Little or no increased risk of autism in IVF treatments, study finds

Alok Jha:

IVF treatments that require the direct injection of sperm into the egg are associated with a small increased risk of intellectual disability in the resulting children, according to a study.
Scientists also found that standard IVF treatment posed no increased risk of children developing intellectual disabilities or autism.
IVF is considered generally safe. About 4% of IVF children have physical or mental problems at birth, compared with 3% of those conceived naturally.
In the latest study, the largest so far into links between reproductive treatments and neurodevelopment, scientists examined how IVF might affect the incidence of autism and intellectual disability.

The Ever-Changing NAEP Sample

Matt DiCarlo:

Next, by grade: In 1978, 28 percent of NAEP-LTT test takers were in 7th grade or lower, compared with 39 percent in 2012. Although standards and curriculum are different today, it’s worth noting that the 13-year old sample has changed as far as where they are in the K-12 system.
Third, there is the difference in parental education. The proportion of the 2012 sample with parents who completed college is over twice as high (54 percent) as in 1978 (26 percent). Conversely, the percentage of 13-year olds with parents who have a high school diploma or less is half its 1978 level. Again, some of this change is recent – for example, the proportion with a high school diploma or less was 27 percent in 1999, compared with 20 percent in 2012.
In short, the student population, and thus the NAEP samples, are changing, over the short- and longer terms. Any concurrent changes in testing performance may just as easily be due to these and many other shifts in the characteristics of the test takers- including unobservable factors that cannot be gleaned from breakdowns by subgroup – as to any change in school performance. This most certainly does not mean that schooling quality is unimportant, only that raw NAEP scores by themselves do not measure it very well, and they’re not supposed to.

And the Looting of Public Institutions Continues

Scott Lemieux:

Not all adjuncts at CUNY are being paid at subsistence level:
David H. Petraeus will earn a $150,000 salary when he joins the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College this fall as a visiting professor of public policy, according to documents obtained by the Web site Gawker through a public-records request.
Shall we make the obvious comparison? I think we shall:
CUNY adjuncts usually earn less than $3,000 per course.

Catching on at last: New technology is poised to disrupt America’s schools, and then the world’s

The Economist:

IN A small school on the South Side of Chicago, 40 children between the ages of five and six sit quietly learning in a classroom. In front of each of them is a computer running software called Reading Eggs. Some are reading a short story, others building sentences with words they are learning. The least advanced are capturing all the upper- and lower-case Bs that fly past in the sky. As they complete each task they move through a cartoon map that shows how far they have progressed in reading and writing. Along the way they collect eggs which they can use to buy objects in the game, such as items to furnish their avatar’s apartment. Now and then a child will be taken aside for scheduled reading periods with one of the two monitoring teachers.
The director of North Kenwood-Oakland school says this sort of teaching, blending software with human intervention, helps her pupils learn faster. It also allows teachers at this school–which, like other charter schools, is publicly funded but has some freedom to teach as it likes–to spend more time teaching and less time marking written work and leading pupils through dull drills of words and numbers. On top of that the school gains an accurate, continuous record of each child’s performance through the data its various programs collect and analyse.
As well as evidence from these schools, the effectiveness of particular bits of software has been studied. The Department of Education spent four years evaluating literacy programs; it concluded that Read 180, a program to help students who have fallen behind in reading, was good at combating adult illiteracy. A randomised control trial of Cognitive Tutor, which helps teachers identify weaknesses and strengths in maths, among 400 15-year-olds in Oklahoma found that children using the program reached the same level of proficiency as the control group in 12% less time.
Meanwhile, the Khan Academy, a creator of online tutorials widely used as a form of home tutoring, is beginning to provide hard evidence for why it is considered one of edtech’s rising stars. At Oakland Unity, in tough inner-city Oakland, test scores for 16-17-year-olds in algebra and geometry have risen significantly in the two years since Khan courses were introduced. These courses are now being adopted by the Los Altos school district, also in California, which is already one of the best-performing in America. Khan Academy pinpoints the way in which edtech can turn conventional education on its head: in its “flipped classroom” pupils are no longer given lectures in the classroom and set problems as homework, but watch instructional videos at home and work on problems in class, where teachers and peers can help them.

Related: Madison’s long-tem disastrous reading resultsa

Getting teachers who make a difference

Pearson:

Getting teachers who make a difference
Teachers matter …
One point of broad agreement in education is that teachers matter greatly. Students of certain teachers simply do better in a way that has a marked effect on social and economic outcomes. For example, a recent study drawing on data covering about 2.5 million US children found that, after correcting for other factors, pupils assigned to teachers identified as delivering better educational results “are more likely to attend college, attend higher-ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in higher [socio-economic status] neighbourhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers.”[6] Professor Schwartz believes that “the single most important input variable [in education] is the quality of teaching.” However, teacher quality, notes William Ratteree – until recently, education sector specialist at the International Labour Organisation – “is a mix of factors which are difficult to pin down.”
Much of the research in this area has focused on what education systems can do to ensure that they find teachers who add value. Even here, though, says Professor Hanushek, “the rules tend to be country-specific.” McKinsey’s 2010 report, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, argues that the best interventions even depend on the current state of the school system. In McKinsey’s view, systems currently marked by “fair” levels of performance should focus on teacher accountability, while “good” systems are likely to benefit more from enhancing the status of the teaching profession.
… But what matters for getting good teachers?

Stop the Rush to the Common Core

Neal McCluskey, Williamson Evers and Sandra Stotsky:

The Common Core — effectively national math and English curriculum standards coming soon to a school near you — is supposed to be a new, higher bar that will take the United States from the academic doldrums to international dominance.
So why is there so much unhappiness about it? There didn’t seem to be much just three years ago. Back then, state school boards and governors were sprinting to adopt the Core. In practically the blink of an eye, 45 states had signed on.
But states weren’t leaping because they couldn’t resist the Core’s academic magnetism. They were leaping because it was the Great Recession — and the Obama administration was dangling a $4.35 billion Race to the Top carrot in front of them. Big points in that federal program were awarded for adopting the Core, so, with little public debate, most did.
Major displeasure has come only recently, because only recently has implementation hit the district level. And that means moms, dads and other citizens have recently gotten a crash course in the Core.
Their opposition has been sudden and potent — with several states now considering legislation to either slow or end implementation, and Indiana, Pennsylvania and Michigan having officially paused it.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Illinois pension bill was equal to 241 percent of its revenues

Reuters:

Ten U.S. states have public pension liabilities that are at least as big as their annual revenues, according to aMoody’s Investors Service report released on Thursday that found the Illinois pension bill was equal to 241 percent of its revenues.
The rating agency took a new approach to determining the health of public retirement systems by weighing each plan’s net pension liability – the difference between the projected benefit payments and the assets set aside to cover those payments – against state revenue.
The typical discussion about how much money public pensions have is incomplete, said the author of the Moody’s report, senior analyst Marcia Van Wagner. By comparing those amounts to states’ revenues, though, the rating agency can get a better sense of states’ abilities to pay for the obligations, she said.
For many of the states that ability is very limited. In nearly half, the pension liability is equal to half the state’s annual revenue.
After Illinois, Connecticut had the highest pension burden in the country, with a pension liability equal to 189.7 percent of revenues. That was followed by Kentucky, at 140.9 percent; New Jersey, 137.2 percent; Hawaii, 132.5 percent; and Louisiana, s 130.2 percent. Colorado’s net pension liability was slightly more than revenues at 117.5 percent and Maryland’s slightly less at 99.5 percent.

How algorithms rule the world

Leo Hickman:

On 4 August 2005, the police department of Memphis, Tennessee, made so many arrests over a three-hour period that it ran out of vehicles to transport the detainees to jail. Three days later, 1,200 people had been arrested across the city – a new police department record. Operation Blue Crush was hailed a huge success.
Larry Godwin, the city’s new police director, quickly rolled out the scheme and by 2011 crime across the city had fallen by 24%. When it was revealed Blue Crush faced budget cuts earlier this year, there was public outcry. “Crush” policing is now perceived to be so successful that it has reportedly been mimicked across the globe, including in countries such as Poland and Israel. In 2010, it was reported that two police forces in the UK were using it, but their identities were not revealed.
Crush stands for “Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History”. Translated, it means predictive policing. Or, more accurately, police officers guided by algorithms. A team of criminologists and data scientists at the University of Memphis first developed the technique using IBM predictive analytics software. Put simply, they compiled crime statistics from across the city over time and overlaid it with other datasets – social housing maps, outside temperatures etc – then instructed algorithms to search for correlations in the data to identify crime “hot spots”. The police then flooded those areas with highly targeted patrols.

Couple sue son’s school over $50k fingerpainting

ninemsn.com:

New York City socialite Michelle Heinemann and her investment banker husband, Jon, are suing the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine after they were charged $50,000 for a finger painting, the NY Post reports.
Ms Heinemann worked with her son’s kindergarten class to create a finger painting that could be sold at the school’s fundraiser charity auction in March this year.
The painting consisted of traced-and-cut-out paper hands of their son, Hudson and his 17 classmates.
After they were told paintings typically sell at fundraisers for up to $1200, the couple agreed they would place the winning bid at $3000 as they could not attend the event, their lawsuit filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court said.
However, the school’s director of advancement had a first-grade teacher, Ms Bryant, drove up the bid to “the outrageous sum of $50,000”, the suit alleges.

National Writing Board report on the First Paper from China

145K PDF

I. Reading (Sources)
Score: (1-6) Reader One 6 Reader Two 5
Reader One:
Yours is a mature and demanding subject. Your work is both convincing and authoritative, and your research is first class. From Jean Bethke Elshtain onward you cover all the bases in the field of ethics. Your use of primary source material is outstanding. There are flashes of genuine distinction in all you do. Congratulations.
Reader Two:
This paper is based on the author’s reading of an impressive number and quality of sources, 63 (!) of them altogether. ey include writings by Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, and Kant, articles in scholarly journals, and monographs on the subject, such as Michael Doyle’s examination of Kant’s “democratic peace thesis” and, especially, Jean Bethke Elshtain’s scholarship. e bibliography is not in alphabetical order, as it should be.

An Interview with Emma Scoble: Reflecting on The Concord Review

Michael F. Shaughnessy

Emma, first of all tell us about what you are currently, doing, studying, and the like.
I am graduating from high school this week and heading to New York University in the fall. Having gone through the grueling college admissions process and four years of high school, I am dedicating my summer to surfing, reading, and hanging out on the beaches of Santa Cruz…
2) Now, I understand that you were published a while ago in The Concord Review. What was your topic and when did this occur?
My paper on the Broderick-Terry Duel was published in the Spring 2013 Issue of The Concord Review. The Broderick-Terry Duel was a pistol duel in 1859 between U.S. Senator David Broderick and California Supreme Court Justice David Terry. The duel was the culmination of a decade of dramatic and divisive politics in California between the pro and anti-slavery democrats. Broderick’s legacy has been imprinted in history, for his death in the duel reversed the pro-slavery Democrats’ victory in the 1859 statewide elections and ensured that California would remain firmly in the Union.
3) What prompted you to write a major research paper on the topic of your choice?
I was inspired by Colonel Edward Baker’s eulogy for his friend, U.S. Senator David Broderick. One of the finest orators of his time, Baker wrote eloquently about how Broderick stood up to a pro-slavery president as well as the California and national legislatures, and repeatedly, won against all odds. He spoke of Broderick’s conviction and courage, his fight against the pro-slavery movement in California, and of how his unwillingness to cave to injustice ultimately cost him his life. Over one hundred years later, Baker’s words still had the power to move me to tears and compel me to research Broderick’s story and the context of his time.
4) Who helped you? Parents, teachers, principals?
My father is a constant source of information and support. My earliest childhood memories are playing with my doll while watching Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary with my father. As I have grown older, we continue to share a love of history.
5) I understand you have some concerns about the current emphasis on Science, Technology, Electronics and Math. Tell us about your concern?
As was recently stated in The Concord Review’s blog, “The Emerson Prizes lost their funding last year…Intel still has $680,000 in prizes for High School work…” I can attest to the contrast in reception of academic achievement in STEM fields versus the Humanities, even at the small, academically-focused, independent school (The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California) that I attend. This year, one of my classmates received an Intel Award and teachers continually publicly recognize and celebrate her achievement in school assemblies and newsletters, which is entirely appropriate because she did extraordinary work.
However, I told several of my teachers about my paper being published in The Concord Review, an internationally recognized academic journal, and while they congratulated me, neither my published paper, nor my Emerson Prize, was acknowledged in a public forum until the last day of school, as a brief afterthought.
I understand that STEM is currently receiving a lot of attention in the national news because it is closely tied to our economic expansion and workforce. I recall a statistic from the U.S. Department of Labor stated that 5% of the American workforce is employed in a STEM related field while 50% of our economic expansion relies on STEM related professions. Clearly, there is a great demand for talent in STEM fields and we are looking to the next generation of brilliant young minds to fill the gap. However, it is essential that students with an aptitude for the humanities be encouraged as well, for man does not live by science alone.
How bland would life be without literature, history, poetry, and music? How will society advance, if we do not understand who we are and where we have been? We need young people who are gifted in English, History, or Language for our economy, too. Our nation needs teachers, writers, law makers, orators, translators, researchers, etc. We need brilliant minds–period, and academic excellence and achievement should be celebrated and nurtured across all fields.
6) Some people talk about “life changing events.” Do you see getting your paper published as a life changing event?
Being published in The Concord Review was one of the happiest moments of my life. The research that I put into the paper will stay with me forever, for through the course of my writing, Senator Broderick became my personal hero. His character and the life that he led have inspired me to live my life with principle and integrity. Serendipitously, by having my paper published, I met another hero, Mr. Fitzhugh, the founder and editor of The Concord Review.
Although I am only acquainted with him through email correspondence, I greatly admire that he has dedicated his life to advocating for youths and youth education. I follow his blog and posts on The Concord Review’s Facebook page, and although his posts are usually serious, they can also be really funny and sassy.
7) What kind of writing are you doing now?
Poems, love letters, creepy Facebook statuses…In all seriousness, I am hoping to write for NYU’s student newspaper in the fall.
8) What have I neglected to ask?
How is learning to write a history research paper relevant and useful to high school students?
In my opinion, writing a history research paper encompasses all of the skills of the humanities discipline–reading, writing, critical thinking, researching, and understanding a subject within its historical context. These abilities teach and reinforce essential skills for any student’s academic and professional career. Being able to think critically about an event or issue within its context is vital to understanding and solving any kind of problem, and in the modern age of the internet, it is crucial that everyone know how to research and identify credible sources. Furthermore, knowing how to methodically organize and support one’s ideas is key to being able to communicate or argue a point and understanding someone else’s argument.
Outside of the classroom, these skills have enabled me to give back to my community. Currently, I am on the Board of the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, which guides the allocation of $12-20 million towards programs that serve impoverished and at-risk children and their families. Although I am the youngest on the commission, my vote has equal power, so I take my responsibility seriously. I prepare for each meeting by reading and analyzing briefs, data, and long government documents in order to understand the issues at hand as well as the greater community context.
It is not easy reading, and I have learned that many local and national policy and funding issues are complex and interconnected; but, by treating each meeting’s agenda as a subject to be researched, I am able to contribute to the Board’s discussions at public hearings and make funding recommendations.

Chicago Layoffs Harbinger of Statewide Future?

Mike Antonucci:

It’s treacherous to predict future trends based on the recent past in education labor policy, but the uproar over school closings and layoffs in Chicago may soon be replicated in other areas of the state as staffing levels are reduced to match student enrollment.
In the early 2000s Chicago was like most large urban districts in the U.S. in that it hired K-12 teachers faster than the school population grew. But when enrollment fell – and it did by 3.6 percent between 2006 and 2011 – and money got tight, the staffing couldn’t be sustained. So Chicago teacher levels were reduced by 14.4 percent in that same time frame. That trend is continuing today.
A look at the rest of the state’s largest districts suggest others may follow suit. Rockford, Schaumburg and Palatine all had enrollment declines but grew their teacher workforce by 8 percent or more. In fact, 17 of the 25 largest districts increased staffing beyond enrollment, or didn’t reduce staffing to match enrollment losses.

Redux: Up, Down & Transparency: Madison Schools Received $11.8M more in State Tax Dollars last year, Local District Forecasts a Possible Reduction of $8.7M this Year; taxes up 9% a few years ago


Matthew DeFour:

Madison’s aid amount is about the same as it was in 2010-11. The district received a $15 million boost in aid last year mostly because 4-year-old kindergarten enrollment added about 2,000 students.
The Madison School Board taxed the maximum amount allowed last year, resulting in a 1.75 percent property tax increase. That amount was low compared to previous years because of the state aid increase. The additional funds allowed the district to spend more on building maintenance and a plan to raise low-income and minority student achievement.
Property tax increase coming
Cheatham said she hopes to propose a lower property tax increase than 6.8 percent when she introduces her budget on July 15. A group of local and national experts recently advised the district that it should reallocate more funding from the administration into classrooms. Cheatham expects to do a deeper review of district finances for the 2014-15 budget.
“I would not be reluctant to ask the taxpayers of Madison to support us with additional funding moving forward if I knew that we were spending every dollar in the best possible way to support the students in our school district,” Cheatham said. “I’ll know that next budget cycle.”
To reduce the budget, Cheatham said she doesn’t expect any major changes that will affect classroom learning.
Instead she could cut a 1.5 percent proposed increase in the employee salary schedule, reduce maintenance spending or make some previously recommended reductions in administrative positions.

Much more in the 2013-2014 budget, here.
Related: Up, Down & Transparency: Madison Schools Received $11.8M more in State Tax Dollars last year, Local District Forecasts a Possible Reduction of $8.7M this Year.
Madison spends significantly more per student than most districts. Property taxes were increased 9% just a few years ago.
Finally the ongoing tax increases may play a role in Madison School Board member Mary Burke’s rumored race for Governor.
Wages fall at record pace.
Madison’s long term disastrous reading scores.

Can we make ourselves happier?

Pascale Harter:

Can we make ourselves happier? According to studies from all over the globe collated by the World Happiness Database in Rotterdam, we can. But the path to happiness may not be where we are looking for it.
Prof Ruut Veenhoven, Director of the Database and Emeritus professor of social conditions for human happiness at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, says his own study found a slight negative correlation between the number of times people in a study spontaneously mentioned “goals” and their happiness.
“Though it is generally assumed that you need goals to lead a happy life, evidence is mixed. The reason seems to be that unhappy people are more aware of their goals, because they seek to change their life for the better.”
Although there is some positive correlation between seeing meaning in life and being happy, studies suggest this is not a necessary condition for happiness. In fact, studies suggest leading an active life has the strongest correlation with happiness.

As More Attend College, Majors Become More Career-Focused

Nate Silver:

A popular article by Verlyn Klinkenborg last week in The New York Times Sunday Review lamented the decline of English majors at top colleges and universities. Mr. Klinkenborg is worried about the “technical narrowness” of some college programs and the “rush to make education pay off”- which, he writes, “presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring.”
I am sympathetic to certain parts of Mr. Klinkenborg’s hypothesis: for instance, the potential value of writing skills even for students who major in scientific or technical fields, and the risks that specialization can pose to young minds that are still in their formative stages.
But Mr. Klinkenborg also neglects an important fact: more American students are attending college than ever before. He is correct to say that the distribution of majors has become more career-focused, but these degrees may be going to students who would not have gone to college at all in prior generations.

The Innovator: Robots invade the children’s nursery

Tim Bradshaw:

If ever you start to fret about being replaced by a robot in some Terminator-style apocalypse, look up a YouTube video entitled “PR2 Autonomously Pairing Socks”. The two-minute clip from a University of California, Berkeley research project in 2011 shows a robot identifying the two matching pairs from five socks. After carefully flattening the socks to inspect their shape and pattern, it checks they’re not inside out, then couples them.
It’s an impressive feat of robot engineering, of course. But for some it will be quite comforting that this task, dispatched in seconds by us humans, takes the $280,000 Willow Garage PR2 robot fully half an hour. On a cost-benefit basis alone, robot armies are unlikely to be marshalled against us in the near future.
Yet robots are about to invade our homes – and they’re coming not for our laundry but for our children. Rather than androids with arms, clunky thumbs and screens for eyes, they’re arriving as toy cars, balls and babysitters – and costing not $200,000 but $200. You might call them robots in disguise.

Illiberal Education and the ‘Heart of the Matter’

Peter Berkowitz:

The Heart of the Matter,” the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America. Regrettably, however, the report’s failure to address the true nature of the crisis facing liberal education may cause more harm than good.
In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences asking that it identify actions that could be taken by “federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors and others” to “maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education.”
In response, the American Academy formed the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, with Duke University President Richard Brodhead and retired Exelon CEO John Rowe as co-chairmen. Among the commission’s 51 members are top-tier-university presidents, scholars, lawyers, judges, and business executives, as well as prominent figures from diplomacy, filmmaking, music and journalism.

E-ducation A long-overdue technological revolution is at last under way

The Economist:

“IT IS possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture,” observed Thomas Edison in 1913, predicting that books would soon be obsolete in the classroom. In fact the motion picture has had little effect on education. The same, until recently, was true of computers. Ever since the 1970s Silicon Valley’s visionaries have been claiming that their industry would change the schoolroom as radically as the office–and they have sold a lot of technology to schools on the back of that. Children use computers to do research, type essays and cheat. But the core of the system has changed little since the Middle Ages: a “sage on a stage” teacher spouting “lessons” to rows of students. Tom Brown and Huckleberry Finn would recognise it in an instant–and shudder.
Now at last a revolution is under way (see article). At its heart is the idea of moving from “one-size-fits-all” education to a more personalised approach, with technology allowing each child to be taught at a different speed, in some cases by adaptive computer programs, in others by “superstar” lecturers of one sort or another, while the job of classroom teachers moves from orator to coach: giving individual attention to children identified by the gizmos as needing targeted help. In theory the classroom will be “flipped”, so that more basic information is supplied at home via screens, while class time is spent embedding, refining and testing that knowledge (in the same way that homework does now, but more effectively). The promise is of better teaching for millions of children at lower cost–but only if politicians and teachers embrace it.

A factory model for schools no longer works

Michael B. Horn And Meg Evans:

The past several decades have seen technology transform industry after industry. Nearly every sector in America has used new technologies to innovate in ways nearly unimaginable a generation before the change.
One sector, however, has remained nearly the same as it was a century ago.
The education system in place in urban school districts around the country was created in the early 1900s to serve a different time with different needs. In 1900, only 17% of all jobs required so-called knowledge workers, whereas over 60% do today.
Back then, the factory-model system that educators adopted created schools that in essence monolithically processed students in batches. By instituting grades and having a teacher focus on just one set of students of the same academic proficiency, the theory went, teachers could teach the same subjects, in the same way and at the same pace to all children in the classroom.
When most students would grow up to work in a factory or an industrial job of some sort, this standardization worked just fine. But now that we ask increasingly more students to master higher order knowledge and skills, this arrangement falls short.
Milwaukee and Wisconsin as a whole have felt this pressure acutely. Between 2011 and 2012, Wisconsin had the biggest six-month decline in manufacturing jobs in the nation after California. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel special report, the city’s pool of college-educated adults ranks among the lowest of the country’s 50 biggest cities. To become an average city among the top 50, Milwaukee would need another 36,000 adults with college degrees. Since 1990, it has added fewer than 1,000 a year.

Spot on. Much more on our “Frederick Taylor” style K-12 system and its’ focus on adult employment, here.

Seattle Schools’ Administrative Governance: “Culture of Bureaucracy”

Melissa Westbrook

There are sometimes days doing this watchdog work that are defeating, sad and frustrating. Today is one those. I’ll get to the issue at hand but a few thoughts first.
I’ve said this before – I do truly believe we have some good and decent people working in SPS. There are several up the food chain who are almost great but, like many a bureaucracy, have those whose work either drags them down or mires them in place.
I’ve also said this before – anyone who works in leadership at SPS who does not read and heed the words in the Moss-Adams report of 2002 is doomed to failure. Or, at least doomed to frustration.
The echo in my head from that brilliant report (and I paraphrase here) –
It does not matter what structural or systemic change you bring to an institution, if the culture of bureaucracy at an institution does not change, nothing changes.

Related: Deja Vu: A Focus on “Adult Employment” or the Impossibility of Governance Change in the Madison Schools.

NCTQ 4-3-2-1 Star-Rating of University Teacher Preparation Programs in the USA: “the evaluations provide clear and convincing evidence, based on a four-star rating system, that a vast majority of teacher preparation programs do not give aspiring teachers

Kelsey Sheehy:

Teaching was once dubbed “the profession that eats its young” and many educators liken their first few years in the classroom to a hazing ritual. The result is an industry that hemorrhages new teachers nearly as fast as it can license them.

One factor feeding the high turnover rate is lack of preparation, according to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national union representing 1.5 million educators.

Newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms … and left to see if they (and their students) sink or swim,” she wrote in a December 2012 report for the AFT. The report called for higher standards and accountability in teacher training programs.

The 2013 NCTQ Teacher Prep Ratings, released today by U.S. News, are a step in that direction.

[Read U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly’s opinion on the NCTQ ratings.]

Part of a broader effort by the National Council on Teacher Quality, the ratings are a subset of the NCTQ Teacher Prep Review, published today by the nonprofit educational research and advocacy group. The review is a 2.5-year effort to gauge the quality of the bachelor’s and master’s degree tracks required to enter the teaching profession.

The Great Divide in High School College Readiness Rates

Rhonda Rosenberg:

10 percent of the schools produce nearly half the college-ready graduates Last week the city announced that 22.2% of students from the high school Class of 2012 met the state’s college-ready standard, up from 21.1% for the Class of 2011. What the announcement didn’t say was that this already weak college-readiness rate was inflated by a small group of schools that contribute a disproportionate number of students to the city’s college-ready percentage. The differences between schools were so great that the city’s overall college-readiness rate of 22.2% did not represent the reality for even most city schools. In fact, only a quarter of the city’s high schools had a college-ready rate that was 22% or better. Here’s one way to look at the numbers: –

Working to Combat The Stigma of Autism

Al Baker:

Autism, or the fear of it, chased one Korean mother from her Queens church. “I very carefully told the mom: ‘I think your child is a little different. Why don’t you take the test for autism?’ ” said the Rev. Joy Lee of the Korean Presbyterian Church in Flushing. “She told me, ‘Oh no, my child will be O.K.’ So then she quit. After that, she did not pick up the phone.”
It crushed another Korean mother — twice. First, she said, when her son received the diagnosis, and again when friends saw it as a sign that she herself was sick. To cure him, they said, she needed psychotherapy.
Sun Young Ko, of Forest Hills, whose 8-year-old son, Jaewoo Kwak, was given a diagnosis of autism 18 months ago, said her own mother refused to discuss her grandson with relatives or friends. “She’s kind of hiding,” Ms. Ko said.

The BS ‘Democratisation’ Of Education By Online Ventures

Tom Foremski:

There’s a revolution in education taking place, many people have told me about the excellent education people can get through online courses, many of them free, some of them from top schools.
It’s a disruptive trend. No, it’s not.
The top schools won’t be disrupted, even most other schools won’t be affected by free online education.
Even if you could sit in on any lecture at any top school, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc, it wouldn’t help you much at all. Students will still be competing to get into those top schools, happy to mortgage their, and their parents’ futures, to pay to get into those top schools.
Because it’s not about the education you get it’s about the contacts you make. It’s about joining a privileged group that takes care of its own throughout the rest of your life. The alumni associations and the other relationships you make are worth far more than the cost or even the quality of the education. It’s not about knowing your subject, it’s about who you know.