John Shafchuk, who first joined the Pasco County school district in 1975, is about to serve his final day here.
Shafchuk, principal of Deer Park Elementary on Trouble Creek Road since 2003, caught folks off guard this past week by filing his retirement papers. He leaves at [...]
If the new high-quality-schools lawsuit hinged on Florida science scores alone, it'd probably be a slam dunk.
"Florida students are pretty much last in the nation for science," says a power point presentation that Todd Clark, the Department of Education bureau chief for curriculum and instruction, gave to a statewide education group meeting in Lake Mary' [...]
Both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report riffed off the news that an elementary school boy was refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance in school. Just cuz I'm lazy, here's the Daily Show version (the segment starts about 90 seconds in):
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon -' [...]Our ability to do things with technology far exceeds our ability to understand implications. Consider the brain chip: “Intel researchers in Pittsburgh told journalists today that brain implants are harnessing human brain waves to surf the Internet, manipulate documents, and much more”.
This got me thinking about how far [...]
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 [...]
BoardBuzz came across this Washington Post item asking for readers to help select the best education blogs of 2009. As the Post’s Jay Mathews writes:
I have put out a best education blogs list the last two years, but I wasn’t a blogger myself then, and really didn’t know what [...]
Lots of reaction to Google’s Chrome OS (web operating system, in theory, a means to do away with Windows, Mac, Linux). Running Chrome OS at this stage is no easy task (see steps required here) – it’ll be a while before it will be available for most users. And, [...]
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?
[...]Lincoln University, a historically black institution in Pennsylvania, doesn't have much in the way of a core curriculum. To graduate, you can take one year of foreign language or two courses in computer science ("Computers for Health Education" counts). They do make you take some intro survey sorts of' [...]
The University of California system is reeling. Crushed by the recession and the total collapse of governance in the Golden State, the UC system just raised student tuition by a mind-boggling 32 percent. A few weeks ago, New York Times Magazine interviewer Deborah Solomon sat down with UC Chanchelor Mark [...]
A Panama City high schooler decided he didn't want to attend his regular school, Mosley High, on Tuesday. But apparently he didn't want to miss out on the experience, either.
So he took a seat in nearby Bay High instead.
Transfers like this aren't allowed, it turns out. So the boy, whose' [...]
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this. There's a new documentary out called The War On Kids which argues that the current culture of many schools is, in essence, a war on children. But from the trailer, at least, the' [...]
The last Bracey Report should be read and reread in its balanced, jewel-like entirety. Federal accountability schemes, despite their avowed purpose of helping the poor, make no sense unless you also believe that American education as a whole is dangerously in decline. Bracey's last report again debunked that myth along [...]
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, announced a new nonprofit group last week to promote the study of "Web science," arguing that his creation deserves its own specific research focus.
The group, Web Science Trust, has set up a Wiki where universities offering Web-science programs can [...]
Congrats and condolences. Word is spreading that Alice Cain, longtime staffer for George Miller, is leaving the Hill and heading to the Hope Street Group. There she'll be focusing on teacher effectiveness and elevating the teaching profession to drive broader reform of our education' [...]
From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation web site.
Brenda forwarded this AP article to me while I was on the road.
Gates Foundation gives $335M for teacher quality
SEATTLE — Three school districts and a coalition of charter schools have agreed to be test kitchens for some [...]
"Schools or districts that are administering more of these alternative assessments may look better than those who are using fewer, and it may not have anything to do with the quality of the program." NCREST director Joan Herman
[...]Read deep into the final regulations for Race to the Top, and you'll see an outline of how the Education Department plans to judge states' applications.
There's the 500-point grading scale, of course.
But for the finalists, there's one last step: Fly to Washington, bring your five best [...]
Not sure, because nobody’s looking. I’ve come across several data points that suggest something similar is playing out here, but nothing definitive. I know that universities that serve the sons and daughters of blue-collar families are experiencing especially sharp gender imbalances.
But for now, all the coverage of this issue comes [...]
Cross-posted to the Storychasers blog.
This week Oklahoma educators participated in our 29th “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” workshop since 2008, and created some fantastic digital stories about the history, geography, and people of our great state.
Did you know Oklahoma is home to a growing black bear population and just had [...]
The $100 million, seven-year grant that Hillsborough schools received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Thursday has the potential to significantly alter the teaching landscape, both in Hillsborough County and nationally.
Its focus on reforming pay structures, evaluation procedures and other matters related to teaching promises to bring [...]
The major papers each add a bit of key information about the just-announced Gates teaching initiative:
Mini RTTT: Federal officials are pushing in much the same direction with a $4.35 billion school-reform grant competition that stresses teacher effectiveness, tied to student achievement. (Gates Foundation gives [...]
State will soon grade its education schools Orlando Sentinel
Florida already grades its public schools and rates its pre-kindergarten programs based on student test scores.
Its teacher-preparation programs look to be next.
Education">Learning to Teach to Bridge the Achievement Gap NYT
David Whitman writes speeches for Arne Duncan at the Department of Education. He’s written for numerous publications on a range of issues and he examined the ”new paternalism” idea and looked at the issue in his recent book.
But maybe he should be at the Department of the Interior? [...]
That’s the title of Christina Hoff Sommers’ new book. She’s tackling an issue that has been discussed here before, the relative paucity of women in the sciences — roughly a fifth of the B.A. recipients in the key fields. If college campuses were gender [...]
IMPROVING TEACHER QUALITY: Hillsborough celebrates winning a $100 million grant to reform teacher evaluations, pay, preparation and other aspects of the job from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Times photo, Edmund Fountain)
SPEAKING OF TEACHER QUALITY: Someone has to prepare them, and the Florida Department of [...]
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 [...]
Salesforce, like many other companies, is jumping onto the enterprise social media bandwagon with the soon-to-be-released Chatter. Basically, Chatter introduces some of the functionality found in Facebook and Twitter into a secure enterprise system. Reactions vary (have a look at the comments on the article), including: “everyone’s on Facebook [...]
Controversy aside, Modern Warfare 2 is an interesting “sign of the times”. In its first week of release, the game generated $550 million (in UK and North America). What other media even comes close? What’s a big weekend for a new movie release? $50-60 million? I’ve been looking for [...]
After three days of 5+ hours work of presentations, we’ve (Jay Cross, Tony Karrer, and I) wrapped up our third annual LearnTrends conference. Scott Skibell of Skillcasting has completed and posted recordings of the event. Topics include: convergence, mobile learning, design, social learning, managing information, microlearning, enterprise 2.0, [...]
Colleges and businesses often work together, but they’re not always allies on tax policy. A downward economy could test their ties.
[...]Adam Kotsko questions the idea that small discussion-based courses are the ideal form of undergraduate education.
[...]One college takes "sound mind, sound body" to a new level, requiring students to lose weight or take a fitness class to graduate.
[...]
Think you don't know anyone outside higher ed who can help your job search? Sabine Hikel says you do.
The Hope tax credit is designed to help middle class families pay for college -- but not this much. A Treasury Department audit released Thursday found that several hundred thousand taxpayers sought credit in 2006 and 2007 for more than half a billion dollars more than they were supposed [...]
Case Western researchers explore whether high-speed networks can improve health care, public safety and graduation rates in the poverty-stricken neighborhoods surrounding its campus.
[...]The University of Nebraska's Board of Regents is scheduled to vote today on whether to limit embryonic stem cell research at university facilities to studies that would have been permitted under the Bush administration's more restrictive policy. The resolution (see Page 4 at this link), which is backed by [...]
As students protested outside, the University of California's Board of Regents on Thursday reluctantly approved a 32 percent increase in "fees" (what the rest of higher education calls tuition) for 2010-11. "We're being forced to impose a user tax on our students and their families," Mark Yudof, the UC' [...]
1.4 percent increase in number of degrees awarded in 2008 is smallest since 2003; growth in biology doctorates accounts for most of the uptick, and humanities continue to dip.
[...]Medical faculty members at the University of Connecticut Health Center have voted to unionize and to be represented by the American Association of University Professors. According to the AAUP, this is the first time that the faculty at a free-standing medical school will have collective bargaining.
[...]
