Lately it’s become fashionable — especially among the highly credentialed — to question whether it’s really “worth it” to go to college. A recent report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education proposed deemphasizing college as the primary goal of our education system in favor of “multiple pathways” for students. Earlier this month, New York Magazine devoted almost 4,000 words to profiling venture capitalists (and college graduates) James Altucher and Peter Thiel and their efforts convince Americans that they’d be better off skipping college. Thiel is even creating a $100,000 fellowship for young people who agree to delay going to college in favor of an internship.
Make no mistake, there is widespread dissatisfaction with higher education. According to a new survey released by the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Americans felt that colleges provided an “excellent” or “good” value for the money. At the same time, 86 percent of college graduates still felt the investment was a good one for them.
Crowdsourcing Education Innovation, For Cash
One of the largest educational publishers in the world is offering cash prizes to the winners of a crowdsourced learning product innovation competition.
One of the world’s largest educational publishers is turning to crowdsourcing for their next great product idea. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s (HMH) initiative–the HMH Global Education Challenge–is an Intel Science Fair-style competition for educators that is giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just one important caveat: HMH retains rights to the ideas.
The competition will be the first major attempt to develop for-market pedagogical materials via crowdsourcing. Participants will upload brief descriptions of their potential projects and then are able to view, comment, and vote on other proposals. A panel of judges, including former Education Secretary Bill Bennett and Bob Wise, the former governor of West Virginia, will decide on the winners from a pool of the 20 top-voted entries in September.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is offering a $100,000 grand prize for the winning entrant and a $25,000 second-place prize. Another $125,000 worth of prizes, including iPads, netbooks, and textbook donations, will be distributed to contestants and the schools of their choice.
New York Voters Pass 93% of School Budgets in State
Voters across New York State approved more than 93 percent of school budgets on Tuesday, as administrators facing sharp reductions in state education aid offered plans to cut staff and programs, tap into reserves and keep tax increases relatively low.
Statewide, districts proposed an average budget-to-budget increase of 1.3 percent, the lowest in 15 years. (The five largest school districts — Buffalo, New York, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers — do not hold budget votes.) The average increase in local tax collections was 3.4 percent, up slightly from 3.2 percent last year, though 36 districts proposed no increase at all, and 20 reduced their tax collection.
Over all, 634 budgets passed and 44 were rejected, according to an analysis by the New York State School Boards Association. As of Wednesday evening, only partial results had been released by the State Education Department.
Mixed grades for ‘green’ Spokane school
Lincoln Heights Elementary School has lights that turn off when rooms are empty, thermostats that automatically set temperatures back at night and carbon dioxide sensors in the gym to circulate air only when it’s occupied.
It was constructed to “green” building standards, which cost Spokane Public Schools nearly $460,000 extra for the South Hill facility.
But the energy savings aren’t what the district thought they would be, a discovery that other owners of green buildings are making all over the state, a new report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee says. Seven of nine public buildings built to green standards and studied by committee staff fell short of the energy goals they were designed to meet.
Close bad charters faster
The D.C. Public Charter School Board might soon close the Ideal Academy Public Charter School, more than a year and a half after I told it to.
When I made that suggestion in a December 2009 column, Ideal was a prime example of a charter school overdue for termination. Its high school, after four years, had shown that most of its students would be better off elsewhere.
“Of the 31 sophomores who took the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System test in math last spring,” I said then, “only 25.8 percent scored at the proficient level or above. Only 38.7 percent reached that level in reading. Among secondary schools [in the District], only six regular schools and two charter schools had lower math proficiency rates. Only 11 regular schools and three charters were worse in reading proficiency.”
California Governor Puts the Testing Juggernaut On Ice
California Governor Jerry Brown has taken a big step towards reducing the testing mania in the nation’s most populous state. Up until his administration we have been on an accelerated path towards the comprehensive data-driven system that test publishers and corporate reformers have convinced leaders is needed to improve schools. But in the May budget outline from Brown’s office, he makes it clear he is putting on the brakes.
From the Thoughts on Public Education blog comes this:Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to suspend funding for CALPADS, the state student longitudinal data system, and to stop further planning for CALTIDES, the teacher data base that was to be joined at the hip with CALPADS.
What is even more encouraging is the explanation Brown offers, which shows a great deal of understanding of these issues. The document states:
Minnesota charter schools get 1-year extension on new rules
Charter schools in Minnesota are getting a one-year reprieve from a deadline that threatened to close dozens of schools.
Those schools’ sponsors were facing a summer deadline to continue sponsoring schools under a new system created two years ago. Schools without a sponsor, or authorizer, by this July would have had to close.
Gov. Mark Dayton signed legislation into law Wednesday that extends that deadline until next summer.
Eugene Piccolo with the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools said the deadline worried many schools.
Forum focuses on bullying in Minnesota school districts
Midday presents a forum on bullying in Minnesota schools including students, parents, teachers, and a panel of experts held last night at the UBS forum. The forum tops off a special series of reports on bullying from Minnesota Public Radio News.
Numbers don’t hold up for tighter school security measures
I was surprised to learn this week that my high school occasionally brought in drug-sniffing dogs when I was a student there some 25 years ago.
That might be because they were only used after school hours. It also might be because the dogs weren’t very effective, given that I never felt discouraged from engaging in the kinds of behaviors during school hours that the dogs are presumably meant to discourage.
Neither were many of my classmates, whose on-school-property, school-hours transgressions often made my own drug-related rebelliousness look pretty lame.
But it’s not only questions about the effectiveness of siccing Fido on schools that make me wonder about a package of Madison School District security proposals sparked by new concerns over drug, gang and other criminal activity in and around schools.
6 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Go To Grad School
More than 41 million Americans over the age of 18 have earned their college degrees, according to 2010 U.S. Census data. But once that hard-earned diploma has been handed over, many grads are faced with the decision of continuing their education with graduate school. Attaining a masters or PhD is an incredible achievement – one that comes with a high cost to a personal life, work experience and the pocketbook.
Before you pack up for another degree, consider these scenarios, in which grad school may not be the best choice.
Ranking America’s High Schools; Challenging All Students
Since 1998, The Post’s Jay Mathews has ranked Washington-area public high schools using the Challenge Index, his measure of how effectively a school prepares its students for college. In 2011, the Post expanded its research to high schools across the United States.
The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college.
Jay Matthews: Behold the power of challenging all high school students — not just the A team
West Potomac High School in Fairfax County and Oakland Mills High School in Howard County are as close as schools come to being twins. Both are in affluent counties and serve ethnically and economically diverse populations. Forty-seven percent of West Potomac students and 52 percent of Oakland Mills students are black or Hispanic. Thirty-eight percent at West Potomac and 31 percent at Oakland Mills are from low-income families.
But when I indulge in my obsessive comparison of schools by their college-level course programs, significant differences emerge. Oakland Mills often bars students from taking Advanced Placement classes if they don’t have B’s in previous courses. West Potomac lets in everyone who signs up and pays the test fees. The AP test participation rate at West Potomac is three times what it is at Oakland Mills, but the passing rate on tests at the Fairfax school is lower: 61 percent, compared with 78 percent at Oakland Mills.
Middleton is the only Madison area high school to make the list.
Did I hear you raht?
ON A call with a bank call center, I was just given a little dialect-identification practice. I had just given the attendant my full name. She then asked me “What’s your last name?”, or so I thought. I repeated it, slightly unsure why she’d asked me to repeat my last name (it’s pretty ordinary). But I misheard her. She’d asked “what’s your wife’s name?” I asked her where her office was located. Any idea where in America a person has to come from to make “wife” sound remotely similar to “last”? Take a guess before reading on.
The office was in Dallas, Texas, which is very close to the borderline of the dialect region known as “Inland South”, as you can see on this map. What makes the inland south different from the lowland south? One of the chief things is glide deletion in the [ai] sound before unvoiced consonants. Glide deletion is what turns “ride” into “rahd”, where a diphthong (two vowels, one gliding into the other) becomes a monophthong or single vowel. This goes on all around the south. What makes an inland southern accent inland and not lowland is that the glide deletion happens before voiceless consonants (like f, t and s) as well as their voiced equivalents (v, d and z). Around the south, “ride” comes out “rahd”. But if someone’s “wife” comes out “wahf”, chances are that person is from the inland south.
School board member Ed Hughes wants to give some docked pay back to Madison teachers (Proposal Withdrawn Later in the Day)
Hughes is making the proposal [56K PDF Ed Hughes Amendment] as an amendment to the district’s budget.
Funding would come from the $1.3 million windfall the district will get from docking the pay of 1,769 teachers who were absent without an excuse on one or more days between Feb. 16-18 and 21.
The district closed school during those four days because of the high number of staff members who called in sick to attend protests over Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed changes to public sector collective bargaining.
“Under the circumstances it seemed to me the school district shouldn’t necessarily profit from that, because the teachers agreed to make up the time in a way that took away planning time for them,” said Hughes, who is considering a run for school board president when new officers are elected Monday.
Hughes is also proposing increasing the district’s proposed property tax levy for next year by about $2 million to pay for maintenance and technology projects and any costs associated with the district’s implementation of a state-imposed talented-and-gifted education plan.
“It seems goofy that we give away $1 million and then raise property taxes [50K PDF Ed Hughes Amendment],” board member Lucy Mathiak said.
If a school board member in Madison gets his way, the district would used money it saved when teachers forced schools to shut down during the budget debate to award end of the year bonuses to teachers.
WTMJ partner station WIBA Radio in Madison says that teachers in Madison would receive $200 gift cards as year-end bonuses.
“Whenever we can, we need to show some kind of tangible appreciation for the extremely hard work our teachers and staff do,” said Ed Hughes, a member of the Madison school board.
“They’ve had a particularly tough year as you know, given that they kind of became political footballs in the legislature. We’re ending up slashing their take home pay by a substantial amount, pretty much because we have to.”
Additional links:
- David Blaska adds quotes from Mr. Hughes, here.
- School board member withdraws controversial gift card proposal.
- Don Severson talks with Vicki McKenna on the proposal (35mb .mp3)
- What’s behind the teacher gift card proposal? by Susan Troller
- TJ Mertz summarizes today’s brief Madison School District budget meeting.
Related: 5/26/2005 MTI & The Madison School Board by Ed Hughes.
Oakland Unified’s strategic plan: It’s here.
I plowed through a draft of the Oakland school district’s strategic plan today — all 50 pages of it. It’ll be discussed at a special board meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday (tomorrow) at the district headquarters. You’ll find links to the report below.
I won’t be surprised if long-time observers of the school system remind us all of the Five-Year Plans of OUSD Past — enthusiastically presented, but long since forgotten. I wonder how this plan compares to former superintendents’ visions for Oakland Unified. It certainly contains some provocative ideas, such as “risk screens” for African American male students at certain transitional points, and school quality reviews that go far beyond the API score.
The plan describes various school funding formulas that the district might adopt — but it doesn’t recommend any. The current system, Results-Based Budgeting, allocates funding based on each school’s average attendance. And unlike schools in most other districts, Oakland schools must cover the actual salaries and benefits of their teachers out of that budget. Schools with lots of teachers who are high on the pay scale typically have a harder time making ends meet in this system, as do those with low attendance rates and/or declining enrollment.
Those schools might find the below statement interesting:The critical factors of enrollment and teacher salary and benefits do not universally allow for a balanced budget, requiring subsidies based on school size and salary/benefit costs, rather than student needs. While the definition of an adequate core program may change as district‐wide priorities and financial position change, it is the main responsibility of the school district to provide a basic educational program to all students.
The Quiet Revolution in Open Learning
In the late days of March 2010, Congressional negotiators dealt President Obama’s community-college reform agenda what seemed like a fatal blow. A year later, it appears that, remarkably, the administration has fashioned the ashes of that defeat into one of the most innovative federal higher-education programs ever conceived. Hardly anyone has noticed.
Obama originally called for $12-billion in new spending on community-college infrastructure and degree completion. The money was to come from eliminating public subsidies to for-profit banks that made student loans. But late in the process, some lawmakers insisted that savings that had already occurred, because of colleges’ switching into the federal direct-loan program in anticipation of the new law, didn’t count as savings. Billions were pulled off the table, and the community-college plan was shelved.
Two days later, negotiators found $2-billion. But they could spend it only on a U.S. Department of Labor program restricted to workers who had lost their jobs because of shifts in global trade. The fit with the president’s expansive agenda seemed awkward, and the amount was pennies on the original dollar. Cynical commentators called it a “consolation prize.”
Brazil May Buy Education Tablets to Lure Manufacturers
Mario Sergio Lima and Iuri Dantas:
Brazil’s government may purchase tablet computers for public schools in a bid to lure manufacturers such as Foxconn Technology Group to build the devices in the country, Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante said.
Brazil may add tablets to the government’s One Laptop per Child program and cut taxes on devices produced locally to reduce costs and encourage local manufacturing, Trade Minister Fernando Pimentel said. Brazil bought 217,200 laptops for the program in the last three years, according to figures posted on the Education Ministry’s website.
“The inclusion of tablets in the program has an important role to play in helping increase the potential of investments aimed at the production of tablets in Brazil,” Mercadante said in an April 27 interview in Brasilia. “We can find tablets at $150 abroad, that’s a very reasonable price for the device.”
Yale Restricts a Fraternity for Five Years
Lisa Foderaro, via a kind reader’s email:
A Yale fraternity whose alumni include both President Bushes has been banned from conducting any activities on campus for five years, including recruiting, as punishment for an episode last October in which members led pledges in chants offensive to women, the university announced on Tuesday.
Yale’s publicizing of its disciplinary actions is highly unusual, but officials said their move followed a remarkably public and far-reaching episode. After the chanting in a residential quadrangle by members of the fraternity chapter, Delta Kappa Epsilon, 16 students and alumnae filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights accusing the university of failing to eliminate a hostile sexual environment on campus. The department confirmed last month that it had started an investigation.
Steering Capital: Optimizing Financial Support for Innovation in Public Education
Public education has reached a moment of rare consensus: something must be done about the sorry state of our public schools, particularly in urban and low-income areas, and that the solution must deliver better results at scale – and without significant additional resources. Other fields like medicine and communications have embraced innovation – a new approach that achieves a better result – as the best means to this end. But education innovation has not yet lived up to its promise. In this paper, education entrepreneur Kim Smith and innovation writer Julie Petersen chart a path forward for how the public, private and nonprofit sectors can work together to advance education innovation by steering capital toward products, services and approaches that improve educators’ productivity and students’ learning outcomes.
Today, the educational ecosystem is not set up to support meaningful and widespread innovation. The policy and investment context that defines the flow of capital in education can either encourage or inhibit this innovation, and today it does much more of the latter than the former. Public policies and regulations favor compliance over excellence, rarely allow state or district buyers to choose flexibly between a range of high-quality product or service options, inhibit the flow of information that would allow buyers to anticipate or measure performance improvements, and offering few meaningful incentives for these buyers to adopt better products and services. The philanthropic capital market similarly provides few mechanisms for rewarding dramatically improved outcomes (including little funding for the scale-up of successful organizations), instead favoring small doses of funding across many organizations. Private investors shy away from fueling education innovation, intimidated by policies that restrict the work of for-profit providers in education, frequent policy volatility at the local level, market domination by a few large publishers that feel little pressure from competition or from their customers to really innovate, and a slow, relationship-based sales cycle that rarely measures or rewards quality.
Strange Advice for Parents of Bright Kids
Awhile back, I posted here my “Strange Advice for Bright Kids.” Today I offer the same gems again, but tweaked to fit the parents of remarkably bright kids. I am once again calling it “strange” advice because I like to look at things from unusual angles and this advice comes from perspectives others may not consider.
1) Ask for help. As you have likely discovered, being the parent of a gifted child isn’t always the cakewalk that a lot of teachers, friends, and parents of average intelligence kids sometimes think it is. These bright lil’ buggers can be INTENSE, which means keeping up with them can be exhausting. They can debate you into a corner, even at a very young age, rationalizing their way into controlling the conversation. Some gifted children have extremely high energy levels and may not need naps at an age when other kids still do. Their sensitivity can catch you off guard as seemingly nonchalant moments turn out to be the impetus that causes a meltdown. Their keen sense of justice means they’re interested in causes beyond their years – and they enlist you to help them save the world. With remarkable focus, they become so immersed in the interesting task at hand that they are impervious to you struggling to tell them it’s time for dinner. And your ten-year-old is having a mid-life crisis, exhibiting his existential depression by asking you questions you haven’t even considered yourself yet (“Why am I here? Why is the world so cruel? What if I can’t make a difference? What’s the point if we’re all going to die someday anyway?”). Plus you know that if you tell your friends you’re worried about your seven-year-old because she’s reading four grade levels above but only being given grade-level material and instruction – that their reaction will be a cynical snort.
Burying the Bias in Teacher Data Reports, Part II
A few weeks ago I posted a report on Edwize about biases in last year’s Teacher Data Reports. Teachers of high performing math students are 35 times more likely to fall at the bottom of the teacher ranking than at the top. [1]
Shortly after that, the DOE placed a document on its website that asserts that “…teachers of high-performing students are as likely to have high value-added scores as low value-added scores.”
To me, call me crazy, this is unlikely to be true. First of all DOE charts found in the very same document seem to contradict that (more on that in a minute). What’s more, DOE used a broad definition of “teachers of high-performing students,” and also included some reports that were so unreliable they were not issued to teachers. Let’s go through this step by step.
An Open Letter to Wisconsin Governor Walker about His School Choice Speech to the American Federation for Children
Dear Governor Walker:
I visited the McIver Institute website to view the speech on your plans to expand school choice in Wisconsin which you gave to the American Federation for Children on May 9th. I have a few questions. If you want to just post your responses below in the comments section of this blog, that would be super! Thanks in advance.
1. Did you use a teleprompter? I don’t think I saw you look at your notes more than once or twice in the thirty-three minute speech. If you gave that speech just winging it, I am very impressed. (When you ate David Gregory’s lunch in his interview of you, I also gave you credit where it was deserved.) My one (very small) constructive criticism of your speaking style is to suggest that you cut back on nodding your head up and down “yes” when applause is washing over the podium. It makes you look a little bit like Dan Aykroyd in the Blues Brothers, and a little too self-congratulatory. On the other hand, if you make it to the presidency some day, and Mr. Aykroyd can lose some weight, he will probably be all set for a return gig on SNL.
Democrats Want to Direct Additional Wisconsin Taxes to K-12 Spending
Assembly Democrats today proposed using more than half of the new money in last week’s bolstered revenue projections to increase K-12 funding in the state budget, charging that Republicans have failed to distinguish between priorities that can wait and those that cannot.
“We are actually fighting for the very future of public education,” Rep. Fred Clark, D-Baraboo, said at a press conference outside the Capitol this morning. Clark is running against GOP Sen. Luther Olsen in a potential recall election.
Dems proposed directing $356 million more toward school aids in the budget after LFB projections added $636 million to state coffers over the next biennium last week. Their proposal would also reserve $200 million of that revenue to repay the Patients Compensation Fund, $100 million to pay down some state debt and $20 million to increase aid to technical colleges.
Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.
Understanding UW Debate: Relative State Support Down, State Regs Remain.
Thornton: More follow through needed on Milwaukee Public School reforms
Plenty of talk, not enough action.
That was the blunt message Wednesday from Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Gregory Thornton, at a forum on how to fix what ails MPS, local government and the city as a whole in an era of declining public resources.
He said while rhetoric about change has been good, with a series of reforms laid out over the years, the focus and follow through have been lacking.
“We have an ‘execution gap,’ ” Thornton said at the forum on Milwaukee’s future with top city, civic and business leaders at Marquette University. “The problem is, we are not playing very well together.”
He said greater effort at partnerships was needed and that the foundation for some solutions was already in place. MPS has vast libraries that might be put to greater use by the community, for example, he said.
Know Your Madisonian: 40-year teacher has seen many changes
Of the six Madison School District principals retiring this year, Cathy McMillan has logged the most years of service with the district at 39 years.
Her 40-year career in education began as a sixth-grade teacher in Baltimore. Since moving to Madison in 1972, she has taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels, worked in district administration, and served as principal at Hawthorne Elementary School and for the past four years at Franklin Elementary School.
Q: Why did you decide to become an educator?
A: I remember my sixth-grade and first male teacher, Mr. Wiskita, inspired me to pursue my interest in math and science. Once I got into the classroom I was hooked. I wanted to see that all students enjoyed learning — especially math. I wanted girls to love math and consider math-related careers.
Helping Kids Beat Depression… by Treating Mom
Successfully treating a mother with depression isn’t just good for the mom; it also can provide long-lasting benefits for her children’s mental health, new research shows.
About 1 in 8 women can expect to develop depression at some point in her life. Incidences peak in the childbearing years, with as many as 24% of women becoming depressed during or after pregnancy. More than 400,000 infants are born to depressed mothers each year in the U.S.
And decades of research have borne out the old expression “when Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” About half of kids with depressed mothers develop the condition–three times the typical risk.
Sadness isn’t the only symptom. Children of depressed mothers are more likely to be anxious, irritable and disruptive than other kids.
Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny?
David Leonhardt, via a Rick Kiley email:
The economic differences among the country’s various religions are strikingly large, much larger than the differences among states and even larger than those among racial groups.
The most affluent of the major religions — including secularism — is Reform Judaism. Sixty-seven percent of Reform Jewish households made more than $75,000 a year at the time the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life collected the data, compared with only 31 percent of the population as a whole. Hindus were second, at 65 percent, and Conservative Jews were third, at 57 percent.
On the other end are Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists. In each case, 20 percent or fewer of followers made at least $75,000. Remarkably, the share of Baptist households making $40,000 or less is roughly the same as the share of Reform Jews making $100,000 or more. Overall, Protestants, who together are the country’s largest religious group, are poorer than average and poorer than Catholics. That stands in contrast to the long history, made famous by Max Weber, of Protestant nations generally being richer than Catholic nations.
Top 10 Questions/Comments Made By My Third Graders During Their First Ever Set of ELA and Math State Exams
(aka “Why Teaching In a Testing Grade May Cause Premature Aging,” or “Why I Have Band-Aids On All My Fingers From Nervously Picking Off the Cuticles While Proctoring”)
10. “Why do we have to use a #2 pencil?”
9. (Directions read by me: “You may not speak to each other while the test is being administered.” Student:) “What does ‘administered’ mean?”
8. “I don’t get how to show my work for this part.”
7. (The test directs students to continue working when they see the words GO ON at the bottom of the page and to stop working when they see the word STOP. On the ELA, students get ten minutes per passage and have to STOP before being directed to move on. On the math exam, they get 60 minutes to do all 40 questions, no STOPping. On the math exam, one student asked:) “When is it gonna say STOP?!”
6. “But none of these choices are right.”
5. “But both of these choices are right.”
4. “Can I look this word up in the dictionary?”
Seattle’s Ingraham parents 1, Seattle Schools 0
Parents, teachers and students have been in shock since the Seattle School District’s interim Superintendent decided to fire a popular principal for little reason, they thought. They fought. They won.
This afternoon Superintendent Susan Enfield reversed her decision about dismissing Ingraham Principal Martin Floe, and sent the high school’s staff this letter:When I was appointed Interim Superintendent, it was with the clear charge to strengthen opportunities for all students to learn. You asked me to bring high levels of transparency and accountability to this effort. The decision I made last Tuesday about the leadership of Ingraham High School Principal Martin Floe reflects my efforts to realize these commitments.
However, I also know that a good leader listens. After extensive conversations with Ingraham High School staff and the community, I have decided to renew Mr. Floe’s contact for the 2011-12 school year, under the condition that he continue on a plan of improvement, which I, along with his Executive Director, will monitor throughout the year.
At Fairfax High, a new dance before the prom
For weeks, Samantha Cormode’s friends at Fairfax High School had been racking up invitations to prom, but she hadn’t been asked.
Samantha, a senior who is headed to Virginia Tech with hopes of earning a spot on the women’s soccer team, had been busy studying for finals, preparing for AP exams and making sure she stayed on top of everything she needed to do for college.
She’d been without a steady boyfriend since September, when she and last year’s boyfriend/prom date had gone their separate ways. She had opted not to go to this year’s event with a group of her friends because last year’s boyfriend/prom date would be among the revelers with his new girlfriend.
That would be too weird.
Teachers Swap Recipes
In every school in America, in three-ring binders and file folders, sit lesson plans–the recipes that guide everyday teaching in the classroom. Like the secrets of talented cooks, the instructional plans of the best teachers have much to offer their creators’ colleagues. But while the plans are increasingly digital, they are still not easily shared across classrooms, nor, especially, across districts or states. Even when these plans are accessible, they are often not organized in a way that makes them easy to use, understand, or customize.
Now, a host of new web sites, from A to Z Teacher Stuff to Lesson Planet to Lessonopoly, are trying to solve that problem and make it easier for teachers to share, find, and make better use of lesson plans and accompanying materials. One, TeachersPayTeachers, a sort of Craigslist for educators, says it has paid more than $1 million in commissions to teachers, who have sold everything from classroom hand puppets to lesson plans on the Civil War. The site even hosts a “lesson plan on demand” auction, in which teachers advertise for, say, 4th-grade materials on Texas history and other teachers bid to fulfill the request.
Your So-Called Education
COMMENCEMENT is a special time on college campuses: an occasion for students, families, faculty and administrators to come together to celebrate a job well done. And perhaps there is reason to be pleased. In recent surveys of college seniors, more than 90 percent report gaining subject-specific knowledge and developing the ability to think critically and analytically. Almost 9 out of 10 report that overall, they were satisfied with their collegiate experiences.
We would be happy to join in the celebrations if it weren’t for our recent research, which raises doubts about the quality of undergraduate learning in the United States. Over four years, we followed the progress of several thousand students in more than two dozen diverse four-year colleges and universities. We found that large numbers of the students were making their way through college with minimal exposure to rigorous coursework, only a modest investment of effort and little or no meaningful improvement in skills like writing and reasoning.
China closes stem-cell gap with the West
China’s aggressive drive to close the gap with the West in stem-cell research is paying off after five years of heavy investment in a branch of science free of the tight regulatory constraints and intense debate over moral issues that hamper experimental work elsewhere.
A decade ago, China had 37 stem-cell research papers published by reputable journals. By 2008, it was 1,116, the China Medical Tribune said. It now ranks fifth in the world in both the number of stem-cell patents filed and research papers published. And its numbers are growing faster than in any other nation.
Madison schools ‘don’t want to wait’ for a crisis
Responding to an increase in violence, drugs and gang activity in and around schools, the Madison School District is considering a broad effort to improve building security, including the use of drug-sniffing dogs in high schools next year.
The district also is proposing to lock the main entrances of middle school buildings during the day. Other recommendations include redesigning main entrances at West and Memorial high schools and adding surveillance cameras to all elementary and middle schools, district security coordinator Luis Yudice said.
“We are not doing this because we believe we have severe problems in our schools (or) because we experienced a tragedy in our schools,” Yudice said. “We don’t want to wait until there’s a crisis. We want to get ahead of the game.”
School choice advocates spend freely on politics, WEAC Spending
A rural legislator who received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from out-of-state school choice advocates took flak back home for supporting expansion of a Milwaukee voucher program when his own school district is struggling financially.
According to a story in the Sauk Prairie Eagle last week, an aide to Rep. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, had to use a gavel to bring order back to a budget listening session at Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital on May 6.
Marklein, a freshman Republican legislator, was asked if campaign contributions were influencing his support for two pieces of recent school choice legislation which provide public tax dollars for families to spend in private schools in Milwaukee. This, at the same time that the River Valley School District, which Marklein represents, has been forced to cut programs and staff and is facing more cuts in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget.
Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators by Steven Walters:
How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.
That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.
Although there are 15 Democratic candidates running for the state Senate, and 80 Democrats running for the state Assembly, the latest WEAC report shows that the teachers union is placing what amounts to an “all in” bet on saving just four Democratic senators who are finishing their first terms.
Wisconsin Teachers Union Tops Lobbying Expenditures in 2009, more than Double #2
Reforming Districts Through Choice, Autonomy, Equity, and Accountability: An Overview of the Voluntary Public School Choice Directors Meeting
Betheny Gross, Robin Lake, via a Deb Britt email:
In February 2011, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) convened a conference to help districts implementing school choice under the U.S. Department of Education’s Voluntary Public School Choice program. The conference, sponsored by the Department of Education, provided grantees access to the most current knowledge from district and charter leaders and school choice researchers on how to effectively implement public school choice.
The conference focused on the most pressing issues faced by localities committed to public school choice. Panelists addressed how choice districts can
actively manage the supply of schools in the district,
make careful decisions about the allocation of resources across these now independent schools,
build fair and transparent enrollment systems,
effectively communicate to all parents about their choices, and
invoke creative solutions to ensure that students with special needs are well served in these diverse schools.
Is College Worth It? College Presidents, Public Assess Value, Quality and Mission of Higher Education
This report is based on findings from a pair of Pew Research Center surveys conducted this spring. One is a telephone survey taken among a nationally representative sample of 2,142 adults ages 18 and older. The other is an online survey, done in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education, among the presidents of 1,055 two-year and four-year private, public and for-profit colleges and universities. (See the our survey methodology for more information.)
Here is a summary of key findings from the full report:
Survey of the General Public
Cost and Value. A majority of Americans (57%) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend. An even larger majority (75%) says college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. At the same time, however, an overwhelming majority of college graduates (86%) say that college has been a good investment for them personally.
Valerie Strauss has more.
Madison East High assistant coach arrested for alleged sexual relationship with 16-year-old
A Madison East High School assistant girls basketball coach was arrested Friday for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old female student.
A search warrant filed Monday in Dane County Circuit Court — seeking a DNA sample from Jason L. Hairston, 29 — states that the girl and Hairston began a relationship shortly after winter break, which ended Jan. 3.
Hairston remained in the Dane County Jail on Monday, where he is tentatively charged with sexual assault of a student by staff.
According to the search warrant, the girl told police that she knew Hairston through her involvement with the team. She said they had sex at a number of locations, including his home and her home, several motels, a parking lot on the North Side and the garage of a North Side home.
Letter to East High School Parents, via a kind reader’s email.
Guest Commentary: An education agenda for Denver’s next mayor
The Denver mayoral race has been remarkable in its focus on education reform. Never before has there been so much discussion, debate and even television ads on this critical issue in the city’s mayoral race. We are fortunate to have two candidates, Michael Hancock and Chris Romer, who are both education reformers.
Some point to the Denver mayor’s lack of direct authority over the city’s schools to argue that the candidates’ rhetoric is better suited for the upcoming school board race. This misses the point: Denver’s next mayor is sure to have a significant impact on public education in our city. And as President Obama and Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet are demonstrating on the national level, serious and much-needed education reforms require strong leadership.
Hancock and Romer have their differences when it comes to education policy, but both realize the central importance of high-quality public education to bringing growth and prosperity to Denver. There are some truly great public schools in our city, but when the district schools as a whole are struggling to sufficiently prepare one-fifth of their students for college, work and civic participation, fundamental reform is required.
Lawmakers and Others Discuss Changes to Education Programs for Prisoners
As state lawmakers combed the budget this year for cuts to close a multibillion-dollar shortfall, some leaders focused on a line item that usually draws little attention: the Windham School District, which received more than $128 million in 2010-11 to provide education to inmates in the state’s sprawling prison system.
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Lawmakers will most likely cut that number significantly in the 2012-13 budget, and that could be just the beginning of big changes to come.
“The structure itself screams out for change, screams out for renovation and innovation,” said State Senator Florence Shapiro, Republican of Plano and chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.
The Windham School District is financed by the Texas Education Agency and overseen by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In the 2009-10 school year, about 77,500 offenders participated in some type of Windham program. The school district operates much like a regular public school system, with a superintendent, principals and teachers at campuses across the state. It provides basic adult education, vocational training, life-skills programs and college-level courses.
Four Degrees of New Jersey Education Association
Question: how many degrees of separation are there between the broadening coalition opposing the expansion of charter schools in New Jersey and the National Education Association?
First, a news hook and a bit of back story. On Saturday morning New Jersey School Boards Association’s Delegate Assembly overwhelming approved an emergency resolution put forth by the Princeton Board of Education that would require voter approval for the authorization of any new public charter school. The approval implicitly supports a pending bill sponsored by Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (and, as NJ Spotlight reports, complicates prospects for a more carefully crafted bill that would expand authorizers beyond the DOE, sponsored by Assemblywoman Mila Jasey).
NJSBA’s disapprobation of charter school expansion is right in line with the political agendae of other education groups like Education Law Center, Garden State Coalition of Schools, and a new group called Save Our Schools NJ (SOS NJ). Their well-coordinated message is simple: taxpayers cough up the dough for public education so taxpayers should have veto power within their communities regarding the opening of any taxpayer-supported charter school. Anything else is taxation without representation, right? If a potential charter school wants to open, then it can put the question to a vote during election season.
Jeb Bush’s education ideas draw national attention
Jeb Bush left the Florida governor’s office in 2007, but his influence still holds sway in Tallahassee, and now is felt in state capitals from New Jersey to Oregon, where lawmakers are eager to adopt his ideas on how to improve education.
Since leaving Tallahassee, the popular former Florida governor has developed a national reputation as an education powerhouse and champion of vouchers and charter schools. His latest recognition: the Bradley Foundation, a conservative group that says it shies away from lauding politicians. Last week, it gave the Republican its Bradley Prize, a distinction that carries a $250,000 stipend.
“The reforms that he put in place during his two terms as Florida governor in many ways lead the country in elementary and secondary education,” said Michael W. Grebe, the president and chief executive officer of the Bradley Foundation, which has spent more than $40 million over the last 20 years in support of charter schools and voucher programs, including as a donor to Bush’s education foundation. “He put in place programs that have clearly raised academic standards. It’s measurable, demonstrable. We’re also really impressed by what he continues to do as a private citizen. When he left office, he didn’t leave behind his work.”
NEA Gives Friend of Education Award to 14 Fugitive Wisconsin Democrats
NEA Gives Friend of Education Award to 14 Fugitive Wisconsin Democrats. Each year the National Education Association issues a “Friend of Education” award to some liberal worthy known for toeing the union line. Last year’s award went to Diane Ravitch, and previous winners are Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy.
This year the union decided to honor the 14 Wisconsin Senate Democrats who fled the state rather than debate and vote on the governor’s collective bargaining bill.
It is believed to be the first multi-week sojourn to the Tilted Kilt ever to result in an award from a major national organization.
Fairfax teacher Sean Lanigan still suffering from false molestation allegations
Sean Lanigan’s nightmare began in January 2010, when the principal at Centre Ridge Elementary School pulled him out of the physical education class he was teaching and quietly walked him into an interrogation with two Fairfax County police detectives.
He had no warning that a 12-year-old girl at the Centreville school had accused him of groping and molesting her in the gym.
The girl, angry at Lanigan about something else entirely, had made the whole thing up. But her accusations launched a soul-sapping rollercoaster ride that still hasn’t ended.
“Emotionally, a part of me has died inside,” Lanigan said in a recent interview. “I’m physically and mentally exhausted all the time, how the whole process has been dragged out to this date. It certainly has affected the quality of life for me and my family at home.”
Test scores could end a Wisconsin teacher’s job
School boards across Wisconsin could use teacher evaluations – which rely in part on the results of students’ standardized state test scores – as part of the reason for dismissing and disciplining educators, according to legislation considered by the Assembly and Senate education committees Monday.
Senate Bill 95 proposes modifying 10 state mandates so that local school districts have more flexibility to decide what’s best for their communities, said Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), a co-sponsor of the bill with Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills).
The legislation covers a wide berth of areas – from allowing school boards to offer physical education credit to high school students who participate in one season of an extracurricular sport, to changing the way a state-funded class-size reduction program is implemented in the elementary grades – but was criticized by some legislators who thought it was too hastily brought to a hearing Monday.
Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) noted that details about the bill were released only one business day earlier, on Friday, by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
“I’m pretty sure if there had been more notice on this, this room would have been packed,” she said, looking at the meager crowd of about 30 people.
Wisconsin Senate Bill 95 Testimony
Thank you for this opportunity to testify on Senate Bill 95.
Due to time limitations — both the time allotted here and the very, very short time between the release of the Bill on Friday and the scheduling of this hearing for today — I will be confining myself to only two of the topics covered in this wide ranging measure. Those are the dilution of the Student Achievement Guaranty in Education (SAGE) and the use of student standardized test scores as a determinant of educator employment conditions. I will note that I believe every section of this Bill should be thoroughly sifted and winnowed.
Before directly addressing the proposals on SAGE and the use of student standardized test scores, I’d like to say a few things about the broader trend in educational thinking and policy in Wisconsin.
Not too long ago Senator Olson chaired a Special Committee on Review of State School Aid Formula. I sat though most of the meetings of that committee. Although little came of it, there was a sense of optimism and ambition in the work of that committee, a sense that we can and should do better. This spirit was captured in the title of the presentation by Professor Alan Odden “Moving From Good to Great in Wisconsin: Funding Schools Adequately and Doubling Student Performance,” (paper of the same title here) . It should be added that Doctor Sarah Archibald, who is anow dvising Senator Olson, was part of that work.
Much more on Wisconsin Senate Bill 95, here.
Madison Edgewood High closed after student’s death; school also deals with unrelated security issue
Edgewood High School closed Monday as students and parents grieved the unexpected death of a student Sunday, and school officials and police dealt with what they said was an unrelated security concern.
The death occurred the same day school officials met with parents to discuss concerns related to graffiti found in a bathroom Friday, according to emails Edgewood High School President Judd Schemmel sent to parents over the weekend.
“We don’t have any reason to believe the two are connected,” Madison Police Capt. Joe Balles said Monday, referring to the death and the security issue.
School officials did not tell parents that they decided to close school until late Sunday after learning of the student’s death, according to emails sent to parents.
Rahm’s Education Promise
Rahm Emanuel will be sworn in today as mayor of Chicago, having campaigned on promises to fix a school system that graduates only half its students. The veteran Democrat talks a good game and has appointed a schools CEO with strong reform credentials. But Mr. Emanuel has miles to go before he proves that his famous political toughness is a match for the unions and bureaucrats who will oppose any reform worthy of the name.
In addressing Chicagoans today, Mr. Emanuel will likely celebrate Illinois Senate Bill 7, which last week passed the state legislature and awaits Governor Pat Quinn’s signature. The law is certainly welcome, and Mr. Emanuel was right to support it. But its provisions say less about the boldness of lawmakers than about the implacability of the status quo.
On the plus side, the law ties teacher tenure and layoffs to student performance, not just to seniority. The law also makes it easier to fire ineffective teachers–easier, that is, than the traditional process that in Chicago can include more than 25 distinct steps. And while it’s good that the law makes it harder for the Chicago Teachers Union to strike, Illinois remains one of only 11 states to allow teachers to strike at all.
Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men’s Website
Madison Preparatory Academy, via a Kaleem Caire email:
ased on current educational and social conditions, the fate of boys of color is uncertain. African American and Latino boys are grossly over-represented among young men failing to achieve academic success and are at greater risk of dropping out of school. Boys in general lag behind girls on most indicators of student achievement.
In 2009, just 52% of African American boys and 52% of Latino boys graduated on-time from Madison Metropolitan School District compared to 81% of Asian boys and 88% of White boys.
In the class of 2010, just 7% of African American seniors and 18% of Latino seniors were deemed “college-ready” by ACT, makers of the standardized college entrance exam required for all Wisconsin universities.
Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (Madison Prep) is a public charter school being developed by the Urban League of Greater Madison. Madison Prep will serve as a catalyst for change and opportunity, particularly young men of color. Its mission is to prepare scholars for success at a four year college by instilling excellence, pride, leadership and service. A proposed non-instrumentality charter school located in Madison, Wisconsin and to be authorized by the Madison Metropolitan School District, Madison Prep will serve 420 students in grades 6 through 12 when it reaches full enrollment in 2017-2018.
Schools ‘should teach how to save a life’, says charity
A heart charity is calling on the government to include the teaching of life-saving skills in the national curriculum.
In a survey carried out by the British Heart Foundation, 73% of schoolchildren wanted to learn how to resuscitate someone and give first aid.
More than 75% of teachers and parents also agreed it should be taught in schools.
The survey questioned 2,000 parents, 1,000 children and 500 teachers.
The BHF wants emergency life support skills (ELS) to be taught as part of personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) lessons and alongside physical education, citizenship and science.
Life-saving skills include cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which can help someone who’s had a cardiac arrest.
What do teachers want?
Readers of this blog or of my book, The Influence of Teachers, know that I believe that the harsh criticism of teachers and their unions is largely undeserved. I also believe it is hurting public education.
In the clamor, the voices of regular classroom teachers are difficult to hear, which is why I am devoting this blog to them. With apologies to Sigmund Freud, “What do teachers want?”
Some answers to that question can be found in recent surveys by Met Life and the Gates Foundation/Scholastic. I include some of those findings below.
Renee Moore, a veteran teacher who is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, says it’s all about respect. “Highest on my list,” she wrote, “would be more respect for the professional expertise of teachers, particularly for those of us who have shown consistently, year-after-year that we are highly accomplished teachers.”
That seems to be consistent with a Met Life finding that most teachers feel they are being ignored. “A majority of teachers do not believe that teachers’ voices are being heard. Seven in ten teachers (69%) disagree with the statement that “thinking about the current debate on education, teachers’ voices in general have been adequately heard.”
Grading teachers
Elizabeth Ling & Jocelyn Huber:
Gov. Cuomo yesterday wrote Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, urging a drastic change of direction as the state Education Department develops a new teacher-evaluation system. The governor’s right: The first draft of that system deserves an F.
It seems Tisch got the message. Soon after the governor’s letter went public, she released a statement committing to an overhaul of the evaluation system.
Cuomo’s recommendations address many of the problems and offer a good starting point to build upon. Now it’s up to Tisch and the Regents to adopt them in earnest when they meet Monday.
American Dreamer: Sam’s Story
“American Dreamer: Sam’s Story” tells the story of a talented young jazz musician named Sam, who was illegally brought to the U.S. at age 5 by his Mexican parents. Though Sam dreams of attending college, he hides his status from even his closest friends, and can’t legally work, drive, get financial aid, or even gain admission to some colleges.
Wisconsin Voucher expansion is threat to public education
here’s a train coming, folks. And, unlike the proposed Madison-to-Milwaukee rail, this train really is high-speed.
If we’re not paying attention, it could end up crippling public education in Wisconsin.
Gov. Scott Walker had already included in his 2011-13 budget proposal a plan to change the Milwaukee school voucher program, which allows low-income students to attend private schools on the taxpayers’ dime.
It would eliminate the enrollment caps; expand it to include schools in all of Milwaukee County, not just the city; and phase out income limits, opening the program to middle- and high-income families.
The Assembly last week passed a separate bill that eliminated the caps and the Milwaukee-only school requirement.
New Jersey School Board President Calls Charter Schools “Bad Public Policy”
Speaking before the Board of Education during its meeting Thursday night, President Jack Lyness expressed strong feelings in opposition to the nation’s burgeoning “charter school movement.”
Charter schools are primary or secondary schools that are funded by government but operate independently from local boards of education in exchange for meeting academic standards stipulated by the state Commissioner of Education. Unlike private schools, charter schools are not permitted to charge tuition, and they are considered part of the public school system.
Many parents of New Jersey school children are considering charter schools as an alternative to traditional public schools. As of January, there are 73 charter schools in New Jersey-the state is the fourth largest charter authorizer in the U.S.-and the state Department of Education website predicts there will be more than 100 by the fall. This year, more than 22,000 children in grades pre-K through 12 throughout the state are enrolled in a charter school. According to the New Jersey Charter Schools Association, 66 percent of the state’s charter schools achieved adequate yearly progress in 2008-09 compared to 44 percent of their local district schools.
Class size hike spells trouble Impact of increase to 34 in K-8 will be negative
There are people who have been making a splash nationally by spreading word that judgment day will be May 21, and by fall, the earth will no longer exist.
If so, we don’t need to be so alarmed about the future of Milwaukee Public Schools. Or a list of other school districts that aren’t in quite as bad shape. Yet.
But in case we remain in this vale of tears a bit longer, let’s talk about what is expected to happen to class sizes in MPS. This won’t be pleasant.
MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton used a number last week in a talk before civic leaders and, later, in comments to the School Board: 34. That’s going to be the average class size next year, he said.
For kindergarten through 12th grade? No, he told me, for kindergarten through eighth grade. There’s no estimate for high schools yet, he said. (As a general matter, high school classes are larger than younger grades.)
“Class sizes will increase,” Thornton said. “That’s just a reality. . . . This is a community that needs learning to be personalized and customized.” In other words, it needs at least reasonable class sizes.
So 34 compared to what this year? Thornton estimated 28 to 29.
Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?
ON command, Eze Schupfer reads aloud the numbers on a worksheet in front of her: “42, 43, 12, 13.” Then she begins to trace them.
“Is that how we write a 12?” her instructor, Maria Rivas, asks. “Erase it.”
“This is a sloppy 12, Eze,” she says. “Go ahead: a one and a two. Smaller. Much better.”
Eze moves to 13.
“Neater,” Ms. Rivas insists. “Come on, you can do it.” Finally, she resorts to the kind of incentive that Eze, her pink glitter sneaker barely grazing the ground, can appreciate: “You’ll get an extra sticker if you can do a perfect 13.”
Eze is 3. She is neither problem child nor prodigy. And her mother, Gina Goldman, who watches through a glass window from the waiting room, says drilling numbers and letters into the head of a 3-year-old defies all the warmth and coziness of her parenting philosophy — as well as the ethos of Eze’s progressive preschool. But she began bringing Eze and her older brother to these tutoring sessions nearly a year ago on the advice of a friend, and has since become the kind of believer who is fueling a rapid expansion of Junior Kumon preschool enrichment programs like this one, a block from the toddler-swollen playgrounds of Battery Park City.
BioMathematics
Biology used to be about plants, animals and insects, but five great revolutions have changed the way that scientists think about life: the invention of the microscope, the systematic classification of the planet’s living creatures, evolution, the discovery of the gene and the structure of DNA. Now, a sixth is on its way – mathematics.
Maths has played a leading role in the physical sciences for centuries, but in the life sciences it was little more than a bit player, a routine tool for analysing data. However, it is moving towards centre stage, providing new understanding of the complex processes of life.
The ideas involved are varied and novel; they range from pattern formation to chaos theory. They are helping us to understand not just what life is made from, but how it works, on every scale from molecules to the entire planet – and possibly beyond.
The biggest revolution in modern biology was the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, which turned genetics into a branch of chemistry, centred on a creature’s genes – sequences of DNA code that specify the proteins from which the gene is made. But when attention shifted to what genes do in an organism, the true depth of the problem of life became ever more apparent. Listing the proteins that make up a cat does not tell us everything we want to know about cats.
Wisconsin Voucher program needs accountability
The children of Milwaukee deserve a quality education regardless of whether they attend Milwaukee Public Schools, a charter school or a private school through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
A key element to support quality is transparency. Clear, easy to understand and readily available information, including test score results, helps parents and the public evaluate their schools. Traditional public and charter schools throughout the state have been using publicly reported test score results and other data to drive school improvement for years. This transparency was extended to the voucher program through laws enacted in the 2009-’11 budget.
This fall, for the first time, students attending private schools through the state’s voucher program had their academic progress assessed with the same statewide tests as their public school peers. Results reported this spring showed that some public, charter and private schools in Milwaukee are doing very well, but too many are not providing the education our children need and deserve.
We believe that students in the voucher program, receiving taxpayer support to attend private Milwaukee schools, must continue to take the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination. Standardized tests, including the WKCE, do not paint an entire picture of a student, and many private schools participating in the voucher program take other quality tests. We need to put all the schools in MPS, charter and choice programs on a common report card.
Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using the Tools of Social Media
Wasn’t it just the other day that teachers confiscated cellphones and principals warned about oversharing on MySpace?
Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. Last Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called “To the Lady,” which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops.
The poet “says that people cried out and tried but nothing was done,” one student typed, her words posted in cyberspace.
“She is giving raw proof,” another student offered, “that we are slaves to our society.”
Yale in Singapore: Lost in Translation
On March 31, Yale University announced final plans to open its first joint campus, in partnership with the National University of Singapore, to be known as Yale-NUS College. The Web site of the new, yet-to-be-built campus was launched immediately. It features Potemkin-village photographs of smiling students, presumably posing as future Yale-NUS students. So as of now, for the first time since 1701, there will be two Yales. (The old one should henceforth be called “Yale-New Haven,” to avoid confusion.)
On April 11, in Singapore, President Richard C. Levin of Yale, along with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the president of the National University of Singapore, signed the agreement establishing the Yale campus in the city-state, and they unveiled architectural plans for the new campus. In New Haven, faculty recruitment has begun, reportedly in an atmosphere of “enthralled” enthusiasm. But the Yale-NUS venture raises troubling questions about the translation of academic values and freedoms into a repressive environment.
NYC Charter School Stalls in Court
The Upper West Side could lose its first charter school before it even opens.
A judge has slapped the Department of Education with a temporary restraining order that halted the start of renovations necessary on the school building on 84th Street where Upper West Success Academy Charter School plans to open in August.
The city downplayed the restraining order.
“While we do not believe the stay was warranted, it is not unusual for judges to preserve the status quo for a short period of time while they consider the legal issues before them,” said Chlarens Orsland, assistant corporation counsel for the New York City law department.
The school, founded by former City Council member Eva Moskowitz, has been the subject of heated opposition since the DOE announced it would be allowed to take root in the old Brandeis High School building, where there are now five small high schools.
Four Questions About Creative Writing
1. Why do people hate creative writing programs so much?
Well they don’t really, not everyone, or there wouldn’t be so many of them–hundreds. From modest beginnings in Iowa in the 1930’s, MFA programs have spread out across the land, coast to coast, sinking roots in the soil like an improbably invasive species of corn. Now, leaping the oceans, stalks have begun to sprout in countries all around the world, feeding the insatiable desire to be that mythical thing, a writer. Somebody must think they’re worth founding, funding, attending, teaching at.
But partly in reaction to their very numerousness, which runs afoul of traditional ideas about the necessary exclusivity of literary achievement, contempt for writing programs is pervasive, at least among the kind of people who think about them at all. In fact, I would say they are objects of their own Derangement Syndrome. Logically, any large-scale human endeavor will be the scene of a certain amount of mediocrity, and creative writing is no different, but here that mediocrity is taken as a sign of some profounder failure, some horrible and scandalous wrong turn in literary history. Under its spell, a set of otherwise fair questions about creative writing are not so much asked as always-already answered. No, writing cannot be taught. Yes, writing programs are a scam–a kind of Ponzi scheme. Yes, writing programs make all writers sound alike. Yes, they turn writers away from the “real world,” where the real stories are, fastening their gazes to their navels. No, MFA students do not learn anything truly valuable.
On “Parents with Options”
A “dagger,” said the well-meaning man, “in the heart of public education.” That man, who superintends Green Bay’s public school system, was reacting to word that Gov. Scott Walker proposed letting parents statewide have the same option poor Milwaukeeans now have – to take their state school aid to a private school, if they choose it.
Parents with options: That was the violence that Greg Maass, that superintendent, was talking about. I don’t mean to single out Maass. He colorfully phrased the apocalyptic view that many others had toward Walker’s idea. A writer for The Progressive, the left-wing Madison magazine that figures we peaked in about 1938, tiresomely said it was “war on education.”
Right: To increase options is to war on education. Actually, though, that is the heart of the complaint of the public school establishment. Giving families more control over where they can get a publicly funded education necessarily means less control for those in charge of what had been the only place you could get one.
But will Walker’s idea kill off public education? Unlikely: Incumbent school systems already live with publicly funded competition.
Free Science, One Paper at a Time
On Father’s Day three years ago, biologist Jonathan Eisen decided he’d like to republish all his father’s papers. His father, Howard Eisen, a biologist and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, had published 40-some-odd papers by the time that he died by suicide at age 45. That had been in Febuary 1987, while Jonathan, a sophomore at college, was on the verge of discovering his own love of biology. At the time, virtually all scientific papers were just on paper. Now, of course, everything happens online, and Jonathan, who in addition to researching and teaching also serves as an editor for the open-access, online-only journal PLoS Biology, knows this well. So three years ago, Jonathan decided to reclaim his father’s papers from print limbo and make them freely available online. He wanted to make them part of the scientific record. He also wanted, he says, “to leave a more positive presence” — to ensure his father had a public legacy first and foremost as a scientist.
Is College a Rotten Investment?
Here’s a familiar story. Americans had a near-religious belief in the soundness of this investment. Uncle Sam encouraged it with tax breaks and subsidized it with government-backed loans. But then, in the 1990s and especially the 2000s, easy money perverted the market. Prices detached from reality. Suddenly, millions of Americans found themselves holding wildly overvalued assets. They also found themselves without the salaries or jobs necessary to pay off the huge loans they took out to buy the assets.
This is not just the story of American real estate. It is also the story of higher education, at least if you believe the dozens of different thinkers and publications that have come to this conclusion in the past few months. They say that higher education is a bubble, just like housing was a bubble, and that it is getting ready to burst. Famed entrepreneur Peter Thiel, for instance, insists that just about every degree is worth little more than the paper it is printed on: Schooling is not education, he says, and ambitious kids should drop out and skip forward to the workplace. New York magazine calls it one of “this year’s most fashionable ideas.” But is it really true?
Bias against rigor in urban schools
Former D.C.school chancellor Michelle A. Rhee was often denounced as a hard case who used her maniacal emphasis on rigor to beat up D.C. teachers and students. I think that was a misreading of what she actually did.
Often the principals she hired were more concerned with creating an atmosphere where teachers connected with kids. Making students work hard was not a priority. Instead, the idea was to convince them to love learning and get those who were way behind up to grade level. Rhee and the principals and teachers she brought into the system talked about raising the ceiling on achievement and bringing more Advanced Placement and other college-level programs into D.C. high schools, but they didn’t do much. My records of AP test participation in the city show no significant gains after Rhee arrived.
I think this is because there is a reluctance, even among the most energetic and reform-minded educators, to push low-income kids too hard. I think many well-meaning and hard-working people in the D.C. school system are biased against rigor. A glaring example of this was unearthed by my colleague Bill Turque in his article about the D.C. Public Charter School Board’s decision to approve the opening of BASIS DC, designed to be the most demanding school ever seen in the District.
Depressed students in South Korea We don’t need quite so much education
A WEEK ago South Korea observed “Children’s Day“, an occasion when every school and office is closed, and the nation’s families march off in unison to chaebol-owned theme parks like Lotte World or Everland. Cynical expat residents are fond of asking “isn’t every day Children’s Day?” They mean it sarcastically but their sarcasm is itself ironic. In reality the other 364 days of the year are very tough for Korean youngsters.
Results of a survey released last week by the Institute for Social Development Studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University show that Korean teenagers are by far the unhappiest in the OECD. This is the result of society’s relentless focus on education–or rather, exam results. The average child attends not only regular school, but also a series of hagwons, private after-school “academies” that cram English, maths, and proficiency in the “respectable” musical instruments, ie piano and violin, into tired children’s heads. Almost 9% of children are forced to attend such places even later than 11pm, despite tuitions between 10pm and 5am being illegal.
Psychologists blame this culture for all manner of ills, from poor social skills to the nation’s unacceptably high rate of youth suicide, which is now the leading cause of death among those aged 15-24. Recently, a spate of suicides at KAIST, a technology-focused university, has drawn national attention. For most students the pinnacle of stress is reached somewhat earlier, in the third year of high school. This is the year in which the suneung (university entrance exam) is taken. Tragic reactions to the stress it creates are all too common.
Wisconsin Bill OKs teacher discipline for bad school test scores
School districts would be able to use standardized test scores as a factor in disciplining or firing teachers under a Republican bill made public Thursday and scheduled for a public hearing Monday.
Currently, districts can use the scores to evaluate teachers, with certain limitations, but not to discipline or fire them.
The bill comes after the state lost out on federal education funding in part due to limitations in how districts can judge teaching performance, and as a state task force develops a plan to better evaluate teachers.
In addition to the teacher evaluation changes, the bill sponsored by the chairmen of the Senate and Assembly education committees also would allow students to receive physical education credit for playing after-school sports, allow athletics suspensions based on police records and alter funding rules for certain programs, among other things.
TJ Mertz has more.
Wisconsin school districts rank low on transparency
When it comes to transparency, Wisconsin school districts are like the kids who spent all night playing video games and the next morning pray that their teachers won’t call on them in class. They are falling behind, offering few of the answers that parents and taxpayers deserve.
Wisconsin’s 442 school districts have earned an overall grade of D on disclosure, according to an analysis conducted by Sunshine Review. The analysis tests the information publicly available on district websites against a 10-point transparency checklist in areas ranging from budgets to criminal background checks on employees.
The Madison Metropolitan School District – one of the state’s largest – did a little better, earning a C-minus.
Want to know basic information, such as what taxes are levied by your school district or how much money it receives from the state and the federal government? Sorry, but chances are you live in a district that does not list tax data on its website – 73% fail to do so.
Nearly two-thirds of school districts neglect to post their current budget along with budgets from previous years so taxpayers can compare spending from year to year. Less than 2% of districts post audits of their finances and performance online or disclose a schedule of upcoming audits.
Higher-education bubble Blowing up grad school
THERE’S a debate going on (Sarah Lacy on Peter Thiel, William Deresiewicz, Annie Lowrey, Matthew Yglesias and even our own Schumpeter and Lexington) about whether the American higher-education market is failing, perhaps in the way the housing market failed (leaving average people with huge overhangs of debt for assets that turn out not to be worth what they thought they were worth), or perhaps in the way the health-care system is failing (sucking up an ever-bigger slice of the national income for services that don’t seem to be providing significantly higher value). Brad DeLong writes that he doesn’t understand why competition in higher education doesn’t seem to work to keep prices down: why doesn’t Yale cut tuition by $5,000 per year to suck top students away from Harvard, or why doesn’t Berkeley offer an out-of-state programme for an extra $3,000 per year to suck top students away from the Ivies? And then he makes this very interesting point:
Town Torn by Tsunami Sees Reopened School as a Therapeutic Step
The week before classes resumed, the middle school’s gymnasium was still a makeshift morgue. But the bodies were removed and the floor disinfected, so Kirikiri Middle School could welcome back students for the first time since the tsunami swept away much of this port town.
“In this disaster, we lost many precious things,” said Nagayoshi Ono, the principal of one of the two schools that have shared the building since Kirikiri reopened two weeks ago, because it is Otsuchi’s sole surviving middle school. “We face a test like a nation at war, and how we respond to this test is up to us.”
Two months after an earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan’s northern coastline, survivors are moving to pick up the pieces. As in many hard-hit areas, teachers and students at this tiny middle school seem to share a conviction that by seeking to resume pre-disaster routines, they can move their devastated communities a step closer toward healing.
Some in D.C. wonder if rigorous charter school can meet poor students’ needs
The Washington region is a hot zone of student achievement, with leading high schools offering a plethora of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes to prove that theirs is a rigorous path to college.
But next year, a public charter school will open in the nation’s capital that raises the concept of academic rigor to a new level. Seventh-graders will take Algebra I and Latin. AP courses will not be an option for high school students — they’ll be the heart of the curriculum.
To graduate, students will be required to complete at least eight AP courses and pass six exams.
The school, to be known as Basis DC, replicates a model developed in Arizona and represents a potential turning point for a charter sector in the District that has grown explosively in the past decade but yielded uneven results.
Jane Goodall, Illustrated
Rob Harris, via a kind reader’s email:
Two new children’s books explore the life of Jane Goodall, the chimpanzee expert and prominent conservationist. The Times spoke with Dr. Goodall about living out her childhood dreams.
Class Size: What Research Says and What it Means for State Policy
Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst & Matthew M. Chingos:
Class size is one of the small number of variables in American K-12 education that are both thought to influence student learning and are subject to legislative action. Legislative mandates on maximum class size have been very popular at the state level. In recent decades, at least 24 states have mandated or incentivized class-size reduction (CSR).
The current fiscal environment has forced states and districts to rethink their CSR policies given the high cost of maintaining small classes. For example, increasing the pupil/teacher ratio in the U.S. by one student would save at least $12 billion per year in teacher salary costs alone, which is roughly equivalent to the outlays of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the federal government’s largest single K-12 education program.
The substantial expenditures required to sustain smaller classes are justified by the belief that smaller classes increase student learning. We examine “what the research says” about whether class-size reduction has a positive impact on student learning and, if it does, by how much, for whom, and under what circumstances. Despite there being a large literature on class-size effects on academic achievement, only a few studies are of high enough quality and sufficiently relevant to be given credence as a basis for legislative action.
NEA Leaders Propose Teacher-Evaluation Shift
National Education Association officials announced Wednesday that they would put a “policy statement” before the union’s governing body for approval that, among other changes, would open the door to the use of “valid, reliable, high-quality standardized tests,” in combination with multiple other measures, for evaluating teachers.
The statement, passed by the NEA’s board of directors May 7, wouldn’t take effect unless the 9,000-delegate Representative Assembly signs on to it at its meeting over the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago. Those delegates could significantly modify the policy statement before approval, and it is likely to be a topic of lively debate.
Still, the announcement comes as a major entry by the NEA in discussions about teacher evaluation, tenure, and due process. To date, the national union has remained silent on most of those issues, even while the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the other national teachers’ union, has put forth various proposals. (“NEA, AFT Choose Divergent Paths on Obama Goals,” Aug. 25, 2010.)
Public Education and Gene Testing to Improve Medication Adherence
There are tons of reasons why people don’t take the medications they’ve been prescribed, including side effects, cost and complicated drug regimens.
A couple of different approaches to improving adherence are in the news today. The first is Script Your Future, a multi-year public-education campaign spearheaded by the National Consumers League and supported by health-industry companies, government agencies, nonprofits and others.
It’s aimed chiefly at patients with diabetes, respiratory diseases including asthma and cardiovascular disease, all of which affect big swaths of the U.S. population and can be particularly troublesome when not treated correctly. The campaign emphasizes the consequences — such as poor health and quality of life — that can spring from skipping meds.
Joel Klein Turns a Blind Eye to His Own Data on Charters and Test Scores
The Atlantic just published a long opinion piece by Joel Klein, including a repetition of his long-standing argument that New York City’s charters perform miracles with “students who are demographically almost identical to those attending nearby community and charter schools,” and that anyone who claims differently is a blind supporter of the “status quo.” A closer look at Klein’s own numbers, however, tells a very different story. According to the progress reports released by his Department of Education just last year, New York City’s charter sector did not outperform similar district public schools. And the Harlem Success Academy — the school which he specifically holds up as “almost identical” to neighboring district schools — actually serves dramatically lower proportions of the city’s neediest students and of English Language Learners than other Harlem schools.
As most observers of the city’s schools know, each year the Department of Education releases progress reports with “grades” for each of its district and charter schools, which take into account the progress that students at each school made when compared to students at “peer schools” (those with similar student bodies in terms of poverty, Special Education status, and the proportion of English Language Learners, as well as other factors.) On the newest school Progress Reports, which were released by Klein’s office in 2010, 58% of district schools got an A or a B in 2010, compared to only 34% of charters. In Districts 4 and 5 in Harlem, more than half of district schools got either an A or B (27 out of 53), compared to only 8 out of the 21 charters in those neighborhoods.
Illinois Overhaul of Schools Gains, Despite Turmoil
Legislation that would make it easier to dismiss ineffective teachers statewide and allow mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel to lengthen the Chicago school day unanimously passed an Illinois House committee Wednesday, despite objections by the Chicago Teachers Union.
The measure, passed unanimously by the state Senate in April, now goes before the full House.
Lawmakers are pursuing passage of a separate “trailer” bill intended to help defuse a dispute that erupted last week when union officials charged the legislation was changed at the last minute without their knowledge.
Chicago Teachers Union officials object to passages in the legislation that would curb their bargaining rights and limit their ability to strike.
The Surprising Number of Milwaukee Public Schools “Administration” Staff Who Make More Than $100,000 a Year
As the debate continues over the anticipated funding cuts coming to the Milwaukee Public School system, a lot of the blame for funding shortfalls has been placed squarely on the shoulders of public school teachers.
To be sure the compensation packages for teachers – especially those who’ve worked in the district for a long time – do play a part in the discussion. But for the focus and blame to be solely on how much teachers in MPS make is unfair and unproductive. I’ve made a fair amount of noise over the past several years about an issue no one else seems to want to discuss when it comes to cuts within MPS: administrative staff in central office.
I live a half block north of MPS central office and it’s always surprised me how many people actually work there. When my wife Jenny started working within MPS I learned a lot more about the infrastructure that runs MPS and I’ve come to see it for what a bureaucratic nightmare it is.
It’s been frustrating for me to see the “boots on the ground” teachers and others who work in the classrooms across Milwaukee to be vilified while central office staff always seem to escape the budget cuts. While we’ve been happy to cut 1000’s of teachers over the past few years, the staff within central office has remained largely untouched. They’re not part of the “evil teachers union” after all.
40 literary terms you should know
Aphorism: Short, sweet little sayings expressing an idea or opinion are familiar to everyone — they just don’t always know the technical term for them. Dorothy Parker was a particularly adroit user of aphorisms.
Apostrophe: Beyond a term for daily punctuation, apostrophe also pulls audiences aside to address a person, place or thing currently not present. O, Shakespeare! Such a sterling example of apostrophe use!
Applicability: The venerable Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien coined this term when badgered one too many times about whether or not his beloved fantasy series was supposed to be a World War II allegory. It wasn’t, but he thought readers could easily apply such an interpretation to the text without losing anything.
Education Bill Fight Puts Spotlight on Chicago Schools Union Chief
As legislators prepared to move a sweeping overhaul of state education law through the Illinois House this week, the Chicago Teachers Union’s sudden turnabout on the bill is raising questions about the union’s role in negotiations and the leadership ability of its untested leader, Karen Lewis.
When the education bill passed the Illinois Senate unanimously last month, the support of the states’ teachers unions seemed to signal an unprecedented, collaborative effort to reform education policy. Lewis and the leaders of the state’s other two major teachers’ unions had agreed to substantial changes on tenure, evaluations and bargaining procedures. But last Wednesday the Chicago Teachers Union membership voted to consider pulling its support, claiming that language curbing collective bargaining rights was inserted into the bill without its knowledge and amounted to an “atomic bomb.”
“The recent steps they’ve taken have certainly concerned a number of the entities they’ve dealt with in Springfield,” said Darren Reisberg, deputy superintendent for the Illinois State Board of Education, who participated in the bill’s negotiations.
Admissions Deans Feel Crunched by the Numbers
Once upon a time, May was not so manic. Although admissions officers have long fretted about enrollment outcomes, they used to fret under fewer microscopes. Application totals were more predictable. Enrollment projections were more reliable. And newspapers had yet to turn the admissions cycle into an annual tally of percentages and prestige.
These days, “yield” is a familiar term. The proportion of accepted applicants who enroll is a crucial number, wa
2010 Wisconsin State Salaries
The MacIver Institute’s new Open Government site provides you with one location for data on Wisconsin public employee salaries, benefits and labor contracts. We have worked hard to not just allow “access” the way many government information sites do, but to give you all of the data in a format that allows you to select and sort the information as you see fit.
Most areas of our site are available to anyone, including some basic tabular information, but our more extensive analysis and graphics pages require an initial sign-in as users of the Open Government site – but the good news is that sign-in is free and easy! All we need is your name, email, city, and state. We will use your email address to let you know when we add more data sets to the website.
The first time you click on a link to our analysis and graphics pages you will be routed to the sign-in page. Then, if you use the same computer and the same internet browser in the future, you should not have to enter your sign-in information again.
Do teens of the Facebook generation value privacy?
For years now, adults have been grumbling about kids these days and how they have no sense of privacy. Always posting everything to Facebook, sharing their lives on Twitter, bantering with friends on MySpace … where’s their good-ol’ sense of self-respect and privacy?
If you feel this way … well, how do I put this gently? You’re wrong.
A new study, based on interviews with more than 160 teenagers, found that the young and the restless indeed have a marked sense of privacy. It’s just that with the medium – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, whatever – come different assumptions and expectations of what is public and what is private.
Wisconsin Voucher plan for other cities creates fears, cheers
Gov. Scott Walker didn’t offer details about how private school voucher programs could work in Green Bay, Racine and Beloit, but on Tuesday, advocates in those cities said they envisioned systems similar to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
Or, perhaps, similar to Walker’s future vision for the Milwaukee program, which Walker has pushed to modify by lifting the cap on enrollment, phasing out income limits for participants and expanding the program to Milwaukee County so suburban private schools can accept publicly funded voucher students from the city.
“Why reinvent the wheel all over again when we can learn from the benefits and mistakes of the Milwaukee program?” asked Laura Sumner Coon, the head of a nonprofit in Racine that currently provides scholarships for 13 area low-income students to attend private schools.
Public-school leaders in all three cities Tuesday vehemently opposed the idea of channeling taxpayer money out of their systems and into private schools.
Green Bay Superintendent Greg Maass said he hadn’t read any research that showed vouchers benefited kids more than maintaining or improving the education they receive in traditional public schools. And research on academic achievement showed voucher-school students haven’t performed at much higher levels than their public-school counterparts, he said.
The 10 Techiest Colleges in the US
Lots of colleges and universities offer quality programs in engineering, the sciences and technology. But there are some schools that offer students of all kinds a completely technologically holistic experience, offering proximity to major techie corporations and internships, a huge range of courses and degrees devoted to different niches, and a world-renowned reputation for being all hopped up on techie genius. Here are the 10 techiest colleges in the U.S.
MIT: While some colleges and universities — even big, research-oriented ones — have single departments that incorporate many different fields in engineering, the sciences or computer tech, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has 19 separate departments and programs in those fields, ranging from Biological Engineering to Mathematics to Nuclear Science and Engineering and more. Research institutes support scientists, students and faculty in astronomy, aeronautics, physics, neuroscience, nanoscience, and a lot more. MIT’s also known around the world as one of the most prestigious tech universities, and its MIT Regional Optical Network provides fast Internet connectivity and support over a 2,500 radius including Boston and New York City.
Learning Today: the Lasting Value of Place
At a conference last summer, Bill Gates predicted that “place-based activity in college will be five times less important than it is today.” Noting the ever-growing popularity of online learning, he predicted that “five years from now, on the Web–for free–you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.”
“College, except for the parties,” Gates concluded, “needs to be less place-based.”
Although it’s bold and thought-provoking, Gates’s prediction is oversimplified. As we can already see, something more complex is happening. Across the United States and the world, colleges and universities, historically defined by their physical campuses, are diversifying their delivery systems. They’re expanding them to provide higher education not only online, but also in new physical locations, both domestically and worldwide. Online education may be on the rise, but place-based education is, too.
The New Normal of Teacher Education
Between 1900 and 1940, America’s normal schools, noncollegiate teacher-training institutions with an emphasis on practical education, gave way to university-based teacher education. Today the nation is moving in the opposite direction.
The first of the public normal schools, educating primary-school teachers, was established in 1839. By 1900 there were more than 330 normals, public and private, enrolling over 115,000 students. Their programs, originally a year long and later longer, included academic subjects but emphasized pedagogy and in-school training.
The rise of the high school and the advent of accreditation and education-professional associations in the late 19th century brought the normal-school era to a close. Higher education determined that the preparation of secondary-school teachers, which required mastery of subject matter, should preferably occur on campus, and so colleges and universities began to create their own teacher-education programs.
Ill. lawmaker says raising obese kids should cost parents at tax time
An Illinois lawmaker says parents who have obese children should lose their state tax deduction.
“It’s the parents’ responsibility that have obese kids,” said state Sen. Shane Cultra, R-Onarga. “Take the tax deduction away for parents that have obese kids.”
Cultra has not introduced legislation to deny parents the $2,000 standard tax deduction, but he floated the idea Tuesday, when lawmakers took a shot at solving the state’s obesity epidemic.
With one in five Illinois children classified as obese and 62 percent of the state’s adults considered overweight, health advocates are pushing a platter of diet solutions including trans fat bans and restricting junk food purchases on food stamps.
Today, the Senate Public Health Committee considered taxing sugary beverages at a penny-per-ounce, in effect applying the same theory to soda, juices and energy drinks that governs to liquor sales. Health advocates say a sin tax could discourage consumption, but lawmakers are reluctant to target an industry supports the jobs of more than 40,000 Illinoisans.
“It seems like we just, we go after the low-hanging fruit, where its easy to get,” said state Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford. He said the state needs to form a comprehensive plan to address physical fitness and disease prevention, rather than taking aim at sugary drinks.
The Humanities, Done Digitally
A few months back, I gave a lunchtime talk called “Digital Humanities: Singular or Plural?” My title was in part a weak joke driven primarily by brain exhaustion. As I sat at the computer putting together my remarks, which were intended to introduce the field, I’d initially decided to title them “What Is Digital Humanities?” But then I thought “What Is the Digital Humanities?” sounded better, and then I stared at the screen for a minute trying to decide if it should be “What Are the Digital Humanities?” And in my pre-coffee, underslept haze, I honestly couldn’t tell which one was correct.
At first this was just a grammatical mixup, but at some point it occurred to me that it was actually a useful metaphor for something that’s been going on in the field of late. Digital humanities has gained prominence in the last couple of years, in part because of the visibility given the field by the use of social media, particularly Twitter, at the Modern Language Association convention and other large scholarly meetings. But that prominence and visibility have also produced a fair bit of tension within the field–every “What is Digital Humanities?” panel aimed at explaining the field to other scholars winds up uncovering more differences of opinion among its practitioners. Sometimes those differences develop into tense debates about the borders of the field, and about who’s in and who’s out.
A second language for every high school student, Stanford’s Russell Berman says
All high school students should be fluent in a language other than English, and it’s a matter of national urgency. So says Russell Berman – and as president of the Modern Language Association (MLA), his opinion carries some clout.
“To worry about globalization without supporting a big increase in language learning is laughable,” the Stanford humanities professor wrote in this summer’s MLA newsletter, in an article outlining the agenda for his presidency.
In conversation, he is just as emphatic, calling for “a national commitment to ramping up the quality of education.”
“Budget attacks on language programs from the Republicans and Democrats are just the contemporary form of a xenophobia that suggests we don’t need languages – and it’s deeply, deeply misguided.”
Dual-language immersion programs growing in popularity
Dual-language immersion programs are the new face of bilingual education — without the stigma. They offer the chance to learn a second language not just to immigrant children, but to native-born American students as well.
In a Glendale public school classroom, the immigrant’s daughter uses no English as she conjugates verbs and writes sentences about cats.
More than a decade after California voters eliminated most bilingual programs, first-grader Sofia Checchi is taught in Italian nearly all day — as she and her 20 classmates at Franklin Elementary School have been since kindergarten.
Yet in just a year, Sofia has jumped a grade level in reading English. In the view of her mother — an Italian immigrant — Sofia’s achievement validates a growing body of research indicating that learning to read in students’ primary languages helps them become more fluent in English.
The Madison School District has launched several dual language programs recently.
Conservative manifesto opposes “one-size-fits-all, centrally controlled curriculum.”
Today 100 conservative education, business and political leaders issued a strong rebuke to a recent call for a national curriculum and national tests.
The manifesto counters the Albert Shanker Institute campaign for a common curriculum and criticizes the federal embrace of common assessments and the funding of two state partnerships to develop them. (Georgia is among the states involved in developing assessments for the Common Core State Standards.)
A local signatory is Kelly McCutchen of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
I know I risk the wrath of many, but as a parent I have no problem with a national curriculum and national tests.
Chocolate Milk on School Menus Under Scrutiny
Does the Nanny State have no bounds? Apparently not, as even beverages are at risk. The newest example of “government knows best” can be found in public schools, where chocolate milk is soon to be banned in an effort to target childhood obesity.
MSNBC reports, “With schools under increasing pressure to offer healthier food, the staple on children’s cafeteria trays has come under attack over the very ingredient that made it so popular-sugar.”
Some school districts have already moved towards removing flavored milk from the menu. Others have sought milk products that are flavored with sugar, a healthier alternative to high-fructose corn syrup.
In the state of Florida, the Board of Education is currently considering a statewide ban of chocolate milk in schools. School boards in Washington, D.C., and Berkeley, California, have already done so. Similarly, Los Angeles Unified’s Superintendent John Deasy has announced plans to push for the removal of chocolate and strawberry milk from school menus.
Despite insurgent threats, hundreds of boys at school in Salavat, Afghanistan
Not a single kid or teacher showed up when the unadorned eight-room school in Salavat opened to much fanfare barely a month ago.
It was a heart-breaking moment for the Canadian military and civilian sponsors for whom education of children in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar province has long been a top, if frustrating, priority
“The insurgents told us, ‘Don’t go to the school. If you guys go, we will cut off your ears,'” says one boy, who looks about 12.
Still, here they are now, neatly paired — sometimes in threes — quietly seated in their wooden desks, attentively reciting a lesson or reading from the chalkboard.
Weeks after that inauspicious start, the raucous chatter of scores of kids sporting baby blue UNICEF backpacks echoes across the dusty soccer pitch at the start of the school day.
Wisconsin Governor Walker: Budget could expand school choice to other cities
Patrick Marley and Jason Stein:
Gov. Scott Walker wants to bring voucher schools to urban areas beyond Milwaukee, and predicts lawmakers will approve that expansion by the end of June.
“I think one of the things between now and the time we finish this (state) budget off at the end of June, we’re going to be able to add and go beyond the boundaries of the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. We’re actually going to be able to add communities like Racine and Beloit and even Green Bay . . . because every one of those communities deserves a choice as well, and with this budget that’s exactly what they’re going to get,” Walker said in a Monday speech to school choice advocates in Washington, D.C.
The proposal comes at a time when Walker is proposing cutting public schools by $841 million over two years and injects a new campaign issue into attempts to recall nine state senators.
A day after Walker made his comments, the Assembly planned to eliminate the cap on the number of children who can participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The 20-year-old system allows low-income children to use taxpayer-funded vouchers worth $6,442 each to attend private schools in Milwaukee, including religious schools.
Change in education certain, but outcome is not Let’s hope education reform does better than last Daniels reform
No truer statement was made about the education reforms enacted in the 2011 Indiana General Assembly than the one uttered Thursday by Gov. Mitch Daniels.
“If we’ve learned anything in Indiana, we’ve learned change can happen, but change is hard,” Daniels said at a bill-signing ceremony. “Change always brings uncertainty.”
“Uncertain” sums up the future awaiting Indiana’s public schools and the teachers who work in those facilities.
Change indeed came during the thorny legislative session. Republicans seized their sudden super majorities in the Indiana Senate and House, ramming through almost every “change” dreamed of by the governor and his superintendent of public instruction, Tony Bennett.
In an improbable corner of China, young scientists are rewriting the book on genome research.
Lab technicians at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, China. Clockwise from upper left: Zhi Wei Luo; Wan Ling Li; Zi Long Zhang; and Yu Zhu Xu.
The world’s largest genome-mapping facility is in an unlikely corner of China. Hidden away in a gritty neighborhood in Shenzhen’s Yantian district, surrounded by truck-repair shops and scrap yards prowled by chickens, Beijing’s most ambitious biomedical project is housed in a former shoe factory.
But the modest gray exterior belies the state-of-the-art research inside. In immaculate, glass-walled and neon-lit rooms resembling intensive care units, rows of identical machines emit a busy hum. The Illumina HiSeq 2000 is a top-of-the-line genome-sequencing machine that carries a price tag of $500,000. There are 128 of them here, flanked by rows of similar high-tech equipment, making it possible for the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) to churn out more high quality DNA-sequence data than all U.S. academic facilities put together.
“Genes build the future,” announces a poster on the wall, and there is no doubt that China has set its eye on that future. This year, Forbes magazine estimated that the genomics market will reach $100 billion over the next decade, with scientists analyzing vast quantities of data to offer new ways to fight disease, feed the world, and harness microbes for industrial purposes. “The situation in genomics resembles the early days of the Internet,” says Harvard geneticist George Church, who advises BGI and a number of American genomics companies. “No one knows what will turn out to be the killer apps.” Companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Intel have already invested in genomics, seeing the field as an extension of their own businesses–data handling and management. “The big realization is that biology has become an information science,” says Dr. Yang Huanming, cofounder and president of BGI. “If we accept that [genomics] builds on the digitalization of life, then all kinds of genetic information potentially holds value.”
Online education growing as colleges offer more classes to meet student demand
Joshua Falso made his first visit to Bowling Green State University on Saturday.
He toured the campus, donned a cap and gown, and graduated.
Falso, 25, of Cleveland, earned his bachelor of science degree in technology by taking classes online while he served in the Air Force, including a stint in Iraq.
Online education has ballooned in the past 10 years as millions of students of all ages earn certificates, licenses and degrees — from associate through doctorate — from any location where they can use a computer.
Few takers for technical schools in Vietnam
Technical universities in South Vietnam are on the look out for students as they are increasingly finding it difficult to motivate students to study for any major in their university.
Departments of education and training in the country will complete receiving university application forms for universities by tomorrow and will transfer these forms to universities for the upcoming entrance examinations.
Of the 29,000 applicants in the South representative office of the Ministry of Education and Training, 20,300 students (70 percent) prefer to study economics and technological subjects in universities, while only 3 per cent wish to follow technical programs.
From the 16,000 applicants for the Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry received so far, 20 preferred to study Mechanical Engineering, 35 preferred Heat Engineering and Refrigeration and 30 preferred Garment and Fashion Design while around 500 preferred Accounting and Business Administration.
