In Poor Schools or Poor Kids? on Education Next, Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform speaks for the Education Equality Project (accountability, pay reform, choice) while Pedro Noguera gives the Broader, Bolder perspective (preschool, health care, nutrition, parent training) on improving K–12 schooling.
Noguera: There are schools across the [...]
On The Answer Sheet, cognitive scientist Dan Willingham argues that arts education is more than a luxury, citing a speech by Jerry Kagan, a developmental psychology researcher.
First, he estimated that something like 95% of children are capable of doing the work necessary to obtain a high school diploma, yet [...]
Many students attend two, three, four or more colleges en route to a degree, writes Chad Alderman on The Quick and the Ed. With AP and online courses, plus low-cost community college options, even more will be rolling their own education. So why not let course-givers provide credits, instead [...]
The Science on Women and Science, is a collection of essays by researchers who disagree on why women lag behind men in science careers. Is it gender bias? Differences in ability or interest? Sean Cavanagh [...]
Pittsburgh students are the best in the nation — and the world — in ability to spell “‘Roethlisberger,” reports The Onion. During the Steeler quarterback’s rookie season in 2004, only 43 percent of students could spell Roethlisberger, said Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl.
“In just five years, we have increased that [...]
Darwinian evolution? Intelligent design? In a letter to a Kansas school board, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees demand that Pastafarian beliefs be taught in public schools along with other theories of creation.
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I [...]
Future teachers will be required to repudiate the American dream — “the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits” == at University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, writes Katherine Kersten in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
According to a [...]
Notes From A Homeschooling Mom is hosting the Carnival of Educators. (Email Andrea if you want to be a future carnival host.)
Siobhan Curious, a Canadian literature teacher, writes about an 18-year-old student who’s desperate to pass her course after seven weeks out of school trying to help [...]
Alternatives to Virginia’s state exam, such as assessing portfolios of students’ work, are proliferating, reports the Washington Post. The pass rate is soaring. Are the alternative assessments too easy?
The Virginia Grade Level Alternative, like the multiple-choice test, assesses students’ understanding of the state academic standards. Teachers [...]
As paternity testing has soared, more men have learned they’re not the fathers of the kids they’ve been raising. But non-dads may be stuck paying child support for other men’s children, reports the New York Times Magazine.
In most states, judges put the interest of the child above that of [...]
The Carnival of Homeschooling is open at Norfolk Homeschooling Examiner.
[...]President Obama promised a national science fair to spotlight young inventors and show young students how “cool science can be.” It’s part of his Educate To Innovate campaign: Sesame Street’s Elmo and Big Bird, corporations, companies, video game programmers and scientists have pledged to promote science, technology, engineering [...]
Parents would pay a detention fee for their misbehaving children if two board members in Nutley, New Jersey get their way. Detention costs the district about $10,000 a year in overtime and maintenance. The board members want to fine parents of “habitual” detainees.
However, the policy may not be legal, [...]
Todd Farley’s Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry gets a review in the Washington Post. After rising from scorer to trainer to test writer, Farley concluded that standardized tests are “less a precise tool to assess students’ exact abilities than just a lucrative means [...]
When it’s noisy, kids don’t learn language skills, writes Ashley Merryman in Newsweek.
Kids in noisy environments hear enough words that they learn to communicate. But they miss out on the additional language necessary to master the more sophisticated nuances of phonics, vocabulary, and structure.
Researchers have looked at children living [...]
Overparenting has sparked a backlash, claims Time, which sees a “revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads.”
The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is [...]
Better science education wouldn’t fix Star Trek’s bad science, argues John Scalzi. But it doesn’t matter.
. . . even movies with bad science can still inspire the science-minded. Aside from James Kirk, the main characters in Star Trek are a science officer, a linguist, a mathematical whiz kid, a [...]
A burka-clad Barbie will be sold in a charity auction for Save The Children.
Barbie can leave her box only if escorted by Mullah Ken, sold separately, writes Tim Blair.
[...]Is Northern Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High, a science-and-tech magnet, too successful, asks The Washingtonian. “Why You Should Hate This School” is the subhead.
The public school admits only 16 percent of applicants. In addition to “whiz-kid scientists, computer jocks, and chess champions . . . there’s also a professional model [...]
To help teens succeed in school, parents’ role starts at home, concludes a new book, Families, Schools and the Adolescent.
For example, while helping with homework makes a difference for elementary students, it has little impact for middle and high schoolers, concludes Nancy Hill, a Harvard researcher.
Visiting the school, [...]
Two overdue library books have been returned to Camelback High in Phoenix 51 years late. An anonymous former student mailed the two books with a money order for $1,000 and a note.
. . . the sender wrote that the money should cover delinquency fees and a little extra in [...]
We’re All Right-Wing Bastards Now, writes teacher Larry Sand of the anti-union California Teachers Empowerment Network in City Journal. Sand is responding to a speech by Bob Chanin, the outgoing general counsel of the National Education Association, who called critics of the union “conservative and right-wing bastards” who [...]
Epic Adventures Are Often Uncomfortable is hosting this week’s EduCarnival.
Darren writes about the principal’s classroom visits, which allegedly aren’t about evaluating teachers, but are about checking for student “engagement.” If students are disengaged, wouldn’t the principal form an opinion about the teacher’s ability?
[...]The Pledge of Allegiance is un-American, argues Michael Lind on Salon.
In a republic, the people should not pledge allegiance to the government; the government should pledge allegiance to the people.
“We owe each other an obligation to obey the rules that we, directly or through elected representatives, have mutually [...]
Two Kentucky librarians who decided a graphic novel was obscene have been fired for refusing to let an 11-year-old check out the book.
Sharon Cook, an employee of the Jessamine County library, checked out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier in 2008 and kept [...]
A linguist father spoke only Klingon to his child for his first three years,
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” (d’Armond) Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to [...]
Will the world end in 2012? Impressed by ads for the new disaster movie, 2012, New York City students seem to think it’s a documentary, reports Ms. Rubin, a science teacher now covering earth sciences.
. . . every time I introduce them to some new feature of the [...]
Scribbit, a mom-blogger in Alaska, wonders why her high school age daughter watches so much TV at school. The daughter watched Enchanted in English class and Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Ice Age and Finding Nemo in German class.
“How many movies do you watch a week?”
She thought a bit, counting up [...]
The drama club edition of the Carnival of Educators is up.
[...]Educators have a new euphemism for struggling students, writes Jay Mathews on Class Struggle. “At-risk kids” are now “at-promise.”
“We use the term ‘at-promise’ in Alexandria City Public Schools to describe children who have the potential to achieve at a higher rate than they are currently achieving,” (Superintendent Morton) [...]
In a low-performing, high-aspiring San Diego high school with Mexican, Somali and Asian immigrants, advanced calculus is the hot class everyone wants to take and the biggest club is an honors math fraternity. Jonathan Winn teaches at Crawford Champs High, a Gates-funded school within a school. From Voice [...]
Test scores improved for students with disabilities from 2005-06 to 207-08, according to a new study by the Center on Education Policy.
The study found that students with disabilities showed progress at all levels of proficiency in 4th grade, where the median percentage scoring at the basic level or [...]
“Unfriend” is the word of 2009, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. The verb refers to the act of removing someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook. But some Facebook fans protested the choice, saying “defriend” is the term of art.
In technology, [...]
Jocelyn of A Pondering Heart is hosting the Carnival Of Homeschooling and urging bloggers to enter the homeschool blog awards over at The Post.
[...]Time is money. To save money on salaries, Hawaiii announced “furlough Fridays” to cut the school year to 163 days. (Gov. Linda Lingle has proposed using teacher planning days to restore the missing days in 2010.) Los Angeles hopes to save save $60 million by closing school for [...]
“Meep” is banned at Danvers High in Massachusetts in response to a Facebook-organized student plot to say “meep” frequently in class.
Principal Thomas Murray banned the word last week after school officials got wind of a student plan brewing on Facebook to stage a major disruption on school grounds using [...]
“Math educators” have dumbed down math content in a vain effort to “engage” low achievers, charges Sandra Stotsky in City Journal.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) 1989 standards lead to “trendy, though empirically unsupported, pedagogical and organizational methods that essentially dumb down math content.”
Stotsky suggests emulating [...]
Teachers are selling lesson plans online, reports the New York Times.
While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even [...]
While resilient ”dandelion” children thrive in any environment, ultra-sensitive “orchild children” will “wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care,” writes David Dobbs in The Atlantic Monthly.
So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as [...]
Chicago’s highly regarded magnet schools will change admissions rules to drop race as a criteria. Instead, there will be more places for siblings and neighborhood children; socioeconomic status will replace race as a diversity factor.
Only 12 percent of all applicants won admission to elementary magnets this year, reports the [...]
Basic algebra stumps most first-year students at City University of New York freshmen, according to a CUNY report.
“These results are shocking,” said City College Prof. Stanley Ocken, who co-wrote the report on CUNY kids’ skills. “They show that a disturbing proportion of New York City high school graduates lack basic [...]
The teacher shortage has turned into a teacher glut, reports AP. Veteran teachers are delaying retirement and new teachers are having trouble finding jobs. Of course, the story features a woman who trained to be an art teacher in Kansas. There are more jobs in math, science and special [...]
The Onion asks: Are Our Children Learning Enough About Whales?
Currently, 84 percent of school funding is spent teaching children about whales. Is that enough? Should every school have its own whale?
[...]New Haven’s widely praised new teacher contract isn’t all that great, editorializes the Washington Post.
The editorial cites Thomas W. Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, who complained in the Huffington Post that the “contract preserves tenure, prevents good teachers from getting paid more than [...]
Churchill’s speeches get low marks from a computerized grading system, British educators tell The Telegraph. “We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and on the streets . . . ” Too repetitive.
His reference to the [...]
A Colorado high school’s automatic phone system called thousands of parents to say their student was failing one or more class. It turned out to be a fail by Hinkly High’s phone system:
The phone messages should have gone only to students who were actually failing — not the entire [...]
A San Jose charter elementary school with low-income students and very high test scores has won an award for financial efficiency, reports John Fensterwald on Educated Guess.
Rocketship Education saves $500,000 per school per year by using online instruction to supplement classroom teaching. The savings enables the network to pay [...]
The Education Trust and The New Teacher Project (TNTP) have issued reports calling for states to commit to “bold reforms” to increase teacher effectiveness in applications for federal “Race to the Top” funding.
Fighting for Quality and Equality, Too, by The Education Trust, and How Bold is “Bold”?, [...]
As Los Angeles Unified contemplates turning more schools into charters, parents in a heavily immigrant neighborhood received an anonymous flier written in Spanish: “DO NOT SIGN ANY PETITIONS FOR A CHARTER SCHOOL BECAUSE YOU COULD BE DEPORTED.”
While United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing LAUSD teachers, was not [...]
Joanne, Joanne Jacobs, Diana Senechal
