Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. He worked at Paypal, founded LinkedIn, and invested in dozens more. Last night, he appeared on Charlie Rose (full interview embedded above, full transcript below), where he talks about the rise of social networking in general, and LinkedIn’s success in particular (it is adding one million professionals every 17 days and is emerging as a “low cost provider of really good hiring services”).
Yesterday, Hoffman wrote a post for us with some concrete suggestions for a Stimulus 2.0 plan led by startups. He hit some of the same themes on Charlie Rose. The best part of the hour-long interview, however is towards the end where Hoffman discusses the role that entrepreneurship can play in getting America out of its rut. Some excerpts:
US Education Secretary Duncan Advocates for the Stimulus
To help struggling schools, the federal government will use stimulus funding to encourage states to expand school days, reward good teachers, fire bad ones and measure how students perform compared with peers in India and China, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said yesterday.
History has shown that money alone does not drive school improvement, Duncan said, pointing to the District of Columbia, where public school students consistently score near the bottom on national reading and math tests even though the school system spends more per pupil than its suburban counterparts do.
“D.C. has had more money than God for a long time, but the outcomes are still disastrous,” Duncan said in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters. He said the unprecedented influx of cash, which will begin to flow in the next 30 to 45 days, would target states, local school systems and nonprofit organizations willing to adopt policies that have been proven to work.
“The challenge isn’t an intellectual one, it’s one of political courage,” said Duncan, who developed a reputation for a willingness to experiment and disrupt the status quo in seven years as chief executive of Chicago schools.
Grading system change debated: Will city’s method make difference?
David Chard, dean of the Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says there’s little difference between most grading scales.
“It’s like Celsius and Fahrenheit. It’s exactly the same thing,” he said.
Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the advocacy group FairTest, said a debate over grading scales often reveals the “tyranny of false precision.”
“These numbers were not handed down by God on a stone tablet,” he said.
To Robert Marzano, a Denver-based education researcher, the typical grading scale is an incomplete measure of student achievement. He recommends bar graphs measuring student achievement on various course topics.
As officials in the Pittsburgh Public Schools prepare to drop a controversial grading scale for a 5-point scale they’re calling fairer and more accurate, Dr. Chard, Dr. Marzano and Mr. Schaeffer cautioned that no version is perfect.
All require some degree of teacher subjectivity, and all require careful, thoughtful application, Dr. Chard said.
Mr. Schaeffer said grading scale controversies generate “much more heat than light,” yet Dallas and Fairfax, Va., also are in the midst of them now.
Dr. Marzano said as many as 3,000 schools or districts have made some of the improvements he favors, such as expanded report cards with bar graphs breaking down student achievement at the topic level while still giving overall course averages and letter grades. He said the bar graphs can correspond to five-point scales measuring achievement in the topic areas.
The Madison School District’s move toward “Standards Based” report cards has not been without some controversy.
Californian and Texan universities struggle with admissions policies
CALIFORNIA and Texas are both large states that are home to a growing population of minorities. They also share another trait. In a blow to the policy of affirmative action, public universities in the two states were forbidden, a decade ago, from using race as a factor in college admission decisions–by a federal court, in Texas’s case, and by state law in California’s.
Texas stalled, guaranteeing admission at the state university of his or her choice to any student graduating in the top 10% of their high-school class. This helped students from predominantly minority high schools who excelled relative to their peers. The University of California (UC), on the other hand, altered its admissions standards in 2002 to require a “comprehensive” review of applications. Under that system, students win points not just for academic criteria such as grades and test scores, but also for overcoming “life challenges”. Affirmative action by the back door, some critics say.
Both policies have had modest success in maintaining diversity. But now policymakers in both states are about to shake the kaleidoscope again. William Powers, the president of the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, has sounded an alarm. The number of students in the top tenth of fast-growing Texas’s high-school classes will have climbed from some 20,000 in 1998 to over 30,000 by 2015. Last year more than 80% of Texas freshmen at UT Austin came from this group. By 2013 it will be 100%.
The 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
The watchword of this year’s Brown Center Report is caution–caution in linking state tests to international assessments–“benchmarking” is the term–caution in proceeding with a policy of “algebra for all eighth graders,” caution in gleaning policy lessons from the recent progress made by urban schools. State and local budget woes will restrain policymakers from adopting costly education reforms, but even so, the three studies contained herein are a reminder that restraint must be exercised in matters other than budgets in governing education well. All too often, policy decisions are based on wishful thinking rather than cautious analysis. As education evolves as a discipline, the careful analysis of high-quality data will provide the foundation for meaningful education reform.
The report consists of three sections, each discussing a separate study. The first section looks at international testing. Powerful groups, led by the National Governors Association, are urging the states to benchmark their state achievement tests to an international assessment, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). After comparing PISA to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the other major international assessment in which the United States participates, the Brown Center analysis examines findings from a chapter of the 2006 PISA report that addresses student engagement. The chapter presents data on students’ attitudes, values, and beliefs toward science.
Warning to UK schools over admissions code breaches
The new chief adjudicator for schools, Ian Craig,has warned schools that are breaking rules by selecting pupils covertly that they will be found out.
Craig, who takes up the post responsible for policing admissions in April, told the Guardian: “If they [schools] are still breaking the code they will be found out quite quickly… we will be sampling schools and reporting to the secretary of state.”
Research published today by researchers at the London School of Economics suggested that a minority of schools – mostly faith schools – are still breaking the two-year-old code of admissions which forbids the interviewing of applicants or discriminatory questions about parents’ marital status or occupations.
Craig said: “I can guarantee the system is fairer now than in the past. The secretary of state is emphasising the fact that he will do his best to make sure it’s fairer. Whether it’s 100% fair or not – I’m sure it isn’t. But it’s up to the legislators to improve it and make it fairer and we will monitor the system.”
How Science Teachers Enact the Curriculum
Scientific knowledge seems to grow at an exponential rate. The sheer amount of data and knowledge and understanding of the world and of the universe keeps growing. That’s obvious. But less obvious is the fact that approaches to science education also change over time.
Of course science education still involves teaching students about the current scientific knowledge base. But another part of science education receiving attention is teacher-facilitated inquiry–that is, helping students learn how to ask a scientific question, how to pursue that question through a series of activities, and how to make activities and data sources cohere.
When science teachers adopt innovative curricula, it’s important that they structure students’ activities as a unit, rather than as a set of linear, discrete events. That’s because students learn with deeper understanding when the teacher has woven the concepts and activities into a coherent whole. Recent research by UW-Madison education professor Sadhana Puntambekar has helped to pinpoint how that’s done, and how science teachers effectively facilitate classroom discussion.
Coherent presentation of activities in a science unit is especially critical when students use a variety of information resources–for example, books, CD-ROMs, and hypertext systems–along with their hands-on activities. Students need teacher help, or scaffolding, as they work to make sense of all the available information.
An Update on Washington DC’s Teacher Compensation Plan
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has said a financial consultant’s report shows that her plan to pay teachers as much as $135,000 a year in salaries and bonuses can be sustained with District dollars after a promised five-year, $100 million contribution by private foundations is spent.
The District’s long-term ability to pay for such an unprecedented compensation package is one of several important questions surrounding Rhee’s proposal. Leaders of the Washington Teachers’ Union have expressed concern about the risks of signing a contract with the District based in part on private funding, given the troubled economic climate.
“What we want is funding that is sustainable,” said WTU President George Parker.
Appearing recently on WAMU’s “Kojo Nnamdi Show,” Rhee said an outside consultant, whom she did not identify, had vetted her compensation proposal.
The Teenager Audio Test
Parents wonder whether Madison’s school lunches are healthy for kids
The “hot lunch” line snakes out the door of the multipurpose room at Franklin Elementary School. Kids dressed in snow boots and parkas file past a table where a staff member is handing out plastic-wrapped containers of hot dogs and fries, canned peaches and a cookie. Forget trays or plates. The kids clutch the packages in both hands and, after a student helper plunks a carton of milk on top, hug the whole load to their chests, trying not to drop mittens and hats. They scurry into the gym and squeeze into a spot at one of the crowded lunch tables, where the “cold lunch” kids are chowing down with a 10-minute head start. Twelve minutes left before the bell rings. Better eat fast.
Is the Madison Metropolitan School District’s school lunch program unhealthy for kids?
It depends who you ask. On one side is a well-trained food service department that manages to feed 19,000 kids under a bevy of guidelines on a slim budget. On the other is a growing number of parents and community advocates armed with research about the shortcomings of mass-produced food and race-to-the-finish mealtimes.
“We’re perpetuating a fast-food mentality,” said Pat Mulvey, a personal chef and the parent of a second-grader and a kindergartner at Franklin. “We can do better.”
Mulvey has joined a small group of parents at south side Franklin and affiliated Randall Elementary calling for changes to the school lunch program. Among their concerns: a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, high fat and salt content in items perceived as “processed” or “junk food,” little nutritional information on the Web site, too much plastic, too much waste and too little time to eat.
This isn’t the first time parents in the district have raised concerns about school lunch. For the past decade, parents, educators and healthy food advocates in the Madison area have asked the School Board, principals and the district’s food service to serve more fresh foods and make lunch longer than 25 minutes.
This issue has come up a number of times over the years.
School placement loopholes remain
Government guidance that parents should know the results of school entry tests before finalising applications for places is still being flouted.
Research shows more schools in England are using selection tests, and parents already find the system too complex.
The government says its admissions code – which admissions authorities must abide by – is now fairer than ever.
The loophole is that it contains clauses to which admissions authorities “should” adhere – not “must”.
On selection tests, the admissions code says: “Grammar schools and other schools, or their admission authorities, which are permitted to use selection by ability or aptitude, should ensure that parents are informed of the outcome of entry tests before they make their applications for other schools.”
Re-thinking our education system a necessity
Privatizing education is the best way to ensure quality
With Gov. Jim Gibbons’ proposed budget cuts to Nevada’s education system being debated within the chambers of the state legislature, everyone is cowering in the corner wondering whether or not we will have a recognizable education system in the future.
Managing and cutting the budget for useless and wasteful programs is what might determine our future. Does a UNLV coach deserve to get paid millions of dollars? Does President David B. Ashley really need a $15,000 desk with matching $3600 leather chairs? Most people don’t care enough to notice this wasteful spending or assume that these benefits are predetermined in contracts. But, when we catch corporate CEOs and other executives flying in private jets or building huge corporate offices, we criticize them openly.
Outrageously expensive desks aside, raising taxes is not the solution. Some suggest raising the room tax because the burden falls on tourists. This mentality is careless because I can’t imagine a tourist who would spend a night in a hotel room with artificially inflated prices due to higher room taxes. As we have seen recently, they are more likely to take their business elsewhere.
More than enough tax money already goes to an already failing public school system. This past election, voters passed yet another room tax to further support the failing public education system in the state.
Charters Offer More Choices in Harlem, but Stir Concern for Public Schools
The high-achieving sixth graders huddled near the gym bleachers to mull their options: African drumming at the Future Leaders Institute, debate team at Democracy Prep or piano at New Heights Academy.
The sixth graders, seven of them, said they were bored with the intellectual pace at Middle School 322 in Washington Heights, so their teachers brought them to the Harlem Education Fair on Saturday to hunt for a new school for the fall.
“I need to be challenged more,” said Shirley Reyes, 11, who was checking out the mix of public charter schools and private schools making their pitches. “These schools give you a better opportunity, they give you better test grades.”
The bustle inside the gym at City College of New York at 138th Street in Harlem — organizers said the fair drew about 5,000 people — reflected just how significantly Harlem’s educational landscape has changed over the past decade.
Charter schools, which are publicly financed but have latitude in how they operate, are now a major force in the community, with 24 of them serving 6,000 children (across the city, there are about 24,000 students enrolled in 78 charter schools). The neighborhood includes about 70 traditional public schools, 14 Catholic schools and 16 other private schools.
Public Colleges Get a Surge of Applicants
Admissions officers at the State University of New York college campus here are suddenly afraid of getting what they have always wished for: legions of top high-school seniors saying “yes” to their fat envelopes.
Lisa Jones, right, and Kimberly Strano assess applications at SUNY New Paltz.
Students are already tripled up in many dorm rooms after an unexpectedly large freshman class entered last fall. And despite looming budget cuts from the state, which more tuition-paying students could help offset, officials say they are determined not to diminish the quality of student life by expanding enrollment at their liberal-arts college beyond the current 6,000 undergraduates.
At SUNY New Paltz, as at many other well-regarded public institutions this spring, admissions calculations carefully measured over many years are being set aside as an unraveling economy is making less expensive state colleges more appealing.
The application deadline is not until April 1, but officials here conservatively predict 15,500 students competing for 1,100 spots, a 12 percent jump over last year.
Similar surges are occurring at public colleges and universities across the country, education experts say.
More on DC Vouchers: “Will Obama Stand Up for These Kids?”
Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama’s new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position.
The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation’s capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program — and with it perhaps the Parker children’s hopes for a Sidwell diploma.
Sarah and James Parker attend Sidwell Friends School with the president’s daughters, thanks to a voucher program Sen. Dick Durbin wants to end.
Known as the “Durbin language” after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that’s so handy when you don’t want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines.
Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. “I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards,” she says. “I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell.” It’s not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt’s students are proficient in reading or math.
That’s the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people’s children — mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos — trapped in schools where they’d never let their own kids set foot.
Schools Crunch Calculus on Stimulus
Schools struggling with some of their worst budget crises in generations are taking stock of President Obama’s stimulus package — hoping the money will restore funding for things like textbooks, teacher salaries and tuition.
The $100 billion in funding dedicated to education touches programs for almost every age group, from early-childhood programs to financial aid for college students. While the money, part of the $787 billion stimulus package, may not result in a full turnaround, districts say, it will help stop some of the bleeding.
Michael Klein
“It’s going to mean a softer landing for us,” says Jack O’Connell, state superintendent of public instruction in California. That state is facing an $11.6 billion cutback in public-education funding, affecting the remainder of this school year as well as next. In some cases, Mr. O’Connell says, “instead of a superintendent having to decide between textbooks or a math teacher, we’ll be able to do both. Or, it will mean a longer bus ride for kids, instead of eliminating transportation.”
When addressing education in the stimulus package, the president last week told a joint session of Congress, “We have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children’s progress.”
NYC Board of Education Human Resources
Ira Glass:
The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they’ve been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up. They call it the Rubber Room. Average length of stay? Months, sometimes years. Plus other stories of the uneasy interaction between humans and their institutions.
The Rubber Room story was produced by Joe Richman and the good people at Radio Diaries.
Note: we’re doing the Rubber Room story with some filmmakers who are making a feature-length documentary about the Rubber Room. Learn more here.
On Public vs. Private School
An annual rite is well under way, as families around the country receive their private-school renewal contracts or acceptance letters. In conventional years, grumbling over tuition aside, their outgoing mail would include signed forms and a registration fee.
This year’s hand-wringing over tuition might be dismissed as the latest hardship for the patrician class, which, like everyone else, can simply educate its young in the public system. But of the more than three million families with at least one child in private school, according to the 2005 census, almost two million of them have a household income of less than $100,000. According to a Department of Education survey, in 2003-4, the median annual tuition of nonsectarian schools was $8,200; for Catholic schools, $3,000.
So for every family that pays $30,000 and up to attend elite schools in Manhattan, thousands more will pay tuitions closer to $2,700 — next year’s cost for St. Agnes Catholic School in Roeland Park, Kan.
To many parents who step outside the public system, an independent or parochial school is not a luxury but a near necessity, the school itself a marker of educational values, religious identity, social standing or class aspirations. Whether tuition payments to the country’s 29,000 private schools are made easily or with sacrifice, many parents see the writing of those checks as a bedrock definition of doing the best by their children.
Low Income Student Advance Placement (AP) Wisconsin Incentive Grant
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:
Wisconsin has won a $2.2 million grant to expand Advanced Placement to low-income students.
Wisconsin’s $2.2 million federal Advanced Placement Incentive Program grant will target 46 eligible middle and high schools, benefitting about 26,600 students.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s “Blended Learning Innovations: Building a Pipeline for Equity and Access” grant from the U.S. Department of Education will support a multipronged approach for students from eligible middle and high schools throughout the state. Poverty rates in participating districts range from 40 percent to 83 percent. Statewide, 35 percent of students are economically disadvantaged based on family income levels that qualify them for free or reduced-price school meals.
In the recent Advanced Placement Report to the Nation, Wisconsin had the Midwest’s highest participation rate (24.2 percent) for 2008 graduates taking one or more Advanced Placement exams while in high school. Of the 15,677 graduates who took Advanced Placement exams, 973 students, or just 6.3 percent, received a fee waiver because they were from economically disadvantaged families.
State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster noted that the grant employs strategies that engage students at various times in their educational planning and preparation. “We want to increase our support for students so they are ready for the academic challenges of Advanced Placement coursework,” she said. “Staff development and business, community, and family partnerships are major components of our effort.”
The three-year grant targets 19 high schools and 27 middle schools located in three cooperative educational service agencies (CESAs) and the Madison Metropolitan School District. CESA 7 is headquartered in Green Bay, CESA 9 is headquartered in Tomahawk, and CESA 11 is headquartered in Turtle Lake. The CESAs will coordinate activities associated with the grant.
Related: Dane County AP Course Offering Comparison.
A Fascinating Look at K-12 Tax & Spending Politics: WEAC and Wisconsin’s latest Budget
The mood was sour at the WEAC offices in August of 2001. Republican Governor Scott McCallum had signed a budget that only increased school funding by $472 million over the biennium. These new funds, approved by McCallum while the Governor was wrestling with a budget deficit, represented increases of 3.1% and 4.2% in school aids over the 2001-03 biennium.
In a press release following the bill signing, the teachers’ union sneered at McCallum’s paltry effort, calling it a “status quo” budget. At no point in the release did they mention the half a billion in new funds they received – instead, they excoriated McCallum for vetoing a .78% increase in the property tax caps and for vetoing relaxation of the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) law, which caps teacher salaries. They derided the Republican governor for not increasing aid enough for special education, saying the “lack” of special education funds meant “school districts will be forced to pit special education against other programs, resulting in decisions that hurt all students.” To the extent they mention the increased aids at all, they dismiss them as merely “part of a continuing effort” to hold down property taxes.
Nearly eight years later, Democratic Governor Jim Doyle stood at the podium in front of the Legislature, which was now controlled fully by members of his own party. Faced with a budget deficit of $5.9 billion (much of it his own doing) Doyle announced his intention to increase school aids by $426 million over the biennium. Even public school children in Wisconsin will recognize this as $46 million less than the increase authorized by McCallum in 2001.
Doyle’s budget also included a funding shell game that imperiled school aids in the future. Doyle cut over $500 million in general funds out of school aids and plugged in an equal amount in federal “stimulus” funds to cover the aids – federal funds which may very well not be available in the next budget. On top of that, he funds virtually the entire school aid increase with one-time federal money. When 2011 rolls around, school aids could be over $1 billion in the hole and fighting tooth and nail with other state programs for funding.
Undoubtedly, the small funding increase, coupled with the risky way funds are shifted around to patch up holes, would cause the thoughtful folks at WEAC to have some serious concerns regarding Doyle’s budget.
Surprise! The day after his budget address, WEAC wasted no time in praising the proposed Doyle school funding plan, gushing that it “stays true to Wisconsin’s priorities and values.”
Schneider correctly points out the risks of using stimulus/splurge funds to plug budget holes. Wisconsin K-12 spending has grown significantly over the years, while UW System state tax dollars have been flat.
The riddle of education: Why is it the last priority?
ALTHOUGH it wasn’t favored to win, and it didn’t, “The Class” was film critics’ “should win” pick for best foreign-language film. Because this deeply engaging movie addresses the subject of teaching underserved public school students, it points to the obvious larger question of why education itself so often should win, but doesn’t.
In the compromised version of the economic stimulus package, it was reported by the Los Angeles Times, education spending was “one of the main sticking points” in securing the necessary votes. While protecting funds for other needs such as healthcare, housing, transportation, green energy, infrastructure, the auto industry, and even banking, why cut education? Why are teaching and learning so routinely deemed expendable when everyone agrees they shouldn’t be?
In a bracingly effective way, “The Class” confronts this riddle with the vivid example of a middle school French teacher in an immigrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris. François Bégaudeau is this teacher as well as the author of “Entre les Murs,” the acclaimed novel/memoir on which the film is closely based. Onscreen, he and his actual students make the hectic “ordinaire tragi-comique” of the book three-dimensional. And under the sly direction of Laurent Cantet, their fragmented classroom interactions yield a film celebrated as “seamless” by actor Sean Penn, who headed the jury awarding it the Cannes Festival’s Palme d’Or for best picture.
Alexandra Marshall, a guest columnist, is the author of “The Court of Common Pleas” and four other novels.
Leader Selection: Disturbing Evidence That Looks Trump Performance
Who would you choose to sail your boat? Who would you vote for? Who do you want for your boss?
The little test above is from a study summarized in the always wonderful BPS Digest, my vote for the best place in the world to find translations of academic research. It is from a forthcoming study in Science. As BPS reports:
“John Antonakis and Olaf Dalgas presented photos of pairs of competing candidates in the 2002 French parliamentary elections to hundreds of Swiss undergrads, who had no idea who the politicians were. The students were asked to indicate which candidate in each pair was the most competent, and for about 70 per cent of the pairs, the candidate rated as looking most competent was the candidate who had actually won the election. The startling implication is that the real-life voters must also have based their choice of candidate on looks, at least in part.”
Then, the researchers asked kids and adults the “who would you choose as the captain” question and “For the pair of candidates shown above, 77 per cent children who rated this pair, and 67 per cent of adults, chose Laurent Henart, on the right (the real-life winning candidate), rather than Jean-Jacques Denis on the left.”
Retiree health debt can’t be ignored
State legislators no sooner congratulated themselves for solving California’s $42 billion budget deficit than state Controller John Chiang insensitively reminded them they are continually adding to an even larger debt for retiree health and dental benefits.
The $42 billion deficit supposedly was wiped away by last week’s narrowly approved $12.5 billion in new taxes, $14.9 billion in spending cuts and $11 billion in new borrowing in adopted budgets for 2008-09 and 2009-10. We’re skeptical considering the state’s typically rosy revenue projections, the continual economic decline that is likely to reduce revenue even more and voters’ unlikely approval of borrowing schemes on the May 19 ballot to bridge the budget gap.
However that pans out, the state already owes another $48.2 billion in unpaid costs for retiree health and dental benefits. This year, 392,000 state employees and retirees whose health coverage is provided by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System cost the state $3.7 billion. The health benefits are separate from CalPERS’ retirement fund, and are financed from employer and member payments.
In effect the state has paid the bare minimum to cover its annual costs, as an overspending consumer might squeak by making the minimum monthly credit card payment. But the debt mounts.
(un)classes: P2P Learning
Ever wish you had the option to get up off the couch and spend the afternoon learning to rock climb, cook, or maybe juggle? Well, we have and that’s why we came up with (un)classes. (Un)classes are to continuing education what BarCamps are to conferences — a lightweight, low-pressure, and most of all fun way to explore topics that interest you without having to make a big up-front commitment.
Unclasses.com is a site to connect people who want to learn about a topic with those in their area who want to teach it. It’s basically a marketplace for matching interest with passion. The actual (un)classes can be whatever you want them to be. People in your area suggest things they want to learn, others join, and someone volunteers to teach. It’s that simple.
(Un)classes are what we call casual learning, fun people exploring mutual interests in a stress-free (and non-competitive) social setting. And the community is in charge: wanna learn something no one is teaching, create a class and recruit a teacher; have a hobby you love and want to share, offer to teach it and assemble some students.
(Un)classes are all about intellectual curiosity and the joy of learning. They’re for people who want to explore the world around them, try out new hobbies, and get out of their boxes one (un)class at a time. If that sounds like you, then you’re exactly the type of person we want to form the core of the (un)class community.
Jane Pettit might see good – and bad – at Bradley Tech High School
Dear Mrs. Pettit,
Ald. Bob Donovan wrote recently that Bradley Tech High School, the school you made happen with a $20 million gift, is “a disgrace that is likely causing Jane Pettit to turn over in her grave.”
Fran Croak, who, unlike Donovan, knew you well as your lawyer and close adviser, is confident you’re resting comfortably, because there are a lot of good things going on at the school, which is named after your father and your uncle. Unlike Donovan, he spends time in the building and is a member of the commission of community leaders that oversees what’s going on.
I thought I’d fill you in on things I saw and heard when I spent a few hours at Tech the other day, as well as in other visits over the years, in case that’s helpful in making up your own mind whether to be pleased or horrified.
The community at large appears to be on the horrified side – at least if you listen to the radio talk shows and some similar chatter. But the folks at the school, both adults and kids, are convinced Bradley Tech is pretty much your typical school, except better than some others. They feel like the kid who incurs the teacher’s wrath even though everyone else did worse things – except in this case, it’s the wrath of the TV helicopters circling overhead after a fight in the school.
Of course, high schools these days – even in the suburbs (did you hear about the New Berlin Eisenhower mess?) – aren’t like they were when you were a student.
There are good aspects to that. A lot of kids, at Bradley Tech and elsewhere, are doing more sophisticated work than you did in high school, not only because of the changes in technology, but because expectations are so different. College wasn’t a must in your day the way it is in the eyes of many kids now, including some at Bradley Tech.
MPS to allow advertising in schools, with restrictions
You’re now welcome to put up advertising inside Milwaukee public schools – provided you can meet more than 15 restrictions on what the ads say and where they’re placed.
An end to the ban on advertising inside schools was sought by MPS athletic commissioner Bill Molbeck and others who are hoping that ads in places such as gyms and athletic fields will generate money for financially stressed athletic programs.
After extended discussions at three meetings in recent weeks, the School Board approved the policy last week without discussion.
Athletic directors and coaches at several high schools told School Board members that they are having a hard time obtaining uniforms, practice equipment and other necessities because they are short of money. They said many of the teams they play, including teams from some suburban schools, are able to do things that they can’t because they get money from advertising.
Board members, particularly Jennifer Morales, added provisions to the original proposal from school administrators to make sure advertising they thought was inappropriate remained out of bounds.
Under the new policy, businesses or organizations will be allowed to advertise as long as ads meet requirements such as:
There is a conspiracy to deny children the vital lesson of failure
Chris Woodhead, via a kind reader:
Parents, teachers and ministers are all engaged in a deception over our exam system says the former chief inspector of schools
Sitting at the back of the classroom, I cringed. A pupil had given an answer that betrayed his complete misunderstanding of the question. His teacher beamed. “Well done, Johnny,” she said, “that is fantastic.”
Why, I asked her afterwards, had she not corrected his mistake? She looked at me as if I were mad. “If I’d told him that he’d got it wrong he would have been humiliated in front of the rest of the class. It would have been a dreadful blow to his self-esteem.” With a frosty glare she left the room.
Have you looked at your children’s exercise books recently? The odds are that the teacher’s comments will all be in green ink. Red ink these days is thought to be threatening and confrontational. Green is calm and reassuring and encouraging. If you read the comments, you will probably find that they are pretty reassuring and encouraging, too. The work may not be very good, but the teacher appears to have found it inspirational.
One of my Sunday Times readers wrote in recently to ask why her son’s headmaster was so reluctant to tell parents whether children had passed or failed internal school examinations. His line was that school tests were meant to diagnose weaknesses rather than to give a clear view of a pupil’s grasp of the subject. He wanted to help his pupils do better and he was worried that honesty might demotivate pupils who were not achieving very much. Did I, she asked, think this was a very sensible idea? I replied that I did not.
GOTTA GO HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD TO DO A TRACKING STUDY
National Council on Teacher Quality:
Kenya appears to be a fave location among educational researchers of late. A relatively stable country where teacher salaries are low (primary teachers make the equivalent of about $3,500 annually) must be the draw. To study the effects of ability tracking in schools, three U.S. researchers provided the funding to 121 Kenyan schools so that they could double the number of their first grade teachers, enabling class sizes of 45 students instead of 90.
Half of the students were assigned to the new first grade classes based on their ability, a practice pejoratively referred to in the U.S. as ‘tracking’, and the other half were randomly assigned, regardless of their ability. Researchers found that students in the schools with tracking scored higher–though just a little–on a post-test than their peers in nontracked schools. More important was the fact that the improved performance was consistent across the board at all levels, for low-, medium- and high-scoring students.
Given the inordinate differences between class sizes, the results are likely not generalizable to the U.S., but still of interest.
Complete 750K PDF Report.
Naughty Teenagers
There is the usual and predictable outrage in the British papers and on the radio today about the latest figures for teenage pregnancy–which has become a bit more common at the last count, and which, despite the government’s best and lavish efforts, remains much more prevalent in Britain than in most of continental Europe (though less so than in America). The idea of wildly libidinous adolescents feeds usefully into a general tabloid narrative of rampant teenage delinquency, parental fecklessness and a country that is going to the dogs.
So here’s an inconvenient fact for the moral declinists: teenage pregnancy and births to teenage mothers were very much more common fifty years ago, before the invention of the pill and the legalisation of abortion, than they are today. Teenagers are rutting no more now than they ever have. What has changed is that teen pregnancies used frequently to result in shotgun marriages, and so the eventual infants were less of a burden on the state than those born to unwed mothers are today. In other words, the deterioration is fiscal rather than moral.
High school teams make it as complicated as they can for Rube Goldberg contest
They built them out of pulleys and levers and ramps and marbles.
Small plastic toys flew, water flowed, dominoes dropped, mousetraps snapped, and, when all was said and done, an incandescent light bulb was switched off and energy-efficient light-emitting diodes were turned on.
That, after all, was the goal of the regional Rube Goldberg Machine Contest on Friday at Discovery World, where more than a dozen high school teams showed off their contraptions, which were designed to complete the simple task of turning off one light and activating another in at least 20 steps.
The team from Pius XI High School did it in 48 steps, culminating in a light bulb representing the sun setting over a tabletop football stadium and banks of LEDs in the scoreboard blazing to life.
Of course, the crowd went wild.
“We run everything, and all of the work is done outside of school,” said Patrick Kessenich, a Pius junior and co-captain of the 14-student team. “It’s fun to be independent, and it’s just great to get together with friends and do something fun.”
“21st Century Skills”
Seems that in the last 96 hours the zeitgeist about “21st Century Skills” has shifted from lively debate and healthy skepticism to a brawl…was it the debate the other day?
For instance, Panic attacks here, while Mike Petrilli unloads the f-bomb here, and The Boston Globe says:
…the burden should be on 21st-century skills proponents to prove that their methods offer a better way to prepare students for college and the workplace. So far, they haven’t done that. And while they say 21st-century skills will only complement the state’s current efforts, it’s not clear that the approach can be implemented without de-emphasizing academic content.
Teachers and parents across the state just don’t know enough about 21st-century skills. The unnerving part is that the proponents don’t seem to know much more.
Much more on “21st Century Skills” here, from the Boston Globe and Education Next
To Keep Students, Colleges Cut Anything but Aid
With the economy forcing budget cuts and layoffs in higher education, colleges and universities might be expected to be cutting financial aid. But no.
Students considering a wide range of private schools, as well as those who are already enrolled, can expect to get more aid this year, not less.
The increases highlight the hand-to-mouth existence of many of the nation’s smaller and less well-known institutions. With only tiny endowments, they need full enrollment to survive, and they are anxious to prevent top students from going elsewhere.
Falling even a few students short of expectations can mean laying off faculty members, eliminating courses or shelving planned expansions.
“The last thing colleges and universities are going to cut this year is financial aid,” said Kathy Kurz, an enrollment consultant to colleges. “Most of them recognize that their discount rates are going to go up, but they’d rather have a discounted person in the seat than no one in the seat.”
Achievement Effects of Four Early Elementary School Math Curricula Findings from First Graders in 39 Schools
Roberto Agodini, Barbara Harris, Sally Atkins-Burnett, Sheila Heaviside, Timothy Novak, Robert Murphy and Audrey Pendleton [693K PDF]:
Many U.S. children start school with weak math skills and there are differences between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds–those from poor families lag behind those from affluent ones (Rathburn and West 2004). These differences also grow over time, resulting in substantial differences in math achievement by the time students reach the fourth grade (Lee, Gregg, and Dion 2007).
The federal Title I program provides financial assistance to schools with a high number or percentage of poor children to help all students meet state academic standards. Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Title I schools must make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in bringing their students to state-specific targets for proficiency in math and reading. The goal of this provision is to ensure that all students are proficient in math and reading by 2014.
The purpose of this large-scale, national study is to determine whether some early elementary school math curricula are more effective than others at improving student math achievement, thereby providing educators with information that may be useful for making AYP. A small number of curricula dominate elementary math instruction (seven math curricula make up 91 percent of the curricula used by K-2 educators), and the curricula are based on different theories for developing student math skills (Education Market Research 2008). NCLB emphasizes the importance of adopting scientifically-based educational practices; however, there is little rigorous research evidence to support one theory or curriculum over another. This study will help to fill that knowledge gap. The study is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in the U.S. Department of Education and is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractor SRI International (SRI).
BASIS FOR THE CURRENT FINDINGS
This report presents results from the first cohort of 39 schools participating in the evaluation, with the goal of answering the following research question: What are the relative effects of different early elementary math curricula on student math achievement in disadvantaged schools? The report also examines whether curriculum effects differ for student subgroups in different instructional settings.
Curricula Included in the Study. A competitive process was used to select four curricula for the evaluation that represent many of the diverse approaches used to teach elementary school math in the United States:
- Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (Investigations) published by Pearson Scott Foresman (Russell, Economopoulos, Mokros, Kliman, Wright, Clements, Goodrow, Murray, and Sarama 2006)
- Math Expressions published by Houghton Mifflin Company (Fuson 2006a)
- Saxon Math (Saxon) published by Harcourt Achieve (Larson 2004)
- Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics (SFAW) published by Pearson Scott Foresman (Charles, Crown, Fennel, Caldwell, Cavanagh, Chancellor, Ramirez, Ramos, Sammons, Schielack, Tate, Thompson, and Van de Walle 2005)
The process for selecting the curricula began with the study team inviting developers and publishers of early elementary school math curricula to submit a proposal to include their curricula in the evaluation. A panel of outside experts in math and math instruction then reviewed the submissions and recommended to IES curricula suitable for the study. The goal of the review process was to identify widely used curricula that draw on different instructional approaches and that hold promise for improving student math achievement.
MINNESOTA MIRACLE WITH MATH TURNAROUND SPECIALIST PROF. BILL SCHMIDT
National Council on Teacher Quality:
We’ve grown so accustomed to Massachusetts’ trailblazer stature in education that perhaps we were a little blasé over its decision to participate in the TIMSS, international assessments of 4th and 8th grade mathematics performance. Nor were we all that surprised to learn that the state’s students performed relatively well compared to students from other nations.
Less blasé are we about Minnesota, which for years has demonstrated little more than smug satisfaction over its high standing among American states, but which decided to finally prove its mettle by competing against the world and doing fairly well (as is illustrated here).
Rendering Knowledge
I may have finally broken a writing block. Aside from two book chapters in the last couple of months I more or less completed a paper length opinion piece for a report ARK are producing on KM in the Legal Profession. The title includes one of those words which has multiple and different meanings namely render which is allowing me to play games between the poetic meaning and that of rendering something down to fat. As a part of that paper I updated my original three rules of knowledge management to seven principles which I share below.
Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can’t make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can’t determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case.
We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted.
Money for Wisconsin Covenant promised but not yet delivered
In introducing his budget last week, Gov. Jim Doyle said he had “identified” $25 million for a state program aimed at ensuring a college education for students who stay straight and study hard.
But what the Democratic governor’s budget proposal doesn’t do is either spend that money or set it aside for the Wisconsin Covenant program.
Instead, the money in the phantom appropriation for the college guarantee program would be returned, unspent, to the state’s main account at the end of the two-year budget in June 2011.
Why do that?
Doyle budget director Dave Schmiedicke said the line item is intended to serve as a placeholder until the fall of 2011, when the first of thousands of Wisconsin Covenant scholars will be entering college.
Over the past two years, 35,000 students in two grades have signed the Covenant, which guarantees a place in a Wisconsin college and adequate financial aid to any eighth-grader who keeps a pledge to do well in school and keep out of trouble. Department of Administration spokeswoman Linda Barth said that the state will start deciding how many students are eligible after they finish filling out their federal student financial aid forms in January 2011.
iReport.com: My School District
via a kind reader’s email, who wonders if a student posting on this site violates the Madison School District’s “Code of Conduct“:
The Obama administration has pledged to reform the country’s school system and we want to know: Are there problems in the school district where you live? Education Secretary Arne Duncan will appear on Campbell Brown’s “No Bias, No Bull” Friday, and your stories may be part of the interview.
Whether you’re a dedicated teacher or concerned parent, we want to hear about the issues facing your school district. Express your concerns, questions and suggested solutions on video.
Texting: Good for kids after all?
study of 88 British kids, aged between 10 and 12, has discovered that those who regularly text have better reading skills despite the use of txt abbreviations.
The increasing use of abbreviations, phonetic spellings and the dropping of vowels is a constant source of irritation to the Daily Mail-reading crowd, who happily quote anecdotal evidence of declining standards. This promoted researchers at Coventry University to take a more scientific approach, and their findings seem to suggest that texting aids literacy rather than damaging it.
The study, published by the British Psychological Society, got 88 children to compose text messages in response to a range of scenarios, then compared the frequency with each child used textisms with tests of their “reading, vocabulary, and phonological awareness”. The results indicated that the increased exposure to print, in any form, led to greater literacy with those using most text’isms being more literate.
College Acceptance Letters Are Glitzier, but Rejections Are Harsher
College admissions officers are jazzing up their acceptance notifications–sending out fancy certificates, T-shirts, tubes of confetti, or Internet links to videos of fireworks–in an effort to inspire loyalty and lock in commitments from today’s fickle and worried high school seniors.
While many students enjoy the new twists on what used to be just fat and thin envelopes, others are criticizing some of the changes to admissions notifications. Some students are less wowed by glitz than by old-fashioned personal letters that show an admissions officer actually read the essays. Some high school officials complain about school disruptions caused by midday fateful E-mails or text messages. And some students say the new electronic rejections–some of which are little more than “Admissions decision: Deny”–feel much harsher than the traditional letters enclosed in ominously thin envelopes.
The controversy over the best way to inform students of their fates is likely to heighten in 2009 as a growing number of colleges experiment with:
Text messages. Baylor University is one of a growing number of schools that blast out congratulatory text messages (though it sends rejections via snail mail).
Yale’s Shiller Says Education, Risk Management Overhaul Needed
— Financial education for individuals and stricter risk controls at banks are needed to counter the psychological biases that led to the mortgage crisis, said Yale University’s Robert Shiller, a professor of behavioral economics.
“This crisis was the result of psychological contagion and speculative bubbles and also the result of poor risk management,” Shiller, who is also chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, told reporters in Tokyo. “The real problem is that we weren’t managing risk.”
A variety of biases in human psychology leads people to make decisions that are against their own self interest, behavioral experts including Shiller say. Behavioral economics combines the findings of psychology with economics and evolved as a challenge to the theory that markets are always efficient.
Will Depth Replace Breadth in Schools?
If our nation’s high school teachers had $20 for every time they had to endure the Depth vs. Breadth debate, they all would have retired to mansions in West Palm Beach.
The debate goes like this: Should they focus on a few topics so students have time to absorb and comprehend the inner workings of the subject? Or should they cover every topic so students get a sense of the whole and can later pursue those parts that interest them most?
The truth, of course, is that students need both. Teachers try to mix the two in ways that make sense to them and their students. But a surprising study — certain to be a hot topic in teacher lounges and education schools — is providing new data that suggest educators should spend much more time on a few issues and let some topics slide. Based on a sample of 8,310 undergraduates, the national study says that students who spend at least a month on just one topic in a high school science course get better grades in a freshman college course in that subject than students whose high school courses were more balanced.
Madison School District’s Outbound Open Enrollment for 2009/2010
648 (2.68% of the District’s enrollment) students open enrolled out for the 2009/2010 school year. 217 high school, 127 middle school and 304 elementary students. [704K PDF: pages 14, 15 and 16]
More on the history of Wisconsin open enrollment, here. Enrollment numbers drive a school district’s tax and spending authority. Wisconsin Open Enrollment website.
Teachers Are All That, And A Bag Of Chips
NPR:
Some teachers in Oregon want to do as they do, not as they say. The state has banned the sale of junk food in schools in an effort to protect the health of kids. But under prodding from teachers, the Oregon state House approved an exception. If the measure becomes law, unhealthy snacks would be allowed in teachers’ lounges. The teachers say they’re adults and can decide for themselves whether they should eat chips.
In Md. and Va., Signs Of the Tough Times: A 2.8% Reduction in Spending
Nelson Hernandez & Theresa Vargas:
The Prince George’s County Board of Education last night approved a $1.6 billion budget that eliminates almost 800 jobs, while Arlington County’s schools chief unveiled the first budget of his 12-year tenure with a reduction in total spending.
The actions showed anew how the economic recession is hitting home for Washington area school systems.
The Prince George’s board unanimously endorsed a spending plan for the 128,000-student system that omits cost-of-living raises and some seniority-based salary increases for employees. The budget also rolls back several programs begun during the 2 1/2 year tenure of superintendent John E. Deasy, who left in December for another job.
Among other cuts, the budget developed by Interim Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. eliminates 144 positions for parent liaisons, who act as a bridge between parents and school staff. Two programs to bolster academic performance will be reduced. An initiative to split school administration into nine zones will be modified to five zones, and a program to train 10 resident principals will be eliminated.
Arlington does a nice job of keeping their current and historical budgets on one easy to use page. Madison’s budget information page.
A Summary of the Madison School District’s Strategic Planning Process
This PDF document [1MB] summarizes some of the work to date from the Madison School District’s strategic planning process. TJ Mertz posted some additional links here.
Charter Schools a Vice?
Obama may love charter schools, Georgia may be on the fence, but St. Louis school leaders see charter schools as a vice. While researching our upcoming story about the International Community School and charter school facilities, I learned that last year, as the leaders of St. Louis public schools prepared to sell a bunch of empty school buildings, the district barred certain unwanted buyers: “liquor stores, landfills, distilleries, as well as shops that sell “so-called ‘sexual toys,’ ” writes St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter David Hunn. “They also blackballed charter schools.”
This despite the city’s 17 public charter schools and 9,500 charter students – and eight new charters expected to open by fall 2010 – writes Bill Schulz of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “Porn shops and liquor stores and charter schools, oh my!” he quipped.
Huhn reports: ” ‘We tried to buy three,’ said Susan Uchitelle, board member at Confluence Academy, a charter school with three campuses and 2,700 students in St. Louis. ‘We finally just gave up…. It was made very clear they weren’t going to sell to us. They’d show them to us. They’d let us walk through them. But then they’d take them off the market.’ “
A handwaving approach to arithmetic
HUMAN language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neglected area. It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his wrists together, but almost everyone moves their hands in meaningful ways when they talk. Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, however, studies gestures carefully–and not out of idle curiosity. Introspection suggests that gesturing not only helps people communicate but also helps them to think. She set out to test this, and specifically to find out whether gestures might be used as an aid to children’s learning. It turns out, as she told the AAAS, that they can.
The experiment she conducted involved balancing equations. Presented with an equation of the form 2 + 3 + 4 = x + 4, written on a blackboard, a child is asked to calculate the value of x. In the equations Dr Goldin-Meadow always made the last number on the left the same as the last on the right; so x was the sum of the first two numbers. Commonly, however, children who are learning arithmetic will add all three of the numbers on the left to arrive at the value of x.
In her previous work Dr Goldin-Meadow had noted that children often use spontaneous gestures when explaining how they solve mathematical puzzles so, to see if these hand-movements actually help a child to think, or are merely descriptive, she divided a group of children into two and asked them to balance equations. One group was asked to gesture while doing so. A second was asked not to. Both groups were then given a lesson in how to solve problems of this sort.
Killing DC Vouchers
President Obama made education a big part of his speech Tuesday night, complete with a stirring call for reform. So we’ll be curious to see how he handles the dismaying attempt by Democrats in Congress to crush education choice for 1,700 poor kids in the District of Columbia.
The omnibus spending bill now moving through the House includes language designed to kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program offering vouchers for poor students to opt out of rotten public schools. The legislation says no federal funds can be used on the program beyond 2010 unless Congress and the D.C. City Council reauthorize it. Given that Democrats control both bodies — and that their union backers hate school choice — this amounts to a death sentence.
Republicans passed the program in 2004, with help from Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, and it has been extremely popular. Families receive up to $7,500 a year to attend the school of their choice. That’s a real bargain, given that D.C. public schools spend $14,400 per pupil on average, among the most in the country.
To qualify, a student’s household income must be at or below 185% of the poverty level. Some 99% of the participants are minority, and the average annual income is $23,000 for a family of four. A 2008 Department of Education evaluation found that participants had higher reading scores than their peers who didn’t receive a scholarship, and there are four applicants for each voucher.
The classroom menagerie
How could anyone not love Laurent Cantet’s The Class ( Entre les murs )? Last year’s Golden Palm winner is the best film about schoolteaching I have seen: a wise, funny cry of helplessness before the tsunami of anarchy that can be school-age adolescence. Adapted from a novel based on his own teaching experiences by François Bégaudeau, it was co-written by Bégaudeau and Cantet. Bégaudeau himself stars as the hapless teacher in a mixed-race school of low attention and high combustibility.
This isn’t the high-school hokum messianic with hope that we get from Hollywood. Don’t expect To Monsieur With Love . These are real people – both the grown-ups and the kids – who spar like dedicated enemies. And they are played by real teachers and schoolchildren, who workshopped the script with the star and director.
At the outset a defensive cynicism arms both sides. A new teacher is introduced by an older to the pupils’ names, on a roster sheet: “Nice. Not nice. Not at all nice.” (“Nice” doesn’t quite get the measure of gentil , with its connotations of decency). The students, in turn, use a class on the subjunctive to try to break down Sir’s resistance. “It’s medieval” . . . “Only snobs use the imperfect subjunctive” . . . “It’s bourgeois”. The free-form fracas finally releases the fatally intended non-sequitur: “People say you like men.”
Teacher Training, Tailor-Made
One May afternoon in Boston, 85 teachers in training arrived at the bayside campus of the University of Massachusetts for a three-hour class called Family Partnerships for Achievement. The instructors had invited several public school parents to come in and offer the future teachers advice. Take advantage of technology, said one parent. Among mobile families in poverty, home addresses and telephone numbers may be incorrect. Cell phones are a better bet. Text messaging really works. Take a walk around the neighborhood. Another suggestion: find out where your students shop and hang out.
Look parents in the eye, added an instructor. Say, “Hi, It’s great to see you.” It’s difficult to discuss academics or ask parents to do anything for you before you get to know them.
Family Partnerships for Achievement is not a course typical of most master’s programs in education. The course was designed with one overriding goal: to prepare teachers to be effective in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). This goal drives every aspect of the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR), a district-based program for teacher training and certification that recruits highly qualified individuals to take on the unique challenges of teaching in a high-need Boston school and then guides them through a specialized course of preparation.
BTR is one of a new breed of teacher training initiatives that resemble neither traditional nor most alternative certification programs. By rethinking the relationship between training and hiring, these programs have found promising new ways to prepare educators.
Experts Wonder How Education Goals Will Be Met
Robert Tomsho, John Hechinger & Laura Meckler:
President Barack Obama laid out new national goals Tuesday aimed at boosting high school and college graduation rates, but left education experts wondering on how he intends to reach his targets, and how much he is prepared to spend on them.
In his address to Congress, the president signaled a shift in federal education policy toward improving the skills of adults and work-force entrants, following an intense focus on boosting younger students’ reading and mathematics attainment under the No Child Left Behind law, the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s schools agenda.
Some observers had believed that education would stay on the back burner early in the Obama administration while the president grappled with the economic crisis. But the subject made it to the top tier of the address to Congress partly because Mr. Obama believes he must send Americans a message about the importance of education.
“Of the many issues, this is one where he feels the bully pulpit needs to be used,” a White House official said Wednesday.
In his speech Tuesday night, Mr. Obama said “dropping out of high school is no longer an option” and set a goal of the U.S. having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tracks college-going among its 30 member countries, the U.S., at 30%, is tied for sixth place in college graduation among those 25 to 34 years of age, 2006 data show, behind such countries as Norway, South Korea and the Netherlands. OECD data suggest that the U.S. was No. 1 until around 2000, but has lost its edge as other countries have stepped up their efforts to promote higher education.
Kevin Carey, policy director of the Education Sector, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., think tank, said the U.S. hasn’t been slipping but other countries have been improving. Regaining our former top position represents “a pretty reasonable goal,” he says. “It’s not moon-shot level.”
Student achievement rising in urban Texas schools
Achievement test scores at big-city school districts in Texas still lag far behind their suburban and rural counterparts but they’re making great strides and narrowing the gap, according to a report by an education think tank released Wednesday.
A study [PDF report] of 37 of the nation’s largest urban school systems by The Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., found that city schools are improving more than other school districts in their respective states.
In Texas, six urban school districts were included in the study: Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
Three of those — Dallas, Austin and San Antonio — are among the top 10 gainers nationally.
The study examined state test scores and demographic information, including race/ethnicity and the percentage of disadvantaged students (those receiving free or reduced lunch), from 2000 to 2007.
It was designed to determine how big-city school districts fared when compared to their suburban and rural peers. The study was able to standardize scores between states, even those using different tests.
Dallas showed the biggest improvement among the large Texas cities, and was 2nd overall nationally. New Orleans topped the list, while Detroit, one of eight districts whose performance declined during the years studied, was last.
In 2000, Dallas was outscored by 100 percent of the state’s school districts. By 2007, just 90 percent of suburban and rural districts did better than Dallas — a significant improvement given its demographics, the study’s author said.
Dallas school superintendent Michael Hinojosa embraced the latest findings.
Straddling the Democratic Divide
Rift in Democratic Party over the nation’s education reform agenda is growing. One side backs strong accountability through reforms, the other looks to augment the current system with social support programs.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Senate confirmation hearing in January was thick with encomiums. He was praised by Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa for the “fresh thinking” he brought to his post as Chicago schools chief for seven years. Republican Lamar Alexander, education secretary under George H. W. Bush, told Duncan he was the best of President Barack Obama’s cabinet appointments. Ailing Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, in written comments entered into the record, praised Duncan for having “championed pragmatic solutions to persistent problems” and for lasting longer in Chicago than most urban superintendents.
The warm greetings given by both Republicans and Democrats on the committee reflect Duncan’s reputation as a centrist in the ideologically fraught battles over education reform. He has received national attention for moves favored by reformers, such as opening 75 new schools operated by outside groups and staffed by non-union teachers; introducing a pay-for-performance plan that will eventually be in 40 Chicago schools; and working with organizations, including The New Teacher Project, Teach For America, and New Leaders for New Schools, that recruit talented educators through alternatives to the traditional education-school route.
At the same time, Duncan maintained at least a cordial working relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union, and both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) backed his nomination. He supported the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB), but also called for dramatic increases in spending to help schools meet the law’s targets, and additional flexibility for districts like his own. In nominating Duncan, Obama said, “We share a deep pragmatism about how to go about this. If pay-for-performance works and we can work with teachers so it doesn’t feel like it’s being imposed upon them…then that’s something that we should explore. If charter schools work, try that. You know, let’s not be clouded by ideology when it comes to figuring out what helps our kids.”
Charter school opponents, watch out
In his address to Congress last night President Obama promised: “We will expand our commitment to charter schools.” Today, as the blogosphere buzzes over the speech, education watchers and International Community School teachers alike are taking that commitment seriously.
Calling it “one of the most important lines in President Obama’s speech,” Kevin Carey, writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education’s blog Brainstorm, discussed the power presidents have to refocus public education debates. Just as President Bush’s focus on testing and accountability all but killed a debate about vouchers that had raged since the Reagan administration, so, Carey argued, “Obama’s forceful position on charter schools is likely to have the same effect.” Charter school opponents, he wrote: “You’re in for a long eight years.”
At Politico’s blog The Arena, education heavy-hitters weighed in for and against.
“President Obama’s enthusiasm for charter schools is baffling. Doesn’t he realize that they are a deregulation strategy much beloved by Republicans?” wrote NYU education historian Diane Ravitch, “If he thinks that deregulation is the cure for American education, I have some AIG stock I’d like to sell him.”
Steven G. Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern University, was ready to get down to brass tacks. “[The] key,” he wrote, “is to switch to funding public schools out of statewide collected taxes instead of funding them out of local property taxes and creating many, many more charter school and private schools where students can cash in the education credit or voucher that their stateought to give them.”
‘iTunes university’ better than the real thing
Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.
Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study.
“It isn’t so much that you have a podcast, it’s what you do with it,” she says.
Skipping class
Launched less than two years ago, Apple’s iTunes university offers college lectures on everything from Proust to particle physics to students and the public. Some universities make their lectures available to all, while others restrict access to enrolled students. Some professors even limit downloads to encourage class attendance, McKinney says.
To find out how much students really can learn from podcast lectures alone – mimicking a missed class – McKinney’s team presented 64 students with a single lecture on visual perception, from an introductory psychology course.
A Lesson in Finance After school: debt and default. Who is to blame? What is to be done?
My wife and I recently made the last payment on her federally backed Stafford loan from graduate school. She had borrowed $21,500, which is slightly more than the average for the two-thirds of four-year college students who take out loans and about half the average for graduate students who borrow. We made modest payments every month for about nine years, and now we’re done. Given the extent to which my wife’s degrees enhanced her earning ability, the loan was a sound investment.
My wife did not feel that her education had done her “far more harm than good,” that it had condemned her to “a lifetime of indentured servitude” or that she was living in “student loan hell.” Neither of us was driven to despair, divorce, suicide or expatriation by the constant pressure of crushing indebtedness and relentless collection agencies. In other words, our experience was very different from the horror stories that Alan Michael Collinge tells in “The Student Loan Scam” to reinforce his argument that student loans are “the most oppressive” type of debt “in our nation’s history.”
Student-loan data suggest that my wife’s case is far more typical than the examples cited by Mr. Collinge, all of which involve people who defaulted on their loans and saw their debt mushroom as a result of penalties, collection fees and compound interest. According to the Education Department, the two-year default rate for federal student loans (both direct government loans and private loans backed by government guarantees and subsidies) is less than 5%. A separate Education Department analysis found that the 10-year default rate for college students who graduated in 1993 was less than 10%.
Moscow Math Festival for 6th and 7th Graders
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Click on the photo to view a larger version.
Here are the problems from this past Sunday’s Moscow Math Festival for Grade 6 [PDF] (1,275 participants) and Grade 7 [PDF] (888 participants), along with a few photos (the competition was held at Moscow State University, using three buildings).
Letters: ‘A’ Is for Achievement, ‘E’ Is for Effort
Letters to the Editor: NY Times:
“Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes” (news article, Feb. 18) indicates a rather recent phenomenon among college students.
Students from the earliest grades are encouraged to work hard and told that the rewards will follow. Students must realize that a grade is earned for achievement and not for the effort expended.
Yes, some students can achieve at higher levels with far less effort than others.
This mirrors the world beyond college as well.
In my experience as dean, when students complain about a professor’s grading, they seem to focus more on their “creative” justifications (excuses) rather than on remedies. Most faculty members stress the remedy that leads to achievement of instructional goals.
The time-honored mastery of the material should remain paramount. After all, this is what our society expects!
Alfred S. Posamentier
Dean, School of Education
City College of New York, CUNY
New York, Feb. 18, 2009
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To the Editor:
As someone who recently went through the ordeal of contesting a grade, I was quite impassioned on reading your article. I have done this only once in four years, so not all of us take the matter lightly.
I resent the suggestion that students feel “entitled” to “get/receive” good grades.
What is so irrational about believing that hard work should warrant a high grade? I would argue that the very core of the American dream is the sentiment that one can achieve any greatness that he or she aspires to if he or she works hard enough.
When one puts one’s all into a class, it’s not shameful to hope that grades reflect that. The same applies to professionals and their salaries. Instead of psychoanalyzing their students, perhaps these professors should ask themselves this question: If your students are all really this despicable, why are you teaching?
Aimee La Fountain
New York, Feb. 18, 2009
The writer is a senior at Marymount Manhattan College.
Yale Freezes Pay of Faculty Earning > $75k
- We will reduce 2009‐2010 budgets by an amount equal to 7.5% of the salaries and benefits of all nonfaculty staff, rather than the 5% announced in December. We expect to achieve this reduction largely through attrition in managerial, professional, clerical, technical, service, and maintenance staff, as well as through reduction of casual and temporary employees. To the extent that layoffs are necessary, we will make sure that affected individuals are provided support and guidance.
- We will also seek larger reductions in non‐salary expenditures. Instead of a 5% reduction for each of the next two years, we will ask units to budget a 7.5% reduction for 2009‐2010, and continue to plan for an additional 5% reduction the following year.
- Faculty, managerial, and professional employees with salaries below $75,000 will continue to be eligible for merit increases of up to 2%. But there will be no increases for those with salaries above $75,000, including all deans, directors, and University officers. Foregoing the increases announced previously will allow us to preserve more staff positions.
Teaching Techno-Writing
A new report calls on English instructors to design a new curriculum and develop new pedagogies — from kindergarten through graduate school — responding to the reality that students mostly “write to the net.”
“Pencils are good; we won’t be abandoning them,” said Kathleen Blake Yancey, author of “Writing in the 21st Century,” a report from the National Council of Teachers of English.”They’re necessary, as a philosopher would put it, but not sufficient to the purpose.”
Yancey, a professor of English at Florida State University and immediate past president of NCTE, described by way of example the case of Tiffany Monk, a Florida teen who, during a flood caused by Tropical Storm Fay, observed that her neighbors were trapped in their homes. She took photos and sent an e-mail to a radio station; help soon arrived.
“This was composing in the 21st century. She chose the right technology, she wrote to the right audience,” Yancey said, during a panel presentation at the National Press Club Monday.
Where did Monk learn to do this? Not in school, said Yancey, where “we write on a topic we haven’t necessarily chosen. We write to a teacher; we write for a grade.”
Also on Monday, NCTE announced a National Day of Writing (October 20) and plans to develop a National Gallery of Writing intended to expand conventional notions of composition. Starting this spring, NCTE is inviting anyone and everyone to submit a composition of importance to them, in audio, text or video form; acceptable submissions for the gallery include letters, e-mail or text messages, journal entries, reports, electronic presentations, blog posts, documentary clips, poetry readings, how-to directions, short stories and memos.
Amid all the focus on new platforms for writing, a panelist who made his name as a nonfiction writer in pre-digital days, Gay Talese, made a case for old-fashioned research methods. Research, he said, “means leaving the desk; it means going out and spending lots of time with people [or books? Will F.]…The art of hanging out, I call it.”
“Googling your way through life, acquiring information without getting up, I think that’s dangerous,” Talese said.
“The modality isn’t what’s crucial,” said Kent Williamson, executive director of NCTE. What is, he continued, is “a commitment to the process” and deep engagement with a subject.
— Elizabeth Redden
Complete report [436K PDF]
Lessons in laughter and how to bend the rules at school
My schooldays were totally great. I went to an all-girls convent and I just remember us all being extremely silly and laughing a lot at the completely stupid things we did.
There were lots of rules so we became extremely creative and were masters at creating totally believable excuses to manoeuvre our way through the system.
Actually, thinking about it I’ve never laughed like we did at school. But it was nice laughter and we never hurt anyone.
My happiest memory was winning a dancing competition.
I’d never won anything in my life before.
My worst memory was sewing the same apron for two years. I had to keep unpicking it and doing it again because it was always so bad. Even today just trying to thread a needle can reduce me to tears.
I went to Lacey Green Primary School in Wilmslow, near Manchester in England.
Well-off children and very poor children were mixed together and I felt very sad for some of them but sometimes made up nasty songs about them with the others.
Home from Home
It was my son’s decision to board at Eton, even though he already had a scholarship to a prestigious day school,” said Mr Bali, an engineer with his own consultancy firm.
“Our misgivings were emotional rather than academic. We are a close family. We see him every weekend. Pastoral care is an important issue when choosing a boarding school.
“In some schools pastoral care amounts to pampering, which might appeal to mothers but I think it should be balanced. Boys must learn to stand on their own two feet.”
Mr Bali’s son eventually managed to convince him that he should go to Eton but the caring father said parents had to be very careful about which boarding school they picked.
Academic standards had to be on a par with top day schools for boarding to be good value.
He was speaking in the wake of a report that found parents considered boarding schools in Britain to be good value for money despite steep fee rises in recent years.
The first-ever National Parent Survey carried out by Britain’s Boarding Schools Association (BSA) found that almost three quarters of parents who chose boarding education for their children said it was worth it.
But the Good Schools Guide warned that although parents were broadly in favour of boarding, fee levels were now approaching the psychological £10,000 (HK$111,000) a term mark and schools would have to work harder to justify the cost.
Environmentally focused boarding school faces new challenge
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/40064302.html:
Dramatic changes to a 7-year-old environmentally focused North Woods boarding school have alumni up in arms and parents frantic about finding new schools for their children.
Administrators for Conserve School in Land O’Lakes announced in January they were laying off about half the school’s 60-member staff as they begin transitioning to a “semester school” model, where students from other high schools attend for half their junior year.
The blame for the drastic alteration was placed on market conditions that have challenged the future of the young school’s $180 million endowment.
But parents, pointing out that the amount of the endowment puts the 145-student school on a per-pupil par with the likes of prestigious Northeast boarding schools Phillips Exeter Academy and Groton School, question the motives of the Chicago steel executives charged with running Conserve.
“My gut tells me, along with a number of other people, is what they are trying to do is they don’t want to run a school,” said Bill Meier, who has a sophomore son enrolled at Conserve. “It’s a pain in the rear to them.”
Meier and other parents have requested Conserve School trustees and administrators meet with them and a mediator to find a way to continue running it as one of only three boarding schools in the state.
Their efforts might be too late.
Conserve Headmaster Stefan Anderson said the school was not likely to stick with the four-year college preparatory academy model. The school already has contacted 80 other schools about the possibility of taking freshmen and sophomores who cannot stay during Conserve’s transition year, he said.
State by State Summary of Additional Federal Tax Dollar Education Spending
These tables (last updated 02/19/2009), in PDF [40KB] and MS Excel [77KB] show preliminary State allocations for Department of Education programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Funds under most of these programs can be used over 2 or more fiscal years. Amounts shown on these tables do not include the funds that will be allocated under the annual FY 2009 appropriation.
There are three additional State formula-allocated programs that received funds in the ARRA and will be added to the tables in the near future.
A table estimating State amounts for Federal Pell Grants follows the “Grand Total” table for State allocations from other programs.
Six Reasons You Should Consider Reading Poetry
Unless you’re currently in high school or taking an English class in college, chances are that you don’t read much poetry. Maybe you think poetry isn’t for you – it seems boring, unfathomable, too erudite, or pointless.
However, there are loads of great reasons to read poetry. Before you dislike something without trying it, consider some of these:
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
– Aristotle
The Spiral of Ignorance
Lack of understanding of the credit crunch is magnifying its damage
THE BBC’s “Today” programme is the main current-affairs show on British radio. Last year it recruited a new presenter, Evan Davis, who is also an economist. An amusing pattern has since developed. Quizzed about the credit crunch, a politician delivers some carefully memorised remark about, say, quantitative easing. Then the guest experiences an audible moment of existential horror, as Mr Davis ungallantly presses him for details.
The tide has gone out and, with a very few exceptions, Britain is swimming naked: almost nobody appears to know what he is talking about. The havoc of the financial crisis has stretched and outstripped even most economists. The British political class is befogged. Ordinary people are overwhelmed. And just as the interaction between banking and economic woes is proving poisonous, so the interplay of public and political ignorance is damaging the country’s prospects.
Start with the government, whose ministers are still oscillating between prophesying economic Armageddon and gamely predicting the best of all possible recoveries. Gordon Brown is learned in economic history–indeed, he is at his most animated and endearing when discussing it. But the prime minister’s grip on the history he is living through is less masterful. The government’s implicit strategy is to try something and, when that does not work, try something else: the approach modestly outlined by Barack Obama, but rather less honest.
Class Size in New York City Schools Rises, but the Impact Is Debated
In many circles, class size is considered as fundamental to education as the three R’s, with numbers watched so carefully that even a tiny increase can provoke outrage among parents, teachers and political leaders. Alarms went off in New York and California last week, as officials on both coasts warned that yawning budget gaps could soon mean more children in each classroom.
But while state legislatures for decades have passed laws — and provided millions of dollars — to cap the size of classes, some academic researchers and education leaders say that small reductions in the number of students in a room often have little effect on their performance.
At recent legislative hearings on whether to renew mayoral control of the New York City schools, lawmakers and parents alike have asked, again and again, why Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein have not done more to reduce class size. On Tuesday, the Education Department issued a report that found the average number of children per class increased in nearly every grade this school year.
“If you’re going to spend an extra dollar, personally, I would always rather spend it on the people that deliver the service,” Mr. Bloomberg said when asked about the report on Thursday, calling class size “an interesting number.”
The Big Test Before College? The Financial Aid Form
Most everyone agrees that something is very wrong with the six-page federal form for families seeking help with college costs.
Created in 1992 to simplify applying for financial aid, it has become so intimidating — with more than 100 questions — that critics say it scares off the very families most in need, preventing some teenagers from going to college.
Then, too, some families have begun paying for professional help with the form, known as the Fafsa,a situation that experts say indicates just how far awry the whole process has gone.
“We’re getting thousands of calls a day,” said Craig V. Carroll, chief executive of Student Financial Aid Services Inc., whose fafsa.com charges $80 to $100 to fill out the form. “Our calls for the month of January are up about 35 percent from last year. There’s been a huge increase in the desperation of families.”
Kung fu school hopes to boom in tough times
A local kung fu school hopes to cash in on the financial crisis, with more people expected to attend courses to tone up their bodies and get rid of negative emotions.
The Hong Kong Shaolin Wushu Culture Centre in Tai O, Lantau Island, has seen a rise in visitor numbers over the past few months, its low season, and has already received bookings for the summer holidays.
Lee Kok-keung, director of the Hong Kong Culture Association, which established the centre in 2006, said the increased interest could have something to do with the economic downturn.
“When the economy is good, people are so busy trading stocks and making money,” he said. “But when the economy is going down, people tend to pay more attention to their health.
“Practising kung fu is not only good for the body, but also an ideal way to cheer you up.”
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk says Texas should assess school district governance
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk said today that Texas should take an “honest assessment” on how public schools are governed, even if it means dismantling elected school boards that he says lack financial and technical skills needed to oversee problematic urban districts.
The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday that Leppert has talked to a state senator and business leader about giving the mayor some control — or total control — of the school district.
“Good for the mayor,” Kirk said. “I understand his frustration. A mayor spends half his time talking about the state of public schools. … Whether there’s a legal nexus or not, people look toward the mayor for help.”
In 1999, when Kirk was mayor, he asked the entire DISD Board of Trustees to resign.
That didn’t happen, but the Citizens Council began recruiting young leaders like Rafael Anchia, now a state representative, to serve on the board.
University of Maryland System Tries to Cut Textbook Costs
As part of an effort to make college more affordable, higher-education leaders in Maryland are trying to keep textbook prices down.
The Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland unanimously approved guidelines Friday to make it easier for students to search for cheaper books.
“This is a real victory for students,” said Josh Michael, a junior at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a student regent.
When Michael started college, he said, he spent almost $500 on books for his first four courses. He bought everything his professors suggested, then discovered as the semester went on that he didn’t really need extra Spanish workbooks and study guides.
Textbook prices have risen far more quickly than inflation. One reason, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office study conducted several years ago, is that they often come with lots of extras, such as CDs. Publishers say such features help students learn, but they often go unused.
Madison School District Middle School Parent Survey
via a kind reader’s email:
You are invited to participate in the Madison Metropolitan School District’s climate survey for middle school parents. Your feedback is important. Please click the link below to begin the survey.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=U2BJMFST6Z95
Madison Kindergarten Registration Begins Monday
Parents, it’s time for your pre-schoolers to begin becoming schoolers.
Kindergarten registration is set for Monday, March 2, from 1-6 p.m. at all Madison Metropolitan School District elementary schools.
Parents or guardians should register their child at the school he or she will attend. To be eligible for kindergarten, a child must be five years old by Sept. 1, 2009.
When registering, show proof of age for the child (birth certificate, baptismal record, medical assistance card), proof of residency (utility bill, lease, mortgage) and an immunization record.
Madison School District Elementary Parent Survey
via a kind reader’s email:
You are invited to participate in the MMSD climate survey for elementary parents. Your feedback is important. Please click the link below to begin the survey.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=U2BJLUT3TE6U
Bethel Lutheran Church looks at opening a downtown school
Developer Randy Alexander has been a member of Bethel Lutheran Church [Map] downtown for eight years. He grew up with a strong faith-based culture and says having a moral compass is critical for raising children.
“And where better to do that than in a Christian school?” he asked.
That’s a big part of why Alexander is part of a church committee to study the market feasibility of a kindergarten through fifth-grade school at the downtown church, 312 Wisconsin Ave. [Map] It’s familiar territory for Alexander, whose Alexander Co. specializes in urban infill projects. It recently developed the Capitol West condominiums downtown and is building the Novation Campus business park in Fitchburg.
If Bethel decides to go ahead and start a school, it would become one of about 30 private elementary schools in the Madison area, most of them religiously affiliated.
Matthew Kussow, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools, said the dismal economy is an obstacle for anyone looking to start a school now. Overall, state private school enrollment for the 2008-09 school year saw a slight decline, he said.
“We are sort of bracing ourselves for a steeper decline for 2009-2010 as the full effects of this economy are being felt,” Kussow said, adding that he won’t know specifically until the spring how many kids are re-enrolling in non-public schools. There are about 900 of them in the state, and they historically enroll about 10 percent of the total student body.
But Kussow also said that in general, private religious schools have a built-in following. So if Bethel identifies a need and believes it can get enough kids to start the school, in the long run, a church school is usually very successful, he said.
More choices are a good thing.
Reforming Primary Education in the UK
IKE buses, not just one but two reviews of primary education in Britain are arriving at the same time. Their titles may be similar but they could hardly differ more.
The Cambridge Primary Review was independently conceived and financed, has been years in the planning and execution, and draws on international evidence and scores of experts. Its final conclusions, due later this year, will synthesise 30 research surveys on all aspects of primary education. The Primary Curriculum Review, by contrast, was commissioned and paid for by the government and is the sole work of a serial government-report writer, Sir Jim Rose. He was asked to look at only the curriculum–not standards, testing or funding–and within that limited remit he was constrained by a tight brief and heavy hints as to the desired conclusions.
On February 20th the Cambridge-led team abandoned their publishing schedule and released the part of their final report that looks at the curriculum. It hopes, somewhat forlornly, to influence government policy. That seems unlikely. The official curriculum agency is already far advanced in creating teaching material along the lines Sir Jim recommends–even though only his interim report has appeared, and that is supposed to be open for consultation until February 28th.
Parents can fight ‘sexting’ stupidity
Is there a difference between a stupid teen trick – passing around a girl’s naked picture she’d earlier provided her now-ex-boyfriend – and child molestation?
Without a doubt.
Is there a difference even between that stupid teen behavior and being a teenager who threatens to use naked pictures obtained under a ruse as ammo for extorting sex?
Of course.
But under state law, all of them could become convicted felons who land on the state’s registry of sex offenders, leaving little distance between them. They would, most likely, be vilified and haunted by the label for decades, if not life, and increasingly told by communities where they can and cannot live.
Dangerous, devious sex offenders who are a risk to public safety deserve it.
Teens with unbelievably cavalier attitudes about sexual limits, to the point of stupidity, do not.
Parents, educators, communities and – we can only hope – kids have had their eyes opened by recent, revolting revelations.
The earlier case, as described in criminal charges, involved since-expelled New Berlin Eisenhower student Anthony Stancl, 18, who, pretending to be a girl on Facebook, got at least 31 boys to send him pictures of themselves naked. Threatening to circulate the pictures to schoolmates, he coerced at least seven of them into sex acts.
Banging on the PK-16 Pipeline
Why am I so ill-tempered when I read a sensible report like “Bridging the Gap: How to Strengthen the Pk-16 Pipeline to Improve College Readiness”?
The authors, Ulrich Boser and Stephen Burd, know their stuff. The sponsoring organization, New America Foundation, has a great reputation. (Bias alert: It also employs one of my sons as a senior fellow, but he does California politics and direct democracy, not national education policy.)
My problem is that smart and industrious experts like Boser and Burd often unearth startling facts but don’t follow through. “Bridging the Gap,” available at Newamerica.net, details the large percentage of first-year college students in remedial courses and the duplication in federal college preparation programs. This is interesting information of which few people are aware.
But their recommendations follow the standard line: Let’s have more meetings and spend more money. Example: “We recommend that the federal government provide states with incentives to come together and adopt national college and work-readiness standards in math, science and the language arts.”
Or: “The federal government should work directly with states to foster partnerships between high schools and postsecondary institutions to smooth the transition between high school and college.”
You might think that sounds reasonable. I think it misses an opportunity. Why not harness the energy and ambition of a new president to shake things up?
The Obama administration doesn’t have much money to spend getting more students ready for college. The Education Department’s $100 billion in stimulus funds will mostly go to less sophisticated projects that create jobs fast.
On Changes in the Washington DC School District’s Governance
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee says the District is no longer exploring the idea of seeking federal legislation declaring the school system in a “state of emergency,” a move that would have freed it from the obligation to bargain with the Washington Teachers’ Union.
In a recent radio interview, Rhee said that the initiative, patterned after a state takeover of schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, was never seriously considered.
The proposal appeared in a statement drafted for a Sept. 22 news conference at which Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty were scheduled to present a series of steps to rid the District of teachers deemed ineffective. The steps, dubbed “Plan B,” were based on existing powers the chancellor possessed and fell outside the legal scope of contract negotiations.
Life After Algebra II
As the school year speeds by, rising seniors at Fairfax High are already meeting with their teachers and guidance counselors to decide which classes they should take next year. Up until this point, the math sequence is spelled out — Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II. After this point, there are plenty of options.
Here are the math classes students in a non-honors Algebra II class can choose from:
Trigonometry (Semester Course)
Probability and Statistics (Semester Course)
Discrete Math (Semester Course)
Pre Calculus with Trigonometry
AP Statistics
AP Computer Science
If they are not pursuing an advanced diploma, they can also choose to take no math class their senior year. That’s an option a few students I talked to this week planned to take. Others were aiming for pre-calculus, which will put them on track to take Calculus in college. Others were talking about a combination of the semester-long courses.
Less money, but more student demand, for technical colleges
State technical college officials say it will be difficult to respond to the heightened needs of laid-off workers given a cut in funding in Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed budget.
Doyle’s budget would eliminate $4 million from state technical colleges over the next two years and would bump up student financial aid only slightly.
The colleges, a main resource for people seeking new job skills, also likely will need to return at least $1.8 million to the state’s main account this spring under a budget repair bill.
“This is not a pretty picture at a time when the state really needs its technical colleges and we have so much demand,” said Paul Gabriel, executive director of the Wisconsin Technical College District Boards Association.
While University of Wisconsin students would get at least $36 million more in financial aid under Doyle’s budget, the increase in aid to state technical college students would be about $1 million, or less than one percent.
“It’s fair to say we were extremely disappointed that there are significant new financial aid resources in the state budget, but not for the most part targeted at technical college students,” Gabriel said.
Some laid-off workers can get free tuition under federal benefits, and Doyle’s budget includes at least $1 million in grants to help retrain workers.
Does state ask less of schools? Report says Wisconsin has laxer education standards than other states
Attention, school officials around the country: If your school is having trouble meeting standards for adequate progress, consider moving the whole operation to Wisconsin.
That was the implication of a study released this week comparing the way 28 states treat the same performance results from schools. More of the 36 schools in the study would be rated as making “adequate yearly progress” in Wisconsin than in any other state. Two schools in the study would be regarded as making adequate progress only in Wisconsin, the report says.
“Although schools are being told that they need to improve student achievement in order to make AYP under the law, the truth is that many would fare better if they just moved across state lines,” the report says.
And Wisconsin would be the place to go.
The report, titled “The Accountability Illusion,” was issued by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank generally regarded as right of center. The foundation supports having national standards for accountability that are consistent from state to state and said the results of the study show the wide variation in how demanding states are when it comes to school quality.
A New Day for School Reform
Congress took a potentially transformative step when it devoted $100 billion in the stimulus package to education. Carefully targeted, this money could revive the reform efforts that began promisingly with President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 — but later languished when his administration buckled under to political pressures from state officials.
Arne Duncan, the new education secretary, will need to resist those pressures. The Bush administration allowed states to phony-up statistics on everything from graduation rates to student achievement to teacher training and state education standards. As a result, the country has yet to reach not only the goals that were clearly laid out in the law but also farsighted education reforms dating to the mid-1990s.
The stimulus package, including a $54 billion “stabilization” fund to protect schools against layoffs and budget cuts, is rightly framed to encourage compliance. States will need to create data collection systems that should ideally show how children perform year to year as well as how teachers affect student performance over time. States will also be required to improve academic standards as well as the notoriously weak tests now used to measure achievement — replacing, for instance, the pervasive fill-in-the-bubble tests with advanced assessments that better measure writing and thinking.
Protecting kids from harassment in cyberspace
THE wireless network at Mayhem Manor spreads from the router in the workroom to the living area of the one-storey hillside dwelling, but not as far as the bedrooms. And that’s important.
Your correspondent has often been tempted to upgrade his WiFi router with the latest 802.11n technology–as much for the increased range as for the four-fold boost in speed. Being eight time-zones behind many of his colleagues, he often checks e-mail in the middle of the night. His trusty little Hewlett-Packard palmtop computer, with its Cisco wireless card, would slip easily under the pillow.
But he’s resisted boosting Mayhem Manor’s wireless signal for several reasons. First, while it would quicken transfers between computers in the house, the internet connection would be no faster. Its speed is governed by the pathetic dribble of a broadband connection that’s 15,000 feet from the nearest telephone exchange in the village below.
The other reason for not upgrading is that he would prefer his tweenage daughter to do all her web surfing, e-mailing, online gaming and social networking not from the privacy of a bedroom, but from a common area of the house where an adult is invariably present.
Two Teachers, 16,000 Students, One Simple Rule
Jay Mathews is a bit of a journalistic oddball. Most reporters see the education beat as a stepping stone to bigger things, but much to his credit Mathews, who writes for The Washington Post, returned to covering schools after an international reporting career. He is best known for his book on Jaime Escalante, who taught low-income children in East Los Angeles to excel in AP calculus and was featured in the film “Stand and Deliver.” Now Mathews is back to profile two young teachers — Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin — who founded the wildly successful Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a chain of 66 charter schools now educating 16,000 low-income students in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
While I have some quarrels with the book’s implicit and explicit public-policy conclusions, “Work Hard. Be Nice” provides a fast-paced, engrossing and heartening story of two phenomenally dedicated teachers who demonstrate that low-income students, if given the right environment, can thrive academically. In 52 short and easily digestible chapters, Mathews traces the story of two Ivy League graduates who began teaching in Houston in 1992 as part of the Teach for America program. Both struggle at first but come under the tutelage of an experienced educator, Harriett Ball, who employs chants and songs and tough love to reach students whom lesser teachers might give up on. Levin and Feinberg care deeply: They encourage students to call them in the evening for help with homework, visit student homes to get parents on their side and dig into their own pockets to buy alarm clocks to help students get to school on time. In Mathews’s telling, it’s hard not to love these guys.
Madison Crime Maps
The Madison Police Department is posting police call data on crimereports.com. Check out these links:
- Madison West High School
- Madison Memorial High School
- Madison LaFollette High School
- Edgewood High School
- Madison East High School
- Shabazz City High School
Frist launches K-12 education initiative
Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today launched a grassroots initiative aimed at reforming K-12 education in Tennessee, saying he hopes to ensure that “every child graduates from high school prepared for college or a career.”
Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, was among those who joined the Tennessee Republican in announcing the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education at Fall Hamilton Elementary School in Nashville.
Frist said the “citizen-led” initiative will have three main components, including a steering committee that will hold 10 public meetings and ultimately produce a strategic plan for state education reform.
Frist, who announced last month that he won’t be running for governor in 2010, said the committee will be composed of education, community, political and business leaders from across the state. He said the idea is to find what education practices are effective and build upon them.
What’s the problem at the Milwaukee Public Schools?
I am not a liberal, but I’m starting to think that decades of tinkering with MPS just may be a smokescreen to ignore the real problems with the system: that in the end, our schools do nothing more than reflect the nature of the city itself.
We’ve spent generations pretending that isn’t the case. I graduated from Pulaski High School just in time to have Howard Fuller present me my diploma. You remember Fuller, right? He was the man who was going to reinvigorate the “troubled” school system and bring hope to Milwaukee.
I walked across that stage in 1992. Exactly what has changed since then? Sure, it’s not all bad. Some schools have high attendance, great parental participation and students who perform well.
But that just bolsters my point. If MPS as an entity was the problem, wouldn’t all schools fail? Wouldn’t all students have to exert an incredible amount of self-determination and willpower just to succeed academically?
Some people, such as School Board member Terry Falk, continue to believe that fiddling is best. Falk’s latest theoretical fix? Potentially scrapping K-8 schools – themselves a recent idea – in favor of grades 6-12 facilities.
Enough already. The fault lines seem clear. MPS is operating in a city with dire problems, where some geographic areas continue to prosper while others operate in a climate of poverty and crime. School performance appears often to follow those socioeconomic trends.
For the record, I’m not excusing the poor performance of students who should realize that education is a path to greater prosperity. And I don’t have any bright solutions either. Except one: If we’re going to keep the questionable practice of throwing money at the problem, quit wasting it on the wrong problem.
Get Lit Players bring poetry’s emotions to other L.A. teenagers
For as long as he can remember, Dario Serrano’s life was all screeching tires and echoing gunshots, babies’ cries and barking dogs, a symphony, as he puts it, of “hood rats and gangsters,” of “vatos and payasos” — dudes and numskulls, loosely translated.
By high school, he’d pretty much given up on himself. He bounced around between three schools. He started selling pot, though he always seemed to smoke more than he sold. His GPA fell to 0.67, which is about as bad as you can get and still be showing up.
Literature, it is fair to say, was not resonating. “I mean, ‘The Great Gatsby’?” he says incredulously, and when he puts it like that, Lincoln Heights does feel pretty far from Long Island.
When a friend suggested that poetry might be his thing, Serrano scoffed. Grudgingly, he started tagging along to a poetry club, and one day last year he took his lunch break in a classroom where a teen troupe called Get Lit was holding auditions.
Get Lit’s artistic director, an African American artist named Azure Antoinette, performed an original composition called “Box,” a denunciation of anyone who would define her by the color of her skin, who would lump together, thoughtlessly, faces of color:
Omega School offers a chance to earn GED
When her daughter started talking about not going to college, Maria Victoria Natera knew what she needed to do.
Natera, 40, said she realized not only did she need to earn her general education development credential, or GED, but also go on to college.
“That really bothered me,” Natera said. “I want more for my kids than I had … I need to set an example.”
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Natera took the first step when she received the credential — an accomplishment that was acknowledged at the recent winter commencement ceremony held by Omega School. The event recognized the 32 students who earned either a GED or a high school equivalency diploma.
Omega School, 835 W. Badger Road, prepares students for taking the required tests for the two programs. Many students who come to Omega have tried a number of other ways to get a high school diploma. The age of the students at Omega varies and some are high school age but have not earned enough credits to graduate on time.
“Sometimes they have to try things and have them not work for them to have success here,” said Oscar Mireles, Omega executive director. “They have to believe we are in a position to help them.”
Translating eduspeak
IF YOU know what deep learning and functional skills are, then you are already on the way to understanding eduspeak. But there are other terms that must be grasped to attain an A* in the subject.
Satisfactory. One of the four possible judgments of the schools inspectorate (the other three are inadequate, good and outstanding). It means “unsatisfactory”. (“Inadequate” for its part means “dire”.) This explains the chief schools inspector’s pronouncement that satisfactory schools are “not good enough”.
Excellence and enjoyment are mutually exclusive. The first is used for what matters (literacy and numeracy), the second for what does not (everything else). “Enjoying reading” and “excelling in music” are howlers in eduspeak.
Non-statutory depends on context. It can mean “optional”, but in the National Primary Strategy, a set of “guidelines” on teaching literacy and numeracy, it means “obligatory”–unless a school wants to risk being deemed “satisfactory”.
Gifted and talented refer to the top 5-10% in academic and non-academic pursuits respectively, who are to be encouraged in their gifts and talents. The terms are necessary as a sop to middle-class parents concerned that their children are not being stretched enough. To deflect the charge of elitism, levelled by many teachers, the categories have proliferated to include the capacity to “make sound judgments”, to show “great sensitivity or empathy” or to be “fascinated by a particular subject”.
Education commissioner orders Providence schools to end Teacher seniority bumping
Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has ordered the city schools to begin filling teacher vacancies based on qualifications rather than seniority, an order that could fly in the face of the teachers’ contract.
McWalters, in a no-nonsense letter yesterday to Supt. Tom Brady, said the district hasn’t been moving fast enough to improve student achievement and that it was time to intervene in a much more aggressive fashion.
The order should come as no surprise to the district. Over the last two years the commissioner has issued a series of “corrective action” orders that spelled out what the district needed to do to improve student performance.
“This is intervention,” McWalters said yesterday. “Every state gets to the point when it’s time to stop suggesting. The district can’t come back and tell me they can’t get it done.”
McWalters said that seniority can no longer be the way that teachers are assigned and vacancies are filled. Starting this fall, teachers at six Providence schools, including the new career and technical high school and the new East Side middle school, will be assigned based on whether they have the skills needed to serve students at those particular schools.
Chamber: Teacher quality key in improving schools
The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce released its 16th annual education report card Thursday, saying teacher quality is one of the most important factors in raising student achievement.
The chamber brings together business people and citizens each year to assess the school system.
Metro schools has missed the required No Child Left Behind benchmarks five times in the past six years. That moved the school system into “restructuring” from “corrective action” under the federal act, one year away from a possible state takeover.
The Education Report Card Committee said it was encouraged to see Metro offering a modest incentive pay plan to help recruit teachers in hard-to-staff subjects, as well as Mayor Karl Dean’s recruitment of two national nonprofits, The New Teacher Project and Teach for America, to bring new talent into the classrooms.
While there were some improvements in 2008, the committee said the city cannot have another year of waiting for a common vision for the standards the schools want to reach.
The chambers recommendations include:
A handwaving approach to arithmetic
HUMAN language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neglected area. It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his wrists together, but almost everyone moves their hands in meaningful ways when they talk. Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, however, studies gestures carefully–and not out of idle curiosity. Introspection suggests that gesturing not only helps people communicate but also helps them to think. She set out to test this, and specifically to find out whether gestures might be used as an aid to children’s learning. It turns out, as she told the AAAS, that they can.
The experiment she conducted involved balancing equations. Presented with an equation of the form 2 + 3 + 4 = x + 4, written on a blackboard, a child is asked to calculate the value of x. In the equations Dr Goldin-Meadow always made the last number on the left the same as the last on the right; so x was the sum of the first two numbers. Commonly, however, children who are learning arithmetic will add all three of the numbers on the left to arrive at the value of x.
The Accountability Illusion: No Child Standards Vary Widely From State To State
This study examines the No Child Left Behind Act system and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) rules for 28 states. We selected 36 real schools (half elementary, half middle) that vary by size, achievement, diversity, etc. and determined which of them would or would not make AYP when evaluated under each state’s accountability rules. If a school that made AYP in Washington were relocated to Wisconsin or Ohio, would that same school make AYP there? Based on this analysis, we can see how AYP varies across the country and evaluate the effectiveness of NCLB.
Wisconsin report [259K PDF]:
More schools make AYP in 2008 under Wisconsin’s accountability system than in any other state in our sample. This is likely due to the fact that Wisconsin’s proficiency standards (or cut scores) are relatively easy compared to other states (all of them are below the 30th percentile). Second, Wisconsin’s minimum subgroup size for students with disabilities is 50, which is a bit larger than most other states (the size for their other subgroups is comparable to other states’). This means that Wisconsin schools must have more students with disabilities in order for that group to be held separately accountable. Third, Wisconsin’s 99 percent confidence interval provides schools with greater leniency than the more commonly used 95 percent confidence interval. Last, unlike most states, Wisconsin measures its student performance with a proficiency index, which gives partial credit for students achieving “partial proficiency.” All of these factors work together so that 17 out of 18 elementary schools make AYP in Wisconsin, more than any other state in the study.
AP:
Some schools deemed to be failing in one state would get passing grades in another under the No Child Left Behind law, a national study found.
The study underscores wide variation in academic standards from state to state. It was to be issued today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which conducted the study with the Kingsbury Center at the Northwest Evaluation Association.
The study comes as the Obama administration indicates it will encourage states to adopt common standards, an often controversial issue on which previous presidents have trod lightly.
“I know that talking about standards can make people nervous,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said recently.
“But the notion that we have 50 different goal posts doesn’t make sense,” Duncan said. “A high school diploma needs to mean something, no matter where it’s from.”
Every state, he said, needs standards that make kids college- and career-ready and are benchmarked against international standards.
The Fordham study measured test scores of 36 elementary and middle schools against accountability rules in 28 states.
Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes
Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.
Prof. Ellen Greenberger studied what she found to be an increased sense of entitlement among college students.
“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”
He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.
“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”
A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.
“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it,” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.
Unigo.com Gives Everyone a Say About College Picks
Research on choosing colleges takes many forms, including visiting campuses and studying the schools’ Web sites. But for a lot of high-school students and their parents, finding a centralized resource containing information about numerous schools still means buying one of the thick, costly printed guides to college that have been around for years. The Web versions of these books are surprisingly dry.
But there’s a new, free Web site that, while overseen by paid editors, is built on lively content submitted by current students at the colleges. The information isn’t just words and numbers, but includes numerous photos and videos for most schools. You also can create a small social network of people interested in the same schools or who share other common traits.
In other words, this is a college-information resource built for the age of YouTube and Facebook.
The site, Unigo.com, costs nothing to use and supports itself with ads. Although it’s only a few months old, it already covers about 250 colleges and universities, and claims to average dozens of student-created reviews, photos and videos for each college. Its sophisticated search engine lets applicants comb all this material to find just what applies to them. For example, Unigo would let you see all content relevant to an Asian-American female applicant with conservative political views.
University of California wants the truth on student applications
he gray-and-green warehouse in suburban Concord seems an unlikely headquarters for a statewide detective operation, and the fact checkers at work there insist they are not mercilessly probing the lives of California’s teenagers.
Still, there is an element of hard-boiled sleuthing in the University of California’s unusual attempt to ensure that its 98,000 freshman applicants tell the truth about themselves and their extracurricular activities. The stakes are high; UC enrollments may be canceled if students are found to be evasive or lying.
Each year, a small number of UC applicants — fewer than 1% — are caught fibbing about such claims as performing a lead role in a school play, volunteering as a tutor for poor children or starring on the soccer field.
But UC officials say there is a broader purpose beyond the relatively few “gotchas”: to scare everyone else straight.
“We take the admissions process very seriously and we want to uphold the integrity of the whole process,” explained Han Mi Yoon-Wu, a coordinator in UC’s central admissions operations.
In an era when tough competition for college entrance may lead some insecure or conniving applicants to hype, or invent, parts of their records, experts say many colleges and universities do some informal checking on students’ extracurricular claims, especially if something seems fishy. But the UC effort appears to be the only formal, systematic program in the nation, they say.
For many years, UC has checked the final high school grade transcript of each admitted student in the summer before enrollment. Failing grades in the last semester of high school can get a student’s admission revoked, as can lies about self-reported grades in previous terms.
A More Joyous Approach: “The War of the Roses”
Queenly Cate Blanchet turns her attention to Richard II
Cate Blanchett is known for the pale beauty of her face and her vivid film performances. Her latest work marks a significant change of pace. As the curtain rises at the Sydney Theatre, she sits centre-stage, a still figure in a white blouse and trousers, blond hair, high cheekbones. A storm of golden petals drifts down from the ceiling, and she wears a crown.
It has become fairly commonplace for film actors to star in London’s West End and on Broadway, but this transposition is different. Miss Blanchett is playing the king in Shakespeare’s Richard II, the first part of a rigorously condensed version of the eight history plays. Miss Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, have become artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, an organisation which already has a fine opinion of itself. “In so far as there is a National Theatre in Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company is it,” says Bob Brookman, the general manager.
Sydney’s “The War of the Roses” ruthlessly cuts the histories down to two evening performances, each lasting a little under four hours, focusing on the death of kings and the hollowness of their crown. If this production, performed as part of the Sydney Festival and now on tour, is a clue to the nature of Miss Blanchetts’ regime, it will be energetic, controversial, ambitious, and, to use one of Miss Blanchett’s favorite adjectives, “noisy.” Casting her as Richard II was the bold idea of the director, the fearless 36-year-old Benedict Andrews. Having an actress play Richard II is not original: Fiona Shaw did it in London in 1995. But casting a woman as Richard III most certainly is. He is played by Pamela Rabe, one of Australia’s most accomplished actors, without a hump and with a heavy sense of irony, which provokes tense laughter in unlikely places.
Miss Rabe is not as self-consciously feminine as Miss Blanchett, who deploys laughter–her own–to dramatise the alienation of the king from his court, and fondly adopts girlish poses during the deposition scene in which Richard passes the crown to Bolingbroke. Shakespearean actors need to drill their vocal cords and Miss Blanchett seemed a little short of training, but she made a likeable, vulnerable, androgynous monarch. Given the extent of the cuts and transpositions, there could be no lingering over the development of character. The playful relationship between Prince Hal (Ewen Leslie) and Falstaff (John Gaden), for example, was speedily established by Hal fellating Falstaff. Sydney was not fazed.
Many of Australia’s best actors have emigrated in search of larger audiences and new writers. Miss Blanchett want to bring in a younger audience to the Sydney Theatre Company’s performances. “We’re hoping to take a more joyous approach,” Mr. Upton said recently. Miss Blanchett and Mr. Upton also want to develop the company’s reputation abroad as well as at home. Later this year their production of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Liv Ullman with Miss Blanchett as Blanche Dubois, travels to the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In this case of celebrity culture, the emphasis will be on the culture.
Waukesha parents warned about illicit photos on students’ cell phones
Police and school officials are urging parents to check for naked photos on their children’s cell phones after a 14-year-old girl learned that her nude photo ended up in the hands of hundreds of area high school students.
The Waukesha West High School [Map] student sent the photo to her boyfriend, but when the couple broke up, he forwarded it to other students using his cell phone, Waukesha police Capt. Mark Stigler said Tuesday. Police have talked to the core group responsible and may recommend felony possession of child pornography charges, he said. Police have recovered computers belonging to the teens to investigate whether they also sent the photos over the Internet.
“We know it’s a hard stance, but how else do we deal with this?” Stigler said. “Kids are being immature and doing foolish things.”
An automated phone message from the Waukesha School District went to parents Monday and Tuesday asking them to talk to their children and check the phones for illicit photos.
Police want parents to delete any inappropriate photos because the magnitude of the potential proliferation of photos is too large to investigate, Stigler said.
Related: Textual Misconduct What to do about teens and their dumb naked photos of themselves.
