9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact. If teachers are mere babysitters, pay them accordingly. 1:11 am February 23, 2011, by Maureen Downey This babysitter piece and the blueberry story are favorites of teachers who often send me copies. This wonderful essay is typically attributed to a New Hampshire paper, but I could not verify the source in a database search of U.S. newspapers going back six years. The essay has been making the rounds for a few years but two readers sent it to me this week, so I thought that was a sign to run it. So, here it is, author unknown: Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year.
The hard bigotry of poverty: Why ignoring it will doom school reform - The Answer Sheet. This was written by Brock Cohen, a teacher and student advocate in the Los Angeles Unified School District who contends that we can no longer afford to trivialize the critical role that poverty plays in a child’s learning experiences – and that true school reform begins with social justice. Brock’s students were recently featured in an NPR piece that charts some of his students’ daily struggles as they pursue their education. By Brock Cohen We have only climbed halfway up the mountain, and halfway isn’t good enough. We want all our children to see the view from the top, to see the world of possibilities that stretch out before them.
-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg We can’t allow another generation of kids to fall by the wayside while we take our time trying to build consensus in the interest of harmony among adults. -Former D.C. We want to come back year after year and continue to add resources and fund more. -U.S. -President Barack Obama But our program is no panacea. Bill Moyers Essay: The United States of Inequality. BILL MOYERS: Welcome. Inequality matters. You will hear people say it doesn’t, but they are usually so high up the ladder they can’t even see those at the bottom. The distance between the first and the least in America is vast and growing. The Washington Post recently took a look at two counties in Florida and found that people who live in the more affluent St. Johns County live longer than those who live next door in less rich Putnam County. That’s true across America. MARTHA MENDOZA: I’ve been a journalist in this area for 25 years, and during that time it has gone from having a pretty robust middleclass to being an area where you see this great divide of wealthy and poor, and nowhere do you see that more than in the Silicon Valley, where 25 years ago this was a place of orchards and farms and ranching and small businesses, and it has completely changed now so that you have incredibly wealthy people and incredibly poor people and a growing gap.
DANIEL GARCIA: This is my tent. The Coming Revolution in Public Education. Why the current wave of reforms, with its heavy emphasis on standardized tests, may actually be harming students Defendants in Atlanta's school cheating scandal turn themselves in. (David Goldman/AP) It's always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts. Is it when a few discontented people gather in a room to discuss how the ruling regime might be opposed? Critics of the contemporary reform regime argue that these initiatives, though seemingly sensible in their original framing, are motivated by interests other than educational improvement and are causing genuine harm to American students and public schools. Fueled in part by growing evidence of the reforms' ill effects and of the reformers' self-interested motives, the counter-movement is rapidly expanding.
It's what history teaches us to expect. There are more reasons why there is a growing rebellion against the reigning reform agenda. Even if all this is correct, you may ask, where are these signs of growing rebellion? SmartBlog on Education - Revising the questions that shape learning - SmartBrief, Inc. SmartBlogs SmartBlogs. Questions are powerful things. Socrates knew this. Einstein too. But curiosity has gotten a bad rep over the years. First there was that little incident with Prometheus, the stolen fire, Pandora and that tempting earthen jar. If only she hadn’t been so curious. Then, there is that old saw about the fate of a feline with insatiable inquisitiveness.
And the pinnacle of our assault on curiosity: Obsessive multiple-choice testing that drills answer finding over question asking. Somehow it feels we have gotten our priorities wrong. Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the answer, I would spend the first 55 minutes figuring out the proper questions to ask. How much time do we spend developing powerful questions — in our classrooms, schools or policy-making bodies? Are we bypassing an opportunity to ask and wrestle with the questions that might lead to sustained transformation in exchange for more statistical data?
Yet, questions fuel innovation. 1. 2. The real problem with Rahm’s school reforms in Chicago - The Answer Sheet. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been pushing a school reform agenda backed by the Obama administration that is at the center of the strike that the Chicago Teachers Union is now waging in the third largest school district in the country. This is not about whether or not you think the union should have called a strike as it did on Monday, but rather about the central problem (M. Spencer Green/AP) with the reforms that Emanuel has been advocating: There’s no real proof that they systemically work, and in some cases, there is strong evidence that they may be harmful. The reforms championed by Emanuel, a former chief of staff to President Obama, have been pushed by Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, and implemented in a number of states.
These include merit pay, an expansion of charter schools, teacher and principal assessment systems that are linked to student standardized test scores, a longer school day and job security for veteran teachers. Test-based evaluation and merit pay. 5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com October 1, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Just weeks into the 2012-2013 school year education issues are already playing a starring role in the national conversation about America’s future.
Since pundits and politicians often engage in education rhetoric that obscures what’s really going on, here are five corrections to some of the more egregious claims you may have recently heard. Lie #1: Unions are undermining the quality of education in America. Teachers unions have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but as education professor Paul Thomas of Furman University tells AlterNet, “The anti-union message…has no basis in evidence.” For these reasons among others, union presence can never be isolated as the sole relevant factor in producing higher student achievement. Lie #2: Your student’s teacher has an easy and over-compensated job.
But is teaching actually overcompensated? The revolution is here. I’ve written a lot about growing resistance to high-stakes standardized testing and other corporate-driven school reforms. In the following piece, the argument is made that the revolution against the reform movement is here. It was written by Jeff Bryant, an Associate Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and the owner of a marketing and communications consultancy.
It serves numerous organizations including Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, PBS, and International Planned Parenthood Foundation. He writes extensively about public education policy at The Education Opportunity Network. Follow Jeff on Twitter: jeffbcdm By Jeff Bryant “It’s always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts ,” wrote John Tierny in The Atlantic recently. In the piece titled, “ The Coming Revolution in Public Education ,” Tierney pointed to a number of signs: *Teachers refusing to give standardized tests, parents opting their kids out of tests, and students boycotting tests. Infographic.jpg (JPEG Image, 1032 × 3000 pixels) Broader, BOLDER Approach to Education: Market-Oriented Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality.