February the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told federal agencies to make similar plans. A week before that, a bill which would require free access to government-financed research after six months had begun to wend its way through Congress. The European Union is moving in the same direction. So are charities. And SCOAP3, a consortium of particle-physics laboratories, libraries and funding agencies, is pressing all 12 of the field's leading journals to make the 7,000 articles they publish each year free to read. For scientific publishers, it seems, the party may soon be over.
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Here is how a journalist described a class she watched a few months ago in a Northern California high school.In the 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ben Stein famously plays a high school teacher who drones on about the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act while his students slump at their desks in a collective stupor. For many kids, that's history: an endless catalog of disconnected dates and names, passed down like scripture from the state textbook, seldom questioned and quickly forgotten.
Now take a seat inside Will Colglazier's classroom at Aragon High School in San Mateo. The student population here is fairly typical for the Bay Area: about 30 percent Latino, 30 percent Asian and 40 percent white. The subject matter is standard 11th grade stuff: What caused the Great American Dust Bowl?
Tapping on his laptop, Colglazier shows the class striking black-and-white images of the choking storms that consumed the Plains states in the 1930s. Then he does something unusual. Instead of following a lesson plan out of the textbook, he passes out copies of a 1935 letter, written by one Caroline Henderson to the then-U.S. secretary of agriculture, poignantly describing the plight of her neighbors in the Oklahoma panhandle. He follows that with another compelling document: a confidential high-level government report, addressed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, decrying the region's misguided homesteading policies.
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Over the last twelve years, I've gone from rote learning in an Eastern education, to a fast-track Western education, to mentorship as an intern, to self-direction in a startup incubator.They announced the 2013 Thiel Fellows this week, one of whom is yours truly. The Thiel Fellowship is an annual $100k award for twenty teenagers to stop school and start something.
That's not to say school is worthless.
Switching schools, and switching countries, has exposed me to many teaching philosophies and cultures. I've learned things more valuable than anything found in one curriculum alone. Leaving school behind, I must remember those lessons.
My academic life has ended, and this post is its eulogy.
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WHEN French entrepreneurs decided in March to launch a swanky new school for software developers, they thought they were on to something. But even they were startled by its popularity. For 1,000 student places starting this autumn on a three-year course, they have fully 50,000 applications.France has a skills mismatch. Joblessness has reached 10.6%, a 14-year high. For the under-25s, it is 26%. Yet, according to a poll by the French Association of Software Publishers and Internet Solutions, 72% of software firms are having trouble recruiting--and 91% of those are seeking software engineers and developers.
Such frustrations spurred Xavier Niel, the billionaire founder of Iliad, a broadband firm, and his business pals to set up the new school--which is wilfully disruptive of France's highly centralised, state-dominated education system. It is privately financed--Mr Niel is investing €70m ($92m)--but will be free for students. It will lead to no state-recognised diploma and applicants need no formal qualifications, although the admissions literature warns would-be students that they "will have to work hard".
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Salaries of presidents of U.S. public universities rose almost 5 percent in the last fiscal year, even as tuition rose and student debt soared, with the median pay package topping $400,000, according to a report released on Sunday.Penn State's Graham Spanier was the top earner last year at the time he was fired over the Jerry Sandusky scandal, according to the study by the Chronicle of Higher Education, though his compensation was inflated by $2.4 million in severance pay and deferred compensation.
The median total compensation for the public university presidents in fiscal year 2011-2012 was $441,392, the study found. Four of the presidents earned more than $1 million, and the median base pay jumped 2 percent to $373,800.
Spanier received total compensation of $2.9 million, the same fiscal year that he was fired for his handling of the Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
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The anemic economy has left millions of younger working Americans struggling to get ahead. The added millstone of student loan debt, which recently exceeded $1 trillion in total, is making it even harder for many of them, delaying purchases of things like homes, cars and other big-ticket items and acting as a drag on growth, economists said.Consider Shane Gill, a 33-year-old high-school teacher in New York City. He does not have a car. He does not own a home. He is not married. And he is no anomaly: like hundreds of thousands of others in his generation, he has put off such major purchases or decisions in part because of his debts.
Mr. Gill owes about $45,000 in federal student loans, plus another $40,000 to his parents. That investment in his future has led to a secure job with decent pay and good benefits. But it has left him with tremendous financial constraints, as he faces chipping away at the debt for years on end.
"There's this anxiety: what if I decided I wanted to get married or have children?" Mr. Gill said. "I don't know how I would. And that adds to the sense of precariousness. There's a persistent, buzzing kind of toothache around it."
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In April there was a dust-up in the finance and education worlds when the American Federation of Teachers called out Dan Loeb, founder and CEO of a hedge fund, for simultaneously investing teacher pension fund assets while serving on the board of StudentsFirst's chapter in New York, which advocates for pension reform, and advocating reform of teacher pensions himself. The whole episode was part of an enemies list exercise (pdf) by the AFT to put money mangers on notice if they deviated from the union's line on pension reform. And it was, of course, easy fodder for one dimensional takes.But as is often the case the reality was more complicated. For starters, because of multiple issues including irresponsible decisions by state legislators and unsustainable benefit schemes demanded by public employee unions (yes there is plenty of blame to go around) there is an enormous problem with financing pensions (pdf). But, for the most part, so far reforms have come at the expense of teachers, generally new teachers, rather than comprehensive efforts to reform how we finance retirement for educators. We need a richer conversation about how to simultaneously address the fiscal problems and modernize teacher retirement for today's more mobile labor market. The choice facing policymakers is less a binary one between defined benefit pensions (those that pay participants a pre-defined benefit) and defined contribution plans (401k-style plans that provide benefits based on contributions and investment choices/performance) than it is about a subset of choices about employer and employee contributions, risk allocation, vesting rules, and issues like portability for participants. In some states Social Security participation is also an issue.
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It just so happens that in the same week that a co-author of a Heritage Foundation immigration study resigned for suggesting that Hispanics have lower IQs than whites, the Pew Research Hispanic Center released a new analysis showing that Hispanic high school graduates have passed whites in the rate of college enrollment.In a report by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor, the center says that "a record seven-in-ten (69%) Hispanic high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college that fall, two percentage points higher than the rate (67%) among their white counterparts."
Furthermore, the center's analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that according to the most recent available data, in 2011, "only 14% of Hispanic 16- to 24-year-olds were high school dropouts, half the level in 2000 (28%)."
A recent comprehensive investigation of high school graduation rates finds that 78% of Hispanics graduated from high school in 2010, an increase from 64% in 2000.
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The United States spent more than US$3 billion last year across 209 federal programmes intended to lure young people into careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The money goes on a plethora of schemes at school, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, all aimed at promoting science and technology, and raising standards of science education.In a report published on 10 April, Congress's Government Accountability Office (GAO) asked a few pointed questions about why so many potentially overlapping programmes coexist. The same day, the 2014 budget proposal of President Barack Obama's administration suggested consolidating the programmes, but increasing funding.
What no one asked was whether these many activities actually benefit science and engineering, or society as a whole. My answer to both questions is an emphatic 'no'.
Students with autism gravitate toward STEM majors
Taken individually, of course, these programmes are all very cuddly and wonderful. They are keenly pursued by governments around the world -- particularly in countries that fret about their economic competitiveness, such as the United Kingdom and the United States.But taken together, these schemes -- which allocate perhaps $600 to each child passing through the US education system -- constitute bad public policy. Government promotion of science careers ultimately damages science and engineering, by inflating supply and depressing demand for scientists and engineers in the employment market.
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I AM a proud member of a small, emerging class of minority women with careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- the STEM fields for short. As a professor at Yale University and a scientist in the field of tissue engineering, or regenerative medicine, I'm often asked how I got to where I am. I usually respond with stories of my early interest in problem-solving and puzzles.
But if I really reflect on how I, a Latina from Las Vegas, was able to become a scientist at an elite university, it wasn't my own curiosity. It was the influence of a blackjack dealer who also happens to be my mother.
My mother may not know the ins and outs of academia, but she taught me the essential ingredients needed to make it as a scientist in a white, male-dominated field.
A blackjack dealer works for tips. As you can imagine, a stodgy personality will not do well in a profession where you have to entertain a diverse clientele. My mother can interact with wealthy families from faraway continents as capably as she does with the locals.
As a professor and researcher, I interact with students and colleagues from all over the world, and I must communicate with each of them in an intellectual yet relatable manner. If I fail to do so, the far-reaching implications of my work are lost on the audience.
My mother's most powerful weapon is her sense of humor. Her smile draws customers to the table, and once they are there she can gently tease a shy person into conversation or draw guffaws from an abrasive personality with a crude joke.
Likewise, whether dealing with an egotistic colleague or an insecure or disengaged student, the ability to find common ground and laugh together is the closest thing that we in academia have to a magic bullet.
My students can easily become bored or distracted when I discuss the chemistry behind metal oxidation. However, when I relate the science to descriptions of "bling-blinging rims" on car wheels, I am guaranteed a look of shock, an outburst of laughter and enough attention to relate the basics of the oxidative process. These kinds of interactions have led to the most professionally and personally rewarding experiences I've had as a professor.
My mother never gave up. She raised my brother and me on her own. I cannot recall a time in my life when she did not work. As a single mother, she provided the only source of income to our small family. I know there were days that she wanted to walk out of the casino and never return. Anyone who has worked in the service industry for over 30 years, as she has, knows the feeling. But an overriding sense of responsibility stopped my mom from doing so. I recall asking her, after she had spent a long night bent over the blackjack table, "How do you deal with all of those personalities every day?"
"What choice do we have?" she answered, referring to our family.
Even though I love my work, there are days when I want to run out of the lab or classroom, too. While not every day at work is the best, I stay for the "we," just like my mom. I've made a commitment to myself, my employers, my students, my own family, and anyone else who relies on my accomplishments. I don't have the choice to give up because I'm not really an "I" after all.
My mother was the first innovator I knew. Considered by her friends and family to be a creative genius, she can sew, crochet, paint, cook, sculpture, and do woodworking and metalworking. As fashion trends came and went, it was impractical for my mother to purchase name-brand designer clothes that I would outgrow within a season. She made me some harem pants that would have made MC Hammer jealous!
THE ingenuity and imagination behind this talent have become extremely valuable in my approach to engineering tissues and biomedical tools. In a field where inventiveness and innovation are keys to success, reallocating existing technologies and developing highly effective, yet low-cost, solutions to biomedical problems is what I have come to do best. It's a little embarrassing now to think back on those harem pants, but I'll never regret witnessing my mom's ingenuity growing up.
Though she is not college educated and has been a blue-collar worker all of her life, my mom provided a model for much of my professional development. What are the odds?
This piece brings to mind Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's memoir, My Beloved World.
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The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master's degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors.Meanwhile, in Madison, the K-12 status quo (presently $15k/student annually) continues.Georgia Tech will work with AT&T and Udacity, the 15-month-old Silicon Valley-based company, to offer a new online master's degree in computer science to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its current degree. The deal, announced Tuesday, is portrayed as a revolutionary attempt by a respected university, an education technology startup and a major corporate employer to drive down costs and expand higher education capacity.
Georgia Tech expects to hire only eight or so new instructors even as it takes its master's program from 300 students to as many as 10,000 within three years, said Zvi Galil, the dean of computing at Georgia Tech.
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"By the time my students reach my classes, they've been deeply handicapped by a secondary-school system that teaches testing, not writing, and a culture that discourages what we once understood to be thinking."Robert Zaretsky, a professor of French history at the University of Houston Honors College, is the author of Albert Camus: Elements of a Life (Cornell University Press, 2010). His next book, A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning, will be published this fall by Harvard University Press.Truth, we're told, is the first casualty of war. But as I hunker in my office bunker, the dull thud of history term papers landing on my desk, columns of sleep-deprived and anxiety-ridden students trudging past the door, I'm convinced that truth is also the first casualty of undergraduate paper writing. It is not only the historical truths trampled in the mangled and muddied papers written by my students. More insidiously, a deeper truth also suffers. Only tatters remain of the contract, implicit but immemorial, that teachers will grade student papers fairly and honestly. This shared conviction, that the students' level of writing can be raised only if the teacher levels with them, now seems a historical artifact.
At the start of the spring semester, as with every semester, I told my students that while this was a history course, the most important thing I could teach them in 15 weeks was not the nature of the French revolutionary tradition, but instead to be better writers. Channeling George Orwell, I told my students that slovenliness of writing leads to foolish thoughts. Referring to France's "mission civilisatrice," I declared that to write well is not just a crucial skill: It is also a moral duty. They could not hope to think clearly, I intoned, if they could not write clearly. Failing this, I continued, we will also fail as citizens.
As I climbed into higher dudgeon, I said I would hold them to the highest standards--that if their writing was as sloppy at the end of the semester as it was at the start, I would have failed as a teacher. And...well, you get the idea.
To be honest, I've mostly failed. It is not, I think, for want of effort. I urge students to hand in rough drafts. Invariably, few take me up on the offer, and those rough drafts I receive I cover in red ink. As for the first batch of papers, I'm no less generous with corrections and suggestions. And just as my comments are in red, so too is the red line of grades: A's are rare, C's are common. I've drawn the line, and I mean business!
But, to be honest, I mean mostly funny business. Many of the final papers are as garbled as the first papers. As for the good papers, they are mostly the work of students who knew how to write when they arrived. And yet, an odd alchemy begins to crackle and pop. While the tenor of my comments remains as sharp as ever, the paper grades begin to rise toward the heavens. Or, more accurately, the grading standard--the one supposedly locked in that empyrean place--begins to sink earthward.
This has little to do with the papers, and everything to do with me.
I've discovered I'm weaving a fairy tale that will let me sleep at night. Not only must I believe I can repair failing writing skills and push against the tides of an increasingly post-literate popular culture, but I must also believe in my relevance as a teacher. But the future of my relevance is yoked to my students' immediate pasts in our national high schools. By the time my students reach my classes, they've been deeply handicapped by a secondary-school system that teaches testing, not writing, and a culture that discourages what we once understood to be thinking.
Our mad rush to testing is, of course, the perverse consequence of our laudable determination to hold schools responsible for our children's education. But the tests do little more than transform our schools into educational Potemkin villages. Our administrators affirm the necessity of standards, but when they are not lowering the bar, they are busily stripping from their curricula a sustained and serious apprenticeship in writing. As the graduation rate becomes the bottom line for our high schools, the pressure to pass grows irresistible--this is perhaps the most decisive factor in the "grade" the schools in turn receive every year.
Is there a similar logic at work with university professors? That the "grade" we receive in student evaluations, based on the grades we distribute, determines the making or breaking of our classes? Short of transforming my upper-level history classes into writing-composition courses--a class that my history majors do not need for their major any more than my Ph.D. in history trained me to teach--I become the students' accomplice, not their instructor, and society's enabler, not its critic.
Yes, this means that truth is a casualty. But we must not lose sight of who is really suffering: our students. Last year the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its "report card" on the performance in 2011 of our nation's schools. They are flunking. Less than a quarter of high-school students performed at a proficient level of writing; only 3 percent rose to an advanced level. Increasingly, professors are called upon to teach remedial English, but often in courses based on the student's ability to write (and read) at a proficient or advanced level. Neither student nor professor is willing to confront that truth, so we join hands in ignoring it.
The result, of course, is not the shattering of the illusions fostered by our testing culture, but their reinforcement. As Orwell sighed, we are all complicit in making lies sound respectable.
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Every year, a few major media outlets publish high school rankings. Most recently, Newsweek (in partnership with The Daily Beast) issued its annual list of the "nation's best high schools." Their general approach to this task seems quite defensible: To find the high schools that "best prepare students for college."The rankings are calculated using six measures: graduation rate (25 percent); college acceptance rate (25); AP/IB/AICE tests taken per student (25); average SAT/ACT score (10); average AP/IB/AICE score (10); and the percentage of students enrolled in at least one AP/IB/AICE course (5).
Needless to say, even the most rigorous, sophisticated measures of school performance will be imperfect at best, and the methods behind these lists have been subject to endless scrutiny. However, let's take a quick look at three potentially problematic issues with the Newsweek rankings, how the results might be interpreted, and how the system compares with that published by U.S. News and World Report.
Self-reported data. The data for Newsweek's rankings come from a survey, in which high schools report their results on the six measures above (as well as, presumably, some other basic information, such as enrollment). Self-reported data almost always entail comparability and consistency issues. The methodology document notes that the submissions were "screened to ensure that the data met several parameters of logic and consistency," and that anomalies were identified and the schools contacted for verification. So, this is probably not a big deal, but it's worth mentioning briefly.
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Most teachers t think that students today have a problem paying attention. They seem impatient, easily bored.I've argued that I think it's unlikely that they are incapable of paying attention, but rather that they are quick to deem things not worth the effort.
We might wonder if patience would not come easier to a student who had had the experience of sustaining attention in the face of boredom, and then later finding that patience was rewarded. Arguably, digital immigrants were more likely to have learned this lesson. There were fewer sources of distraction and entertainment, and so we were a bit more likely to hang in there with something a little dull.
I remember on several occasions when I was perhaps ten, being sick at home, watching movies on television that seemed too serious for me--but I watched them because there were only three other TV channels. And I often discovered that these movies (which I would have rejected in favor of game shows) were actually quite interesting.
Students today have so many options that being mildly bored can be successfully avoided most of the time.
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Recently, Step Up for Public Schools (SUPS) released a pamphlet titled "The Truth about Vouchers and Privately Run Charters." Unfortunately, a better title for their flier would have been "Half-Truths." SUPS raises several tired talking points about school choice in Wisconsin that have been repeatedly debated, disproven, and regurgitated over more than two decades of voucher discussion.Today, we'll break down their "Fast Facts" on how the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the Parental Private School Choice Program (Racine) have affected education in the Badger State. While there are also some interesting statements about non-instrumentality charter schools (the same schools that regularly outscore both regular public schools and instrumentality charter schools in Milwaukee, we'll save that for another day. Let's look at what the SUPS has to say about Wisconsin's voucher programs.
1. Students in the taxpayer-funded private school voucher program do not perform better than their peers in neighborhood public schools.
A: In more than 20 years of operation, there has only been one apples to apples comparison of student growth between similarly matched students from MPS and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). That study - the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) - showed very few statistically significant differences between the two groups of pupils. What they did find was that voucher students were 4-7 percent more likely to graduate, attend a four-year college, and stay in that college than their peers. While factors like parental involvement may have played a role, the study strongly suggests that these schools were a significant force behind the improved attainment of the students that chose vouchers.
One thing is clear - there's no evidence that these voucher schools are hurting students, despite having only 50 percent or less of the funding that their traditional public school peers have had in Milwaukee. As the state's data collection and standards improve and we learn more about student growth and the impact that individual teachers have, we'll develop a better understanding of where MPS and MPCP schools stand in terms to serving students on a year-to-year basis.
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Four years ago, long before he'd join the Heritage Foundation, before Marco Rubio was even in the Senate, Jason Richwine armed a time bomb. A three-member panel at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government accepted Richwine's thesis, titled "IQ and Immigration Policy." In it, Richwine provided statistical evidence that Hispanic immigrants, even after several generations, had lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites. Immigration reformers were fools if they didn't grapple with that."Visceral opposition to IQ selection can sometimes generate sensationalistic claims--for example, that this is an attempt to revive social Darwinism, eugenics, racism, etc," wrote Richwine. "Nothing of that sort is true. ... an IQ selection system could utilize individual intelligence test scores without any resort to generalizations."
This week, Heritage released a damning estimate of the immigration bill, co-authored by Richwine. The new study was all about cost, totally eliding the IQ issues that Richwine had mastered, but it didn't matter after Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews found the dissertation. Heritage hurried to denounce it--"its findings in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation"--and Richwine has ducked any more questions from the press.
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The word was out last year that Republican Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald intended to retire and make the big money working as a lobbyist. Two days after his term was up, he signed up as a lobbyist for School Choice Wisconsin.Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.Fitzgerald's decision underlined the ironic facts of life in Wisconsin. Choice Schools may be badly underfunded, getting just $6,442 per pupil in public funding (about half of what public schools get), and may often pay lousy salaries to teachers. But those who lobby for school choice are doing just fine, thank you. Indeed, the pay is so good that three former Republican Assembly Speakers now do lobbying and advocacy for school choice.
The first to jump aboard the gravy train was former Speaker (and key figure in the legislative caucus scandal) Scott Jensen, who works for two Washington D.C.-based groups that work to increase School Choice funding: the American Federation for Children and the Alliance for School Choice, two sister organizations located at the same address, 1660 L Street NW, Suite 1000. Both groups have a key consultant, Chartwell Strategic Advisors, the one-man consulting company run by Jensen from his Brookfield home. In 2011, the most recent for which these groups filed federal income tax forms, Jensen earned $202,972, including $102,7346 from the American Federation for Children and $100, 236 from the Alliance for School Choice.
These groups have often worked to influence issues and elections in Wisconsin. A report by the American Federation for Children bragged that "With expenditures of $2,392,000, [AFC] engaged in hard-fought, successful battles to ensure educational choice majorities in both chambers of the Legislature" in Wisconsin, as the the Badger Herald reported.
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One of the few things educators and administrators agree on: charter schools need multiple authorizers
Here's a rarity within New Jersey's education reform community: consensus. The NJ Education Association, Gov. Chris Christie, Commissioner Chris Cerf, Education Law Center, and NJ Charter Association concur that the state's charter school law is broken. In response, several members of the state Legislature are working on overhauls, and last week a draft of the bill Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex) is putting together was leaked to NJ Spotlight.Critics of our 14-year-old charter school law are buttressed by various national research organizations that evaluate state charter school legislation and find ours lacking. The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), for example, ranks New Jersey 31st out of 42 states with charter school laws.
We lose points on funding inequities between traditional (district) and independent (charter) public schools and a certain lack of transparency. Most critically, New Jersey relies on a single entity to authorize new charters (the education commissioner), despite mounds of data that proves that effective laws invest "multiple authorizers" with approval authority.
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A discussion on school reform in New York took a surprising turn this week when Paul Vallas, a pioneer of the current era of school reform, said, "We're losing the communications game because we don't have a good message to communicate."That's something for Vallas, who is now superintendent of the public schools in Bridgeport, Conn., (earning $234,000 a year, according to this article). As a reputed expert in turning around failing school systems, he led the school districts in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans and was a champion of many of the reforms that critics believe are leading to the privatization of public education and doing nothing to actually improve schools.
Vallas has been at the forefront of modern school reform. For example, back in 2002 when he was in charge of Philadelphia's schools, he oversaw what at that time was the largest exercise in allowing private managers -- including for-profit companies -- to run public schools. In New Orleans, where he was hired after Hurricane Katrina to supervise the reconstruction of the ravaged school system, he oversaw the creation of a collection of charter schools. Many of them were staffed with Teach For America recruits, who are given five weeks of summer training before being sent into classrooms with high-needs students.
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Melissa Sargent, D-Madison, represents District 48 in the Assembly:
By now, most people have heard about Scott Walker's proposal to expand the voucher school system to new districts, including Madison, yet many people aren't clear as to what this means for our students as well as the administrators, teachers and parents. I've been asked by numerous constituents to give an explanation of how this would apply, in real terms, to our public education system.State Senator Fred Risser, Representative Jon Erpenbach, Representative Mark Miller:
The best way to break this down is in three parts: the fiscal effect on taxpayers and our public schools; a comparison between public school and private school accountability; and a comparison of the performance of students in voucher schools and public schools.FINANCES: Madison currently has 4,202 private school students. Based on a conservative assessment of income levels, 1,387 of these students would be eligible for the voucher program. So what does this mean for Madison taxpayers?
If 1,387 private school students become voucher students, Madison taxpayers would subsidize private schools for about $3.8 million and see a reduction in state aid of that amount. The Madison district's taxpayers would have to pay more to replace the $3.8 million, or the district would have to make $3.8 million worth of cuts in services for public school students. One thing that has been made abundantly clear to me by my constituents and other community members is Wisconsinites don't like the idea of their taxpayer dollars going toward private education.
As legislators, we hear about many important issues that will impact our state's future. No issue we face has an impact as far reaching as the education of Wisconsin children. Providing future generations with the skills to be productive and successful must be a top priority.Much more on vouchers, here. Madison's long-term, disastrous reading scores.Unfortunately, in the proposed state budget, corporate special interests won out over Wisconsin children.
In the proposed budget, the governor has chosen to increase voucher program funding by $94 million. The proposal also expands the voucher program to school districts with two or more "failing schools."Based on this language, the Madison School District would as failing, and therefore open to voucher expansion. As a result, Madison tax dollars would be invested in private, unaccountable schools, rather than its public schools.
We believe that just isn't right. Every time a student leaves the public school and enters the voucher program, the state withholds $2,200 in funding from the public school. While it may mean one fewer student to educate, the school's fixed costs remain the same, and the district is forced to raise property taxes to cover the difference.
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Harrison J. Kell, David Lubinski, and Camilla P. Benbow:
Youth identified before age 13 (N = 320) as having profound mathematical or verbal reasoning abilities (top 1 in 10,000) were tracked for nearly three decades. Their awards and creative accomplishments by age 38, in combination with specific details about their occupational responsibilities, illuminate the magnitude of their contribution and professional stature. Many have been entrusted with obligations and resources for making critical decisions about individual and organizational well-being. Their leadership positions in business, health care, law, the professoriate, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) suggest that many are outstanding creators of modern culture, constituting a precious human-capital resource. Identifying truly profound human potential, and forecasting differential development within such populations, requires assessing multiple cognitive abilities and using atypical measurement procedures. This study illustrates how ultimate criteria may be aggregated and longitudinally sequenced to validate such measures.
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Hickory dickory dock"Hickory, dickory dock, The mouse ran up the clock". Listen to a traditional children's song.
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Energizing Education strives to have all students reading at grade level by third grade in an effort to boost their success for the future. It's produced success at Jackson's Frost Elementary School this year, and now Michigan Center schools want to use it too, said Kriss Giannetti, the program's grant coordinator.Related: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed...and not before"The intent always was to take the program countywide," Giannetti said. "We know to make a real difference, we have to reach out to all children."
An Energizing Education presentation is part of the Monday, May 13 Michigan Center School Board meeting. The district plans to offer it to students at Arnold Elementary School in the 2013-14 school year, said Superintendent Scott Koziol.
"We believe this program will offer confidence and support for our students who might be struggling a little bit," Koziol said. "We believe once they are in this program, which offers positive adult support, their learning will take off."
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Corporate governance is a much-discussed topic, and the operation of corporations has proven a fertile field for investigative journalism. But even though many colleges and universities are multibillion-dollar-a-year operations, the subject of university governance has been largely neglected. This is unfortunate because university governance raises fascinating questions of great public interest involving the complex intersection of law, morals, and education. Nasar v. Columbia is a case in point.On May 6, Columbia University submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it in mid-March in the Supreme Court of New York by Sylvia Nasar, the John S. and James L. Knight professor of business journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Nasar's complaint alleges, among other things, that "from 2001-2011, Columbia illegally misappropriated and captured for its own purposes income generated by a $1.5 million charitable endowment" established by the Knight Foundation. Columbia contends that Nasar's suit is without merit and that even if all her allegations were true, the university could not be found to be in violation of the law. But if all of Nasar's allegations are true and the courts of New York are unable to grant relief, it would mean that New York state law permits university administrations to disregard their written agreements with impunity and behave deceitfully when called to account.
A distinguished New York Times journalist and author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography A Beautiful Mind (made into a major Hollywood film), Nasar was appointed in 2001 to the Knight chair as a tenured Columbia professor. She has built an esteemed program in business journalism at Columbia and in 2011 published the bestselling Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius.
Nasar learned of irregularities in Columbia's management of Knight chair funds in 2010. She protested to Columbia and alerted the Knight Foundation, which promptly initiated an audit performed in the autumn of 2010 by Big Four accounting firm KPMG. According to the KPMG audit, "it appears that the Graduate School of Journalism did not abide by the original terms and spirit of the grant agreement." The audit concluded that at least $923,000 of expenditures were "unallowable" and claims against Columbia could total as much as $4.5 million.
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Frederick Hess & Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj:
As much as any city in America, Milwaukee has played a pioneering role in educational choice. More than two decades after establishing the nation's first urban school voucher program, Milwaukee offers families a raft of options, including district schools, charter schools and publicly funded private school scholarships.Yet, this dramatic expansion of options has not yet translated into dramatic improvement. Student performance and graduation rates have not moved as reformers once hoped, and the achievement of low-income students continues to languish. On the 2011 urban National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 10% of Milwaukee eighth-graders were judged proficient in math and just 12% in reading. Especially disturbing is that the vast majority of public and private high school graduates who go on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee do not complete college.
But this should be cause for renewed energy, not despair. After all, the Milwaukee Public Schools district has displayed a willingness to find ways to turn around struggling schools and to tackle long-standing fiscal challenges. Milwaukee's charter school authorizers have shown themselves willing to hold low-performing schools accountable. Schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program increasingly have embraced accountability for performance. Across all three sectors, there are instances of high-performing schools where even Milwaukee's most challenged pupils can excel.
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Stoughton High School is only the second high school in the country to have a state-of-the-art digital fabrication laboratory that can supposedly create anything. The $206,000 facility will debut with formal classes this fall, and features a computer-controlled large and small milling machines, laser and vinyl cutters, and a 3D printer.Isthmus contributor Lauren Pongan reports on the project in the May 9 issue and discussed her story on the May 8 installment of WORT's In Our Backyard.
Listen to the interview.
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A fundamental tension between state and local control lies at the heart of Wisconsin's school finance system. For much of Wisconsin's history, schools boards were responsible for deciding how much to spend on education, and how much revenue to raise via the property tax levy to fund spending. However, the balance tipped in favor of the state in the 1993-'94 school year, when the state imposed revenue limits.Related:Revenue limits cap how much additional money school districts can raise for each pupil through a combination of state aid and property tax. Since their inception, revenue limits have increased annually at roughly the rate of inflation. The imposition of revenue limits defined one basic attribute of education finance in Wisconsin: Maintaining the status quo. Consider:
Increases in revenue limits use the previous year as a base, ensuring that the largest predictor of spending is how much a district spent in the previous year.
Revenue limits increase at roughly the rate of inflation, keeping overall school finance formula revenues, in inflation-adjusted dollars, relatively constant.
The distribution of total state and local spending by school district remained steady between 1999 and 2012.
In 1999 the 100 districts receiving the most state and local revenue per student received 117% of the state average of state and local revenue. In 2012 that number was 119%. Similarly, the 100 districts receiving the least state and local revenue received 88% of the state average of state and local revenue. In 2012 that number was 87%.
A state aid program called special adjustment aids ensures districts cannot receive less than 85% of the state aid they received in the previous year.
The enrollment number used to generate payments to schools is a three-year average. It is designed to cushion districts against sudden increases and decreases in enrollment.
Madison Schools' Budget Updates: Board Questions, Spending Through 3.31.2013, Staffing Plan Changes
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Wisconsin K-12 Tax Spending Dominates Local Transfers
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Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Bettner email (PDF):
What's the first ingredient necessary to address workplace concerns? The opportunity to talk with colleagues to identify areas of common concerns and brainstorm about possible solutions. That' s the conclusion reached by the clerical and technical employees who attended the March 20 SEE-MTI General Membership meeting. In response, SEE-MTI President Kris Schiltz and MTI staff rep Doug Keillor agreed to schedule monthly membership organizing workshops to provide: 1) an opportunity to get together to talk and 2) to further develop an organizing approach to problem-solving. The first workshop was held on April 24, and the next workshop will be held soon with notice in MTI Solidarity!.The organizing workshops are structured to provide a brief update on what is happening across the district relative to SEE unit concerns (e.g. surplus declarations, budget proposals, etc.) and then those present breakout (e.g. elementary, middle, high, administration) to discuss their concerns, facilitated by their unit rep. Following the small group discussions the participants reconvene to report on topics of discussion and organizing relative to the identified issues.
While MTI has used similar organizing models on a smaller scale for years, the monthly SEE-MTI member organizing workshops are an attempt to further institutionalize this approach, engaging more Union members in the process and leading to better potential outcomes.
All SEE-MTI members are welcome and encouraged to attend. Join your fellow Union members in working for positive change in the District!
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Why they are wrongThe average person in a developed country does not think about education the way a well educated VC or entrepreneur thinks about education.
VCs and entrepreneurs tend to be well educated. Well educated people think about education as an investment. You put as many of your resources in to an investment as you can. It may take 20 years to pay off, but if the return-on-investment is high (which it is for education) then you invest. This group of people -- if you're reading this, you fall into this group -- generally understand that education is an investment, and as a result are price insensitive and will optimize for quality (a higher return on investment). For this group of people, quality is the primary driver of a purchasing decision, not cost.
The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. It's something they have to do because it's mandated and the lack of the highest quality education hasn't negatively impacted their lives in a meaningful way. Step back for a second before you judge. Imagine it's 2005, and you live in a small town in the middle of Ohio (where I grew up) and you don't get a college degree. If you get a factory job and make $25k/year and your wife gets a factory job and makes $25k/year, you're making $50k/year. But houses only cost $90,000 and food is affordable and you can get a loan for a car for $300/month. So you're not doing terribly and the default state for your children is the same life. You can afford a house, food, have a car, and have weekends off.
So, what has the lack of an education done to the typical American's life? It's removed job security, screwed your retirement, and maybe set you up to go bankrupt if you get sick. There are no immediate consequences, there are no immediate consequences for your children, but there is an immediate cost. So the average person thinks of education as an expenditure. If you get sick when you're 70, you're screwed. Or if you don't save in your 401k, you may have to work till you're dead. Or maybe your children won't be as competitive in a global workforce 30 years. Don't believe me? Only 15% of kids taking the SAT pay for an out of school test prep course like Kaplan. Over 50% of Americans don't have beyond a high school degree.
This fundamental investment vs. expenditure mindset changes everything. You think of education as fundamentally a quality problem. The average person thinks of education as fundamentally a cost problem.
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Members of the Class of 2013, I salute you.As everyone keeps telling you, you are graduating at a difficult and even frightening time. I wish it were otherwise -- that my generation was bequeathing you a finer world. We aren't. The world into which you are entering is rich with challenges. Many are scary.
This does not make your generation unique. Through the nation's history, America's colleges and universities have sent forth graduates in times of war, of fear, of economic risk. Eighty years ago, the world was mired in a four-year-old economic depression. Seventy years ago, many schools skipped commencement exercises entirely because their graduates were all heading off to World War II. Fifty years ago, Bull Connor was setting fire hoses and police dogs on civil-rights marchers in Birmingham, Alabama. And 45 years ago, today's exercises would have been sandwiched between the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
In short, there was never a golden age -- a period when new graduates could step into the world and simply start building careers and families without worry.
So what is the great challenge of your generation? Protecting the environment? Increasing equality? Abating poverty? Achieving world peace?
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It's hard to master math when you're too tired to keep your eyes open in class. While nutrition and family income have previously been associated with academic performance, now quantity of sleep has also been shown to play a role, according to a Boston College analysis reported on by the BBC. The study, which draws on data culled from tests taken by more than 900,000 students in 50 countries, found that the U.S. has the greatest proportion of students whose academic performance, particularly in math and science, suffers due to poor sleep, with 73% of 9 and 10-year-olds and 80% of 13 and 14-year-olds affected. Those rates are significantly higher than the international average of 47% and 57%, respectively.The top 5 countries where poor sleep hampers learning are:
United States
New Zealand
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
Australia
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The flap in Madison over the appropriate level of reserves for the UW System tees up an opportunity for a broader look at the financing of what may be the state's finest asset.First, an observation: if the auditors had found deficits or fund shortages, the flap would be a lot more serious and even more politically combustible. So, at least we have a problem of too much money on the books, not too little.
Further, there is even more money floating around the system than the Legislative Fiscal Bureau discovered in an audit of its general accounts. It's in the off-balance sheet accounts of organizations like the UW Foundation, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and other foundations like the UW Madison Hospital Foundation and University Research Park.
Take WARF as an example. It has assets of $2.5 billion, not counting the present value of its flow of royalty income. Those assets are included on the balance sheet of other major universities, but not in Wisconsin.
WARF brings in royalty income from patents
of more than $50 million per year, and, at a modest 5% return on its portfolio, another $125 million per year. That's $175 million per year. (It probably does better than 5% in most years.)Its mission is to support UW - Madison, so it gave $48.3 million in research awards on the campus in 2010-11. The question arises as to where the rest of the dollars go. Some supports its staff, and some gets plowed back to build its principal. That's how it got to $2.5 billion.
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SLOWLY but surely the cost of America's public-sector pension promises is becoming clear. Last year the best estimate of the shortfall was more than $4 trillion. To deal with its deficit, a giant Californian pension fund, CalPERS, recently announced plans that will increase contributions by employers (in effect, taxpayers) by up to a half, starting in 2015-16.
AdvertisementFinal-salary pension costs have risen for decades because workers are living longer and the retirement age has barely budged. The bill was disguised in the 1980s and 1990s by good asset returns. But dismal equity markets have since forced many private providers to close final-salary schemes to new members and switch to less lavish defined-contribution plans.
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Just a generation ago, California's schools were the pride of American education (it's one of the reasons my parents moved with me to California in the early 1960s). Today, tracking with the economic woes of the rest of the Golden State, California's schools rank 30th in the country . . .and falling.Now it could get much worse - and quickly -as one of the few bright spots of California public education is at risk of disappearing. The implications to the state's high education enclaves, such as Silicon Valley, are frightening. But for California's low-income, high-unemployment regions in places like the Central Valley and the state's urban centers, the impact could be devastating. Indeed, what lingering hope there is that California can recover its old luster in less than a generation may evaporate as well.
The program is called the International Baccalaureate. If you haven't heard of it it's probably because the program has done a far better job at helping elementary and high school students than it has at promoting itself or its confusing name. In retrospect, it probably should have spent more time on the latter, because now as California cuts its educational budget the program - at least its California operation of more than 200 schools across the state - is facing a dangerous shortfall of its $2.5 million annual budget.
International Baccalaureate is actually a huge operation. Founded in 1968, IB is (as its name suggests) a global program, well-established in nearly 150 countries, serving more than a million students. Everywhere the goal is the same: to take young students from every economic level and bring them to the highest levels of analytical thinking in order to prepare them for college and a successful career This has been true for IB students in Botswana and Bangladesh, in Canada and - at least until now, in California.
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THE day a girl fainted from hunger was the final straw for Emmanuel George, the principal of Democracy Prep charter school in Harlem. She had refused to eat the "nasty food" served at his school. Her distaste was shared widely: many went hungry, and those who did eat mostly chose junk food. So in January Mr George switched to a supplier of healthy lunches called Revolution Foods. Since then the proportion of children choosing to accept free meals has gone from less than half to over 85%. Visits to the school nurse plummeted, and complaints of stomach-ache and headaches have almost vanished. Teachers say everyone works better in the afternoons.Everyone from Michelle Obama to Jamie Oliver is trying to improve children's diets, but doing so has proved difficult. It is, then, particularly interesting that a solution is emerging from the private sector. Revolution Foods, which is based in Oakland, California, serves 1m meals a week in nearly 1,000 schools across America. Most of its customers are public schools.
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I felt as if I were an unwilling accomplice to torture. Echoes of the victim's screams rang off the varnished walls. The door, tight shut though it was, could not block the cries of panic. A baby, alone and imprisoned in a cot.The baby's mother was visibly disturbed, too, pale and tearful. She was a victim herself, preyed on by exponents of controlled crying, or Ferberisation - that pitiless system, cruel to them both.
Controlled. Crying. The words speak of the odious aim: a bullying system controlling the feelings of a baby. The mother had been told the situation was the reverse, that the baby was trying to force her will on the mother, but all I could see was a one-year-old demented by abandonment. One American mother wrote poignantly on the internet: "Is Ferberisation worth my heartache or am I truly torturing my child? It seems like cruel and unusual punishment."
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After the Louisiana Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the financing of a far-reaching private school voucher program, Howard Fuller sent a message to his 2,855 Twitter followers:"THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!!"
The Louisiana decision, important as it may be, is not my subject today. Fuller is. I suggest that, in a couple ways, "The struggle continues" is a great motto for Fuller's career and an important way to get a handle on understanding the person who I suggest has been the most significant figure on Milwaukee's education scene over the last generation.
There are two important ways to apply the word "struggle" to Fuller, and, more broadly, to Milwaukee and national efforts to improve education.
One is to look at Fuller's continuing deep involvement in education and his refusal to give up. Like him or not - and there are long lists for each - you have to be humbled by the fact that he's 72, still intense about education, still traveling the country frenetically as an advocate, and still deeply involved in the school he has made his special project, CEO Leadership Academy, an independent charter school at 3222 W. Brown St. Fuller knows intimately every reason to be pessimistic. But, for him, the struggle continues.
In the other definition, "struggle" means how hard it has been to make general progress, especiall
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I agree with Marcus and Rojas that attention to problems of replication is a good thing. It's bad that people are running incompetent analysis or faking data all over the place, but it's good that they're getting caught. And, to the extent that scientific practices are improving to help detect error and fraud, and to reduce the incentives for publishing erroneous and fradulent results in the first place, that's good too.But I worry about a sense of complacency. I think we should be careful not to overstate the importance of our first steps. We may be going in the right direction but we have a lot further to go. Here are some examples:
1. Marcus writes of the new culture of publishing replications. I assume he'd support the ready publications of corrections, too. But we're not there yet, as this story indicates:
Recently I sent a letter to the editor to a major social science journal pointing out a problem in an article they'd published, they refused to publish my letter, not because of any argument that I was incorrect, but because they judged my letter to not be in the top 10% of submissions to the journal. I'm sure my letter was indeed not in the top 10% of submissions, but the journal's attitude presents a serious problem, if the bar to publication of a correction is so high. That's a disincentive for the journal to publish corrections, a disincentive for outsiders such as myself to write corrections, and a disincentive for researchers to be careful in the first place. Just to be clear: I'm not complaining how I was treated here; rather, I'm griping about the system in which a known error can stand uncorrected in a top journal, just because nobody managed to send in a correction that's in the top 10% of journal submissions.
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2013-2014 Madison School Board President Ed Hughes:
The proponents of the proposed expansion of Wisconsin's private-school voucher program have run out of substantive arguments. Governor Walker's "This is about children" illustrates how vacuous their efforts at persuasion have become.Vouchers are hardly an existential threat to the Madison School District. Rather, the District's long term disastrous reading scores are the essential issue, one that merits endless attention and improvement.When Governor Walker's budget was first announced, his initial talking points in support of his voucher expansion plan featured the claim that schools in the nine targeted school districts were failing and vouchers were necessary to provide a lifeline to students who needed help to pursue other schooling options. Neither the governor nor his supporters are pushing that argument any more. It seems that they got the point that it is not a smart move politically for the governor to go around trashing the public schools in some of the larger urban areas of the state.
While proponents have claimed that students in voucher schools do better academically, the wind has gone out of the sails of that argument as well. DPI has reported that students in voucher schools in Milwaukee and Racine performed worse on the WKCE than students in the public schools in those communities. Voucher school advocates can point to data that supposedly support their view, opponents can counter with contrary figures, and at best the evidence on improved student performance is a wash. There is no reason to think that students in the nine districts targeted for voucher expansion would do any better in the private schools in their area than they would in their neighborhood public schools. No one has offered an argument to the contrary.
Voucher proponents sometimes try to construct a cost-savings argument around the fact that the per-pupil amounts that voucher students would receive are less than the average per-pupil expenditures by their school districts. But this argument goes nowhere because no one is proposing that the public schools shut down as voucher schools expand. Consequently, there's really not much of a response to the observation credited to former Governor Tommy Thompson that "We can't afford two systems of education."
Additionally, voucher schools have not discovered a magic bullet that allows them to educate students across the spectrum of needs more economically. Here's a telling excerpt from an op ed by the Choice Schools Association advocating for much higher voucher payments and posted on line by the right-wing MacIver Institute:
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Community college students are needlessly assigned to remedial math classes to learn lessons they won't use during their studies, according to new research from a Washington, D.C. group.Related: Math forum audio/video.And the study also found that many high school graduates are not learning subjects they will need to use in their careers.
The study was produced by the Washington, D.C.-based National Center on Education and the Economy and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"What these studies show is that our schools do not teach what their students need," the authors wrote, "while demanding of them what they don't need; furthermore, the skills that we do teach and that the students do need, the schools teach ineffectively. Perhaps that is where we should begin."
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When Amy Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother came out in 2011, it sparked controversy among many people but especially psychologists and experts in child development. The book, they felt, had lodged in the culture certain stereotypes about an Asian parenting style that was not well-studied or well-understood and certainly not ready to be held up as some kind of model.Chua's book was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek memoir of her experiences raising her two daughters with her (non-Asian) husband, which involved hours of forced music practice every day, severe restrictions on extracurriculars, outright bans on social activities like sleepovers, and punishment and shaming on the rare occasions her children failed to attain their mother's high expectations. Chua eased off as her kids grew older, and she admitted that she might have been wrong in some instances. (Mainstream media coverage portrayals were somewhat less nuanced). Nonetheless, the story of a Yale-professor mother who had pushed her child until she landed at Carnegie Hall seemed to confirm that Asian-American parents are tough, demanding--and they consistently produce whizzes.
When Chua's book first hit the transom, Su Yeong Kim thought, "Oh my God! I actually have data for this!" An associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, Kim had been following more than 300 Asian-American families for a decade when the book came out. In March, she published her results; they will no doubt surprise Chua and her admirers. Children of parents whom Kim classified as "tiger" had lower academic achievement and attainment--and greater psychological maladjustment--and family alienation, than the kids of parents characterized as "supportive" or "easygoing."
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CRICKET, boarding-house names reminiscent of Harry Potter's Hogwarts and ancient and peculiar customs are among the hallmarks of Britain's leading private schools. Now they can be found in Singapore and Kazakhstan. As the domestic market softens, some of the most famous names in British education are building far-flung outposts.Related wisconsin2.orgHarrow led the way in 1998 by setting up a school in Bangkok, where its straw boaters greatly amused the locals. It now has schools in Beijing and Hong Kong too. Sherborne, a private school in Dorset, has opened a branch in Qatar. From next year Wellington, a boarding school in Berkshire, will compete for Shanghai's pupils with Dulwich, a south London day school, which already has a franchise there.
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Wisconsin is marching inexorably down a path toward two separate publicly-funded education systems for our k-12 students. One is our traditional public schools; the other, private voucher schools largely funded by taxpayer dollars.Much more on Grumps, here.The school voucher program began in 1990 under Governor Tommy Thompson with a modest investment in Milwaukee. 337 students, all low-income, used vouchers valued at $734,000 ($2,178/voucher) to attend seven private, nonsectarian schools. Since then, the voucher program has grown exponentially. Funding last year equaled $158M and provided vouchers worth $6,442 to 24,000 students who attended private/parochial schools in Racine and Milwaukee.
In the next two years, the program expansion, if approved by the State legislature, will spread to at least nine more school districts, including Madison. 29,000 students will participate. Funding will increase to $209M - an almost 300-fold increase since inception. Public school funding, over that time span, has increased only three-fold.
Vouchers will be available to a family of four with an income of almost $78,000/year. In addition, these students may always have been private school students. Once students secure a voucher, they have that voucher in subsequent years no matter how high the family income. This policy generates a separate system, subsidizing private education at taxpayer expense with no accountability to, nor approval from, that taxpayer.
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Technology is for geeky men and fashion is for beautiful women. This is of course not the case, but unfortunately it is the perception of a large percentage of schoolgirls around the age of 13. It is just this that caused Belinda Parma to set up Little Miss Geek and start her mission of teaching girls, classroom by classroom, that a career in technology is not just accessible but appealing. She uses a team of great speakers who use their own careers to prove to the girls how the fashion and technology worlds have now collided.On 26 April Little Miss Geek re-visited St Saviour's & St Olave's School in London for the second time to prove to a select group of Year 9 girls that careers in technology can be fascinating and the scope for creativity within them. Belinda cherry picked the following three inspirational speakers who are successful examples of women who work in or with technology.
Clara Mercer who heads up Marketing at the British Fashion Council, cited examples of big fashion brands who are using technology in interesting new ways, such as Diane Von Furstenberg's catwalk show that featured models wearing Google glasses, Burberry's virtual rain at their fashion show in Taiwan and live streaming through their store windows. She concluded that technology has become the most exciting part of her job and that it will never stop evolving and changing the nature of the fashion industry.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to help college students drowning in debt by putting them in the same boat as the big banks.Stupidly subsidizing TBTF banks is bad policy. The student loan bubble will surely not be helped by further debt expansion."We do this for the banks because we believe that this is going to help the economy, right, help us on shaky recovery. Same thing is true for our students," Warren said in an exclusive interview on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday. "The big banks have got an army of lobbyists out there, they've got an army of lawyers to fight for them. Our students have just their voices and they call on us to do the right thing and that's what we need to do."
The new Democratic senator from Massachusetts introduced her first bill Wednesday, the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act, offering students temporary relief from the burden of high interest rates on loans.
"If the Federal Reserve can float trillions of dollars to large financial institutions at low interest rates to grow the economy, surely they can float the Department of Education the money to fund our students, keep us competitive, and grow our middle class," Warren said during a speech on the Senate floor, her second one so far.
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In the United States, private school is generally a privilege of the rich. But in poorer nations, particularly in Africa and South Asia, families of all social classes send their children to private school. The private schools within reach of the poor, however -- usually a single classroom a woman runs in her house -- are not a big improvement. But two school systems -- Bridge International Academies in Kenya and BRAC in Bangladesh -- are offering something different: they are making decent education accessible to the world's poorest on a giant scale.Both BRAC and Bridge are large and getting larger. BRAC has more than 1.25 million children in its schools in Bangladesh and six other countries, and it is expanding. Bridge is smaller, with 50,000 children, but it is only four years old, and it is opening a new school in Kenya every 2.5 days and is moving into other countries. BRAC puts its schools mainly in remote rural villages, Bridge in urban slums. They both serve the poor -- and serve them relatively well. But that is about all they have in common.
The two school systems have diametrically opposing philosophies, methods and business models. Anyone familiar with the debate in the United States about American education would recognize these polar opposites. Bridge is a for-profit company which draws income solely from school fees; to be profitable it must keep class size at 50 or larger. One of its investors is Pearson, the media and education company whose tests have proven so controversial in New York. Bridge relies on standardization and technology. At 11 a.m. for example, every single second-grade teacher in every Bridge academy will be teaching the exact same lesson, supplied with a word-for-word script from Bridge headquarters delivered by Nook e-reader.
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More Americans are going to college than ever before. Many graduates, however, are buried in debt with few job prospects. In "Is College Worth It? A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education" conservative pundit William Bennett weighs the relevance of a four-year degree against rising tuition costs. The Reagan administration official recently spoke with U.S. News about what prospective students should be thinking about, what they get for their buck and why a bachelor's degree is no longer synonymous with success. Excerpts:Should Americans keep sending their kids to college?
Sometimes. But they shouldn't automatically or reflexively send their kids to college. They should pause and stop and think. It's not like deciding to have breakfast or go to bed. It's more like, say, to get married. It's a big decision. [There are] a lot of consequences, a lot of costs, a lot of ups and downs. Investigate it with your eyes open.
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The rumor that a national school reform effort moving through Madison would wipe out treasured class electives at West High School has been buzzing in that community for years.Fascinating. 2006: The movement toward one size fits all via English 10. 2013: "West High School's elective courses are so popular among students".Parents and students got a chance to bring their concerns about the implementation of Common Core standards to the top Thursday evening, during a conversation with new Madison School District Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, held in the school library after her day-long visit to West High.
It was the second in a series of four public meetings being held at the city's public high schools this spring to allow Cheatham, who started work in the district on April 1, to hear community concerns.
Cheatham told the crowd of 150 or more that she had heard a lot that day from students and staff about the "amazing potpourri" of elective courses at West.
"They think they are a major asset of the school. I think so too," she said.
West High School's elective courses are so popular among students that speculation the Common Core standards would be their death knell fueled a sit-in of some 500 students in fall 2010, the year the state adopted the standards. Today, many of Madison's public schools are still figuring out a way to incorporate the standards, about which confusion reigns among students, parents and teachers.
Lynn Glueck, a school improvement coordinator at Memorial High School, said this week that Common Core focuses on developing key skills needed for college and career readiness. The standards related to English language arts, for example, are about "close reading, critical thinking and argumentative writing where students pull evidence out of the text," Glueck said.
In the instances where Common Core has been used at Memorial, which some say is leading the district in implementing the standards, "students are really engaging in it," she said.
Additional and informative background here.
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If you doubt that we live in a winner-take-all economy and that education is the trump card, consider the vast amounts the affluent spend to teach their offspring. We see it anecdotally in the soaring fees for private schools, private lessons and private tutors, many of them targeted at the pre-school set. And recent academic research has confirmed what many of us overhear at the school gates or read on mommy blogs.This power spending on the children of the economic elite is usually -- and rightly -- cited as further evidence of the dangers of rising income inequality. Whatever your views about income inequality among the parents, inherited privilege is inimical to the promise of equal opportunity, which is central to the social compact in Western democracies.
But it may be that the less lavishly educated children lower down the income distribution aren't the only losers. Being groomed for the winner-take-all economy starting in nursery school turns out to exact a toll on the children at the top, too.
First, the data on parental spending on education. There is a lively debate among politicians and professors about whether the economy is becoming more polarized and about the importance of education. Dismissing the value of a college education is one of the more popular clever-sounding contrarian ideas of the moment. And there are still a few die-hards who play down the social significance of rising income inequality.
When you translate these abstract arguments into the practical choices we make in our personal lives, however, the intellectual disagreements melt away. We are all spending a lot more money to educate our kids, and the richest have stepped up their spending more than everyone else.
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Steve Hartley, Madison Schools Chief of Staff:
Attached is a spreadsheet listing questions received from BOE members to date and some of our responses. Over the course of the next two months, we will continue to collect your questions and respond at both Operational Support and Regular Board meetings.Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham (PDF):
The draft budget included several new positions for the Board's consideration. After refining and prioritizing with staff and vetting with principals, we are only asking for approval of two essential positions at this point. The position changes represent a savings of just over $2 million from the draft budget.Perhaps a positive sign "we must keep our efforts and resources focused on providing supports to schools to improve instruction". Reading is surely job one, as the District's long term disastrous reading scores illustrate.As we prepare for next year, we must keep our efforts and resources focused on providing supports to schools to improve instruction. We must also be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars by reducing the impact of our budget.
To get to these recommendations, we conducted a rigorous examination of positions funded in the draft budget to decide what we believe is absolutely necessary right now. Much of the work we need to do next year is about improving the systems and structures for how we serve students, not adding additional resources. It will be critical going forward that we narrow our focus to the strategies that we know work, implement them well and sustain the focus over time.
So far, we have only considered the position decisions that we need the Board to approve. Over the next two months, we will continue to work through the draft budget in order to reduce the tax impact and align with our efforts for next year. Also, we have only reviewed positions based on the draft budget. Next year, we plan to engage in a more thorough, zero-based budgeting process.
Position Additions from Draft Budget that are No Longer Recommended
There are several positions included in the draft budget that we are no longer recommending at this point. In looking at specific positions, we considered our ability to carry out necessary work through more efficient systems and in some cases, the need to pause and re-consider our approach.
With that in mind, we are no longer recommending going forward with the following position additions that were included in the draft budget. Because these were new positions in the draft budget, they do not have staff in them currently and do not require any layoffs.Mental Health Coordinator: Through redistribution of work in student services, we will be able to provide support to implementation of the Mental Health Task Force's work.
Safety Coordinator: We will continue to coordinate efforts across the organization to ensure safety.
Commentary on Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes' Teacher Salary Increase Words.
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On August 31, 2012, Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki posted four papers on the Internet.The titles were inscrutable. The volume was daunting: 512 pages in total. The claim was audacious: he said he had proved the ABC Conjecture, a famed, beguilingly simple number theory problem that had stumped mathematicians for decades.
Then Mochizuki walked away. He did not send his work to the Annals of Mathematics. Nor did he leave a message on any of the online forums frequented by mathematicians around the world. He just posted the papers, and waited.
Two days later, Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, received an email alert from Google Scholar, a service which scans the Internet looking for articles on topics he has specified. On September 2, Google Scholar sent him Mochizuki's papers: You might be interested in this.
"I was like, 'Yes, Google, I am kind of interested in that!'" Ellenberg recalls. "I posted it on Facebook and on my blog, saying, 'By the way, it seems like Mochizuki solved the ABC Conjecture.'"
The Internet exploded. Within days, even the mainstream media had picked up on the story. "World's Most Complex Mathematical Theory Cracked," announced the Telegraph. "Possible Breakthrough in ABC Conjecture," reported the New York Times, more demurely.
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Click or tap for a larger version
Via Wistax.org Read more, here.
Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.
Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.
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The number of Russians at British private schools is rising as the rarefied world of Harry Potter is increasingly seen as a fashionable passport to a better life.It is summer term at Maidwell Hall prep school. The boys and girls are back from holidays. Among them, and fresh off the plane from St Petersburg, is a new Russian pupil, Gosha Nikolayev. "I'm a bit scared and a bit excited," Gosha says. His father, Sergei, has come to the UK with his 11-year-old son to drop him off. If all goes well Gosha will spend two years here before moving to a top boarding school. Dad has ruled out Eton, so this could be Charterhouse or Stowe.
Gosha's new school near Northampton is a vision of how foreigners must imagine the land of Harry Potter. The main building is a dreamy turreted mansion overlooking its own boating and fishing lake. Maidwell Hall's website shows pupils reading on the lawn under a perfect blue sky, playing rounders, or sharing a mealtime joke. The ethos is old-fashioned: boys wear tweed jackets, corduroy trousers and ties. Good manners are encouraged; mobile phones banned.
"We are trying to create a country- house atmosphere," says headmaster Robert Lankester. "It always existed in prep schools before but has been lost in many cases." He adds: "Parents from abroad love the tradition. They want to buy into something British." Gosha is the school's second Russian; the first - "a lovely chap, loads of friends", the head says, cheerfully - is happily settled at Stowe.
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When news broke Tuesday that the Louisiana Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's voucher system, which uses public dollars to pay for low-income students to go to private schools, the fight over vouchers made its way back into the headlines. The Louisiana program, pushed hard and publicly by Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, offers any low-income child in the state, regardless of what public school they would attend, tuition assistance at private schools. It's something liberals fear will become commonplace in other states in the future if conservative lawmakers get their way on education policy.Much more on vouchers, here.Yet conservatives have been dominating legislatures since 2010 and there has been little success in creating voucher programs. Louisiana is one of only two states with such a broad program in place. After the 2010 Tea Party wave there was "a big spike in the number of states considering voucher legislation," says Josh Cunningham, a policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). But most of those states didn't actually pass any bills. Since 2010, four states have created new voucher programs. This year alone, according to NCSL, voucher bills have failed in seven states. While vouchers were once a key piece of the school choice agenda, they now play second fiddle to more popular education reform policies. But are they dead?
"Charter schools are the main thing at this point in time," says William J. Mathis, managing director at the National Education Policy Center, which studies educational policy. "Vouchers just never seemed to grab traction."
Sweden's voucher system.
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Gallup has launched a panel focused on U.S. college and university presidents to track and understand their opinions on important topics and issues facing higher education. Gallup surveys these leaders every quarter on an annual basis. This report contains the key findings from the inaugural study.THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Despite not being excited about the future of higher education in general, the majority of university presidents are excited about the future of their institution, many suggest enrollment will increase in the near future and that graduation rates will increase in the distant future.A large number of college and university presidents -- 62% -- say they are excited about the future of their institution. In contrast, only two in 10 (20%) are excited about the future of higher education.
MOOCs (MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES)
Even with the growth of online universities, presidents are not strong supporters of MOOCs when it comes to improving learning, solving financial challenges that colleges face, or reducing the cost of education for students.Three percent (3%) of presidents strongly agree when asked if they consider MOOCs to be a solution to the following: Improving the learning of all students.
Only 2% of presidents strongly agree when asked if they consider MOOCs to be a solution to the following: Solving the financial challenges that colleges now face.
Eight percent (8%) of presidents strongly agree when asked if they consider MOOCs to be a solution to the following: Reducing the cost of education for students.
COST AND PREPARATION
Few presidents (5%) believe that higher education institutions are not adequately preparing students for success in a global economy. This finding suggests that the presidents believe strongly in the importance of graduating from college and the ability to obtain a good job.Only 8% of presidents believe higher education is affordable to everyone who needs it.
When asked what percentage of students graduate from high school prepared to enter college, nearly five in 10 (47%) say 25 to less than 50 percent are prepared to enter college.
Nearly seven in 10 (68%) say not being academically prepared is the biggest barrier for high school students in pursuing higher education.
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ine Madison area middle and high school students have made it to the national finals of a history competition.The nine are among 60 Wisconsin students to earn their way to the National History Day finals June 9-13 at College Park, Md., according to a news release from the Wisconsin Historical Society.
The students include Ameya Sanyal, Sanjaya Kumar, Anna Stoneman, Kristin Kiley and Lucas Voichick from the EAGLE School in Fitchburg; Manlu Liu, Madeline Brighouse-Glueck and Sara Triggs from West High School; and Eliza Scholl from Hamilton Middle School.
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Josh Mitchell & Douglas Belkin:
The White House proposes that the government forgive billions of dollars in student debt over the next decade, a plan that cheers student advocates, but critics say it would expand a program that already encourages students to borrow too much and stick taxpayers with the bill.The proposal, included in President Barack Obama's budget for next year, would increase the number of borrowers eligible for a program known casually as income-based repayment, which aims to help low-income workers stay current on federal student debt.
Borrowers in the program make monthly payments equivalent to 10% of their income after taxes and basic living expenses, regardless of how much they owe. After 20 years of on-time payments--10 years for those who work in public or nonprofit jobs--the balance is forgiven.
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The "silver lining" in our five-years-and-running Great Recession, we're told, is that Americans have finally taken heed of their betters and are finally rejecting the empty allure of suburban space and returning to the urban core."We've reached the limits of suburban development," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan declared in 2010. "People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities." Ed Glaeser's Triumph of the City and Alan Ehrenhalt's The Great Inversion--widely praised and accepted by the highest echelons of academia, press, business, and government--have advanced much the same claim, and just last week a report on jobs during the downturn garnered headlines like "City Centers in U.S. Gain Share of Jobs as Suburbs Lose."
There's just one problem with this narrative: none of it is true. A funny thing happened on the way to the long-trumpeted triumph of the city: the suburbs not only survived but have begun to regain their allure as Americans have continued aspiring to single-family homes.
Read the actual Brookings report that led to the "Suburbs Lose" headline: it shows that in 91 of America's 100 biggest metro areas, the share of jobs located within three miles of downtown declined over the 2000s. Only Washington, D.C., saw significant growth.
To be sure, our ongoing Great Recession slowed the rate of outward expansion but it didn't stop it--and it certainly didn't lead to a jobs boom in the urban core.
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A New Jersey lawmaker is pushing a bill to stop retired school administrators from double-dipping by collecting both pensions and salaries from post-retirement school jobs.Laura Waters has more.Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, D-Essex, cited an investigation by New Jersey Watchdog and NBC 4 New York that found 45 retired superintendents employed as interim school administrators, collecting $4 million a year in pension pay plus their executive salaries.
"There are retirees who are earning generous salaries while collecting pensions, and the worst part is that they are not breaking any laws because the current system allows this to happen," said Caputo. "The state is in no position to just be giving away money."
For example, Ralph E. Ross collected $292,272 last year - $149,256 in salary as interim superintendent of Deptford Township schools in Gloucester County, plus $143,016 from pension as retired superintendent of Black Horse Pike Regional schools in Camden County.
"I don't apologize for any money I get," said Ross, who now pockets his pension plus $136,500 in salary as interim chief at Monroe Township schools in Gloucester County. "My services are worthwhile and appreciated."
This Practice is certainly not limited to New Jersey. Madison has also had some "double dipper" employees.
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The future U.S. workforce is here--and it is woefully ill-prepared for the demands of today's (and tomorrow's) workplace. So say employers in a unique study by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, Partnership for 21 Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management, which looks at the readiness of new entrants to the workforce. Knowing how employers view these new entrants is an important first step in enabling both these new entrants and U.S. business to succeed on the global economic playing field.The four participating organizations jointly surveyed over 400 employers across the United States. These employers articulate the skill sets that new entrants--recently hired graduates from high school, two-year colleges or technical schools, and four-year colleges--need to succeed in the workplace. Among the most important skills cited by employers:
Professionalism/Work Ethic
Oral and Written Communications
Teamwork/Collaboration and
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving.
In fact, the findings indicate that applied skills1 on all educational levels trump basic knowledge and skills, such as Reading Comprehension and Mathematics. In other words, while the "three Rs" are still fundamental to any new workforce entrant's ability to do the job, employers emphasize that applied skills like Teamwork/Collaboration and Critical Thinking are "very important" to success at work.
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It's been clear for weeks that Gov. Scott Walker's budget faced major challenges in getting through the state Senate, where a small group of veteran, moderate Republicans has advocated for higher funding of public education and protested loudly a budget provision that would expand private voucher schools in nine cities across the state.The state Assembly, where Republicans hold a 20-seat majority and which is dominated by conservatives swept into office in the tea party wave of 2010, has largely been dismissed as a rubber stamp for Walker and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
On Tuesday, however, 13 Assembly Republicans made clear that they have serious concerns about the Walker budget's funding for public education.
In an open letter to Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, and Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, the co-chairs of the budget-crafting Joint Finance Committee, the group implored the committee leaders to provide more money to local schools:
"Collectively, we have heard from parents and schools in our districts that the budget proposal should provide more funding for public schools. We're sure you have heard similar comments. We all know that Wisconsin has a strong history of quality education for our youth. To keep that tradition, we agree that the public schools in our districts would benefit from an increase in K-12 funding and an increase in revenue limits."
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U.S. colleges such as Boston University are using financial aid to lure rich students while shortchanging the poor, forcing those most in need to take on heavy debt, a report found.An interactive chart can be viewed here.Almost two-thirds of private institutions require students from families making $30,000 or less annually to pay more than $15,000 a year, according to the report released today by the Washington-based New America Foundation.
The research analyzing U.S. Education Department data for the 2010-2011 school year undercuts the claims of many wealthy colleges that financial-aid practices make their institutions affordable, said Stephen Burd, the report's author. He singled out schools -- including Boston University and George Washington University -- that appear especially pricey for poor families.
"Colleges are always saying how committed they are to admitting low-income students -- that they are all about equality," Burd said in a phone interview. "This data shows there's been a dramatic shift. The pursuit of prestige and revenue has led them to focus more on high-income students."
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Janesville School District leaders are retooling the school day and graduation requirements to give students a competitive edge outside the classroom. The initiative is called Project Redesign.Right now Janesville students only need 22.5 credits to graduate from high school. Students in seventh grade this year will be required to earn 26.5 credits during their high school stints to get a diploma.
Craig High School's principal, Dr. Alison Bjoin, is one of many who helped design the district's new graduation requirements.
"This whole initiative is about making sure that our students leave Craig and Parker high schools ready to compete," Bjoin said.
The school will be adding credits in four core areas: science, math, social studies and English. Bjoin said Project Redesign is about giving students the skills to compete after high school.
"[They'll be] able to compete in college, in the military, in [careers]," Bjoin said. "Making sure students get additional credits in those core areas is going to help them on that path."
The additional credit requirements will be phased in starting in 2014.
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UW-Madison's incoming freshman class last fall included the lowest percentage of Wisconsin students and by far the highest percentage of international students in at least a decade, the latter fueled by a doubling of Chinese freshmen from the previous year.Also for the first time last year, the university enrolled a higher percentage of sons and daughters of alums -- called "legacies" -- than first-generation college students.
The findings, drawn from university admissions data, were compiled by a 16-member university committee over the last school year and presented to the Faculty Senate this week. The authors called on the university to redouble efforts to enroll the state's best students, among many recommendations.
"Between 2002 and 2012, the fraction of new freshmen from Wisconsin declined from 64 percent to 56 percent," the report reads. "We now enroll a smaller fraction of in-state students than many of our peers, and believe that in order to fulfill our mission to the state of Wisconsin this trend should be reversed."
Paul DeLuca, UW-Madison provost, said the university faces new challenges as the number of high school graduates in Wisconsin declines, a trend expected to continue for the next five years.
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Private U.S. colleges, worried they could be pricing themselves out of the market after years of relentless tuition increases, are offering record financial assistance to keep classrooms full.The average "tuition discount rate"--the reduction off list price afforded by grants and scholarships given by these schools--hit an all-time high of 45% last fall for incoming freshmen, according to a survey being released Monday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
"It's a buyer's market" for all but the most select private colleges and flagship public universities, said Jim Scannell, president of Scannell & Kurz, a consulting firm in Pittsford, N.Y., that works with colleges on pricing and financial-aid strategies.
It is likely that some private colleges will be forced to be even more generous with discounts this fall. As of the May 1 deadline for many high-school seniors to commit for their freshman year of college, early reports suggest some non-top-tier schools fell 10% to 20% short of enrollment targets, said Mr. Scannell.
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Why do boys get diagnosed with autism four times as often as girls?New research, including some of the latest data from the International Society for Autism Research annual conference last week, addresses this question, one of the biggest mysteries in this field. A growing consensus is arguing that sex differences exist in genetic susceptibility, brain development and social learning in autism--and they are meaningful to our understanding of the disorder and how it will be treated.
Yale University researchers presented results showing that being female appears to provide genetic protection against autism. Meanwhile, scientists at Emory University showed in preliminary work that boys and girls with autism learn social information differently, which leads to divergent success in interactions with other people.
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"A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" just had its 30th birthday, so it seems appropriate to pay our respects. After all, this report, issued by the Reagan Administration's National Commission on Excellence in Education, continues to inform current educational debates and is just as relevant now as it was a generation ago.To give you a taste of the document, here's a line from the introduction: "If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
Not much nuance there, but a lot of clout. Over the last 30 years Americans have gradually accepted the premise of "A Nation at Risk" and many agree that our system of public education needs to be reformed. That's a huge change in perception, especially for a system so resistant to change: remember, schools in America still follow an agrarian calendar and most classrooms look no different than school houses in the 19th century, 25 kids or so with a teacher in the front, modeled after schools that Horace Mann saw in Prussia in 1843.
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I was asked recently to articulate to a legislator my thoughts and concerns about public education funding and accountability. Ah, so much to say ... about funding; accountability, the Common Core initiatives, and the McCleary Decision on education funding.Great and timely. Listen to or read an interview with Laurie Rogers, here.Legislators love to give more of our tax dollars to K-12 education, but they aren't good at pursuing accountability or transparency from administrators and school boards. That's partly because they listen too much to the Edu Mob, and not enough to We, the People.
What legislators hear from the Edu Mob is usually contrary to what actually needs to be done for the children, so we advocates have little hope of ever nailing down solutions. After six+ years of advocacy, I'm profoundly tired of hearing legislators state, year after year, "Education needs more money!"
FUNDING:
Question #1: What basis do legislators have for saying that K-12 education is underfunded, or that funding has been cut, or that more money will produce a better education system?
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Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their "study observation forms," the observers watched intently as the students--in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all--opened their books and turned on their computers.For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer--and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the Web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students' screens and noted whether the students were wearing earbuds.
Although the students had been told at the outset that they should "study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course," it wasn't long before their attention drifted: Students' "on-task behavior" started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.
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The Common Core State Standards are a set of rigorous academic standards in mathematics and English language arts. They are the culmination of a meticulous, 20-year process initiated by the states and involving teachers, educators, business leaders and policy makers from across the country and both sides of the aisle.The standards form a foundation for a high-quality education, have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, and are slated for full implementation in 2014.
Unfortunately, the Republican National Committee recently adopted a resolution rejecting the Core Standards, calling them a "nationwide straitjacket on academic freedom and achievement." This resolution and efforts under way to repeal the Core Standards in several states are misguided and have to be resisted.
Mathematical education in the U.S. is in deep crisis. The World Economic Forum ranks the quality of math and science education in the U.S. a dismal 48th. This is one of the reasons the 2010 report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" by the National Academies warned that America's ability to compete effectively with other nations is fading.
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Greg Duncan and Katherine Magnuson:
Programs beginning before 1980 produced significantly larger effect sizes (.33 standard deviations) than those that began later (.16 standard deviations). Declining effect sizes over time are disappointing, as we might hope that lessons from prior evaluations and advances in the science of child development would have led to an increase in program effects over time. However, the likely reason for the decline is that counterfactual conditions for children in the control groups in these studies have improved substantially. We have already seen in Figure 1 how much more likely low-income children are to be attending some form of center-based care now relative to 40 years ago. This matters because, though center-based care programs have varying degrees of educational focus, most research suggests that center-based care is associated with better cognitive and achievement outcomes for preschool age children (NICHD Early Childcare Research Network and Duncan 2003).Even more impressive are gains in the likely quality of the home environment provided by low-income mothers, as indexed by their completed schooling. In 1970, some 71 percent of preschool age children in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution had mothers who lacked a high school degree, while only 5 percent of the mothers had attended at least some postsecondary schooling...
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When people who fundamentally agree purport to disagree, you have a non-debate. This was the upshot a few days ago when Maria Miller, secretary of state for culture, sensibly asked the arts sector to help her make the economic case for arts funding.Everyone agrees the arts are not a commodity; you can't reduce it all to money; pure instrumentalism is the enemy of creativity. Indeed, John Maynard Keynes - the economist instrumental in setting up the Arts Council - spoke of "enjoyment" and "serious and fine entertainment". He did not refer to endogenous growth theory. So, to be clear, no one disputes that we invest in the arts to fire our imaginations, stimulate our culture and assure our quality of life. But there is an economic benefit, too.
Had Keynes been discussing what we can afford in a time of austerity, I am confident he would have pointed to the benefits of our world-class arts and culture, including the way they regenerate our communities and plant our flag on the world stage. And I am sure he would not have failed to point out that they return 0.4 per cent of UK gross domestic product on less than 0.1 per cent of government spending.
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A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world's best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the steps leading up to the building, and others wait in the lobby directly in front of the embassy door. An officer stands on the corner of a side street facing the iconic department store Harrods, half a block away on Brompton Road. Another officer peers out the window of a neighboring building a few feet from Assange's bedroom at the back of the embassy. Police sit round-the-clock in a communications van topped with an array of antennas that presumably captures all electronic forms of communication from Assange's ground-floor suite.
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Among the major benefits of being a teacher in a foreign country are the opportunities it provides for meeting and speaking with the "natives". Over my "career" in Japan, I've interacted with a broad spectrum of students: from 2 year-old children (and younger) to people in their 80's, from office ladies and blue collar workers to professionals and company presidents. Students' motivations for studying have ranged from being forced to study by their parents (or company) to viewing the acquisition of a second language as a vehicle to a better life. During these 15 plus years, I've spoken to hundreds of Japanese about a vast array of topics, including education. As a former teacher in my native country, education has always been a topic of profound personal interest. Recently, I spoke at length with a young student, whom I have been teaching for 5 years, about his educational experiences, first in elementary school, which he attended in North America, and his subsequent experiences upon returning to Japan. The conversation was very enlightening, for several reasons.DON'T ASK WHY!
The first example of the difference in education "styles" occurred shortly after he started school back in Japan. About 1 month after school started, his parents received a letter from the school instructing them to instruct their son to stop asking "why" questions during class. Basically, the letter said that their son was asking too many questions and was a disruptive influence in the classroom."WE", NOT "ME"
My student's first major "social" adjustment was the necessity of being aware of, and thinking about, the "feelings" of others. He spoke of becoming physically ill due to the stress caused by having to "learn" to restrain himself from speaking or acting "impulsively", how he had to constantly reign in his "normal", natural "impulses, and instead, reflect on how his actions might potentially "hurt" someone. Essentially, he said, his initial response was to become almost paranoid about speaking or "participating" in class.
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The economy has changed in structural ways; preparing for the old economy is a sure path to disappointment.Millions of young people will be graduating from college over the next four years, and unfortunately, they will be entering an economy that has changed in structural ways for the worse. It's easy to blame politics or the Baby Boomers (that's like shooting fish in a barrel), but the dynamics are deeper than policy or one generation's foolish belief in endless good times and rising housing prices.
1. Getting a college degree, even in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects, no longer guarantees a job. As I have often noted, producing more graduates does not magically create jobs. The economy can only support a certain number of jobs in any one field. Producing 10 times as many graduates in that field does not create 10 times more jobs.
According to this analysis of supply, employment, and wage trends in information technology (IT) and other high-tech fields, Guestworkers in the high-skill U.S. labor market (via B.C.), only half of those graduating with STEM degrees get jobs in STEM fields.
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My Coursera course, "The Modern and the Postmodern," might have been labeled "course least likely to become a MOOC." In many ways, it is an old-fashioned "great books" course, although I prefer to call it a "good-enough books" course, and in the 20 years I've been teaching it, it has always relied heavily on student interaction in the classroom.We've always started in the late 18th century, usually with Kant and Rousseau, and then wound our way through 200 years of mostly European intellectual history--Karl Marx, Gustave Flaubert, and Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, and Michel Foucault in the 20th. In recent years we've finished up with the philosophers Kwame Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Zizek. We are interested in what happens when the modern search for the "really real" is replaced by the postmodern embrace of intensity and difference. We explore how modernist artists and writers have looked for a foundation that will ground their ideas and formal experimentation, while postmodernists have given up the search for a firm base.
Last summer my institution, Wesleyan University, where I am president, became the first liberal-arts college to join Coursera. I'd been discussing online education with the faculty, students, and board members, and I had a notion that we should start our own program. But after reading about Coursera's success in attracting large numbers of students to courses taught by talented professors at strong universities, it seemed to me that we should become a partner. The Coursera folks wanted to know which classes we would offer, but at that point summer was half over, and I wasn't certain who among my colleagues would want to participate. I knew I could volunteer myself for starters, and so that's what I did. Eventually, professors from six different departments agreed to join me in offering courses.
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Why is it that you, without embarrassment, publish the fact that 70% of the staff of your Washington office can't perform simple arithmetic? One can go into virtually any office and find someone who will freely admit that 'I can't do math.'--- John C. Nelson, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal
"I can't do math." It's probably one of the most common statements I hear as a teacher, and it would be difficult for me to come up with a statement that irritates me more (although saying "my bad" when you mean "my mistake" comes close). It is especially irritating because the person who says it invariably sounds happy and content with this assertion of inability. And it isn't merely students; last year, I sat in a meeting while four Tennessee Wesleyan College personnel smiled cheerfully and told me one after the other that they couldn't "do" math.
Stating that you can't "do" math, it seems to me, is roughly equivalent to stating that you can't read and can't write. And while illiteracy is a serious concern (according to a 1993 report from the U.S. Department of Education, about 23% of all citizens of the United States are functionally illiterate), you are not likely to find many college students (or college personnel, for that matter) bragging with a grin that they can't read a sentence or write their own name. And if someone told you that they couldn't "do" history, you probably wouldn't pat them on the head and say, "There, there, I can't do history, either." But this is exactly what happens in mathematics.
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In the fall of 2011, Stanford University offered three of its engineering courses--Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Introduction to Databases--for free online. Anyone with Internet access could sign up for them. As Sebastian Thrun, the director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, tells the story, he assumed just a handful of people would enroll in his graduate-level AI class. Instead, more than 160,000 students registered. A massive number.That's when the enormous hype began about massive open online courses, better known as "MOOCs." Since then, Thrun and his fellow lab professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng have founded education organizations that offer free online classes. Thrun's start-up is called Udacity (in part, a takeoff on the word "audacious"), and Koller and Ng's is Coursera. In December 2011, in response to Stanford's initiatives, MIT launched its own effort, called MITx (short for "Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange"), and a few months later joined forces with Harvard, drolly changing the name of the organization to edX. A consortium of British universities has also created its own MOOC platform, Futurelearn. So far, more than 90 universities worldwide have teamed up with one or more of these MOOC providers, prompting the New York Times to crown 2012 as "The Year of the MOOC."
Although it's clear that there's a flurry of interest in MOOCs among universities, higher-ed students, the tech industry, and pundits, these free online courses are also likely to have a significant impact on K-12 librarians and other educators. As Joyce Valenza, a teacher librarian at Springfield Township High School in Pennsylvania, pointed out on her SLJ blog, "Never Ending Search," MOOCs "can reach tens of thousands of students of all ages, regardless of geography or social class. They have the potential to be equalizers. MOOCs have the potential to disrupt traditional education platforms. And experts predict they will."
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U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke frankly to a roomful of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors about the state of the nation's education system.Related: www.wisconsin2.orgAt the NewSchools Summit this afternoon, the former head of Chicago's public schools said he believes that technology not only improves access to education but also graduation rates. In a discussion with Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, Duncan referred to many schools and universities as glorified "dropout factories" and called for teachers and parents to "knock at his door or the governor's door" and demand better for their children.
Duncan has made significant steps in his tenure as education secretary -- although his efforts have incurred significant criticism from the National Education Association. Duncan has secured increases in Pell grants for students to attend college, and he is a supporter of innovation through programs like "Race to the Top" and "Investing in Innovation." Additionally, he has helped secure an additional $10 billion to avoid teacher layoffs and $500 million for a national early learning competition.
But these efforts are not nearly enough, and Duncan conceded that "we have so far to go."
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I've been making my way through Richard Kahlenberg's biography of Albert Shanker, and one of the recurring themes that jumps out at me is the way long-lasting policies can emerge from the confluence of short-lived circumstances. Previously I wrote about this kind of "policy stickiness" in the context of higher salaries for teachers with master's degrees, but you can also see it play out with regard to dismissing teachers based on seniority, a practice known as "last in, first out" (LIFO).Recently, reformers have attempted to do away with LIFO because it's an arbitrary, albeit straightforward, way of determining whom to dismiss. But according to Kahlenberg, 30 years ago the climate of discrimination in the country was so bad that Shanker felt we needed LIFO because it was arbitrary.
Shanker and the AFT argued that seniority was worth preserving. Seniority "has proven to be the most effective mechanism for protecting workers--regardless of race, religion, sex or age--against capricious and arbitrary actions of their employers," the union said. Seniority prevented racist employers from firing blacks first. And it also protected workers "from the whims and prejudices of their employers" not related to race. Finally, seniority was important as a union principle because it "prevents divisiveness among working people by distributing scarcity in a way that is objectively fair and therefore perceived to be fair." (p. 241)Posted by Jim Zellmer at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom:
About 10 percent of Wisconsin kindergartners weren't prepared for classroom reading instruction, according to the results of a test administered for the first time statewide last fall.In the Madison area, 92% of Middleton's Kindergarten students met the benchmark while Verona students scored 87%, Madison 84%, Waunakee 97%, Monona Grove 98%, Oregon 97%, McFarland 93%, DeForest 92% and Sun Prairie 88%.The main purpose of the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening, or PALS test, is to identify students who struggle with certain literacy fundamentals and need intervention, said Patrick Gasper, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Instruction.
Teachers can use the results to tailor their reading instruction, he said.
"A child not meeting the benchmark could be (a sign of) inadequate experience with literacy, a special education need, or it could be general slow development," said Beth Graue, a UW-Madison education professor and expert on early childhood education.
Gov. Scott Walker has proposed $2.8 million in his biennial budget to add the test in grades 1 and 2 and 4-year-old kindergarten starting in fall 2014.
The State Journal obtained the results under the state's Open Records Law. DPI doesn't plan to publish the information because the test is a tool for classroom instruction and not meant to compare students, schools and districts, Gasper said.
Related: Madison's disastrous reading results.
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Devastating Budget Cuts Still Look Like Increases So Far. The National Center for Education Statistics issued its "First Look" at comprehensive school district revenues and expenditures for the 2009-10 school year. It's a welcome report, though not exactly a "first look" since it uses U.S. Census Bureau figures available since last fall.Status Quo Costs More: Madison Schools' Administration Floats a 7.38% Property Tax Increase; Dane County Incomes down 4.1%.... District Received $11.8M Redistributed State Tax Dollar Increase last year. Spending up 6.3% over the past 16 months.According to the authoritative National Bureau of Economic Research, America's "Great Recession" began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. Because of the vast number of agencies involved, it takes years to gather and report definitive public education revenue and spending data. So while we may eventually see figures that corroborate the tales of woe we hear from those quarters, that time has not yet arrived. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Here are a few of the center's findings:
School districts reported $599.9 billion in total revenues.
That was an increase of 0.8 percent from the previous year, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Current expenditures per-pupil, however, rose 1.0 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
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If Republican Gov. Scott Walker's proposed expansion of the state's school voucher program wasn't dead already, a letter from the feds calling into question the program's legality could be the final nail in the coffin.Among other things, the April 9 letter requires the Department of Public Instruction to monitor voucher schools to make sure they are in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and to report complaints they get from parents who allege the voucher program discriminated against their disabled children.
For the American Civil Liberties Union and Disability Rights Wisconsin, whose complaint led to the letter, "this is a big win," said Julie Mead, a professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at UW-Madison.
And a big loss for voucher proponents, who detest the kind of government oversight and bureaucracy the feds are requiring. Even worse for them is that the feds' criticism is just one more reason for Republicans who were already iffy on Walker's expansion to oppose it.
Now the question is whether the state's existing voucher program -- which has proven popular with parents, or at least with parents of non-disabled students -- can survive the federal order.
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One can often hear opponents of value-added referring to these methods as "junk science." The term is meant to express the argument that value-added is unreliable and/or invalid, and that its scientific "façade" is without merit.Now, I personally am not opposed to using these estimates in evaluations and other personnel policies, but I certainly understand opponents' skepticism. For one thing, there are some states and districts in which design and implementation has been somewhat careless, and, in these situations, I very much share the skepticism. Moreover, the common argument that evaluations, in order to be "meaningful," must consist of value-added measures in a heavily-weighted role (e.g., 45-50 percent) is, in my view, unsupportable.
All that said, calling value-added "junk science" completely obscures the important issues. The real questions here are less about the merits of the models per se than how they're being used.
If value-added is "junk science" regardless of how it's employed, then a fairly large chunk of social scientific research is "junk science." If that's your opinion, then okay - you're entitled to it - but it's not very compelling, at least in my (admittedly biased) view.
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Last year at TIME I took a look at the new websites where teachers can share their work - in some cases for personal profit and in some cases under circumstances where vendors can profit. The idea has great potential - especially with Common Core - for teachers to share work in an anytime/anywhere manner. But as the column noted - greatly upsetting some readers who thought there should simply be no question - there are also a complicated set of legal questions swirling around these sites about who owns content teachers produce in the course of their work. [You can read some terms of use language from key sites here] Not a lot of case law yet but a New York court ruled that school districts own the rights to lesson plans teachers create as part of their employment and with employer provided tools. That's a generally accepted, if infrequently enforced, standard.Now the National Education Association has released its new statement on digital learning and it includes a statement about the ownership issue seeking to create a new standard - and include this issue in collective bargaining:
...education employees should own the copyright to materials that they create in the course of their employment. There should be an appropriate "teacher's exception" to the "works made for hire" doctrine, pursuant to which works created by education employees in the course of their employment are owned by the employee. This exception should reflect the unique practices and traditions of academia.
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"I'm pro-union (for jobs in which people are nearly powerless and easily replaced, like farm or factory workers, I'm just not sure it is helping teaching as a profession)." Regarding unions, I think it's not only a matter of skill and replaceability, but also power imbalances. Teachers I know and hear from in non-unionized states describe the arbitrary and punitive use of power to silence troublemakers and embolden poor, unethical, even illegal practices in administration and school governance. There's also considerable political pressure and involvement in education that necessitates the strength in numbers that comes with unions. Think of the science teachers who dare to teach about evolution as a fact, health teachers who mention birth-control, LGBTQ teachers harrassed or silenced, or teachers who dare to suggest that a student with two moms comes from a family every bit as normal as others, journalism teachers pressured to restrict their students' First Amendment rights, librarians who allow students to check out controversial books, English teachers who use controversial books or creative writing assignments, social studies teachers who teach students about the Islamic Golden Age... Think about the teachers who give the starting point guard an F that will remove him from the playoffs, teachers who bust the school board member's child for plagiarism, teachers who say something unpopular in the public sphere, signing anti-war petitions or letters to the editor, etc.These are not hypothetical issues - they happen all the time. Daily. A vinidictive (or intimidated) administrator has so much power over a teacher - even with union support. A principal can ruin a teacher's year, ruin a career, run their their health and morale into the ground. Removing the union actually makes it harder for most of us to do good work in difficult circumstances, harder to speak up on behalf of students and families. I think the overall educational outcomes in union vs. non-union states and countries undercut your suggestion that unions do not help education. True, I've also heard stories about local associations and union reps who are bad for schools and kids. It happens. But I don't see those exceptions as an argument against unions - it's an argument for better governance, management, and ethical decision-making by those individuals.
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Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Bettner email (PDF):
Thanks to the volunteers who helped make phone calls at MTI on April 23. With few volunteers, 51 callers were "patched through" to leave a message for Senator Sheila Harsdorf that voucher expansion is bad for Wisconsin and that public schools must be fully funded. The Governor's proposed budget will take $96 million from public schools to fund private and parochial "voucher" schools and private charter schools.This program was a great success in other Senate Districts as well, generating well over 200 contacts last week. Any member interested in giving this a try, another night of calling is being considered for Thursday, May 9, 4:30 - 7:30 p.m., at MTI. The constituents we are calling are targeted based on their likelihood to respond positively and include WEAC members and voters favorable to public schools. This fight is critical because if we lose, voucher schools will be coming to Madison, whether we want them or not, with slick marketing campaigns designed to lure tax dollars into their pockets by denigrating our public schools. Don't let this happen! We need seven confirmed volunteers to make this set-up worthwhile.
If you can join us next Thursday, please contact Jeff Knight (knightj@madisonteachers.org / 257-0491).
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It came down to a very close finish but in an overtime session the Spring Harbor Middle team overtook the O'Keeffe Middle team at the African American History Bowl held on Saturday, April 13.As first-place finishers, team members (pictured below l-r) Odoi Lassey, Russell McGee, James Horton (alternate), Shania Weaver (backup alternate) and Coach Sara Johnson will travel to New Orleans on an all-expenses paid trip to complete in the 100 Black Men National History Bowl Challenge in June.
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The Madison School District, via a kind reader. Much more on Jennifer Cheatham, here.
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The index score is the number of college-level tests given at a school in 2012 divided by the number of graduates that year. Also noted are the percentage of students who come from families that qualify for lunch subsidies (Subs. lunch) and the percentage of graduates who passed at least one college-level test during their high school career, called equity and excellence, (E&E). A (P) next to the school's name denotes a private school.While Middleton (#1097) and Verona (#1529) made the 2013 index, no Madison high schools were included. Interestingly, thirteen (13) high schools from the Austin, Texas area were included along with two from Minneapolis, MN, two from St. Paul, MN, one from Ann Arbor, one from Portland, one each from Mobile and Birmingham, AL.
I have been ranking the most challenging schools in the country and this region for 15 years. Rarely have I encountered anything like the American Indian Public Charter High School of Oakland, Calif., the No. 1 school on my 2013 list. It has risen to the top just as its city school board is trying to shut it down.I visited the high school and its two American Indian charter middle schools two months ago. They hold classes in offices downtown and in a run-down residential part of the city, where they set an extraordinary standard of achievement.
The students enroll in Advanced Placement courses in the ninth grade and eventually take more of those college-level classes and exams per student than any high school in the Washington area. In their white shirts and dark slacks and skirts, the 243 students bustle around their little campus. Eighty-one percent of them are from low-income families, but their AP test-passing rate of 41 percent is higher than any D.C. school except Wilson and the School Without Walls, which have mostly middle-class students.
The three Oakland charter schools are in trouble because Ben Chavis, the unorthodox educator responsible for their success, has been charged by the school district with misappropriating public funds. Chavis denies doing anything wrong. He left the school in late 2011 to tend his cattle farm in North Carolina, leaving parents and new school leaders -- with their own internal disputes -- to fight for survival. The city school board voted last month to withdraw the schools' charter by a narrow 4 to 3 margin, but the county or state school board could overrule that decision.
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Carolyn Miller, Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie and Kristen Purcell:
The vast majority of parents of minor children -- children younger than 18 -- feel libraries are very important for their children. That attachment carries over into parents' own higher-than-average use of a wide range of library services.1The ties between parents and libraries start with the importance parents attach to the role of reading in their children's lives. Half of parents of children under age 12 (50%) read to their child every day and an additional 26% do so a few times a week. Those with children under age 6 are especially keen on daily reading with their child: 58% of these parents read with their child every day and another 26% read multiple times a week with their children.
The importance parents assign to reading and access to knowledge shapes their enthusiasm for libraries and their programs:
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Thousands of students in Montgomery County failed final exams in high school math courses last semester, according to data that raise questions about how well students have learned the material and whether there is a disconnect between the test and the course work.Recently released figures show failure rates of 62 percent for high school students taking the county's geometry final and 57 percent for those taking the Algebra 2 exam. Among students taking the same courses on the honors level, 30 percent to 36 percent failed the end-of-semester tests in January, according to data from the school system.
The numbers have alarmed parents in the high-performing school system, where nearly 16,000 high school students in seven math courses did not pass their finals -- a majority of the roughly 30,000 students taking those tests.
Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr said a work group would begin meeting this summer to unravel the reasons behind the poor test results, which he said could involve issues of teaching, student support, or alignment between the curriculum and the exam.
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The US Department of Homeland Security, criticised for failing to check the student status of a Kazakh man charged in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, has tightened procedures for admitting foreigners with student visas, a US official saidThe new procedure is the government's first security change directly related to the attacks last month.
The order, effective immediately, was issued by a senior official at US Customs and Border Protection, David Murphy. It was circulated on Thursday, a day after the Obama administration acknowledged a student from Kazakhstan accused of hiding evidence for one of the Boston bombing suspects was allowed to return to the United States in January without a valid student visa.
The student visa for Azamat Tazhayakov had been terminated when he arrived in New York on January 20. But the border agent in the airport did not have access to the information in the Homeland Security Department's student and exchange visitor information system, called SEVIS.
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MMSD offers Read 180 and System 44 as a reading intervention to adolescent students who are two or more years behind their grade level in reading in regular education, special education and the English as a Second Language program. Read 180 and System 44 are integrated into the District's Response to Intervention (RtI) plan to provide students with access to these research-based intervention materials in all district secondary sites, including middle schools, high school and alternative programs.Data issues regarding READ 180 and System 44 by Andrew StatzRead 180 is an intensive reading intervention program that meets the needs of struggling adolescent readers whose reading achievement is below proficient. The program addresses individual needs through differentiated instruction, adaptive and instructional software, high-interest literacy and explicit instruction in reading, writing and vocabulary development.
The Read 180 instructional model provides a way to organize instruction and classroom activity. Each session begins and ends with whole-group teacher-directed instruction. During the class, there is a structure for the use of time including whole group and small student groups. In the small group time, students rotate among three stations, including:
Computer center - students use the READ 180 software independently, providing them with intensive, individualized skill practice;
Small group - students receive diagnostically informed instruction where individual needs can be met;
Independent center - students read from READ 180 paperbacks and audiobooks. Journal writing, reader responses and reading strategies are applied.
System 44 is an intervention program that is designed for struggling adolescents that need basic support in letter sounds, decoding, word recognition, word-level fluency and strategies for unfamiliar words. System 44 helps middle and high school students "crack the code" on the 44 sounds and 26 letters in the English language. It is intended to be a short term intervention, with students only remaining in the program until they have mastered the sounds of the English language. When student master the decoding, skills as determined by the Scholastic Phonics Inventory, they may advance to Read 180 or another intervention if appropriate. System 44 incorporates a screening tool for reading and phonics to assist with the proper identification of students into either System 44 or Read 180. While MMSD has used Read 180 for several years, System 44 was made available district-wide in 2012-13.
Because of these discrepancies and uncertainty over which students actually received the READ 180 or System 44 curriculum, any data staff of READ 180 and System 44 updates generated by MMSD would be misleading and could lead to improper estimates of the results these programs produce, which could in turn lead to misinformed decisions about the direction and effectiveness of these programs. As a result, the Research & Program Evaluation Office cannot report on these programs until data discrepancies are resolved in the future.
Next Steps. District staff are working with teachers and school staff to correct the errors in READ 180 and System 44 participant lists for the 2012-13 school year.This process includes identifying specific students whose records are inconsistent and attempting to standardize their records, as well as meeting with middle and high school schedulers to emphasize the importance of consistent record keeping for these programs and discuss plans to make sure accurate records are maintained in the future. In, addition, district staff will conduct quarterly audits of READ 180 and System 44 participation to compare transcript and SAM records and correct disparities as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, because SAM only stores a current list of READ 180 and System 44 participants, it is not known if there is a way to repair errors in historical MMSD data on these two programs. More exploration with the vendor is needed to determine what history, if any, can be recovered.
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At a recent rally in a Latino community center in Waukesha, Gov. Scott Walker urged a group of mostly private school parents, students and administrators to advocate for his proposal to expand vouchers beyond Milwaukee and Racine."I need your help," Walker told a crowd of about 350 people, the majority of them children, on April 25. "We need you to help us spread that message to other lawmakers in our state Capitol, because they need to understand this is not a political statement; this is not a political campaign. ... This is about children."
A week earlier at First United Methodist Church in Downtown Madison, representatives from the Department of Public Instruction and the Wisconsin Association of School Boards laid out the arguments against voucher expansion to a group organized by Grandparents United for Madison Public Schools.
"This is a Waterloo moment for public education," WASB lobbyist Joe Quick told about 60 people.
"You've got good schools here," concurred DPI financial adviser Jeff Pertl. "We've got to fight to protect them."
In recent months, in gymnasiums, libraries, churches and offices across Wisconsin, both sides in the voucher debate have ramped up their efforts to sway public opinion, especially in the districts of a handful of key Republican senators.
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Sue Schaar, Madison Schools' TAG Coordinator:
The Compliance Plan, including the timeline with benchmarks, is being drafted to outline the activities and processes that will take place in the next 13 months in order to bring MMSD into full compliance with DPI by May 31, 2014. A final document will be scheduled for Board review before the May 31, 2013 submission to DPI.This document highlights areas of infrastructure that must be addressed as we move forward, including instructional design at the school level and consistent messaging from central office with measures of accountability incorporated. Clearly, our efforts in this area must be aligned with other improvement efforts as we move forward.
Issues around which decisions have been made:
Fine Arts and TAG will be creating a portfolio system to be utilized in the identification processes in areas of Leadership, Creativity, and Visual/Performing Arts
MMSD will incorporate the use of USTARS and utilize local norms into the identification processes for all 5 areas
Professional development regarding the characteristics of advanced learners, including those from typically under represented groups, will be accomplished at the local school level through a 45 minute DVD that the TAG department will create over the summer. This professional development should take place at all schools prior to winter break in 2013-14. Schools will have a menu of choices about how to deliver this PD.
Discussion is still occurring around:
Incorporation of advanced interventions into multi-tiered system of support and how to incorporate in School Improvement Plans
A review of consistent, qualitative difference between High School core courses and embedded and/or other Honors Courses as demonstrated by a review of the syllabi
The tension between implementing interventions for advanced learners through clusters, flexible groups or enrichment periods coupled with differentiated instruction throughout the school day
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Watch for the seventh edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality, releasing May 9, 2013.The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has been producing Hopes, Fears, & Reality since 2005, after a set of major studies showed conflicting results about charter school performance and caused quite a dustup. CRPE created this annual report and its overall research program on charter schools with two goals in mind: (1) to provide an even-handed assessment of charter school outcomes to date so that people involved in policy and practice can make sense of the research without having to rely on simplistic headlines or read complex and conflicting journal articles, and (2) to create a forum for leading thinkers to push charter sector leaders to look to the future and improve on the past.
We at CRPE are quite proud of the data and essays that have appeared in Hopes, Fears, & Reality across the years. With support from the National Charter School Resource Center at American Institutes for Research, we are excited that the report can continue to reach new audiences through this venue. If you are new to this series, please look at the past editions. I hope you will find them useful--even surprising and provocative. As a research organization, CRPE is committed to following the evidence wherever it leads. For that reason, our work points out both the beauty marks and the warts of the charter sector. Because we believe that students urgently need better public school options, CRPE commissions essays that push policymakers and charter leaders to anticipate issues that few people are thinking about now but that could greatly enhance the sector's effectiveness and reach.
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I am enthusiastic about the passion that all of us feel about public education, and I welcome the diversity of viewpoints among us. All of us understand that our schools - and our children - represent the future of Rhode Island. All of us understand that every step we take to advance public education will help advance the economic prosperity of our state.
As we work together to transform our schools, there is an important factor that has remained constant: the unwavering support from the membership and the leadership of this General Assembly. House Speaker Fox, Senate President Paiva Weed, and you, the members of the General Assembly, have been steadfast allies of our schools, our teachers, and our students. My colleagues in other states are envious of the support we receive from our elected officials in Rhode Island - and I am very grateful. Speaker Fox and President Paiva Weed: Thank you for your leadership.
You have many important education matters before you this session, including a package of bills on school safety. Above all else, our schools must be safe places for teaching and learning. These bills, which Representative McNamara and Senator Gallo have sponsored, will help us better ensure the safety of our teachers and students.
We must also ensure that our communities have the resources they need as we work to transform education in our state. Governor Chafee is a champion of education. Even in these difficult economic times, he has consistently maintained support for education funding. This year, Governor Chafee's budget again supports Year Three of our Funding Formula, including important categorical funding:
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Something you hear a lot from charter school opponents is that they'd be OK with charters if the schools more consistently produced gains for students. Yet in places that have done a good job with charter quality the opposition from special interests remains. Some new polling data that will become public next week in Massachusetts casts a light on this issue.The poll of 625 registered voters in Boston found that just 23 percent of respondents supported keeping current limits on charter schools while 64 percent are in favor of expanding charters. 66 percent think the city should lease vacant buildings to charters and 67 percent think charters should get state funding for construction and renovation. Perhaps most interesting, 73 of voters said they support allowing charter schools with a proven record of success to expand - essentially a "smart cap" idea (pdf).
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As many of us have long suspected, the impacts of popular market-oriented reforms are not as positive as their proponents would have us believe. Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and then-CEO and now-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who ran the school systems in New York, Washington, DC and Chicago, respectively, along with the mayors who controlled the school systems they led, all exaggerated their successes. In fact, the report I recently co-authored as National Coordinator of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, "Market-Oriented Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality," discovers that using student test scores to make high-stakes decisions did little good and more than a little harm.We found that across all three cities, student NAEP test scores rose less than they did in comparable high-poverty urban districts. In Chicago, reading scores, already below average, fell further. New York City students achieved the second-lowest average test score growth across fourth and eighth grade reading and math of the ten districts studied, beating only Cleveland. And Washington, DC students, who had been gaining ground in both subjects, saw that growth stop or even begin to fall. Moreover, what small gains did accrue went heavily to white and higher-income students, so many achievement gaps grew rather than narrowed. Closing schools neither helped students nor saved money, and drove teacher turnover, not teacher quality.
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Barry Garelick, via a kind email
The tendency to interpret the standards along the ideological lines of the reform movement can be seen most readily in how the Standards for Mathematical Practice are interpreted. The SMP themselves are sensible and few mathematicians or teachers would disagree with their principles. Their interpretation and implementation is another matter, however.Standards for Mathematical Practice: The Cheshire Cat's Grin.
Standards for Mathematical Practice: Cheshire Cat's Grin, Part Two
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Standards for Mathematical Practice: Cheshire Cat's Grin, Part Three
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In my 1996 book Generation X Goes to College, I predicted that virtually anyone with a computer and a modem would have access to the storehouse of human knowledge. As a result, higher education as we know would become an anachronism, if not obsolete. The university's status would diminish because it would lose its competitive advantage in disseminating information.The recent emergence of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), however, raises obvious questions. Are these new teaching methods as effective, in terms of student performance, as real-life classrooms? Can these new technologies bring down higher education costs? Former Princeton president William G. Bowen takes on these questions and others in his new book Higher-Ed in the Digital Age. Once a skeptic, Bowen now concludes that online learning programs will reduce the cost of higher education without harming student learning outcomes.
His conversion is inspired by the findings of ITHACA, a non-profit organization that conducted "the most rigorous assessment to date" on the economics of online learning technology. That study demonstrated that student learning outcomes, as measured by standardized tests, are no worse in online courses than in traditional classes. Not better, just not worse. Though these results might sound unimpressive, Bowen asserts that they are "very important" because they disprove the common prediction that online education will harm students.
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Think of all the different ways you can say the word interesting. Different inflections carry different messages. Different accents change what letters are sounded or the number of syllables and can hint at your background. Probe the word and it can become really interesting - and educational.Here's another thing that's interesting, educational and, I would add, a special jewel in Milwaukee education: The linguistics class at the Milwaukee School of Languages taught by Suzanne Loosen.
If I had taken this class when I was in high school, I would remember it to this day, 45 years later. Which got me thinking about two questions:
What makes a high school class especially memorable and valuable? What are we doing to encourage, support and respect classes such as this one and teachers such as Loosen?
A few things are special about Loosen's class:
First, the course itself. Linguistics - "the scientific study of language," as Loosen teaches her students - is normally a college-level subject. Best as Loosen knows, the course, an elective for 10th through 12th-grade students, is the only high school class in the nation devoted entirely to the subject, although many teachers include linguistics as part of broader courses.
Second, the enterprising aspects of creating the course. There are pluses to the increasingly standardized, regulated and monitored world of education. But there are minuses, like not seeing very often what Loosen offers: the creativity and zest of teaching a beloved subject that is a bit off the conventional path.
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The title of this post refers to the title of an article I wrote twenty years ago: The Immorality of Test Security. It is basically immoral to hold people accountable for improved results on tests that are so secure that teachers aren't even allowed, in some cases, to see them. And as more states back off releasing tests and allowing teachers to score them, it seems timely to revisit the argument. (See this and this article on the changes to make the Regents exam no longer teacher scored).As I have long written, I have no problem with the state doing a once-per-year audit of performance. But what far too many policy-makers and measurement wonks fail to understand is that if the core purpose of the test is to improve performance, not just audit it, then most test security undercuts the purpose. Look, I get the point of security: you can get at understanding far more easily and efficiently (hence, cheaply) if the student does not know the specific question that is coming; I'm ok with that. But complete test security after the fact serves only the test-makers: they get to re-use items (and do so with little oversight), and they make the entire test more of a superficial dipstick, using proxies for real work, than a genuine test of transparent and worthy performance.
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Parenting in a pathologically competitive, information-saturated city can make anyone crazy, even those parents lucky enough to be worried about fennel burgers in school lunches. And while Avenues offers its students every imaginable educational benefit -- a 9-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio, a Harvard-designed "World Course" -- it has also tapped into an even deeper, more complicated parental anxiety: the anxiety of wanting their kids to have every advantage, but ensuring that all those advantages don't turn them into privileged jerks.Much more on Avenues, here.As Manhattan, and particularly downtown, is transformed by a staggering infusion of wealth, there is a growing market for creating emotionally intelligent future global leaders who, as a result of their emotional intelligence, have a little humility. In fact, when the nearby Grace Church School was researching whether to start its own high school, it asked top college-admission officers what was lacking in New York City applicants. The answers coalesced around the idea of values, civic engagement, inclusiveness and diversity -- in a word, humility.
And so Avenues students may run to their "Empire State of Mind: Thinking About Jay-Z in a New Way" "mini-mester" while passing a Chuck Close self portrait, but they do so with the intent of being "humble about their gifts and generous of spirit," as the school's mission statement puts it. "We wanted a school that was innovative and wouldn't force our kids into any particular mold," says Sheree Carter-Galvan, an Avenues parent and a general counsel at Yale University. Or, as Ella Kim, mother of a 4-year old, explains, Avenues took the anxiety of a New York parent -- albeit of a certain type -- "and designed a school around that."
Last winter, a group of Avenues 4-year-olds ventured out to the 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in Chelsea to view the work of John A. Parks, an English painter, who fingerpainted his childhood memories. Schulman thought it segued seamlessly with a unit they were doing on abstract art, which included studies of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Schulman, who always seems to be brimming with excitement, explained how the subject matter and the field trip were perfect for the immersion classes. "You can use the vocabulary in both languages," she said, to learn about the art.
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I frequently have my undergrad and grad students read Bill Easterly's excellent book, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. They are often a bit depressed after reading the chapters on growth, noting how little we seem to know about growth in the real world. It is the education chapter, however, which really gets to them. In it, Easterly points out what has been known for ages but is rarely mentioned in print (see Lant Pritchett's "Where has all the education gone?" for a refreshing exception), namely, that education is not positively and significantly related to economic growth for most samples. Sometimes you can find a weakly positive t-stat in a sample of OECD countries, but you are lucky if you merely find zero correlation (instead of a negative and significant) in the developing world.Related www.wisconsin2.org.
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Education in rural areas has been in the headlines recently, with scandals over missing textbooks, overcrowded classrooms and inadequate facilities. A group of South African dignitaries visited the Eastern Cape province recently to witness conditions for themselves. This is what they saw:
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There are more than 120 programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision - the top level of National Collegiate Athletic Association competition - but only 23 of them turned a profit in 2012, according to a new NCAA report on athletic department finances. That is despite upward movement in generated revenues: a 4.6 percent increase at FBS programs and a 9.06 percent increase at the smaller Football Championship Subdivision ones. While the median spending at FBS programs is $56 million, for other institutions, it hovers around $14 million. FBS median expenses increased 10.8 percent above the previous year, compared to 6.8 percent at FCS programs and 8.8 percent at Division I institutions without football. The report also notes the gap in the growth of expenses between institutional and athletics spending. At FBS programs, the median athletics expenses increase was 4.4 percent higher than the institutional increase. At FCS and Division I no-football colleges, the gap was 3 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively.
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Temple Grandin and Richard Panek:
The following article is adapted from The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, out now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.I was fortunate to have been born in 1947. If I had been born 10 years later, my life as a person with autism would have been a lot different. In 1947, the diagnosis of autism was only four years old. Almost nobody knew what it meant. When Mother noticed in me the symptoms that we would now label autistic--destructive behavior, inability to speak, a sensitivity to physical contact, a fixation on spinning objects, and so on--she did what made sense to her. She took me to a neurologist.
Bronson Crothers had served as the director of the neurology service at Boston Children's Hospital since its founding, in 1920. The first thing Dr. Crothers did in my case was administer an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to make sure I didn't have petit mal epilepsy. Then he tested my hearing to make sure I wasn't deaf. "Well, she certainly is an odd little girl," he told Mother. Then when I began to verbalize a little, Dr. Crothers modified his evaluation: "She's an odd little girl, but she'll learn how to talk." The diagnosis: brain damage.
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Some Verona grade school boys may remember the "hard lockdown" Thursday at their elementary school as the day they got to pee in a bucket in a janitor's closet.Verona Area School District Superintendent Dean Gorrell emailed a frank letter of apology to parents Friday for "not having adequate (or any) communication" about the lockdown while authorities searched for a dangerous suspect nearby.
As for the boys and their temporary bathrooms, that was simply a matter of protocol, safety and expedience, as the elementary school gymnasium where staff and students were under lockdown has no immediate access to bathrooms.
Gorrell said he had received no complaints about that as of Friday afternoon. The children were not allowed to go to bathrooms outside of the gym because it would have required their presence in a hallway, and staff "made provisions for students to relieve themselves in private," he said.
On the topic of communication to parents and others about the lockdown, Gorrell said a new notification system called SchoolReach Instant Parent Contact has already been purchased and should be online for the next school year.
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Legislators should be skeptical of a proposal by Gov. Scott Walker to sharply expand the school voucher program. There isn't much evidence that students in voucher schools are better educated; in fact, they seem to perform at about the same level as their peers in mainline public schools.Comparing Milwaukee Public and Voucher Schools' Per Student SpendingWe also remain deeply skeptical of the move by the Legislature two years ago to open up the program to lower middle-income families. If there is any justification for the voucher schools, it's to give impoverished families a "choice." We have long supported choice for the poor and believe the program should be limited to those families. Republicans essentially are advocating a shadow school system. Why not work harder to adequately fund and hold accountable the system we have?
Walker's plan would expand private voucher programs to at least nine other districts outside Milwaukee and Racine. Families with income of to about $70,000 a year would be eligible.
Before they act, legislators should take a close look at outcomes.
In a report released last month, the state Department of Public Instruction found that students attending voucher schools in Milwaukee and Racine scored lower than public school students in Milwaukee Public Schools and the Racine Unified School District on the state standardized achievement test.
I find discussions of the per-pupil funding level of different types of Milwaukee schools usually turns into a debate on how to make a true apples-to-apples comparison of per-pupil support for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). While basic differences in MPS and MPCP schools and their cost-drivers make any comparison imperfect, the following is what you might call a green apples to red apples comparison.DISCLAIMER: if you not interested in school funding, prepare to be bored.
Per-pupil support for MPS
Note I am not trying to calculate per-pupil education funding or suggest that this is the amount of money that actually reaches a school or classroom; it is a simple global picture of how much public revenue exists per-pupil in MPS. Below are the relevant numbers for 2012, from MPS documents:
.......
Though not perfect, I think $13,063 (MPS) and $7,126 (MPCP) are reasonably comparative per-pupil public support numbers for MPS and the MPCP.
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W. Lee Hansen, via a kind reader's email:
This paper presents estimates of the full resource costs of Minority and Disadvantaged Student Programs for UW-Madison and the UW System. It shows that for 2008-09 the total resource costs of M/D programs are almost 60 percent higher than the published expenditure figures for UW-Madison and more than 75 percent higher than the published expenditure figures for the UW System. It provides several alternative estimates of the per student resource costs of these programs. Finally, it cumulates the value of the resources committed to M/D programs during Plan 2008 and in the years subsequent to 2008. These differences occur because the UW System's Minority and Disadvantaged Student Annual Report (M/D Report) fails, without explanation, to include the full array of M/D program costs even though it openly acknowledges these omissions.
Based on the full resource costs estimates developed here, these costs range from as little as $1,000 per student to as much as $80,000 per student, depending on which groups of students receive the most benefit from these programs.The results presented here for 2008-09 provide at best a snapshot view of the resource costs of M/D programs. Additional perspective comes from cumulating the resource costs of M/D programs for UW-Madison and for the UW System during the decade-long Plan 2008, and from estimates of these costs for the duration of Plan 2008 plus the first five years under UW's new diversity plan called Inclusive Excellence.
The constant-dollar estimates of the resource costs incurred by UW-Madison during Plan 2008 total $280,000,000, and they approximate $500,000,000--half a billion dollars--for the 15-year period beginning in 1998-99 and continuing through 2012-13. Comparable estimates for the UW System are substantially greater, totaling $680,000,000 during Plan 2008 and approximating $1,150,000,000--more than one billion dollars--for this same 15-year period.By understating the resource costs of its M/D programs and failing to provide evidence on the success of its M/D programs, the UW System fails to meet its commitments to transparency and accountability, and in the process compromises its institutional integrity.
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I am moved to respond to Sol Garfunkel's "Opinion" article.1 I am a long-time high school mathematics teacher in a public school. I started teaching around the time of SMSG and have been in the trenches throughout several of the math wars. I know Dr. Garfunkel's fine work in creating interesting modeling projects and his outspoken opinion that using technology to solve problems that apply the mathematics we are teaching will better concretize students' understanding of the underlying mathematics. It sounds like a fine idea, but the reality is often very different.Related: Math Forum audio & video.Our problems in teaching mathematics begin in elementary school. Sadly, many teachers working with our children at the start of their mathematical journeys are not themselves comfortable with the mathematics they are trying to teach. They often only know one way to teach an idea and they may not fully understand how that method works and why it gives the right answers. Such a teacher confronted with an alternate creative method (perhaps suggested by a clever child or a seasoned colleague) may reject the alternative rather than trying to see how and why two methods produce the same result. Beyond stifling the creativity of students and discouraging them from trying to see how the mathematics works, such an approach is not fertile ground for applications and modeling projects in which creative exploration and possibly unorthodox methods are encouraged as a means of truly understanding what is happening. Teachers who lack confidence in their own understanding of the ideas may not want to include these sorts of activities in their classrooms.
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Rarely has the political payoff for a special interest group been as quick or blatant.Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.The American Federation for Children, one of the leading advocates for school choice in the country, brags in a recent brochure that it spent more than $325,000 - far more than the group has previously made public - to help elect state Sen. Rick Gudex in a closely contested Wisconsin race last fall.
Gudex won his seat by less than 600 votes.
Then, last week, the freshman lawmaker joined two other Senate Republicans in saying they were drawing a line in the sand by vowing to oppose a state budget bill if it doesn't include an expansion of the state's school voucher program.
"The American Federation of Children got exactly what they wanted," said Mike McCabe, head of the left-leaning election watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. "They want legislators who will go to the mat and make expanding the voucher program the bottom line."
Just as interesting, McCabe said, is that the school choice organization is saying in its own material that it spent twice as much helping Gudex as it reported to state regulators. McCabe said his group is looking into filing an election complaint.
A source familiar with the American Federation's political spending in Wisconsin called such a complaint "frivolous." The organization, the source said, had abided by Wisconsin election laws.
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Boston College's greatest marketing campaign lasted about six seconds.It's called the "Flutie Effect." In a 1984 game against the University of Miami, BC quarterback Doug Flutie threw a last-second "Hail Mary" pass 48 yards that was miraculously caught for a game-winning touchdown--a climactic capper on one of the most exciting college football games ever.
The play put BC on the map for college aspirants. In two years, applications had shot up 30 percent.
Ever since, marketing experts and school deans have acknowledged the power of the Flutie Effect's ability to transfer a successful collegiate athletic program into a hot ticket for admission. Georgetown University applications multiplied 45 percent between 1983 and 1986 following a surge of basketball success. Northwestern University applications advanced 21 percent after winning the Big Ten Championship in football.
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Related: Status Quo Costs More: Madison Schools' Administration Floats a 7.38% Property Tax Increase; Dane County Incomes down 4.1%.... District Received $11.8M Redistributed State Tax Dollar Increase last year. Spending up 6.3% over the past 16 months.
This manages to be both incomprehensible and incredibly offensive at the same time. I have no idea what Friedman thinks he's talking about when he blathers on about disappearing protective floors; I can only hope that he isn't making a super-tasteless reference to the recent disaster in Bangladesh. But it's simply wrong that today's world is "tailored" for anybody who happens to be "self-motivated". Both the self and the motivation are components of labor, not capital, and as such they're on the losing side of the global economy, not the winning side.Friedman is a billionaire (by marriage) who -- like all billionaires these days -- is convinced that he achieved his current prominent position by merit alone, rather than through luck and through the diligent application of cultural and financial capital. His paean to self-motivation recalls nothing so much as Margaret Thatcher's "there is no such thing as society" quote: "parenting, teaching or leadership that 'inspires' individuals to act on their own will be the most valued of all," he writes, bizarrely choosing to wrap his scare quotes around the word "inspires" rather than around the word "leadership", where they belong.
True leadership, in a society where the workers are failing to be paid even half the fruits of their labor, would involve attempting to turn the red line in Blodget's chart around, and to spread the nation's prosperity among all its citizens. Rather than telling everybody that they're "on their own" and that if they're not a success then hey, they're probably just not "self-motivated" enough.
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BRITISH universities can be depressing. The dons moan about their pay and students worry they will end up frying burgers--or jobless. Perhaps they should try visiting McDonald's University in London's East Finchley.Students are often "rough and ready", with poor qualifications and low self-esteem. But ambition-igniting murals display the ladder of opportunity that leads from the grill to the corner office (McDonald's chief executives have always started at the bottom). A map of the world shows the seven counterpart universities. Cabinets display trophies such as the Sunday Times award for being one of Britain's best 25 employers.
McDonald's is one of Britain's biggest trainers. It gets about 1m applicants a year, accepting only one in 15, and spends £40m ($61m) a year on training. The Finchley campus, opened by Margaret Thatcher, then the local MP, in 1989, is one of the biggest training centres in Europe--many of the classrooms are equipped with booths for interpreters. It is part of a bigger system. An employees' web-portal, Our Lounge, provides training as well as details about that day's shifts, and allows employees to compete against each other in work-related video games.
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John Wihbey at Journalist's Resource has highlighted an important problem: Young people aren't very good at search.Since Google's algorithms have trouble in distinguishing between spam and good content, a search-based education isn't much use if students don't know how to evaluate sources of information.
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Cindy Koeppel, via a kind email:
* NEW SPECIAL PROJECT * "Civility in the Golden Age, 1959-1969"On April 16, 2013, Dirksen Center staff member delivered remarks entitled "Civility in the Golden Age, 1959-1969" to a conference, "Returning Civility to Our Public Discourse," funded by The Center and sponsored by the Institute for Principled Leadership at Bradley University.
Mackaman used documents from Everett Dirksen's papers to illustrate the nature of civil discourse among the political leaders in the 1960s.
Read the remarks at: http://www.dirksencenterprojects.org/Civility.pdf
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Lisa Hansel, via a kind reader's email:
So why haven't we ensured that all children get a rigorous, supportive education?Kate Walsh:This is a question I ask myself and others all the time. I think it's more productive than merely asking "How can we?" Those who ask how without also asking why haven't tend to waste significant amounts of time and resources "discovering" things that some already knew.
Okay, so I've partly answer the why question right there. Much better answers can be found in Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, E. D. Hirsch's The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, and Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
But still, those answers are not complete.
Right now, Kate Walsh and her team with the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) are adding to our collective wisdom--and potentially to our collective ability to act.
NCTQ is just a couple months away from releasing its review of teacher preparation programs. The results may not be shocking, but they are terrifying. Walsh provides a preview in the current issue of Education Next. In that preview, she reminds us of a study from several years ago that offers an insiders' look at teacher preparation:
The most revealing insight into what teacher educators believe to be wrong or right about the field is a lengthy 2006 volume published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Studying Teacher Education. It contains contributions from 15 prominent deans and education professors and was intended to provide "balanced, thorough, and unapologetically honest descriptions of the state of research on particular topics in teacher education." It lives up to that billing. First, the volume demonstrates the paucity of credible research that would support the current practices of traditional teacher education, across all of its many functions, including foundations courses, arts and sciences courses, field experiences, and pedagogical approaches, as well as how current practice prepares candidates to teach diverse populations and special education students. More intriguing, however, is the contributors' examination of the dramatic evolution of the mission of teacher education over the last 50 years, in ways that have certainly been poorly understood by anyone outside the profession.Huh? Really? How exactly does one prepare without training? Walsh goes on to explain that. But the only way to prepare yourself to comprehend the teacher educators' reasoning is to pretend like "prepare them" actually means "brainwash them into believing that in order to be a good teacher, you have to make everything up yourself." Back to Walsh:Studying Teacher Education explains the disconnect between what teacher educators believe is the right way to prepare a new teacher and the unhappy K-12 schools on the receiving end of that effort. It happens that the job of teacher educators is not to train the next generation of teachers but to prepare them.
Harking back perhaps to teacher education's 19th-century ecclesiastical origins, its mission has shifted away from the medical model of training doctors to professional formation. The function of teacher education is to launch the candidate on a lifelong path of learning, distinct from knowing, as actual knowledge is perceived as too fluid to be achievable. In the course of a teacher's preparation, prejudices and errant assumptions must be confronted and expunged, with particular emphasis on those related to race, class, language, and culture. This improbable feat, not unlike the transformation of Pinocchio from puppet to real boy, is accomplished as candidates reveal their feelings and attitudes through abundant in-class dialogue and by keeping a journal. From these activities is born each teacher's unique philosophy of teaching and learning.There is also a strong social-justice component to teacher education, with teachers cast as "activists committed to diminishing the inequities of American society." That vision of a teacher is seen by a considerable fraction of teacher educators (although not all) as more important than preparing a teacher to be an effective instructor.
Nowhere is the chasm between the two visions of teacher education--training versus formation--clearer than in the demise of the traditional methods course. The public, and policymakers who require such courses in regulations governing teacher education, may assume that when a teacher takes a methods course, it is to learn the best methods for teaching certain subject matter. That view, we are told in the AERA volume, is for the most part an anachronism. The current view, state professors Renee T. Clift and Patricia Brady, is that "A methods course is seldom defined as a class that transmits information about methods of instruction and ends with a final exam. [They] are seen as complex sites in which instructors work simultaneously with prospective teachers on beliefs, teaching practices and creation of identities--their students' and their own."Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?.The statement reveals just how far afield teacher education has traveled from its training purposes. It is hard not to suspect that the ambiguity in such language as the "creation of identities" is purposeful, because if a class fails to meet such objectives, no one would be the wiser.
The shift away from training to formation has had one immediate and indisputable outcome: the onus of a teacher's training has shifted from the teacher educators to the teacher candidates. What remains of the teacher educator's purpose is only to build the "capacity" of the candidate to be able to make seasoned professional judgments. Figuring out what actually to do falls entirely on the candidate.
Here is the guidance provided to student teachers at a large public university in New York:
In addition to establishing the norm for your level, you must, after determining your year-end goals, break down all that you will teach into manageable lessons. While so much of this is something you learn on the job, a great measure of it must be inside you, or you must be able to find it in a resource. This means that if you do not know the content of a grade level, or if you do not know how to prepare a lesson plan, or if you do not know how to do whatever is expected of you, it is your responsibility to find out how to do these things. Your university preparation is not intended to address every conceivable aspect of teaching.
Do not be surprised if your Cooperating Teacher is helpful but suggests you find out the "how to" on your own. Your Cooperating Teacher knows the value of owning your way into your teaching style.
Wisconsin has recently taken a first baby step toward teacher content knowledge requirements (something Massachusetts and Minnesota have done for years) via the adoption of MTEL-90. Much more on teacher content knowledge requirements, here.
Content knowledge requirements for teachers past & present.
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When you look at the average performance of American students on international test scores, our kids come off as a pretty middling bunch. If you rank countries based on their very fine differences, we come in 14th in reading, 23rd in science, and 25th in math. Those finishes led Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to flatly declare that "we're being out-educated."Related: www.wisconsin2.orgAnd on average, maybe we are. But averages also sometimes obscure more than they reveal. My colleague Derek Thompson has written before about how, once you compare students from similar income and class backgrounds, our relative performance improves dramatically, suggesting that our educational problems may be as much about our sheer number of poor families as our supposedly poor schools. This week, I stumbled on another data point that belies the stereotype of dimwitted American teens.
When it comes to raw numbers, it turns out we generally have far more top performers than any other developed nation.
That's according to the graph below from Economic Policy Institute's recent report on America's supply of science and tech talent. Among OECD nations in 2006, the United States claimed a third of high-performing students in both reading and science, far more than our next closest competitor, Japan. On math, we have a bit less to be proud of -- we just claimed 14 percent of the high-performers, compared to 15.2 percent for Japan and 16.2 percent of South Korea.
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Classrooms across the country roll out universal math and reading standards, a growing group of critics are pressing officials to slow their implementation or dump the learning goals entirely.This is the first school year that most states are using voluntary academic standards known as Common Core, which lay out what students should know from kindergarten through 12th grade. Written by a group of governors, state school officials and other experts with the goal of better preparing students for college and careers, the standards have been adopted entirely by 45 states and the District of Columbia since 2010. A 46th state, Minnesota, has adopted only the language-arts portion.
Now, the Common Core effort is under attack from an unlikely coalition: conservatives who decry the implementation costs and call the standards an intrusion into local education decisions; union leaders who worry that states have tied, or plan to tie, teacher evaluations to new Common Core exams; and some parents who contend their children are ill-prepared for the Common Core tests.
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Now we know what Gov. Jerry Brown really cares about -- what gets him riled and raring to rumble."The battle of their lives," he promises opponents. "This is a cause."
When a governor bares his soul like that, not only is he waving a nasty stick, he's tacking up a big sign that reads, "Name your price."
Brown's passion: pouring more tax money into inner-city schools at the expense of the suburbs.
It's not that simple, of course. Nothing about California school finance is.
Not all urban districts would benefit from Brown's school funding redistribution scheme. Oakland Unified, for example. Brown's hometown, where he was mayor, would get shortchanged.
Oakland's schools would receive $228 less per pupil under his plan when fully implemented than under the current funding formula, according to the state education department. The governor's own budget office also shows Oakland as a loser.
So the governor might want to tweak his proposal to eliminate at least one unintended consequence.
Brown's plan would allot significantly more money for districts with large percentages of poor children -- those eligible for subsidized lunches -- and English learners. But that would mean less than otherwise for middle-class and better-off districts where the vast majority of kids speak English at home.
Among the 50 largest districts, more than half would be losers under Brown's plan, based on education department calculations.
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But Shirey said he would withdraw that recommendation if the Sacramento Police Officers Association, the union representing city police officers and sergeants, does not agree to have its members pick up the full employee contribution into their pensions by July 1.Most city employees pay an employee share of pension contributions; the city picks up an employer share. The police union is the largest in the city that does not pay into its retirement plan.
Dustin Smith, the head of the police officers union, said the organization and city officials are in "active bargaining sessions" and that more talks are planned.
"We're still hoping we can bargain some type of deal that works out for both the community and the officers who serve it," he said.
The City Council will receive its first formal briefing on the budget at its May 7 meeting and is scheduled to adopt the budget June 11.
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School principals should know who their best teachers are, and those top performers deserve higher pay.Much more, here.Jeff Charbonneau, honored last week by President Barack Obama at the White House as national teacher of the year, helps show why.
Charbonneau teaches chemistry, physics, engineering and architecture at Zillah High School in Zillah, Wash.
"I fight a stigma," Charbonneau wrote in his award application. "Students hear the words 'quantum mechanics' and instantly think 'too hard' and 'no way.' It is my job to convince them that they are smart enough, that they can do anything."
He's succeeding. About two-thirds of juniors and seniors at the small, rural school are signing up for chemistry and physics. And nearly every student is graduating with some college credit, according to the Associated Press.
Charbonneau can award college credits to his high school students because he attained adjunct faculty status with local universities, and many of his fellow teachers at Zillah now are doing the same. Zillah offers 72 classes that can lead to college credits, and 90 percent of students go on to college, an apprenticeship or the military.
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Back when I used to blog about politics, I was a constant critic of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact operation. Or, as I called it, Politi"Fact," with the emphasis on the sarcasm quotes.Why? Because PolitiFact Wisconsin, as the local franchise is known, tries to set itself up as a neutral arbiter, and so it usually plays the "both sides do it" card. It can't be too critical of one side, even if that one side plays far more fast and loose with the facts than the other side does. (Also: there are only two sides, so the truth must lie in the middle!)
This kind of faux-neutrality is the hallmark not of fact-checkers but of a distant, entitled media, hoping to maintain an "above it all" reputation and the good graces of the folks who generously douse the state's largest media operation with significant political ad buys every couple of years.
In Monday's paper, the PolitiFact crew examines some claims made about school vouchers by groups both favoring the program's expansion (including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker) and opposing it, claiming it is "sorting out the truth" about voucher schools. It should be no surprise that I oppose expansion, though I am not personally involved in the anti-voucher groups cited in this story.
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The Madison School Board recently voted 7-0 to encourage the state Legislature to say no to school choice. The surprise would have been had they voted otherwise.I suspect Madison's school board is like yours in Neenah and others throughout the state. Given their druthers, they'd just as soon have no competition. Makes management ever so much simpler.
Of course, those who can afford to do so can send their children to private schools - but first they must pay the monopoly school district, or move out of town. What a business model! Kim Jong-un would approve!
Our school board has the firm backing of the teachers union - the same one that unilaterally closed down Madison schools for a week during the Siege of the Capitol in February-March 2011. It should! The union elected them!
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Schools that want to do a better job fighting bullying ought to start with one key step, a group of researchers said Tuesday: Stop using the term "bullying."Because it's "being used for everything from rolling eyes to 'not wanting to be your friend' to sexual assault, the word 'bullying' has really obscured our ability to focus on what's happening" to children, said Dorothy Espelage of the University of Illinois.
Educators have been "spinning our wheels for decades" in a bid to treat bullying, but they're often hampered by policies that require mistreatment to be repetitive, for example, part of the classic definition of bullying. That focus also obscures whether specific acts are happening more or less, she said.
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The Urban Scientist, Scientific American
News of Kiera Wilmot's arrest has seriously unnerved me. She is the Florida high school student who was experimenting with common household chemicals in science class that resulted in a minor explosion. There were no injuries and no damage to school property; however, she was taken away in handcuffs, formally arrested and expulled from school.
I acknowledge that too little information has been provided on the case. We have NO idea what was happening in the class. Where was the teacher? Were students involved in a laboratory activity at the time? I have spent time in the high school classroom. I know the shenanigans (and havoc) these pre-adults can cause. It is no laughing matter. Even if this were a prank, say something akin to my generation's idea of setting off smoke bombs in the hall during the passing of classes, my gut reaction stands.
I don't like what our public education (and justice) systems do to urban youth (e.g. the discipline gap with Black kids). I worry about urban kids who don't (tend) to have access to social capital that advocates for them and gives them a chance after stupid mistakes. I worry what this will mean to her family financially. What will it mean for her future? Will graduating from an alternative school prevent her from attending college? Will she be marked as a trouble maker? Will she have a criminal record that prevents her from gainful employment and a meaningful life? More immediately, will she get locked away for 20 years? Shit like that happens to kids who look like her.
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Peter Cooper understood this well. A wealthy man, he owned a lot of land in Manhattan -- including the land underneath what is now the Chrysler Building -- and he knew that land would, literally, produce healthy rents in perpetuity. A philanthropist, Cooper knew exactly what he wanted those rents to be spent on: he created the Cooper Union, a college with the defining characteristic that it would charge its students nothing. It was -- and is -- a noble cause. And in the early days, its trustees quite literally bought into that cause: they helped out with its endowment, and covered its deficits in years where it lost money.Cooper understood that free education doesn't really scale. If you're charging, then extra students provide extra income which can pay for extra teachers and administrators and buildings. But if you're giving education away for free, then it's imperative that you operate strictly within your means. The only way to grow is if you persuade some new generations of wealthy benefactors to contribute their own money or land. But at Cooper Union, that hasn't happened for many decades.
As a result, Cooper Union has always been an extremely special educational institution, the kind of place where a little went a very long way. The faculty was not well paid; the facilities were bare-bones. But the students were fantastic, because Cooper could pick the very best of the very best. And the college's overriding social mission engendered a huge amount of loyalty and love for the institution, as well as being reflected deep in its curricula. Here's Sangamithra Iyer, for instance:
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As public schools across the country transition to the new Common Core standards, which bring wholesale change to the way math and reading are taught in 45 states and the District, criticism of the approach is emerging from groups as divergent as the tea party and the teachers union.The standards, written by a group of states and embraced by the Obama administration, set common goals for reading, writing and math skills that students should develop from kindergarten through high school graduation. Although classroom curriculum is left to the states, the standards emphasize critical thinking and problem solving and encourage thinking deeply about fewer topics.
But as the common core shifts from theory to reality, critics are emerging. State lawmakers are concerned about the cost, which the Fordham Institute estimated could run as high as $12 billion nationally. Progressives fret over new exams, saying that the proliferation of standardized tests is damaging public education. Teachers worry that they haven't had enough training and lack the resources to competently teach to the new standards. And conservatives say the new standards mean a loss of local control over education and amount to a national curriculum. They've begun calling it "Obamacore."
On Tuesday, the head of the American Federation of Teachers and a strong supporter of the Common Core standards will warn that the new approach is being poorly implemented and requires a "mid-course correction" or the effort will fall apart.
"The Common Core is in trouble," said Randi Weingarten, the union president who is slated to speak Tuesday in New York about the issue. "There is a serious backlash in lots of different ways, on the right and on the left."
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Described as the "Alex Ferguson of University Challenge", for 16 years librarian Stephen Pearson has been the driving force behind the rigorous selection and training procedures of Manchester University's quiz team, leading them to three victories since 2005. Ahead of tonight's final between Manchester and UCL, he gives five insights into what makes a successful team.1. Fingers on buzzer
The ability to buzz in on starter questions is actually more important than pure knowledge. The starters are the key to a team's success - even if a contestant has copious amounts of general knowledge, if they don't have the instinct to buzz in straightaway, they're simply not going to get the starter points. Contestants should buzz in even if they are not 100 per cent sure of the answer.
2. Team building
A cohesive team is essential. When picking the contestants I ensure that there's at least one candidate who's strong on literature, history, geography and science. The training sessions allow the contestants to understand when to leave certain questions to the expert in that field. The first practice session is for them to get to know each other as people as much as anything else. I use a similar format to business team-building exercises - there should be lots of bonding and harnessing of team spirit. I'm getting a bit old for it now, but I know that after the practice sessions current and previous contestants will go to the pub for, I'm told, informal mentoring over drinks.
3. The classics
Many of the University Challenge questions include clues which refer to the Latin and Greek derivations of words - particularly scientific terms. This means that people who know their classics can respond even if they've got no idea about the science involved. Kwasi Kwarteng, now an MP for the Conservative party, showed this to great effect in his performance as part of the winning Trinity College Cambridge team of 1995.
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A battle is heating up in California over Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to boost funding for all schools, but funnel more money to districts where many students are poor and struggle with English and less to wealthier districts.Since Mr. Brown, a Democrat, unveiled the "weighted funding" plan in January, school chiefs in poorer areas have pushed hard for the state legislature to pass it.
But superintendents in richer districts argue that the proposed redistribution is unfair and that they want a bigger slice of the pie now that the state's finances have improved, thanks to a stronger economy and a tax increase.
Public schools in California, as in other states, are financed by a mix of federal, state and local dollars. Local funding includes property taxes and donations, which tend to bring in more money in wealthier areas.Federal funding, which includes Title I funding for low-income districts, generally brings more money to low-income districts.
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As the Rev. Richard Sunderlage entered the elementary classroom at Resurrection Lutheran School one recent morning, all five students shot up out of their desks.Students at the school are required to stand whenever an adult enters the room. They also must address their elders as "ma'am" or "sir."
Such rules set the school apart, but so do many other things. It is tiny -- just 12 students in first grade through high school -- and it is not affiliated with a church. Even rarer, it charges no tuition or fees.
"We don't want there to be any barriers," said Sunderlage, the school's driving force.
Now in its third year, the school appears to be the only no-tuition, no-fees, first-through-12th-grade private school in the state. Matt Kussow, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Religious & Independent Schools, said he is not aware of any others.
Good Shepherd Lutheran School in Wisconsin Rapids also is tuition-free, but it stops at eighth grade, charges a book fee and caps enrollment at 15. Resurrection Lutheran turns no one away. It has had as many as 33 students and could hold up to 100.
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Indiana lawmakers are proposing huge increases in state education funding this year. Ditto those in Wisconsin.Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman's 2009 Madison Rotary Speech:Here in Illinois, The Deadbeat State? Just the opposite. Education funding is being strangled by the same python that is strangling the rest of state government's finances: pension obligations. Every day that the Legislature delays the enactment of pension reform, the unfunded liability of the state's five pension funds grows by $17 million, according to Gov. Pat Quinn's office.
In this state, we're not arguing about how to, say, give more money to schools because great schools drive growth and innovation, attract businesses, create jobs.
No, we're arguing instead about which school kids will get cheated more than other school kids because state lawmakers dither on a pension fix -- kids from richer districts or those from poorer districts? That's the depressing debate we're having.
Here's why: In Illinois, the Legislature sets a "foundation" funding level that the state says every student needs for an adequate education. That's the starting point for a calculation that determines how much state aid each district receives. The calculation considers each district's local taxing ability to meet that foundation level, and also looks at how many students in the district need extra support because they're from low-income families. Districts that have relatively lower revenue and educate relatively more higher-need students receive more state aid.
"Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk - the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It's as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands." Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI's vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the "impossibility" of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars ("Similar to GM"; "worry" about the children given this situation).
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Students at Wingra School only needed to travel across the street for a day in the outdoors as part of its annual all-school unit called Outdoor Odyssey.Last week, students ages 5 to 14 culminated the unit by working in multi-age teams to complete a variety of challenges throughout the UW Arboretum, across Monroe Street from the school.
The challenges, created by Wingra teachers and UW Arboretum naturalists, included identifying animal skin and bones, a scavenger hunt, identifying scat and measuring the weather with different instruments made by the students.
Wearing a matching raincoat and boots with a bug design, kindergartener Leo Langer, 5, used a trowel to dig up invasive plants under the supervision of teachers and Arboretum staff. He said it was his favorite activity so far that day.
"I learned a new way to dig out (dame's rocket) instead of just pulling stuff out with your hands," he said.
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Harold Begay drives around Tuba City, on the Navajo Reservation, showing a visitor boarded-up buildings and ramshackle houses abandoned by the federal government and left to rot.Begay, who is superintendent of Tuba City Unified School District, tells his visitor about high unemployment on the reservation and the sense of alienation in many young people who feel cut off from their culture and the traditional Arizona classroom. Like most Arizona districts on American Indian reservations, Tuba City's is struggling.
Begay is familiar with the disconnect between the traditional values of the Navajos and modern education.
A quiet man whose soft speech is inflected with the tones of his native Navajo language, Begay spent his childhood tending his family's corn and sheep a few miles from where his Tuba City office now stands. He greeted the sunrise with prayers and ended evenings with a family meal and stories about what it means to be Navajo, or "Dine" as they call themselves.
After enduring troubles in school on the reservation, Begay joined the Marines and, after leaving the military, drove a school bus. He eventually went back to school, earned a doctorate and traveled the world before being drawn back to Tuba City, a few square miles of modest homes on the mesas of the Painted Desert, 75 miles north of Flagstaff.
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The team from West High School won at the Wisconsin Science Olympiad State Tournament on Saturday April 13th at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The team competed against high school teams from across the state. West High performed at a high level, winning many individual medals (8 first place medals) and the overall team championship. West followed up last year's win with back to back titles. They also won the honor to represent the state of Wisconsin at the national tournament where the top Math and Science high schools will compete for national honors. Hamilton Middle School will also attend the national tournament.Congratulations.
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