With women earning 58 percent of bachelor’s degrees, some private liberal arts colleges are practicing affirmative action for male applicants to preserve a gender balance in enrollment. Private colleges have the legal right to discriminate against women, but don’t like to publicize it. Now the U.S. Commission on Civil [...]
Interestingly, each computer has something different on the screen. This is probably fine. Students should be free to use their machines as a thought extensions, utilizing the tools in ways that make sense to them, to help them make sense of what’s being taught.1
My week is over, with [...]
D’Arcy Norman poses the question, “How do you connect to people online?” This post is my response to that question.
It’s this blog that I value the most as a connection point with others. It’s where I started dabbling in this networked way, where I connected to my first edublogger [...]
FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE: Hillsborough elementary students build marble roller coasters and more in their Science Olympics. (Times photo, Skip O'Rourke)
GRANTED: Seventy Pinellas teacher win grants to help them pursue new, nontraditional methods in their classrooms.
GRADUATE: US Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki tells' [...]
Oh yeah, because of stuff like this. To be fair, they do issue refunds when you find dead frogs in your salad. [...] Texas will judge teacher-training programs based on graduates’ effectiveness in the classroom, reports the Houston Chronicle. Poor programs could lose state accreditation. Till now, programs have been judged only by the percentage of graduates who pass the teacher certification exam.
The biggest change to the accrediting rules — and potentially [...]
Amanda MacMillan’s article last month for CNN Health, “Internet addiction linked to ADHD, depression in teens” highlights a troubling study from Taiwan pointing to widespread Internet addiction problems faced by adults as well as youth. This paragraph really got my attention:
Our culture practically mandates time online, he (Dr. Dimitri [...]
Sylvia Martinez is spot on in her post today, “Students are not the enemy.” Shame on the vendor and vendor representative, Sophos and Chris Ridgway, for sharing an upcoming session at NYSCATE (The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education) conference titled, “[...]
This happens a lot. Wine is the only type of alcohol that comes in a container that requires its own special tool to open. Other alcohols don't even have basic child-proofing. So, when you're smashed out of your mind and caught without a corkscrew, it [...]
Of course, the web is not social. Just like technology isn’t social. Or media isn’t social. We use these resources for social means, but that’s a function of use, not of the characteristics inherent in the web or media. We compress “social uses of the web” to social web for [...]
A good name is often as good as (or better than) a good idea. The age of the informavore displays both provocative thinking and a memorable term. The video (about 30 min) is a loosely connected flow of thoughts on the impact of the web on humanity, information abundance, [...]
At Ed Money Watch, we discuss and analyze major issues affecting education funding. In our Friday News Roundup, we try to highlight interesting stories that might otherwise get overlooked. These stories emphasize how federal and state policy changes can affect local schools and districts.
As Enrollment Grows in Utah, Budget Shrinks[...]
Remember that one time you hit ‘reply all’ and the entire Undergraduate Assembly found out you were going to be 10 minutes late because of an emergency GYN appointment? Um, me neither.
Picture the worst email gaffe you ever made, and magnify that times a thousand, because a [...]
And I got this email directly, which (with permission granted) I will reproduce:
Hello Mr. WhItmire,
Thank you for your interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal, “The Lost Boys”. Your new book could not be more important and I hope it’s a huge best seller! I’m a retired [...]
Bruised by the gubernatorial losses in New Jersey and Virginia, and embattled by the ongoing health care reform debate, President Obama turned his attentions to education reform this week. On Wednesday the POTUS highlighted reforms in 10 states—most notably, moves to allow student data to be tied to teacher [...]
IRRODL just released a special issue on Openness and the Future of Education. Future of education is not an explicit focus in the articles, but can be anticipated as a result of the focus of the articles. Topics include: openess and textbooks, peer-to-peer learning, impact of openness, disaggregated future [...]
New legislation introduced this week by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) would create a comprehensive literacy policy that encompasses early childhood, elementary, and middle level and high school education. The Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation or “LEARN” Act (H.R. 4037 [...]
In the wake of Tuesday’s election there is some speculation that the policy climate in Virginia may become more friendly to charter schools — a change that’s long overdue. Albemarle County is using chartering in some progressive ways but overall the state’s policy is an embarrassment. A panel in Williamsburg will [...]
--Rhoda Janzen's new memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Offered by publisher, accepted because I'm related to some lovely Mennonites in little black dresses.
--Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night. Never read any Cox. Part of my search for reincarnations of Wilkie Collins.
--Daphne Du Maurier's
For whom do the (wedding) bells toll? (Washington Post Reliable Source)
When a university says “Everything is on the table” during budget cuts, could that possibly mean athletics? (San Francisco Chronicle)
Is it time for an Office of Consumer Protection—for higher ed? (American Progress)
A symposium in Arlington on Tuesday brought together some of the most well-known researchers in the field of early childhood to dig into a tough and timely question: How do we help young children in the United States who know very little English?
The day-long symposium, "Investigating the [...]
Meadow Pointe mom Susan Cali took her battle against a new cell phone tower at John Long Middle to the school's PTSA this week, but didn't gain much traction.
The group thanked Cali for her views, but took no action either for or against the tower,' [...]
The Chicago Teachers’ Union is a gang, charged James Meeks, chair of the Illinois Senate Education committee and pastor of Salem Baptist Church, in an Oct. 17 speech.
“Chicago Public Schools have a gang problem. The gang, however, is not the BDs (Black Disciples), the gang is not the GDs [...]
The H1N1 virus is spreading more and more each day, and the seasonal flu may show up at any moment; yet we’re all facing the dilemma of not knowing where and how to go to get vaccinated since there is currently a shortage of both the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines. [...]
USA Today reports that Clarksville-Montgomery County school district in Tennessee decided to go mostly paperless with student report cards. The district now makes grades available to parents with secure online accounts. The same system, called Power School, is used by parents to access progress reports, attendance, and student lunch accounts.
NSBA’s own Ann [...]
Those inside the school reform bubble are pretty much solely focused on things like Race to the Top, mayoral control, and the like. But everybody else out there -- teachers, principals, parents -- is probably focusing on more mundane (immediate) issues like H1N1 and the gang rape of a teenage girl in Richmond, [...]
Raped repeatedly by her father, abused by her horrible mother and kicked out of school for her second pregnancy, Precious (also obese, black and illiterate) finds redemption when an alternative-school teacher (lesbian) teaches her to read and write a journal about her feelings. Writing isn’t going to save Precious [...]
(Photo from Pinellas County schools)
[...]States are creating alternate pathways to graduation for students who can’t pass high school exit exams, reports the Center on Education Policy. Most offer alternatives for disabled students; some also exempt students who aren’t fluent in English. Pass rates have improved in most states. Many more states are [...]
Check out figures four and five in this report from the Southern Regional Education Board.
[...]"Without you saying anything to them, they will believe that they are responsible for making big decisions about budget matters, school policies, hiring of the principal and dozens of other matters."
Imagine charter schools CEO Dennis Bakke in a recently revealed email about how to pick and manipulate charter boards. ([...]
We launched a new site this week, Discuss Campus. There was a huge flood to the site and there is already a healthy community over there with over 200 questions asked in the first 2 days. Awesome. There were quite a few questions that [...]
Texas spent $300 million over three years on merit pay for teachers, but saw no effect on student achievement, concludes a review by the National Center on Performance Incentives reviewed the now-defunct Texas Educator Excellence Grant.
The state is now funding another merit pay plan, District Awards for Teacher Excellence, [...]
The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management -- an organization not widely known outside of academia and technical policy circles -- puts on truly meaty conferences. I've attended three APPAM conferences to date, including the Annual Fall Research Conference going on in Washington,' [...] 
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