English is the official language of the state of Missouri. One official language is bad enough, but at least we don’t have two. Ottawa is finding that multiple official languages can cause hassles after a ceremony featuring speeches in official English left out any mention of official French. The [...]
My kindergarten readiness posts met with some disagreement from readers, who responded that if children can’t complete the tasks on readiness tests, then they’re not mature enough to learn in a classroom.
I’d like to ask those readers how they explain the success of Building Blocks, a federally-funded [...]
An article in the Columbia Daily Tribune explains the commotion over the Columbia Public Schools’ brand-new elementary school building. The problem with it? It looks too nice — much nicer than the districts’ other buildings. Some people say it’s inequitable for one school in the district to have handsome [...]
The Missouri State School Board voted today to close the Wellston School District. Wellston students will be Normandy students after this school year.
Normandy is only provisionally accredited; its student MAP scores are better than Wellston’s, but not by much. Normandy has shown admirable willingness to accept new students; however, [...]
Nashville’s mayor has announced the creation of a charter school incubator to train principals. The center will start out as a nonprofit financed by private donations.
Supporters hope the incubator will teach school leaders about the features of successful charters:
Ideas about common traits shared by good charter schools — longer [...]
There’s a bill before the D.C. Council that’s even worse than this one that was proposed during Missouri’s past legislative session. The D.C. bill would mandate 30 or 45 minutes of physical education per day, depending on grade level, and would order schools to buy “minimally-processed” food [...]
Kevin Horrigan confirms my suspicion that the idea for a state dog was thought up by some schoolchildren. Several of Missouri’s symbols had their start as class projects, and the Newfoundland proposal continues that trend.
Besides serving as convenient research topics for fourth graders, state symbols appeal to people [...]
Sting operations against dairy farmers notwithstanding, Missouri has better raw milk policy than some states do. For example, Wisconsin bans all raw milk sales, including the practice of selling shares in a cow in exchange for future delivery of milk. (Selling raw milk from a farm is legal [...]
USA Today looks at meat in the National School Lunch Program and finds that it doesn’t compare favorably to the meat in fast food restaurants. The USDA accepts blemished meat that the restaurant chains would reject, and the private companies conduct better tests for bacteria, too.
A professor of medicine [...]
Following Tuesday’s commentary on a Tax Foundation report, MO Rage has written another post that has me scratching my head. This one’s about government spending, and it contains the following statement:
I totally agree that we need to reduce spending but, frankly, not on jobs.
All government spending translates into [...]
The University of Missouri Extension isn’t alone in promoting food ideologies to students. This article about school food in Southampton, N.Y., describes how teachers there urge students to lobby for different cafeteria food:
“What do I keep telling you guys you have to be?” she asked her class.
“The Generation [...]
Prescription drugs: They come in little white bottles. They take the shape of tablets, gels, or liquids. And they can’t talk.
That last fact usually goes without saying. No one would expect medications to speak, right? Actually, proposed regulations seem to anticipate just that. If drug companies couldn’t advertise in [...]
MO Rage completely misunderstands this Tax Foundation report (link via Kansas City Prime Buzz). The report notes the rising percentage of tax filers who don’t owe any income tax, then states (emphasis mine):
A record had been set every year since 2002, as tax cuts throughout the Bush [...]
Britain has determined that it can no longer justify paying someone the equivalent of $73,000 a year to monitor UFO reports. It justified the position for the past 50 years, though.
I’m not surprised that the British public kept the UFO office busy for decades. Such is the human imagination, [...]
If a software company announced that it would teach, for free, tens of thousands of people how to use its products, people might view that as a ploy to snag customers. Every business wants people to be comfortable with its products so they’ll buy more. The company could put out [...]
If this pre-filed bill becomes law, red-light cameras will be with us forever. H.B. 1229 would send all revenue from the cameras to school districts. Anyone who opposes cameras at intersections would then appear to be an enemy of education.
[...]The Wall Street Journal reports on the strange predicament of an English village named Stilton:
The bar on producing Stilton cheese here is a curious consequence of EU efforts to protect revered local foods by limiting the geographical area where they can be made.
Here is the ponderous statute. It [...]
Someone in Texas had the idea to put a replica of Michelangelo’s “David” in his yard, wearing only a Santa cap. Tacky? Yes. Criminal? No. Still, the government had to get involved:
Then, parents started calling Big Spring city officials saying their children were asking why Santa was naked.
The city [...]
This article in the L.A. Times describes Young Oak Kim Academy’s foray into single-sex schooling. The public middle school has separate classes for boys and girls. Teachers use different methods to teach the two groups, corresponding to what they believe are the innate characteristics of the sexes:
“Boys are impulsive,” [...]
Another Oregon public school plans to become a charter. The ability to enroll students from other districts is an attraction, as it was for the last school I blogged about. But this time, the school also identifies funding as a reason to change its status.
A few years ago, [...]
This Springfield News-Leader editorial is absolutely correct:
It’s not like this family is forcing their products on anyone. They’re simply trying to meet a demand, like a good business is wont to do.
The family in question sold raw (unpasteurized) milk from their farm, as is legal in Missouri. Then, their [...]
This article in the New York Times explores the plight of Alaska’s rural public school districts. These schools serve only a handful of students, and to survive, they have to try to convince families to move into homes within their boundaries. One district advertised on Craigslist.
Few parents are eager [...]
The Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools website states:
Our vision is simple: a great education for every kid in our city, no matter the color of their skin, what neighborhood they stay in or how much money their parents make.
This statement, combined with the New Orleans location, led me to [...]
Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), an online charter school, received an “Outstanding” rating from the Oregon Department of Education for its students’ test scores. That’s the highest rating that the Department of Education gives schools. ORCA is, by the state’s evaluation, one of the best public schools in Oregon.
In any [...]
Here comes the state dog! Show-Me Progress and Kansas City Prime Buzz note the filing of a bill to honor Newfoundlands in general and Seaman (the dog who went along on the Lewis and Clark expedition) in particular.
I wonder if a school group lobbied for this one, [...]
As I wrote yesterday, school districts that give preference to local food suppliers incur significant costs. Processing crops obtained directly from nearby farms calls for more labor, or new equipment, or both:
Eric Cartwright, the executive chef of the MU’s Campus Dining Service, spoke about the problems with getting [...]
Urban chickens are legal in Minneapolis. Legal, but regulated:
Those interested in keeping chickens in the city must apply for a permit and get approval from 80 percent of their neighbors within 100 feet of their property.
Just 120 people have the permits, although a chicken owner estimates that more than [...]
School districts in Minnesota are paying more for food produced in their state — up to twice what they would pay if they bought it from other places. The districts say there’s a didactic purpose:
But the expense is worth it, partly because serving local food is a good way [...]
This St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about the Census in Schools Program mentions lesson plans provided by the federal government:
Gateway, like 118,000 schools nationwide, will get lesson plans provided by the Census Bureau in subjects such as math and social studies that puts into context the importance of the census, [...]
The Maryland Heights Planning and Zoning Commission sounds just a little bit defensive about the city’s ban on new carports:
“We’re not saying anything against anyone who lives in a house with a carport,” said Chuck Caverly, vice chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which recommended the change.
Is [...]
The man who was denied admission to the bar because of his unpaid student loans has once again been told he can’t get a law license.
[...]When I blogged about Michigan’s bill to exempt babysitters from daycare regulations, I didn’t know it imposed a $600 limit. The bill has been signed into law, and babysitters are free to watch kids in peace — as long as they earn less than that amount in a [...]
When I last blogged about the BASIS charter schools, I hadn’t had a chance to watch Two Million Minutes: The Twenty-First Century Solution, which is the fourth in the Two Million Minutes series. Now that I’ve seen the full documentary, I can revisit the question: “Is BASIS [...]
The University of Missouri Extension runs a program called the Kindergarten Farm Food Initiative. A newsletter to parents from the beginning of the school year states (emphasis in the original):
your child will enjoy locally grown fruit and vegetable snacks three times a week.
It also characterizes locally grown food [...]
When online schools in Oregon used technology to compete with traditional districts, legislators responded that the virtual schools shouldn’t accept new students until the state can study the matter further. Yet when an Oregon district uses the Internet for crisis management, it’s celebrated as innovative. No one calls [...]
Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old American, is another sailor who hopes to become the youngest to sail around the world. In a few weeks, she plans to depart for a nonstop six-month voyage.
I haven’t heard about any government criticism of her or any attempts to put her in state custody. That [...]
By way of Edspresso, I see that Pittsburgh is dealing with the same issue that St. Louis did not long ago: Its public school district won’t sell a building to a charter school.
I’m optimistic that this will turn out well for Pittsburgh charters. Districts can dig in [...]
Do U.S. high school students score poorly on math and science tests because of too many commercials and not enough encouragement from Big Bird? If so, a new federal campaign will remedy that. It’s a hodgepodge of initiatives, ranging from science-themed video games in public libraries to commercial-free science [...]
Tyler Cowen is blogging about a study that found No Child Left Behind to have improved student math scores but not reading scores. Cowen comments:
Math skills are more the result of drill, whereas you have to learn how to love to read and much of that happens within the [...]
The Wall Street Journal reports on a bakery that experiences a large increase in demand for pies around Thanksgiving.
Although there is nothing she can do to prevent the occasional customer from scalping her treats in the parking lot — a $12 pie can go for more than $20 — [...]
One of the things I like best about production in a free economy is that consumers don’t have to think about it. If each of us had to pay attention to the details of how all our things are made — where the materials come from, what knowledge is needed [...]
The trial for the man charged with terrorism because of a conversation he had with a telemarketer was originally scheduled to take place this month, but it’s been postponed until Jan. 4 (search case no. 0922-CR03091-01).
Getting angry on the phone is only one of many behaviors that can [...]
A small Oregon school district has found a way to gain new students. It’s converted to a charter specializing in natural resources. In the upper grades, the curriculum includes public service experience:
High school students are working with the Forest Service to help clean up campgrounds and do other activities [...]
Fulton’s public kindergarten screenings are nothing compared to what New York City kids have to go through to get into a public gifted program. Kids in New York have to sit still for a whole hour and answer questions about analogies. Needless to say, few preschoolers can accomplish [...]
This article in the Fulton Sun details all the things the Fulton Public Schools expect entering kindergartners to be able to do:
Social and emotional skills screeners look for include children being able to go to the bathroom by themselves, sharing toys, sitting and listening, showing independence and learning how [...]
Financialstability.gov no longer says “Coming Soon.” Now it reads like any other campaign website:
America is back from the brink of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It was helped back by the actions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve, and especially the forceful [...]
Nobel laureate James Heckman spoke to the St. Louis Federal Reserve on Monday about human capital investment. A theme of Heckman’s research is that it’s wisest to invest in children when they’re young. Programs that serve preschool-aged children have a high rate of return, in economists’ parlance, while programs [...]
The Federal Reserve, like a knight in shining armor, is riding forth to protect consumers from a fearsome dragon: gift cards that expire within five years from date of purchase.
If retailers are not informing customers about the terms and expiration dates of the cards, I can understand a regulation [...]
I agree with this quote about urban farming from an article in the Pitch:
“I’m hoping for more availability and enthusiasm for local food in Kansas City — seeing a code that allows growers to sell and connect with potential buyers. Then local food will grow all on its own,” [...]
Some teachers who want to sell lesson plans online are running into trouble with the districts that employ them, according to this New York Times article. The concept of mutual gains from trade is foreign to the education establishment:
Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, [...]
An article in Time profiles Yinghua Academy, a Mandarin-immersion charter school in Minnesota. (And, yes, although equally innovative schools are cropping up in various sectors of the education market, this school really is a charter; someone in the Yinghua Academy office confirmed its status over the phone.)
Yinghua Academy [...]
This article in the Kansas City Star celebrates the Parents as Teachers Program, and the fact that it makes no effort to focus on people who really need help:
Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of legislation in 1984 that forced all Missouri school districts to offer the experimental Parents as [...]
I knew homeschoolers in Tennessee faced some restrictions, but I wasn’t aware that parents need a bachelor’s degree or their superintendent’s permission to homeschool high school–aged students. (Parents of younger children need only a high school diploma or GED.)
There are many happy homeschooling families in Tennessee, and I [...]
Today was the second USDA live Facebook chat. (Here are my comments on the first chat; the video is here.) Today’s session focused on the Farm to School component of the USDA’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Initiative, and its goal of supplying public schools with local [...]
Worrisome news from Los Angeles suggests that some public school districts are not the “melting pots” that education lore makes them out to be. Students who don’t speak English are relegated to separate classes, where they have little contact with native speakers. Many who entered the schools in kindergarten [...]
A Wall Street Journal article explains how unusually rainy weather affects the corn and soybean harvests. Most crops aren’t dry enough for storage yet, but leaving them in the fields puts them at risk for mold and other kinds of damage.
A late harvest that threatens crops is a challenge [...]
Matthew Kahn writes about safety precautions that can do more harm than good because they lull people into complacency:
Child proof safety caps on medicine lull people into not hiding medicine from kids and kids break into the pills. Diabetic medicines for fighting high blood sugar lull diabetics into thinking [...]
At Cato@Liberty, Andrew Coulson discusses Charles Murray’s ideas about education. Murray advocates competition in education because he believes competing schools will offer safer environments and impart more knowledge, but he does not expect choice to raise test scores significantly. He thinks that students could learn more information than they [...]
Today brought sad news for Laura Dekker: The Dutch court has forbidden her to set sail and extended state guardianship until July. This despite the fact that she passed every test they set for her:
The court said that while Dekker’s sailing skills were adequate and a psychological report concluded [...]
I think not, but that’s what a poster from the New York City Health Department does. The poster, which is intended for a religious Jewish audience and is also available in Yiddish, reminds people to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds. It also shows several hand washing [...]
An op-ed in the Birmingham Weekly contains an error that’s familiar to anyone following school lunch policy. It conflates “healthy” food with “local” food:
Currently each of these “funded” meals are allotted $2.57, which means that after you strip away labor, energy and overhead costs, schools have $1 per meal [...]
The Michigan House passed a bill that would exempt babysitters like the woman who watched neighbors’ kids at a bus stop from daycare regulations. If the bill becomes law, Michigan won’t require you to get a license just to look out a window at some kids for 20 [...]
A debate on the New York Times website examines the question of regulating twins. Just as many people called for restrictions on in vitro fertilization after Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets, some medical experts are outraged by the far more commonplace occurrence of twin births — and [...]
If Pennsylvania were to rescind its remaining restrictions on ticket scalping, this kind of thing would happen less often.
[...]Edspresso links to this essay by Hope Frick, a virtual school student in Pennsylvania. She’s written an articulate explanation of why she chose to attend a virtual academy. You have to sympathize with her frustration at the responses she gets when she tells people about her school. Frick [...]
Laura Dekker is still waiting for permission to set sail; latest reports say the Dutch court will issue its decision on Friday.
Dekker is bending over backward to respond to criticisms of her plans. She’s delaying her trip until after this school year. She says she’ll study while she’s [...]
The Columbia Daily Tribune examines school lunches in this interesting article. Like many districts, Columbia Public Schools is trying to serve healthier lunches. And the locavore philosophy is in fashion, so the district wouldn’t mind jumping on the local food bandwagon, either.
But the district is learning that buying local [...]
A proposed charter school, Excelsior Prep, has been turned down by a school board in Oregon. Surprise, surprise:
“We were expecting this,” said Excelsior Prep Board member Tonjia Haskins after the meeting. “They have been opposed basically since the beginning.”
Getting charter applications denied by Oregon’s school boards is par [...]
When teachers in the Harlem Success Academy charter schools observed that students were struggling with farming references on standardized tests, they decided to do some unconventional test prep. They took their classes to a farm and let them learn firsthand about sheep and pumpkins.
Some people (namely, commenters on the [...]
Clayton residents are debating whether the city should restrict pet chickens. This Post-Dispatch article presents the usual quotes from neighbors who abhor all things farm-related. Also noted are the people who want Clayton to promote chicken ownership actively:
On the other side of the issue is Clayton resident Stan Braude, [...]
By way of the Panama City Renaissance School blog, I’ve learned that an executive director of a teachers’ union in Nevada wants to start a charter school for the purpose of preparing future teachers.
The proposal has some characteristics in common with the apocryphal public service [...]
This week’s Well-Intentioned But Ineffectual Nanny State Award goes to California, for enacting a law requiring doctors to conduct a physical examination before performing cosmetic surgery. At the Orange County Register’s In Your Face blog, Colin Stewart writes:
As this blog commented last year, passing a law requiring doctors to [...]
The Missouri Virtual Instruction Program (MoVIP) is offering additional courses at the high school level through the National Repository of Online Courses Network. When I first saw the news, I was thrilled because I’ve long thought that the online school covered too few subjects. Then I read through [...]
The above advice was given to students in China before a national exam, according to this radio program featured on the Two Million Minutes Blog.
The program reports that China is trying to incorporate more critical thinking into its school system. I don’t expect it to make progress in this [...]
Jessica Watson started out yesterday on an attempt to sail solo around the world. I hope she completes her voyage safely.
Meanwhile, Laura Dekker remains on land, waiting for Dutch authorities to decide whether she’ll be allowed to sail. We’ll see later this month if she gets to try to [...]
Some locavores argue that the government should encourage local food consumption in order to create a more stable and sustainable economy. I’ve countered that a geographically diverse food supply is more reliable than any local food supply.
Today I have an example. The following entries are from Whole Foods’ [...]
Missouri has a mountain lion response team, even though we don’t have any mountain lions.
[...]Here is a Popular Science article about Quest to Learn, the game-themed charter school I wrote about last month (article link via the Quest to Learn Parents’ Blog).
I’m glad that Quest to Learn is the subject of media attention and debate. Unfortunately, this particular article leaves readers [...]
While most states are giving parents a wider range of educational choices, Oregon is going in the opposite direction. From shutting down public school choice in Portland to threatening virtual schools with enrollment freezes, to holding up charter school applications, Oregon’s education policy blocks innovation at every [...]
Some residents of private communities have found that saving the planet conflicts with following their community rules. They want to conserve energy by hanging clothes outside to dry. But their neighbors dislike the sight of hanging laundry. At one time, people solved these dilemmas by moving west. Nowadays, [...]
This op-ed in the Post-Dispatch praises billboards and decries billboard bans. While I’m not sure I agree that billboards “are a part of Missouri’s heritage,” at least not on the level of Daniel Boone or Lewis and Clark, billboards do perform a valuable service: They give drivers information. I [...]
Paul Krugman writes that public-school layoffs bode ill for America’s economy:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States economy lost 273,000 jobs last month. Of those lost jobs, 29,000 were in state and local education, bringing the total losses in that category over the past five months [...]
A Post-Dispatch article about a “Help Wanted” sign provides anecdotal evidence that supports my opinion of permits: Permit requirements are a tax (and a pain in the neck for people who have to deal with them).
The article reports on a sign that a business in Maryland Heights put up [...]
Last night, a school board in Oregon turned down a charter school application because the proposed charter would compete with the district:
Board members said the 6-12th grade school, sponsored by Corbett School District superintendent Bob Dunton, was an innovative program but would compete with course offerings at the [...]
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the School District of Philadelphia is going to start evaluating principals by, among other things, how many students eat breakfast at school.
I liked these comments from a principal:
Should a principal be blamed for a student who ate breakfast at home and therefore doesn’t eat [...]
I didn’t have a video to share when I blogged last week about the USDA’s live Facebook chat. Now, the USDA has put the video up on its YouTube channel. I disagree with the USDA’s promotion of the locavore ideology, but I’m glad it puts media like this [...]
The Springfield News-Leader has a story today about urban gardening. Here’s how a member of a task force explains the rationale for local food subsidies:
“The food consumed by the citizens of the Springfield Economic Area, an amount in excess of 1,100 tons of food per day, is shipped and [...]
Lest anyone think I’m trying to pick on Oregon when I write about its nonsensical charter school application process, let me point out that Oregon is not the only state whose charter school regulations should be updated. An article linked to by Edspresso explains the drawbacks of [...]
Midwives, breastfeeding mothers, and now school nurses: They are all claimed to be indispensable when disaster strikes. Nurses are in the news because the St. Louis Public Schools laid off a fraction of its nursing staff. The Grade has the story. A warning of dire consequences can [...]
In case you missed it last night, here you can watch David Levin, one of KIPP’s founders, talk about how KIPP got started and how it works. The videos give you a glimpse of life in KIPP classrooms, too. This is required viewing for anyone interested in the KIPP [...]
For public schools to be innovative, it helps to have a competitive education market surrounding them. Then, schools are on the lookout for ideas that are truly new. Otherwise, a school can dress up a tired old idea in fancy language and pass it off as something original, because there [...]
Caroline Hoxby has found that students who were randomly selected to attend charter schools earned better test scores than other students who applied for charter schools but lost the lottery. This research controls for an important factor in charter students’ achievement: motivation to attend charters. You can’t compare scores [...]
Recently I returned to The Story of Stuff Blog to see what had transpired since I last wrote about The Story of Stuff in May. I learned that Annie Leonard is planning to release a follow-up video in November, with more videos to come. The biggest news, from [...]
The Post-Dispatch reports:
Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed papers with the 5th District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon announcing her office’s intention to file a brief in favor of Chris and Melissa Kalbfleisch. Madigan was granted a temporary extension Monday to file them.
This is the case of the boy with autism who recently [...]
I participated in the USDA’s live Facebook chat today with Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. I appreciated the gracious tone of the talk, as well as the willingness to answer a variety of questions, including questions (i.e., mine) that challenged the value of local food. However, I remain at odds [...]
This article about a proposed Spanish-immersion charter school (linked to by the Panama City Renaissance School Blog) illustrates how outrageous the charter application process is in Oregon.
First, let’s look at Missouri’s charter school law. I wouldn’t say that it’s easy to get charters approved in Missouri, but [...]
The following excerpt comes from an article in the Christian Science Monitor about Arne Duncan’s approach to education policy:
Indeed, the practice of finding and highlighting innovative solutions that exist somewhere outside Washington seems to be at the core of Duncan’s approach. It’s the rationale for the $5 billion “Race [...]
Alex Tabarrok is blogging about merit pay for teachers. An experiment in India found that incentives for teachers have a significant, positive effect on students’ test scores.
One of the most interesting results of this study is that incentives created a spillover effect. The teachers facing incentives were rewarded if [...]
Dan Pink argues in this talk that extrinsic rewards like bonuses don’t motivate people to do well when charged with complex tasks. His conclusion: Businesses need to change the way they reward employees, by moving away from performance incentives and by emphasizing greater autonomy for each worker.
Does this apply [...]
