Be careful, in the wrong hands, it's dangerous...

Yikes

Watch out

Had a rough day, kids?

listening to the radio after work

A song by The Band Perry came on. Done. I started thinking of my favorite people at work...
I was also taught to play nice, but that was then.

A familiar story nationwide

Most of us can relate to this shift in mobility and opportunity in American society from then till now. Unless you are among the 1%, in which case it's perfectly okay.

New York City charter schools getting $4.5 million state grant to teach regular public schools

So, one school is being paid to collaborate with the other school. Why aren't they both receiving some of the money? Why would PS85 want to show the charter how to connect with parents, just to see them lured away by the charter? Seems rather one-sided to me.

Myths about introverts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/introvert-myths_n_3569058.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Georgia Attorney General says SACS should be more transparent

Wow, ya think? An organization with the power to torpedo superintendents, get board members removed, and revoke accreditation should maybe get in line with sunshine laws? HOw about when a state agency uses their info and reports as basis for action? Maybe they should have to reveal all the details...

You tell 'em, finland

Sahlberg tells what he thinks of the Gove  (UK) plan:  http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jul/01/education-michael-gove-finland-gcse?CMP=twt_gu&view=mobile

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/us-education-reform-lessons-from-finland

Wow, you mean, it's the poverty?

A new report from ETS explains all the long-term effects of poverty. Amazing.
http://www.ets.org/newsroom/news_releases/report_warns_child_poverty

Why can't John Merrow get published?

You'd think it would be a slam dunk. He's an experienced, respected journalist. When all his comments on the subject were complimentary and supportive, nobody had a problem. Now that he is thinking for himself, suddenly it's not newsworthy.
http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6490

Why do great teachers give up teaching?

why great teachers hang it up.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/07/17/why-great-teachers-are-fleeing-the-profession/

Dangers of Technology

Diane Ravitch is fantastic. Check out her blog, but first read this piece in Scientific American. She clearly lays out her argument for why we should be cautious about the rise of technology in our schools, instead of accepting big tech arguments without questioning.

What are we doing to families?

We insist that a parent who 'cares' will read to their youngster every day, and then listen to them read when they are older. But if it becomes a burden, or interferes with other, more pressing priorities, what is really accomplished? This mother is exhausted. We can sit back in our armchair and analyze all that we believe should be changed in her life, but, it's HER life, after all. We don't know what the pressures and obstacles may be. If she is exhausted from work because she is the primary wage earner in the household, who has the right to criticize her for keeping a roof over their head and food on the table? If she is simultaneously caring for children and an elderly parent (or in-law), how can we take issue? Bottom line, she dreads the read aloud, and her son will eventually pick up on that. He will begin to dread her dread. How does this serve the aim of building a literate society.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/im-tired-of-reading-out-loud-to-my-son-o-k/

Wow, some people really illustrate that Mark Twain quote...

"It's better to remain silent and be assumed a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

That can also apply to launching a Twitter tirade without knowing ANY of the facts. See this rehash of what happened on Twitter after Marc Anthony sang at the baseball All-Star Game. It shows the frightening level of ignorance and prejudice in our society. Manuel Monserrate has explained the truth that shows the extent of this lunacy better than I ever could, so please read and enjoy. For this reason, I eagerly await the day when some uneducated cop tries to give me grief, a day which can't be long off.

So, you run a 'successful' charter school and want to have control of the preparation of your teachers. The answer? Start your own Graduate School of Education. That's the premise behind the Relay Graduate School of Education, housed at North Star Academy in Newark, NJ. Here's one take on it:
But is a school really successful if 50 enter 5^th grade, 1/3 are gone by 8^th grade and only a handful ever graduate?
Is this any indication of the quality of teaching, or pedagogy involved?  I won’t go so far as to suggest that what I personally might perceive as offensive, demeaning pedagogy is driving these attrition rates (okay… maybe I just did).

Gates branching out

Now he wants to get his hooks into higher ed.  Excerpt:
Critics fear that the focus on quickly pumping more students through the system could encourage colleges to water down requirements or turn away applicants who might struggle. Already some feel it has prompted community colleges to churn out too many graduates with short-term certificates that polish the colleges' completion numbers but offer dubious long-term value to students. Eventually, critics worry, the foundation's efforts to promote access and completion could actually increase social divisions by creating separate and unequal programs.
If philanthropic efforts like Gates's create public colleges that are just teaching to the job interview, the result could be "a better on-ramp for jobs but a worse one for real social mobility," says Robin Rogers, an associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in an e-mail. Ms. Rogers, who is working on a book about the role of billionaire philanthropy in public policy, says "the leadership class of the United States could become one that students had to be born into or selected to be in"—through scholarships—"by the existing elite."

Your brain on professional sports

The Chronicle has an article about brain injury and CTE. Focuses on football players, mentions milder head injuries in passing, but doesn't really drive home the point that you can develop problems very easily.

Must read

If you don't follow Jack Hassard's blog, The Art of Teaching Science, you really should. He has dissected Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards, the NCTQ report, and now he's looking at  the makeup of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). Apparently this is replacing NCATE. I missed that one. Anyway, Jack is blistering the choice of who serves on this council, as it is heavy on admin and reformer types. Take a look.

Once again, all together...

IT'S THE POVERTY, STUPID!

http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/kids-count-on-public-education-not-grit-or-no-excuses/

P.L. Thomas (Furman University) lays it all out for anyone who STILL doesn't get it. That would be everyone living under a rock since the 1960s. Like 95% of our elected officials.
So, you are 2.5x more likely to be a rich adult if you were born rich and never bothered to go to college than if you were born poor and, against all odds, went to college and graduated.

This will be welcome news to folks in underserved communities, I'm sure

I'm so glad that now we can all benefit from the latest technical advances, brought to us by Doctors for America.

*Sarcasm intended*
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_news.php?id=899

Work-family balance in academia

Someone has looked at the men's side of this discussion, specifically men in the sciences. The categories and comments are interesting. for instance, Asked, “Do you think that having children then is difficult to manage with being a scientist?” one physicist said, “No, absolutely not. That’s why you have a wife.”
That kind of comment would not likely be heard in a business setting, at least not without the door closed and locked. Wow.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/22/sociologists-consider-how-male-scientists-balance-work-and-family#ixzz2ZJo6s67M
Inside Higher Ed

Finally, TFA criticism they can't ignore

It's coming from those who've completed their program, instead of only outside observers. They'll have to pay attention to this.
http://prospect.org/article/teach-americas-civil-war

Members of Congress don't like critique

There is a member who is a former HS English teacher. He had the audacity to critique a memo from another member. It's priceless. and revealing.
http://www.happyplace.com/25021/former-high-school-teacher-congressman-irks-gop-by-marking-their-memos-with-a-red-pen

Wow, so much for romney's bluster and dire warnings about Obamacare

None of it came true in Massachusetts: http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/01/pf/massachusetts-health-care.moneymag/index.html

so, why did he spew so much nonsense on the campaign?

Back to Finland

From the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-secret-to-finlands-success-with-schools-moms-kids-and-everything/277699/

The Finns didn't always have it this good. For much of the early 20th century, Finland was agrarian and underdeveloped, with a GDP per capita trailing other Nordic countries by 30 to 40 percent in 1900.


Finland's strong trade unions pioneered its initial worker protections, but the state soon took those functions over. Today, roughly 75 to 80 percent of Finns are union members (it's about 11 percent in the U.S.), and the groups dictate the salaries and working conditions for large swaths of the population.
And as the country worked to industrialize in the 1960s, its economic policymakers took on a mentality similar to that of CEOs at tech companies with awesome employee perks like free string cheese and massages.

The morality of income inequality

No surprises here:

Americans know they live in a two-tier country -- one where the uber-super-ultra-rich are leaving the rest of us behind; where, as Michael Moore famously put it, 400 of the richest people control the same amount of wealth as 150 million others; where, as President Obama said in a speech on Wednesday, the "average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40% since 2009, but the average American earns less than he or she did in 1999."

 The fairness gap is the basis for a wide range of policies, from the tax code to education; health care to the minimum wage.

 If the rich making more will help the poor be better off, too, that's cool. If not, it's unfair, or amoral. For real-world reference, here's a quick look at CEO pay in the United States, from the AFL-CIO: The average S&P 500 CEO compensation in 2012, according to that labor group, was $12.3 million. A worker? $35,000. Do the poor benefit from that disparity? Does everyone? Anyone?

from TIME magazine

Interesting article.

"Earlier this year, S. Paul Reville, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, blogged in Education Week that reformers need now to think beyond the numbers and “admit that closing achievement gaps is not as simple as adopting a set of standards, accountability and instructional improvement strategies.” In Massachusetts, he wrote, “We have set the nation’s highest standards, been tough on accountability and invested billions in building school capacity, yet we still see a very strong correlation between socioeconomic background and educational achievement and attainment. It is now clear that unless and until we make a more active effort to mitigate the impediments to learning that are commonly associated with poverty, we will still be faced with large numbers of children who are either unable to come to school or so distracted as not to be able to be attentive and supply effort when they get there.” Reville called for “wraparound services” that would allow schools to provide students with a “healthy platform” from which they could begin to work on learning."

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/09/why-are-the-rich-so-interested-in-public-school-reform/#ixzz2Z9IOJ0pc

What a relief- I'm actually a 1-percenter.

So says Charles Koch, in a new commercial airing in some parts of the country.
Of course, he is using the entire globe as his reference population. so, by his reckoning, if you make 34,000/yr, you are among the top 1% wealthy people IN THE WORLD. Whew, I feel so much better now. It's not such a big deal anymore that it's a struggle to cover the bills some months, that I haven't seen a pay increase in several years (in fact I make LESS now than 5 years ago when I started at my current school), that the price of gasoline is shooting up suddenly for no damn reason.
For background on Koch and his economic philosophy, read up on Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. Also try reading Shock Doctrine, if it's not too depressing. I'm still working on it. Also look at the article exposing their political influence and connections, as soon as I find it. Here's one to get you started. And another. How about the Times?
Aha, here it is: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
There's even a film about it: http://www.thenation.com/blog/167502/koch-brothers-exposed#

By the way, here's an example of what free-market policy can get you.