Could Miami have a revolt against FCAT like the one just seen in Palm Beach County? Parents and teachers in Palm Beach joined together to put a halt to a vast over-emphasis on FCAT.
Why did this happen in Palm Beach?
According to the Palm Beach Post, the precipitating events centered around [...]
The current recession is having a devastating effect on America’s young people – including both younger children in school and older teenagers who have left school and are looking for work, but seldom finding it.
Having parents out of work is disruptive to the home lives of children and is associated [...]
Some well-informed educators believe that the Legislature may cut the state budget by as much as 12% for Fiscal Year 2010-11. This would result in more layoffs in the M-DCPS.
Perhaps the primary concern of the Legislature has to do with what happens in fiscal year (FY) 2011-12 after the [...]
From what can be seen so far, the New Haven contract is a medium-sized step toward higher levels of teacher accountability.
The deal does not include individual teacher merit pay, but teachers will be more strictly evaluated in the past, and ineffective teachers can be fired in 120 days.
No important overall [...]
My work for reforming public schools began in 1985, and one of my inspirations at the time was Theodore Sizer’s very cleverly personalized book, “Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School.”
My first intervention in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools was in favor of decentralizing curricular control to the [...]
What if we passed a half-cent sales tax referendum devoted to increasing the number of well-paid, highly-skilled jobs in high-technology research and manufacturing in Miami-Dade County?
Such a tax would bring in about $200 million a year. The tax would sunset in ten years, but it could be made permanent based [...]
The article from Education Week concerning the impact of the research of William Ouchi on school decentralization remind us that Miami-Dade has some unfinished business in this field.
New York has gone further than other big-city districts in decentralizing, and the results show that this has had a very favorable outcome.
Principals [...]
I have been a teacher unionist since graduate school at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where I was part of the Teaching Assistant Association when it ran a strike for higher pay.
I was the founding Secretary-Treasurer of the United Faculty of Florida at FIU, and for the first several years [...]
The outsourcing battle at FIU has only just begun. The professors are gradually learning about the challenges facing them from for-profit corporations that would like to take over more and more of the teaching functions.
Since higher ed depends partly on student tuition and since many students are unable to afford [...]
In thinking about the threat of online outsourcing to faculty jobs at FIU, I have also been considering what is coming in online outsourcing in K-12.
Teachers in public schools are facing the danger that their jobs could fly away to India.
Clayton Christensen, in his book, “Disrupting Class,” argues that [...]
Chester Finn’s long article, “Is It Time to Throw in the Towel on Education Reform?” is worthy of extended reflection.
We are coming to the end of No Child Left Behind. FCAT is obviously being weakened as the obsessive central focus of K-12 education in Florida. High schools will not be [...]
For the past week, I have been super-busy in learning about and writing about Florida International University’s new contract with a company which will handle many aspects of a new online degree program. The company will provide us with:
### An Internet platform with slick graphics and videos;
### The recruitment of [...]
We need a Cory Booker (mayor of Newark, New Jersey) or an Adrian Fenty (mayor of Washington, D.C.) in Miami. However, Blacks are not a majority here as they are in Newark or D.C.
One could argue that the current disproportionate Black influence over the public schools is possible only because [...]
The current discussion on health insurance reform is bringing many facts to light regarding high costs of medical care. When you compare education with medicine, some important similarities emerge:
1. Both education and healthcare are not paid for directly by those receiving benefits.
Families do not pay tuition for public schools [...]
Edison High School has experimented with the academy structure before, but they did it in a fashion that was doomed to fail from the very beginning because they did not integrate the core academic disciplines – language arts, math, science and social studies – with the special thematic disciplines of [...]
This series of ten episodes totaling about 90 minutes ran on the Jim Lehrer Newshour on PBS over the past two years. Merrow interviews teachers and principals who bitterly oppose Rhee, as well as some who support her.
The show includes footage of several national education researchers whose work is well-known [...]
One of the most important new merit pay programs for teachers and principals in the nation is occurring in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, school district.
The program is called Leadership for Educators’ Advanced Performance (LEAP).
The Obama administration has granted $1.9 million for a pay-for-performance program in six pilot schools for [...]
Alberto Carvalho is showing himself to be a very constructive superintendent – at least as far as the number one problem of the MDCPS is concerned, which is fixing up the lowest-scoring high schools.
First, Carvalho put in Dougas Rodriguez, the Florida principal of the year, as the head of Central [...]
In 1981, under the leadership of Dal Lawrence, the AFT teachers’ union in Toledo, Ohio negotiated an intern program for beginning teachers. The idea was to give greater professional responsibility to teachers by involving selected individuals in mentoring new teachers.
A responsibility that was previously closely held by the administration was [...]
What is a sensible salary strategy for the United Teachers of Dade in the current negotiations?
Laying off thousands of school employees so that the union members can receive their step raises makes no sense at all. The School Board and administration should firmly oppose union demands to receive step raises [...]
Some argue that students should not be rushed through high school and college, but that they should instead be allowed to have plenty of time for both intellectual and emotional growth.
In particular, young people need to go through a meaningful initiation process, such as the bar mitzvah and the bat [...]
Today’s Washington Post story marking two years of leadership of the Washington, DC school district by Michelle Rhee reminds us of the experience of the MDCPS with Rudy Crew.
A strong leader comes in from the outside with an elaborate plan for change, but then meets massive resistance from the [...]
" target="_blank">A story by Kathleen McGrory in The Miami Herald this morning tells us that Central High is being partly restaffed. Over 200 veteran teachers have applied for positions. Ineffective teachers are being pushed out.
This is the most comprehensive restaffing of any school in the history of the Miami-Dade" [...]
As of very recently, several comments submitted to teachdade.com have attacked specific TD readers. These will not be published unless the comment offers a non-libelous critique of a public figure. Other comments have criticized TD's editorial policy. While I take web site suggestions seriously and might act on them, I [...]
The new book by Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb, "Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education," needs to be taken seriously because it describes grave threats to teacher unionism – online classes and schools, plus the evaluation and training of teachers based on student test [...]
Imagine a storefront school in a low-income neighborhood that could hold 200 students at a time.
Imagine a school with very close, supportive ties between students and teachers and between student peers – where everyone was well motivated to learn.
Imagine a school that could ensure that almost every high school [...]
I am taking a vacation until May 19. There were be no long posts by me during this time, but I may post occasionally.
Please help to pick up the slack by posting more yourself.
[...]The comments of FIU education professor Louie Rodriguez on the Chris Wolfe Show this week have me thinking.
How could one develop a progressive program for K-12 education at the state or local level that the FEA or UTD would support?
What do we really need in Florida today? [...]
The choice of Mark Rosenberg as the new president of Florida International University makes us think about how the public schools relate to the local public institutions of higher education, FIU and Miami Dade College.
This relationship is in flux because MDC is becoming a four-year state college that grants the [...]
How can we get closer to our goal of a public school system which provides a superior education for all students?
The obvious answer is that we need teachers who are better prepared and better motivated. We need to attract and retain more teachers who are highly effective, and we need [...]
UTD oppositionists believe that the union will cave in and accept an unpaid furlough between now and the end of June. They predict that the UTD will lose thousands of additional members – after having lost 1,200 already, according to the Miami Herald.
The oppositionists say that the poll being [...]
We may later have to eat our words, but the “experts” are saying the recession has hit bottom and recovery is already underway. It seems we have also reached bottom in Florida politics. Read More...
[...]Given that improving FCAT scores is a state mandate that cannot be evaded, M-DCPS could still keep much of the curriculum as it is, but every Friday could be set aside as “Teacher Creativity Day,” where teachers were allowed to present their own curriculum.
The teachers’ curriculum would have to [...]
It is just possible that the United Teachers of Dade is running a balanced, rational response to the budget cuts.
They might have just the right amount of militance in the form of the work-to-contract campaign and the growls in the direction of Larry Feldman for his deviation [...]
Busy, busy, busy...we are all busy. How do you "reward" students? Do you follow the CBCs every single day? Any deviation?
For instance, I allowed students to play chess every three weeks or so on Friday if they behaved well.
Recently I was told by an assistant principal that chess doesn't' [...]
In the middle of a severe recession with a union effort to “work to contract,” it probably makes very little sense to propose a broad effort of institutional
renewal, but let’s think about this with regard to the Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
The truth of the matter is that most [...]
The most pressing issue facing the MDCPS in its curriculum has nothing to do with FCAT scores. The issue is school violence.
The people who concern themselves with reading, writing, math and science are not putting first things first. Kids are dying at each other's hands. Perhaps the answer has to [...]
Many teachers argued at the School Board meeting on Wednesday that they should not take an unpaid furlough because it is not at all certain that the district will have the funds to pay them back after July 1.
The information coming out about federal stimulus funds and the state budget [...]
Lately I have been reflecting on my 10 year career as a teacher and all the time I have given to so many children while at the same time sacrificing time from my own.
I have been thinking back on the many nights I have been in my room checking papers, [...]
People have been trying to figure out what is going on between the UTD and the MDCPS.
We have been getting signals ever since Alberto Carvalho was hired that he was promising to deliver the full contractual raise to the teachers, but the actual payment of this raise [...]
I'm going to use the flimsy pretext that this story involves schools to justify posting it on an education site. Truth is, I want this story to be widely read. Huang Qi is about to become a martyr because he spoke in behalf of 10,000 dead school children. Read
Consider this:
"When the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to" [...]
The Miami Herald reports that a secret meeting of the School Board decided to require employees to take a two-day unpaid furlough to bring this year’s budget in balance. They will be repaid after July 1, 2009 out of next year’s budget. Read More...
[...]TD Faithful:
Due to recent suspicious and even threatening comments posted on this site, all comments must now receive editorial approval. Read More...
[...]Modern technology has enabled many organizations to become flatter. Middle management isn't needed because the leaders can communicate instantly with everyone and everyone can in turn provide feedback.
Has our district become flatter? Read More...
' [...]The impending closing of six Roman Catholic schools in South Florida shows that our state’s two existing voucher programs – one through corporate tax credits and the other for disabled students – are not enough to keep religious schools in operation.
The Catholic archdiocese is considering converting some other schools to [...]
Web 2.0 Tips and Tricks
With all the discussion of expensive software implementations, I'd like to offer some technology advice for teachers and the school district in general. There's a great deal of software available for low or no cost.
Originally, I had hoped to publish an article I wrote about how [...]
During the past week, two mothers of students at Ronald Reagan Doral Senior High School engaged in a hunger strike in front of the school to demand an end to budget cuts at the school.
Several parents and students from Doral testified against the cuts in front of the School [...]
