We spent some time blogging about Richard Berman’s idiotic attack on teachers and their unions early this year. We talked about how Berman works to create front groups that attack labor, environmental and consumer activists. One point we didn’t stress is that part of Berman’s schtick is that he doesn’t like [...]
AFT president Randi Weingarten was among the participants in a lively and substantive online discussion about the future of No Child Left Behind held recently on the NewTalk Web site. Read Randi's contributions, and those of other educators and policy experts--along with comments from readers--in [...]
I started teaching back in the dinosaur era before NCLB, as an alternatively certified teacher. Heck, I had an emergency credential in social studies. Which meant I had a degree, had passed a drug test, a content test and had breathed on a mirror. Frankly, I was a bit [...]
State AYP results have been coming out for a while now, revealing that an increasing number of schools are missing the NCLB benchmark. Here's a random selection of a few recent ones:
In Oregon, more than 1 in 3 schools failed to make AYP. (Via Education Daily.)
In Minnesota, [...]
That is, does it pay to pay kids for grades?
Princeton and Harvard researchers, written up recently in the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively, seem to have different answers -- or at least different hypotheses. And their answers may depend on whether we're looking for payments [...]
Skoolboy has an interesting post on testing this week. He draws on Dan Koresh’s latest work to highlight the problems in tests that draw on a narrow number of domains, and thus have a set of items that can be anticipated in test prep. There’s a nice explanation [...]
Slate and the New York Times have reported that the scheduled startup in August of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland could end the world. Really.
Such an event likely would create additional problems for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in both the House and the [...]
When bad news about privatization is reported in the news, privatizers fight back. Then, if they have to concede, they use the "failure = success" argument. Fordham coughs up this argument in its weekly Gadfly newsletter in reference to Philadelphia's school privatization effort.
From a Philadelphia Inquirer article [...]
(And Some Paint)
From WGNO-TV in New Orleans, where the AFT has a large contingent of teachers, many from out of town, attending the National Charter School Conference.
Volunteers helped touch up a New Orleans charter school, and they know how much it helps kids when their school looks [...]
Below is the AFT statement on yesterday's CEP report showing rising math and reading scores since 2002:
CEP’s report is good news for America’s students, parents and teachers. It confirms that the steady rise in student achievement, a trend that dates back to the beginning of the nationwide effort [...]
If so, watch the video below click here* for the CNBC video of a debate between WaPo columnist/editorialist Jay Mathews and filmmaker/entrepreneur Bob Compton. The subject is how children are educated in China, India and the U.S.
After watching this cablicious babblefest, I know less about the [...]
I get to pretend to be smart on the days I read Alexander Russo's "Around the Blogs" and "Big Stories of the Day" posts. His blog is the place I go when I need a quick fix on education news.
Today, Russo's "Around the Blogs" links to [...]
To Sherman Dorn, AFT member/AFT leader/historian/author/blogger. He's added a new title.
[...]There's a blog I'd read every day, but, until he comes back from the dead and stoops to blog, his novels make pretty good reading, too. I'm rereading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which, as the title suggests, is about a character, The Boss, who travels back [...]
Chad Alderman (oops) Aldeman at the Q&E calls baloney on Fordham's overly generous take on research about a study on the DC voucher program.
The latest issue of AFT's American Educator takes on the often contentious question of how best to help English language learners master English and meet academic standards.
Continuing to quote from the press release:
"The highly charged debate over how to teach English language learners [...]
Here's a bigger, bolder concept that could revolutionize education in this country: community schools.
The May/June issue of PSRP Reporter, one of the AFT's publications, highlights a few community schools, which "stay open day and night, serving as the hub of their neighborhoods by hosting a [...]
You know those movies and TV shows about the lone juror holding out because he/she is the only one who believes the defendant is innocent (or, maybe, in this case, guilty)? Not only does Henry Fonda (Juror #8 in 12 Angry Men) come to mind, but also [...]
Joe Williams recently wrote a post about teachers' opposition to the creation of a fourth public funded system of schools in Rhode Island that focused on how teachers are part of the "old rhode island." That's because only their union reps showed up for a hearing that took place [...]
UPDATE: I spoke with Kevin Carey at a Center for American Progress event today, and, very politely, he assured me he is strongly opposed to school vouchers. That's something I should've known from his many posts on the subject. It's hard to sort things out while whispering at the [...]
Diplomas Count came out and said something about P-16 councils, but I'm most impressed with the cool online doo-dads. For instance, I grabbed a quickie report on my hometown, population 40,000 or so, and found that the place I grew up is pretty similar to national averages [...]
Rah, Rah Rhee
Kick 'em in the knee
Rah, Rah Rass*
Kick 'em in the other knee.
The NCLB spirit bunnies cheerleaders are FIRED UP!!!! (Was there a big NCLB pep rally recently?)
Charles Barone kicks 'em in the knee, taking to task Jack [...]
Big news in the edublogosphere is that Joel Packer of the NEA is now blogging. Joel is simply one of the best people in the DC public education community. When I first started at AFT I was on a summer fellowship. As part of that I covered some [...]
One result of our reduced blogging is that we don't call, uh, "baloney" on many of the idiotic things said or written about education policy and unions, but I couldn't pass this one up.
After noting that the American Pediatric Society has called for more pediatric research, Charles Barone [...]
Really, if you haven't been reading eduwonkette lately, you're missing something special. The guest postings from Bill Ayers, Sol Stern and Tim Daly show an openess to exchange and debate that is what blogging should aspire to. She digs into data faster and better than just about anyone [...]
Mike Meehan, social studies chairman at Construction Careers Center, a charter school in Missouri, explaining why he and his colleagues want to join the AFT.
[...]In honor of the 25th anniversary of A Nation At Risk, Columbus Education Association’s CEA blog asked a number of people to post their thoughts on what a world without ANAR would be like. I’m not sure I was able to totally get myself into the stylistic spirit of [...]
Today, the AFT released Sizing Up State Standards 2008*, which finds some states making meaningful progress in developing grade-by-grade content standards for English, math, science and social studies.
Virginia scored 100%, and 15 others were above 75% -- not bad since we used more rigorous criteria [...]
I could have titled this “Revenge of the Jebi” but you’ll get the point. Many states have processes to revise their constitution, including regularly scheduling referenda on whether to create a constitutional convention. Florida is a bit different. Every twenty years a committee of elders (aka the Tax and [...]
It's time for a Friday Quick Quiz.
For decades, the AFT has helped educators expand their influence as school leaders and decision-makers. That commitment extends to:
A) The Queen of Brobdingnag, who reports high levels of job satisfaction.
B) Semiprime numbers, who deserve the same rights as other AFT [...]
Earlier this year, when Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was in Florida, she kowtowed to the knuckle-draggers in her party's base, refusing to say that evolution should be part of the state's science standards.
With a green light from the Bush administration, this week's news should come as no surprise: [...]
Via Tapped, I see that Colorado state rep. Doug Bruce landed in some hot water for saying, during a debate on an immigration bill
"I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado."
He then [...]
From our blog cousins at FACE Talk, a little help for Mike Petrilli, who's entitled to his own blog, but not his own -- ah, you know.
Looks like union-basher Richard Berman has a new blog.
I've written before about the "kids are stupid" meme that pops up in the media. Give students a test, report the findings on a particular question, and conclude kids are stupid. Often lost is that, by the same measure, adults are stupid, too.
So, I had to click [...]
From an article in today's WaPo about teenagers' TV habits:
Daheia J. Barr-Anderson and her colleagues found that the two-thirds of youths who had a bedroom set watched more TV, moved less and had poorer diets and lower grades than those without [...]
An article I read awhile back seems relevant to the recent back and forth between/among Ed Sector's Kevin Carey, eduwonkette/skoolboy, and Sherman Dorn about what kind of education research should lead to policy changes.
I was flipping through the pages of the Journal of [...]
I rarely pull things straight from the AFT Web site, but, as a native of basketball-loving Indiana, I have to grab this video about New Orleans' big man Tyson Chandler's efforts to help teachers.
Bonus info on Chandler: He's been great for the fantasy basketball team of AFT [...]
We'll be back on the air a bit later this week. John and I have been travelling. Most recently, I was in Denver at the American Education Finance Association meeting. The strangest thing I saw there, aside from the big blue bear, was someone wearing a lone ranger mask while [...]
I’ve just finished a big bit of research on the ramifications for the current economic downturn on services AFT members provide. Stunning fact: at the end of the “recovery,” we managed to give 300,000 fewer kids health insurance than at the start. The recovery hasn’t been good for working [...]
Number one
Multiple Choice: "FOIA Request Elicits Greetings and Blank Pages."
A) A headline from an Ed Week article by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo about the Department of Education's response to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding a federal commission on reading research.
or
B) [...]
From Readingteacher, a first-year elementary teacher in Brooklyn who blogs at Edwize:
The biggest challenge to students’ literacy development in the classroom is, in my experience, the case of the standardized testing, both with its extensive time allotted for test prep and test administration.
Think it's just another lazy [...]
I'll confess that I have at times thought WAY too much over the past six years or so about SES -- supplemental educational services (mostly after-school tutoring) supplied by for-profits and nonprofits under No Child Left Behind.
As I noted last week, AFT's Nancy Van Meter wrote about SES [...]
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced a differentiated school accountability pilot program yesterday. But Ed Week's David Hoff threw a flag, noting that the announcement was delivered in Minnesota, a state that is ineligible for the pilot program.
(Feel like an instant replay? On Secretary Spellings' 2005 trip [...]
