Newly Discovered Eighth Grade Exam From 1912 Shows How Dumbed Down America Has Become

Michael Snyder:

Have you ever seen the movie “Idiocracy”? It is a movie about an “average American” that wakes up 500 years in the future only to discover that he is the most intelligent person by far in the “dumbed down” society that is surrounding him. Unfortunately, that film is a very accurate metaphor for what has happened to American society today. We have become so “dumbed down” that we don’t even realize what has happened to us. But once in a while something comes along that reminds us of how far we have fallen. In Kentucky, an eighth grade exam from 1912 was recently donated to the Bullitt County History Museum. When I read this exam over, I was shocked at how difficult it was. Could most eighth grade students pass such an exam today? Of course not. In fact, I don’t even think that I could pass it. Sadly, this is even more evidence of “the deliberate dumbing down of America” that former Department of Education official Charlotte Iserbyt is constantly warning us about. The American people are not nearly as mentally sharp as they once were, and with each passing generation it gets even worse.
Just check out some of the questions from the eighth grade exam that was discovered. Do you think that you could correctly answer these?…
-Through which waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?

Related: Madison Literary Club Talk: Examinations for Teachers Past and Present.

Inside the Box People don’t actually like creativity.

Jessica Olien:

Unfortunately, the place where our first creative ideas go to die is the place that should be most open to them–school. Studies show that teachers overwhelmingly discriminate against creative students, favoring their satisfier classmates who more readily follow directions and do what they’re told.
Even if children are lucky enough to have a teacher receptive to their ideas, standardized testing and other programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top (a program whose very designation is opposed to nonlinear creative thinking) make sure children’s minds are not on the “wrong” path, even though adults’ accomplishments are linked far more strongly to their creativity than their IQ. It’s ironic that even as children are taught the accomplishments of the world’s most innovative minds, their own creativity is being squelched.

Arts education: A look at how Michigan’s schools teach music, drama, painting and more

Brian Smith:

From parents funding elementary art classes out of their own pockets, to a school district with more than 100 art and music teachers, to urban charter schools specializing in the arts, Michigan’s arts education landscape is as varied as its geography.
Over the next week, online and in print, MLive will take a look at how schools across the state teach the arts, focusing on how districts have cut, maintained or brought back classes through hard budget choices and generous fundraising.
The state’s educational guidelines call for students from kindergarten through high school to learn about dance, visual art, music and theater, and the Michigan Merit Curriculum requires students to complete one course in “visual, performing or applied arts” in order to graduate and receive a high school diploma.
That graduation requirement, coupled with budget pressures facing districts across the state, has often put elementary and middle school arts programs on the chopping block.

Simple Approaches to School Improvement

David Cohen:

Schools in the city of Sanger, California, struggle with many of the educational challenges you’d anticipate in a rural, farming community, populated largely by migrant workers with low incomes and little English. Yet in the past decade, Sanger schools have beaten the odds, improving educational outcomes for their students in many significant ways.
You can find the details in this AP story by Gosia Wozniacka, at the San Diego Union-Tribune web site: Farm town develops education success formula. The story echoes much of what David Kirp said about improving schools in his book Improbable Scholars, (reviewed here). While his book focuses on Union City, New Jersey, he does refer to Sanger as an example of similar conditions producing similar improvements.
The most important take-away from these stories is that school improvement does not require dramatic overhauls in curriculum or governance. Rather, it’s mainly a matter of stability and trust, the key conditions that allow people to build a shared understanding of the challenges they face and how to best serve their students, developing home-grown solutions that everyone commits to supporting.
Here’s a sample of the article, which I hope you’ll read in its entirety:

Scarsdale Elementary School Program Review

Scarsdale10583:

The Principals of the five elementary schools and Scarsdale Assistant Superintendent Lynne Shain took center stage at the Board of Education meeting on Monday night December 9 to present a review of the elementary school program in the district. This presentation is one of a series of special reports that have been presented at Board of Education meetings in preparation for school budget discussions for 2014-15. The Principals reviewed the curriculum, program elements and staffing to give an overview of activities at the five schools, explain what’s now being done and the associated costs.
It was an impressive review of many of the elements of the elementary program and it can be viewed on the Scarsdale Schools website on the Video on Demand page here or read the highlights of the presentations below.
Shain explained that the highly professional staff, small class sizes, student support, emphasis on basic skills plus interdisciplinary programs and critical and creative problem solving all contribute to a successful K-8 program that allows students to excel in high school and beyond. In response to new federal and state requirements to teach the core curriculum the district has made modest modifications to the curriculum where needed.

Much more on Scarsdale, here.
Scarsdale plans to spend $143,899,713 during the 2013-2014 school year for 4,700 students or $30,616 (!) per student. This is about double Madison’s $15K/student, which is itself, double the United States average. Scarsdale demographics & Madison.

Solve math problems with logic

Manila Standard Today:

An educational and enrichment workshop was recently conducted by the Galileo Enrichment Learning Program where the multi-awarded mathematician and Singapore Math advocate Dr. Queena Lee-Chua together with her son Scott, shared with the participants the fundamentals of Singapore Math and demonstrated how this fun learning approach is used to solve word problems.
Multi-awarded mathematician and Singapore Math advocate Dr. Queena Lee-Chua shared with the participants the fundamentals of Singapore Math and demonstrates how this fun-learning approach is used to solve word problems.
The workshop, held at Nuvali Evoliving AVR, Sta. Rosa City, Laguna, was organized by Galileo Sta. Rosa, attended by parents and their kids, as well as by teachers from different pre-schools and elementary schools in and outside Manila. It was indeed an enlightening and engaging time for everyone as the mother and son tandem proved to the audience that complex mathematical problems can be solved with simple math logic.

Much more on Singapore Math, here.
Related: Math Forum Audio/Video.

Exceptional Minds School Helps Kids with Autism Find Their Niche

Maane Khatchatourian:

For the majority of young adults diagnosed with autism, finding a skilled job — especially one in the entertainment biz — is a pipe dream. But thanks to Exceptional Minds digital arts vocational school, it doesn’t have to be.
With the school’s help, four autistic students in their early 20s were hired to work on post-production visual effects for “American Hustle.” Arielle Guthrie, Lloyd Hackl, Patrick Brady and Eli Katz, who are in the program’s third and final year, provided rotoscoping services — the laborious process of outlining elements in key frames for digital manipulation — from EM’s Sherman Oaks, Calif., studio.
One of the program’s instructors, Josh Dagg, closely supervised the project, which the students worked on for five weeks on top of their full course loads. Dagg said most people with Autism Spectrum Disorders — when they feel mentally engaged — can focus with laser precision on a task for hours on end. Students in the program represent a wide range of individuals afflicted with a varying severity of symptoms. The students who worked on “American Hustle” had milder forms of autism.
“I want them to look forward to a career of personal and professional success rather than a lifetime of people telling them that ‘because you hit this particular number in this genetic lottery, you are now a glorified houseplant,’ ” Dagg said. “That’s a very real fear for a lot of people (with autism).”

In the ‘silent prison’ of autism, Ido speaks out

Thomas Curwen:

The high school student’s ‘Ido in Autismland’ is part memoir and part protest, a compelling message to educators on how to teach people such as him.
I t-h-i-n-k …
Ido Kedar sits at the dining room table of his West Hills home. He fidgets in his chair, slouched over an iPad, typing. He hunts down each letter. Seconds pass between the connections.
… A-u-t-i-s-m-l-a-n-d …
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He coined the word, his twist on Alice’s Wonderland.
“C’mon,” says his mother, Tracy. “Sit up and just finish it, Ido. Let’s go.”
He touches a few more keys, and then, with a slight robotic twang, the iPad reads the words he cannot speak.
I think Autismland is a surreal place.
For most of his life, Ido has listened to educators and experts explain what’s wrong with him. Now he wants to tell them that they had it all wrong.
Last year, at the age of 16, he published “Ido in Autismland.” The book — part memoir, part protest — has made him a celebrity in the autism world, a young activist eager to defy popular assumptions about a disorder that is often associated with mental deficiency.

Wisconsin DPI collecting testimony on Common Core

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email:

DPI held public hearings on the Common Core State Standard today, December 19, in Milwaukee, LaCrosse, and Ashland. The public may submit written testimony on the CCSS to DPI until January 3, 2014. Testimony may be send via email to CCSSTestimony @dpi.wi.gov or mailed to DPI at P.O. Box 7841, Madison, WI 53707-7841.
This is separate from the legislative hearings on the CCSS which were held in October. The following information has been provided by DPI to update us on developments since the legislative hearings.
NEW Developments since October Hearing Opportunity
On December 11, the Assembly special committee on CCSS released the following report and on December 12, voted on eight recommendations crafted after hearing public testimony at the four hearings in October. Read more about the outcome of that vote from the committee chair press release here or view the Wisconsin Eye video of this vote and discussion here (120 min).
On December 11, the Senate special committee released their report and recommendations. It is unclear whether the Senate committee will also vote on their recommendations.

WWC Review of the Report “The Impact of Dual Enrollment on College Degree Attainment: Do Low-SES Students Benefit?”

What Works Clearinghouse:

This study used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) to examine the effects of dual enrollment programs for high school students on college degree attainment. The study also reported whether the impacts of dual enrollment programs were different for first generation college students versus students whose parents had attended at least some college. In addition, a supplemental analysis reports on the impact of different amounts of dual enrollment course-taking and college degree attainment.
Dual enrollment programs offer college-level learning experiences for high school students. The programs offer college courses and/or the opportunity to earn college credits for students while still in high school.
The intervention group in the study was comprised of NELS participants who attended a postsecondary school and who participated in a dual enrollment program while in high school (n = 880). The study author used propensity score matching methods to create a comparison group of NELS participants who also attended a postsecondary school but who did not participate in a dual enrollment program in high school (n = 7,920).

Via Noel Radomski

Chinese fakes hit Japan’s luxury diaper market

Julian Ryall:

Counterfeit diapers are damaging both the reputation and bottom line of Japanese manufacturers in China, with companies in Tokyo calling on local authorities to act.
The booming Chinese market is proving a lucrative one for Japanese firms such as Daio Paper, which makes the hugely popular Goo.n line of disposable diapers. And because they are superior to Chinese products, that has elevated them to the status of a luxury product.
That popularity, however, has made them a target for the fakers.
The quality of the copies – the diaper looks like the genuine article and the packaging is indistinguishable – means that the counterfeiters can charge almost the same price as the real thing, between 155 and 185 yuan (HK$234). That figure is double the price in Japan, underlining the importance of the Chinese market to Japanese firms.
It is only when the diapers are put to the test that the differences become clear. The copies are made of a rougher material and absorb less liquid.
This has caused big problems for companies such as Daio Paper, as angry parents complain about the quality of diapers that they believed were genuine products.

China’s academic obsession with testing

Kelly Yang, via a kind John Dickert email:

This month, for the third time in a row, the Asians kicked American butt — academically, that is. On reading, science and math, students in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore earned the top scores on the international PISA test. U.S. students scored below or near the worldwide average, prompting suggestions that American education as a whole is failing. As a Hong Kong educator, I’m confident that the last thing the United States needs to copy is Chinese education.
Here in this city of 2 million parents , there are 2 million school principals, all ordering after-school academic courses like appetizers in a restaurant. Parents are the headmasters because our schools no longer control the education process. A 2011 survey estimated that 72 percent of Hong Kong high school students receive tutoring outside of school, often until late in the evening. So when our schools get out, the school day is just beginning for most kids.
Long before the term “tiger mom” was coined, Chinese parents had a history of obsessing over academics. The other day, I overheard two parents talking about their sons. One mom turned to the other and shrieked, “I found him in his room, just sitting there. Not doing anything!” The other gasped and shook her head in disbelief.
Their sons are 6 years old.

Milwaukee Public Schools shows slight gain in reading, math scores on national exam

Erin Richards, via a kind Wisconsin Reading Coalition email:

Milwaukee Public Schools students’ average reading and math scores on a national exam ticked up slightly in fourth and eighth grade between 2009 and 2013, according to a new report released Wednesday.
But — and there always seems to be a “but” — only the score change in eighth-grade math was statistically significant over those years.
And compared with the performance of 20 other urban districts in 2013, MPS ranked in the bottom four for math and the bottom six for reading.
Still, MPS officials were optimistic about the latest results of the Trial Urban District Assessment, praising the district’s average scale-score increases in reading and math in fourth and eighth grades over the past two years — even though federal statisticians said those changes did not fall outside the margin of testing error.
“Would we like to see statistically significant change? Sure,” said Melanie Stewart, MPS director of assessment. “But in all four areas, we are trending in the positive direction.”
Results from the urban district assessment come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a government-sponsored exam administered about every two years that’s considered the best gauge of how students are doing in reading and math.
National and state results on the 2013 assessment were released last month.
….
Fuller said MPS and community leaders need to think about reaching out to other urban districts showing improvement.
“We can’t keep acting like there’s nobody out there teaching poor, young black and brown students how to read,” Fuller said.

Related: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Why do people who chose not to study science and math opine on the virtues of studying science and math?

Philip Greenspun:

The New York Times editorial board contains people who studied history, economics, law, history (again), journalism, journalism (again), history (again, this time for the “science” expert), journalism, English literature, French literature, English literature (again), comparative literature, law, psychology, international relations, German, modern history, and law. Yesterday, the group signed an editorial entitled “Missing from Science Class; Too Few Girls and Minorities Study Tech Subjects.” The group of history and literature majors confidently wrote about the benefits of a tech education, how to motivate women and people with particular skin colors, and the sagacity of President Obama’s proposal on preschools (my previous post on the subject; note that Obama has previous extolled the virtues of STEM education for people other than himself (example)).
Why would folks who apparently preferred other subjects suggest that women and particular minority groups be encouraged to study tech subjects that they themselves did not like and ended up not needing?
Separately, here is a much more substantive approach to the challenge of getting more women interested in computer science: “Feminism and Programming Languages” by Arielle Schlesinger. Excerpts:

The Wisconsin Specific Learning Disabilities Rule took full effect on December 1

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email

requently Asked Questions about Making Specific Learning Disability (SLD) Eligibility Decisions has been updated to reflect full implementation of all components of the SLD eligibility rule. The document is posted at http://sped.dpi.wi.gov/files/sped/pdf/sld-faq.pdf.
SLD in Plain Language, including a one page summary of the eligibility criteria for SLD is posted at http://sped.dpi.wi.gov/files/sped/pdf/sld-plain-language.pdf.
Wisconsin’s Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) Rule: A Technical Guide for Determining the Eligibility of Students with Specific Learning Disabilities update is posted at http://sped.dpi.wi.gov/files/sped/pdf/sld-guide.pdf.
DPI recommends that you replace any earlier versions of the guide or the FAQs with their updates. Look forward to an updated overview of SLD PowerPoint presentation, and other updates in the coming days and weeks.

Thinning the Ph.D. Herd

Rebecca Schuman:

Faculty and graduate students at Johns Hopkins University, an elite private research institution that costs undergrads $61,000 per year, are up in arms about a new strategic plan that proposes sweeping changes (and cuts) to its Ph.D. programs. Some 275 graduate students, concerned about the viability of their departments, have petitioned the university to reconsider, arguing to Inside Higher Ed that such downsizing could be emulated around the country if it takes effect. But these grad students should be more concerned about their viability after the Ph.D.–which is grim. Johns Hopkins knows this, and is taking drastic but needed measures. I’m all for it, and I’d be delighted, not dismayed, if other universities emulated this strategy.
Here’s the plan, which faculty and students have demanded the administration reconsider: Over the course of the next five years, Hopkins would like to cut its graduate enrollment by 25 percent, and use those savings to raise the remaining grad-student stipends (what “nonemployees” get instead of a salary) to $30,000 per year.
This reduction would result in fewer graduate seminars. More importantly, though, instead of roughly one-half the instruction in the university being done by graduate students, only one-fourth would be, and this will put senior faculty in more contact with the undergraduate hoi polloi than they have been in decades. (The fact that Hopkins plans to fire no tenured faculty–merely to force them into contact with undergrads–is why these reductions seem much more reasonable than the ones at, say, Minnesota State University-Moorhead.) Meanwhile, the grad students that do remain will be paid well: that $30,000 is straight-up baller cash in the grad-school world–current stipends at JHU are around $20,000, and I received around $16,000 at UC-Irvine.

Teaching Isn’t Rocket Science. It’s Harder.

Ryan Fuller:

In 2007, when I was 22, I took a position as an aerospace engineer working on the design of NASA’s next-generation spacecraft. It was my dream job. I had just received a degree in mechanical engineering, and the only career ambition I could articulate was to work on something space-related. On my first days of work, I was awestruck by the drawings of Apollo-like spacecraft structures, by the conversations about how the heat shield would deflect when the craft landed in water and how much g-force astronauts could withstand. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t just watching a documentary on the space industry–I was inside it.
I was extremely motivated during my first year of work. I got in earlier and stayed later than most, and I tried to learn everything I could from my more experienced colleagues. The work wasn’t easy. Our team was trying to re-engineer, with modern technology, something that was designed in the ’60s. As a design engineer, I had to integrate the efforts of several different groups that often didn’t talk to each other or even get along very well. My deadlines haunted me like a thousand nightmares. Over the course of the next few years, though, I received awards and exceptional performance reviews, and I gained the respect of my colleagues, some of whom had been in the business for about as long as I had been alive.

Seattle Times and OSPI Sign Deal for SPS Student Data

Melissa Westbrook:

KUOW obtained a copy of the two-year agreement between the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and The Seattle Times, signed last month, which authorizes eight Times journalists to work with, but not publish, confidential student and staff information, including names and Social Security numbers.
“Wow,” said Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda. “I wasn’t aware of [this agreement], and I don’t think any of my staff was aware that this was being considered and approved.”
“This is really disconcerting for us, because we’ve been assuring families that we are really mindful about following [data privacy] rules,” Banda said.
The contract outlines measures the Times must take to secure confidential data it receives, including allowing OSPI to inspect Times facilities and requiring any confidential information to be returned or destroyed when the contract expires.
One sour note – KUOW did not explain the “grant-funded” Education Lab project at Seattle Times is thru the Gates Foundation.

Middleton High School investigating allegations of widespread cheating

Molly Beck, via a kind reader’s email:

Middleton High School officials are investigating claims of cheating, including allegations of students sharing and selling photographs of test questions.
Nearly 250 seniors at Middleton High School were told to retake a calculus test this week after the school learned last week of suspected cheating among its test takers, a spokesman said.
The scope of the investigation widened after the school received four letters from parents and students indicating such cheating had occurred before and in other subjects.
In a letter to parents Thursday, principal Denise Herrmann and associate principal Lisa Jondle said during the course of their investigation into alleged sharing of photos of calculus test questions, they received letters from students and parents “which provided additional information to the scope and severity of cheating on tests in courses across the curriculum,” prompting the school to notify all parents of the allegations.
Herrmann and Jondle asked parents for their support “in talking with your students about the ramifications of engaging in some of the dishonest assessment practices reported to us.”

Wisconsin Recertification Votes Mean What You Want Them to Mean

Mike Antonucci:

The Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission released the results of this year’s 408 union recertification elections. If you are a union person, you were encouraged that “about 90 percent of the groups said yes to recertifying.” If you are a union opponent, you were encouraged that “workers rejected over 70 of 408 school district unions.”
I don’t read much into the results either way. Some unions chose not to recertify, and since the law puts the apathetic on the “no” side, we have no sense of the depth of opposition. Since doing nothing was the same as voting no, there was no reason to vote no unless you felt very strongly about it.
The locals that achieved support from a majority of members can feel proud of their accomplishment in such an environment, but even the largest victories still leave them with 25 percent or more of their rank-and-file who don’t want them or can’t be bothered making a phone call to record their support.

Taking stock of Jonathan Raymond’s tenure and legacy at Sac City

John Fensterwald:

Jonathan Raymond saw his charge as superintendent of Sacramento City Unified as transforming the district. This week, after 4½ years leading the 42,000-student district, he departs with a credible list of accomplishments at least partly attributable to his leadership.
Some of those – progress in implementing Common Core standards, greatly expanded summer programs, new college and career programs tied to businesses and the community, home-school visits and new parent-teacher partnerships – will survive. So too probably will the new focus on social and emotional aspects of learning, which, Raymond said, “is really catching on like the beginning of a wild blaze.”
Other changes, though – protections he provided a half-dozen once low-performing Priority Schools and a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law tied in part to adoption of a new teacher evaluation system – will remain under attack from the teachers union with whom Raymond repeatedly clashed.

School board races matter, and there’s still time to run

The Capital Times:

Candidates who lose a race for public office face a choice. They can give up on campaigning and step back to the sidelines of the American experiment. Or they can wade back into the competition — better prepared and more determined to prevail.
Gaylord Nelson lost his first race for the state Legislature.
So did Scott Walker.
Robert M. La Follette lost and lost before he won the governorship.
Bill Proxmire lost statewide race after statewide race before he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Paul Soglin lost his first race for mayor of Madison.
And Madison firefighter and paramedic Michael Flores lost his first race for the Madison School Board in 2012.

Much more on the 2014 Madison School Board election, here.

I Am a Teacher With Really Bad Handwriting

Andrew Simmons:

My students squint desperately at my handwritten comments on their papers. They turn the paper sideways as if a fresh angle might lend clarity. They shrug or giggle and fold the paper up, resigned to the grade and regrettably impervious to the constructive criticism I carefully crafted the previous night.
“I can’t read this, Simmons,” a student sometimes announces. I hustle over to translate and feel the warmth of real shame creeping along my neck when it takes me more than a few seconds to figure out what I’ve written. I can read my own writing, but even I am sometimes momentarily baffled by what I behold.
I have terrible handwriting. Being left-handed and not particularly committed to tidiness in any capacity, my scribbling, whether cursive, print, or some ugly amalgam, never evolved significantly from my elementary-school days. If anything, it is now worse.

Semester that was: Chancellor Rebecca Blank aims to up UW reputation

Aliya Iftikhar:

Chancellor Rebecca Blank arrived at the University of Wisconsin this fall in a time of strained relations between the university and state Legislature.
With goals of increased funding, faculty retention and continuing the Wisconsin Idea, Blank said she came into her position with low expectations for state funding.
Nonetheless, Blank said she would advocate to keep current funding levels and also work to establish good communication and relationships with the Legislature.
Blank also advocated for a balance between affordable higher education and new revenue streams. To do so, she emphasized improving private donor funding.

Madison’s Lake Wobegon schools?

Chris Rickert:

Nearly 30 percent of the students at Madison’s Marquette Elementary School were classified last year as “talented and gifted,” or TAG, according to the school district.
That may not be Lake Wobegon territory — where “all the children are above average” — but it’s still pretty hard to believe.
Such alleged widespread student giftedness isn’t just the case at one district school.
Yes, there are wide variations among Madison elementary and middle schools in percentage of TAG students, but figures from the district suggest that on average districtwide, there are about twice as many TAG students as one would expect given national averages and expert opinion.
The National Association for Gifted Children estimates that about 6 percent of American school children are gifted.
The federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics put the gifted and talented number at 6.7 percent as of 2006, the most recent year for which data are available.

Much more on “talented & gifted” programs, here, including a recent parent group complaint.

What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? The Right to File a Grievance

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

When a union member files a grievance it means that the member and his/her union believes that their employer has failed to live up to its end of a provision which the employer agreed to include in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. They are called “agreements” for a reason: the union and the employer pledged that what they agreed upon in negotiations is what both will live by, that it is best for the employees and the employer. A Collective Bargaining Agreement is a legally binding Contract.
Filing a grievance sets in motion a process for resolving the employee’s complaint, often a complaint which could have been resolved easily and informally through discussion. Once a grievance is filed, the union and the employer meet in a process set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement to discuss the reasons on which the grievance is based. When the issue cannot be resolved through discussions, the union may take the complaint to a neutral third party (an arbitrator) who will decide whether management has violated the Contract. Wisconsin law assures that union- represented employees cannot be retaliated against because of filing a grievance.
The Collective Bargaining Agreement is the Constitution of the workplace, and only unionized employees, like members of MTI, are protected by a Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Poverty influences children’s early brain development

University of Wisconsin-Madison News
Poverty may have direct implications for important, early steps in the development of the brain, saddling children of low-income families with slower rates of growth in two key brain structures, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
By age 4, children in families living with incomes under 200 percent of the federal poverty line have less gray matter — brain tissue critical for processing of information and execution of actions — than kids growing up in families with higher incomes.
“This is an important link between poverty and biology. We’re watching how poverty gets under the skin,” says Barbara Wolfe, professor of economics, population health sciences and public affairs and one of the authors of the study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE.
The differences among children of the poor became apparent through analysis of hundreds of brain scans from children beginning soon after birth and repeated every few months until 4 years of age. Children in poor families lagged behind in the development of the parietal and frontal regions of the brain — deficits that help explain behavioral, learning and attention problems more common among disadvantaged children.
The parietal lobe works as the network hub of the brain, connecting disparate parts to make use of stored or incoming information. The frontal lobe, according to UW-Madison psychology professor Seth Pollak, is one of the last parts of the brain to develop.
“It’s the executive. It’s the part of the brain we use to control our attention and regulate our behavior,” Pollak says. “Those are difficulties children have when transitioning to kindergarten, when educational disparities begin: Are you able to pay attention? Can you avoid a tantrum and stay in your seat? Can you make yourself work on a project?”
The maturation gap of children in poor families is more startling for the lack of difference at birth among the children studied.
“One of the things that is important here is that the infants’ brains look very similar at birth,” says Pollak, whose work is funded by the National Institutes of Health. “You start seeing the separation in brain growth between the children living in poverty and the more affluent children increase over time, which really implicates the postnatal environment.”

The Darkest Term: Teacher Stress and Depression

Andrew Old:

To sum up, I have been teaching for 10 years now in mainstream and BESD. Last year has been awful. Wanted to quit; couldn’t cope; cried all the time at home; worked ridiculous hours to keep up; didn’t sleep. Also, I’ve put on nearly 3 stone through poor diet, eating on the run and comfort eating and look about 50 (I’m 31). I went to the doctors because I was ill a lot and, once I’d explained symptoms, he medicated me for work-related anxiety.
Months passed and there was no change really so I went back. Now I take mild antidepressants too on top of anxiety meds. Generally it’s helped and I can cope better but I definitely had to get out of my current school as it is going to the dogs. So short-staffed it is silly; no PPA; always on duty; no time to get anything done. 13 hour days most days.

Lecturers must stand with students to preserve the right to protest

Nina Power:

Three years ago today, parliament voted by a narrow margin to triple tuition fees and cut the educational maintenance allowance. Outside, thousands of students, lecturers and others gathered in the freezing cold to protest against everything the vote represented – the closing off of further and higher education to all but the rich and those prepared to take on thousands of pounds worth of debt for a job that might never come. Riot police charged horses into crowds, lashed out with batons to devastating effect and kettled hundreds for hours on Westminster Bridge. Dozens were later charged with serious public order offences, although juries thankfully didn’t buy it, acquitting 18 of the 19 who pleaded not guilty.
Three years later, we find the right to protest yet more eroded. Following successful student actions in support of cleaning staff, “occupational-style protests” have recently been the subject of an injunction at the University of London, turning a civil matter criminal, and recent “Cops Off Campus” demos have seen a return of aggressive police tactics in the form of physical violence, kettling and mass police presence. The only thing the police seemed to have “learned” from last time was the short-term impact of mass arrests – as the 286 anti-fascist protesters arrested recently in Tower Hamlets will know. Protesters are loaded into police vans or specially commissioned buses, taken to police stations all over London and sometimes even outside the city, held for hours, released on police bail with ludicrous conditions (not to enter the city of Westminster, or to attend any protests, or to congregate in groups of four), then the charges are dropped many months down the line.

How iOS7 is forcing a redesign of Montessori education

Bobby George:

The Montessori method of teaching relies heavily on natural materials. One of the first things people notice about our classrooms, for example, is the abundance of activities involving wood. And so it made sense that as we duplicated the Montessori experience in digital form, the materials presented looked the same way. On an iPhone or iPad, the experience we offered children was largely rooted in the real world.
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The introduction of iOS7–a new operating system that removes ties to the physical world in many ways–has changed everything. It’s more transparent, noticeably lighter, and seemingly faster.
+
We desire the same traits in a digital Montessori education. And that’s led to a rethinking of the aesthetic that is so thoroughly dependent on woodgrain–and all its shadows and textures that are now relics of Apple’s previous operating system. The new version forced us to seriously consider how our apps would look and feel, and how children would engage with them. As we’ve changed to reflect this, the question becomes, will children still interact with the digital material as they do the physical one when it isn’t grounded in their real-world experience?

Teacher salaries in Wisconsin down 5.4 percent since 1990 (excluding benefits)

Mike Ivey:

The average teacher salary in Wisconsin is $55,171, down 2.1 percent since 2000 when adjusted for inflation, according to a new report from a national education group.
The Wisconsin salary, which does not include benefits, is comparable to the U.S. average of $56,383. Teacher salaries nationally have fallen by 1.5 percent since 2000, adjusted for inflation.
By comparison, Minnesota teacher salaries have risen by 3.3 percent since 2000 to $56,268.

View the report, here.

Proposed Wisconsin Bill would allow charter schools to expand free of districts, unions

Erin Richards and Jason Stein:

Wisconsin could see a dramatic rise in the number of charter schools operating outside of districts and without teachers unions, under a new Assembly bill brought by Republicans that would take independent charters statewide.
The proposed legislation would eliminate district-staffed charters and empower a new slate of authorizers to approve independent charters: all four-year and two-year University of Wisconsin System institutions, as well as all the state’s regional educational service agencies and technical college district boards.
The measure comes as Republican lawmakers intensify their efforts to pass a charter-school bill in the remaining months of the session.
Independent charters are controversial because they are public schools run like private businesses; they don’t employ unionized staff and don’t have to answer to school boards. They exist through a contract, or charter, with an approved nondistrict entity.
Advocates see the schools as important to reform efforts because they’re not bogged down by school system bureaucracy and have more flexibility in curriculum and staffing.
Opponents criticize the schools for not having to follow the same rules as traditional districts, and for being the darlings of business interests. The schools also, in effect, reduce funding for traditional public schools the charter pupil otherwise might have attended.

Justified anger: Rev. Alex Gee says Madison is failing its African-American community

Rev. Alex Gee:

I had just finished my presentation about the mass incarceration of African-American men to a Downtown Rotary luncheon when a woman from the audience approached me.
“Wonderful presentation, Dr. Gee!” she told me, adding she was intrigued by my data and insights about Wisconsin’s mass incarceration phenomenon.
She added, “If you don’t mind, I must tell you that I am so glad that you are not some angry black man!”
This well-intentioned white Rotarian had just heard how Wisconsin has an epidemic and leads the nation in the incarceration of African-American males between 20 and 24 years old.
Giving these kinds of presentations typically takes a toll on me because of the bleakness of the subject matter, the pain in my soul unearthed by the topic and the typically blank stares by people who wonder why we are still talking about racial disparities in 2013.
“I am an angry black man,” I responded. “Why would you think I wasn’t angry over what is happening in and to my community? Is it because I put on my best face and ‘safe’ black voice for you today?”

Worst-Ever Homeschool Law Proposed in Ohio

Home School Legal Defense Association:

With the introduction of Senate Bill 248 on December 3, 2013, by Senator Capri Cafaro, Ohio has suddenly become a frontline in the battle over homeschooling freedom.
SB 248 is breathtakingly onerous in its scope. It requires all parents who homeschool to undergo a social services investigation which would ultimately determine if homeschooling would be permitted. Social workers would have to interview parents and children separately, conduct background checks and determine whether homeschooling is recommended or not. If it is not recommended, parents would have to submit to an “intervention” before further consideration of their request to homeschool.
SB 248 was offered by sponsors as a way to respond to the death of 14-year-old Teddy Foltz-Tedesco in January 2013. News reports indicate that Teddy had been abused for years by his mother’s boyfriend, Zaryl Bush. After teachers reported abuse to authorities, Teddy’s mother withdrew him from public school, allegedly to homeschool him. Reports tell a sad story of a broken home where neighbors, friends, family, police, teachers and others knew Teddy was suffering ongoing abuse. Finally, Bush beat Teddy so severely that he later died of his injuries. Both Bush and Teddy’s mother are now in prison. A news report can be found online.

Leaked! Harvard’s Grading Rubric

Nathaniel Stein:

From: The Dean of Harvard College
To: The Faculty
In light of the controversy regarding so-called grade inflation, please take a moment to review the grading guidelines rubric, reproduced below:
¶ The A+ grade is used only in very rare instances for the recognition of truly exceptional achievement.
For example: A term paper receiving the A+ is virtually indistinguishable from the work of a professional, both in its choice of paper stock and its font. The student’s command of the topic is expert, or at the very least intermediate, or beginner. Nearly every single word in the paper is spelled correctly; those that are not can be reasoned out phonetically within minutes. Content from Wikipedia is integrated with precision. The paper contains few, if any, death threats.
A few things can disqualify an otherwise worthy paper from this exceptional honor: 1) Plagiarism, unless committed with extraordinary reluctance. 2) The paper has been doused in blood or another liquid, unless dousing was requested by the instructor. 3) The paper was submitted late (with reasonable leeway — but certainly by no more than one or two years).
An overall course grade of A+ is reserved for those students who have not only demonstrated outstanding achievement in coursework but have also asked very nicely.

The Discomfort Zone: Want to teach your students about structural racism? Prepare for a formal reprimand.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:

Shannon Gibney is a professor of English and African diaspora studies at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC). When that’s your job, there are a lot of opportunities to talk about racism, imperialism, capitalism, and history. There are also a lot of opportunities to anger students who would rather not learn about racism, imperialism, capitalism, and history. I presume MCTC knows that; they have an African diaspora studies program. Back in January 2009, white students made charges of discrimination after Gibney suggested to them that fashioning a noose in the newsroom of the campus newspaper–as an editor had done the previous fall–might alienate students of color. More recently, when Gibney led a discussion on structural racism in her mass communication class, three white students filed a discrimination complaint because it made them feel uncomfortable. This time, MCTC reprimanded Gibney under their anti-discrimination policy.
Elevating discomfort to discrimination mocks the intent of the policy, but that’s not the whole of it. By sanctioning Gibney for making students uncomfortable, MCTC is pushing a disturbing higher-education trend. When colleges and universities become a market, there is no incentive to teach what customers would rather not know. When colleges are in the business of making customers comfortable, we are all poorer for it.

U.S. Rare in Spending More Money on the Education of Rich Children

Lisa Wade:

“The United States is one of few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children usually have more educational resources than those serving poor students,” writes Eduardo Porter for the New York Times. This is because a large percentage of funding for public education comes not from the federal government, but from the property taxes collected in each school district. Rich kids, then, get more lavish educations.
This means differences in how much we spend per student both across and within states. New York, for example, spends about $19,000 per student. In Tennessee they spend $8,200 and in Utah $5,321. Money within New York, is also unequally distributed: $25,505 was spent per student in the richest neighborhoods, compared to $12,861 in the poorest.

Single-Sex vs. Coed: The Evidence

single sex schools:

What’s the evidence? What have researchers found when they compare single-sex education with coeducation?
Let’s begin with two recent studies in which students were RANDOMLY assigned either to single-gender or coed classrooms, with no opt-out. We are aware of no other studies in which students were randomly assigned either to single-gender or coed classrooms, with no parental opt-out allowed. Any such study would be illegal in the United States; in the United States, federal statute 34 CFR 106.34 requires that any assignment to a single-gender classroom or school must be completely voluntary.
In the first study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania traveled to Seoul South Korea, because in Seoul, students are RANDOMLY assigned either to single-gender or to coed high schools. The assignment is truly random, and compulsory. Students cannot “opt out” of either the single-gender format or the coed format. This policy of random assignment was instituted in 1974 specifically to prevent clustering of students from particular backgrounds at particular schools. In recent decades, many Korean school districts have loosened the policy and they now allow parents to express preferences or to “opt out” of particular schools. But not in Seoul. In Seoul, it’s still a true random assignment with no opt-out.
The scholars from Penn recognized that the random nature of the assignment creates the opportunity to compare single-gender schools with coed schools, without the usual confounding variables which would accompany any attempt at a similar comparison among North American schools. All the schools in the study are publicly-funded; none of them charges any fees or tuition. The researchers found no differences between the single-gender and the coed schools in terms of teacher quality or in teacher training. Class sizes in the boys’ schools were no different than in the typical coed school, and class sizes were actually slightly larger in girls’ schools than in the typical coed school. There were no differences in socioeconomic background or prior academic achievement between students attending single-gender schools and those attending coed schools.

A Lesson In Mismanagement: Despite borrowing $10 billion to fund school construction, Chicago still has an overcrowding problem. Millions also went to schools that now stand empty.

Jason Grotto, Alex Richards andHeather Gillers:

More than a decade ago, demographic projections signaled an important reversal for Chicago Public Schools: Enrollment was about to shrink dramatically.
Yet CPS leaders appointed by former Mayor Richard M. Daley issued billions of dollars in bonds to repair, expand or replace the vast majority of the district’s schools regardless of future needs and without voter input, a Tribune investigation found.
In total, CPS officials have borrowed more than $10 billion in general obligation bonds since 1996 to fund school construction projects, debt that has contributed to the system’s current financial crisis. Officials poured $1.5 billion of that money into schools that today are less than 60 percent full.
Along the way, CPS invested $100 million in schools it closed this year, in part, because they were underused. About half of that spending came after demographic projections predicted districtwide enrollment drops.

Top of the class: How much impact does where your child ranks in primary school have on their later confidence and exam results?

Richard Murphy and Felix Weinhardt:

Conventional wisdom suggests that it is always best to place children with higher-performing peers.
Our research, which looks at their later outcomes, indicates that this is
not necessarily true.
Imagine two pupils of the same high ability: one is top of their class but the other is in the middle because their school attracts many high-ability children.
We find that the pupil who was top of the class becomes more confident and performs better in secondary school than the pupil who had the same test score in primary school but a lower rank.
These rankings are inferred by the pupils themselves as it is not standard practice for teachers to discuss rankings. We find that being highly ranked during primary school has a positive effect on later test scores that is equivalent to being taught by a highly effective teacher for one year. And being ranked in the top quarter of your primary school peers as opposed to the bottom quarter improves later test scores by twice as much as being taught by a highly effective teacher for one year.

The Capacity Challenge: What It Takes for State Education Agencies to Support School Improvement

Ashley Jochim, Patrick J. Murphy , via a kind Deb Britt email:

The push to raise standards and increase student outcomes has placed state education agencies (SEAs) at the center of efforts to improve the performance of the nation’s lowest-performing schools, but few are well positioned to deliver on that imperative. Federal and state initiatives like Race to the Top, School Improvement Grants, and Common Core State Standards pose challenges that most agencies are not prepared to meet.
Seeking to understand what SEAs are doing to meet new and existing obligations, researchers conducted interviews with state chiefs and analyzed agency initiatives and budgets in 10 states with varied approaches to school and district improvement. They found no evidence that those with the most money had better data systems or more comprehensive accountability systems. And few SEAs engage in the type of budget analysis that would enable them to assess whether their investments align with their priorities or are paying off.
While the lack of legal authority to intervene in failing schools sometimes limited the ability of states to act on their school improvement strategies, the researchers found that states that had such authority rarely used it.

Peach Baskets

In 1891, when Mr. James Naismith (he got his MD in 1898) put two peach baskets with the bottoms out at about 10 feet up at each end of the gymnasium in Springfield, Massachusetts, how many high school students do you think could make the three-point shot? Zero.
Today, when people see the exemplary history research papers published in The Concord Review, the most common reaction is: “These were written by High School Students?!” The reason for this disbelief is that most adults (even Edupudits, etc.) today no more expect high school student to write 11,000-word research papers than people in 1891 expected them to be able to make a three-point shot or dunk the basketball.
Theodore Sizer, late Dean of the Harvard School of Education and Headmaster of Phillips Academy, Andover, wrote, in 1988, that:
Americans shamefully underestimate their adolescents. With often misdirected generosity, we offer them all sorts of opportunities and, at least for middle-class and affluent youths, the time and resources to take advantage of them. We ask little in return. We expect little, and the young people sense this, and relax. The genially superficial is tolerated, save in areas where the high school students themselves have some control, in inter-scholastic athletics, sometimes in their part-time work, almost always in their socializing. At least if and when they reflect about it, adolescents have cause to resent us old folks. We do not signal clear standards for many important areas of their lives, and we deny them the respect of high expectations. In a word, we are careless about them, and, not surprisingly, many are thus careless about themselves. “Me take on such a difficult and responsible task?” they query, “I’m just a kid!” All sorts of young Americans are capable of solid, imaginative scholarship, and they exhibit it for us when we give them both the opportunity and a clear measure of the standard expected. Presented with this opportunity, young folk respond. The Concord Review is such an opportunity, a place for fine scholarship to be exhibited, to be exposed to that most exquisite of scholarly tests, wide publication. The Concord Review is, for the History-inclined high school student, what the best of secondary school theatre and music performances, athletics, and (in some respects) science fairs are, for their aficionados. It is a testing ground, and one of elegant style, taste and standards. The Review does not undersell students. It respects them. And in such respect is the fuel for excellence.”
Since 1987, The Concord Review has published more than a thousand 6,000-word, 8,000-word, 11,000-word, 15,000-word, and longer history papers by secondary students from 46 states and 38 other countries, and, as we only take about 5% of the ones we get, evidently several more thousands of high school students have written serious history papers and submitted them. But I was recently asked, “How many high school students do you think could actually write papers like that?”–Suggesting that it must be a very small number indeed! As small perhaps as the number of high school students who could make that three-pointer in 1891?
Some examples: Colin Rhys Hill, of Atlanta, Georgia, decided to write a 15,000-word history research paper on the Soviet-Afghan War; Sarah Willeman of Byfield, Massachusetts, decided she wanted to write a 21,000-word paper on the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah in 1857; Nathaniel Bernstein, of San Francisco, chose to write an 11,000-word paper on the unintended consequences of Direct Legislation reforms in the early 1900s in California; and Jonathan Lu, of Hong Kong, wrote a 13,000-word paper on the Needham Question (why did Chinese technology stall after 1500?)…(send to fitzhugh@tcr.org for pdfs of these papers).
“Where there’s a Way, there’s a Will,” I sometimes think. If peach baskets exist, some day somewhere a high school student or two will try to shoot a ball through one. Obviously by now the number of such students who can make a three-point shot is very large. We even have nationally-televised high school basketball games in which they can demonstrate such an achievement. If an international journal for the academic history research papers of secondary students exists, perhaps some students will actually write and submit them?
Most people may tell a high school students that they are not capable of doing the reading and the writing for a long serious history research paper. Most of their teachers do not want to spend the time coaching for and reading them. But my advice to any prospective high school author is (pay no attention to the people who tell you that you are only capable of writing a five-paragraph essay), and:
Prepare yourself over hours, weeks, months, and years of practice.
Make sure your feet are behind the three-point line.
Take the shot.
—————————
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
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British Library Releases 16, 17 & 18 Century Digitized Books

Ben O’Steen:

We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.
Which brings me to the point of this release. We are looking for new, inventive ways to navigate, find and display these ‘unseen illustrations’. The images were plucked from the pages as part of the ‘Mechanical Curator’, a creation of the British Library Labs project. Each image is individually addressible, online, and Flickr provies an API to access it and the image’s associated description.
We may know which book, volume and page an image was drawn from, but we know nothing about a given image. Consider the image below. The title of the work may suggest the thematic subject matter of any illustrations in the book, but it doesn’t suggest how colourful and arresting these images are.

Universities as Commercial Enterprise, an Ongoing Case Study

Dave Brockington:

This essay on the current experience at the University of Michigan published on Inside Higher Ed, made the rounds last week. Titled “Corporate Values”, it includes several quotes that speak directly to my ten year experience at my current institution. To wit:

America’s public research universities face a challenging economic environment characterized by rising operating costs and dwindling state resources. In response, institutions across the country have looked toward the corporate sector for cost-cutting models. The hope is that implementing these “real-world” strategies will centralize redundant tasks (allowing some to be eliminated), stimulate greater efficiency, and ensure long-term fiscal solvency.

As I’ve argued in the past, the experience in Britain serves as both a model and a warning to my colleagues in the United States. Decisions are taken purely on a revenue-stream criterion. If eliminating one undergraduate program will allow resources to be shifted to another, thus resulting in a marginally enhanced revenue stream on a per-student basis, then such a move has appeal. Those of us providing the “content” are treated as interchangeable parts, have superficial input in decision making (which is typically window dressing as one of many “stakeholders” in the institution, designed to assuage concerns of consultation). Management decisions are conducted with no transparency, and handed down as edicts. There’s no entertainment of feedback, let alone constructive criticism. Again this resonates:

5 Things Faculty Can Actually Do About the Academy, Part 3: The Humanities Resembles a Pyramid Scheme, and We Should Be Bothered By That

Rebecca Harris:

Earlier this fall semester, Dr. Anne-Marie Womack (Tulane), a colleague from my graduate institution, and I had a piece about the academic job market in English published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In the piece, we make the argument that departments should strive to make the first round of job applications free of cost for candidates. The idea for this piece arose when we were on a flight together to campus visits and we got into a discussion about how much money we had spent on Interfolio during the job search “season”. Both of us had applied to more than 100 jobs, and for myself the Interfolio cost alone was north of $600. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Interfolio, it is a dossier service that allows a candidate to put his or her materials together, including confidential letters of recommendation, and send them as one package to the hiring committee responsible for the job search. The minimum cost for sending a dossier through Interfolio is $6, and in the case of print materials, the price increases as the page count goes up. For most jobs I applied to, the committee required at minimum a CV, three confidential letters of recommendation, a teaching philosophy, a writing sample, and a job letter in the first round of application.
Due to the volume of this type of application, the cost for a single Interfolio dossier could go as high as $20. Given such a high cost to applicants, most often graduate students, adjuncts, and postdoctoral fellows, and the fact that many jobs in English had as many as 500 applicants in the first round, we argued that departments and schools should work to make the process free to applicants by requiring only an electronic submission of a CV and job letter in the first round.
We further argued that this system would also provide feedback and reassurance to applicants advanced to the next round of the search by contacting them for materials like the writing sample and confidential letters of recommendation. Requesting more materials from a short list, we claimed, “would also alert us of our success and would mark a significant personal accomplishment in what can be a very anonymous process.”

A Right to the University

Brenna Bhandar:

On 4 December, the University of London was granted an injunction from the High Court that prohibits ‘persons unknown (including students of the University of London) from ‘entering or remaining upon the campus and buildings of University of London for the purpose of occupational protest action’ for the next six months. Many such injunctions have been granted to universities across the country over the past four years, with increasing frequency and ever wider restrictions on student protest. In this case, the University of London argued that the occupation of Senate House threatened the liberty and freedom of senior university personnel, and presented a risk of damage to property, despite assurances from the occupiers that staff were free to come and go from the building and no such damage would occur. The eventual eviction of the occupiers was rough and violent. On 5 December, 35 students were arrested and several of them detained overnight. Some were assaulted by the police.
‘The action is restorative,’ the occupiers’ official statement said, ‘displacing the undemocratic and unaccountable management with a democratic space for the free pursuit of knowledge, critical enquiry and dissent.’ Their specific demands related to the democratic deficit in university governance, the privatisation of service provision and the student loan book, and the working conditions of academic, cleaning and maintenance staff.
The use of injunctions to quash protest is an indicator of how deeply privatisation has taken root in British universities. Injunctions are a private law remedy. They are being granted to prohibit protest as if universities, as legal persons, were like any other private property owner; as if students were like any people at large, violating the property rights of the university. The claimant in this case alerts the court to the Code of Student Discipline, implying that students who take part in sit-ins and occupations are in breach of their contract with the university. The right to express dissent, the rights of freedom of association and expression, and entirely legitimate concerns about university governance, are excised from the ostensibly private realms of property and contract.

Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch From America’s Most Desperate Town

Matt Taibbi:

The first thing you notice about Camden, New Jersey, is that pretty much everyone you talk to has just gotten his or her ass kicked.
Detroit’s Debt Crisis: Everything Must Go
Instead of shaking hands, people here are always lifting hats, sleeves, pant legs and shirttails to show you wounds or scars, then pointing in the direction of where the bad thing just happened.
“I been shot six times,” says Raymond, a self-described gangster I meet standing on a downtown corner. He pulls up his pant leg. “The last time I got shot was three years ago, twice in the femur.” He gives an intellectual nod. “The femur, you know, that’s the largest bone in the leg.”
“First they hit me in the head,” says Dwayne “The Wiz” Charbonneau, a junkie who had been robbed the night before. He lifts his wool cap to expose a still-oozing red strawberry and pulls his sweatpants down at the waist, drawing a few passing glances. “After that, they ripped my pockets out. You can see right here. . . .”
Even the cops have their stories: “You can see right here, that’s where he bit me,” says one police officer, lifting his pant leg. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m going to have to shoot this dog.'”
“I’ve seen people shot and gotten blood on me,” says Thomas Bayard Townsend III, a friendly convicted murderer with a tear tattoo under his eye. “If you turn around here, and your curiosity gets the best of you, it can cost you your life.”

The Homeschool Apostates

Kathryn Joyce:

At 10 P.M. on a Sunday night in May, Lauren and John,* a young couple in the Washington, D.C., area, started an emergency 14-hour drive to the state where Lauren grew up in a strict fundamentalist household. Earlier that day, Lauren’s younger sister, Jennifer, who had recently graduated from homeschooling high school, had called her in tears: “I need you to get me out of this place.” The day, Jennifer said, had started with another fight with her parents, after she declined to sing hymns in church. Her slight speech impediment made her self-conscious about singing in public, but to her parents, her refusal to sing or recite scripture was more evidence that she wasn’t saved. It didn’t help that she was a vegan animal-rights enthusiast.
After the family returned home from church, Jennifer’s parents discovered that she had recently been posting about animal rights on Facebook, which they had forbidden. They took away Jennifer’s graduation presents and computer, she told Lauren. More disturbing, they said that if she didn’t eat meat for dinner she’d wake up to find one of the pets she babied gone.
To most people, it would have sounded like overreaction to innocuous forms of teenage rebellion. But Lauren, who’d cut ties with her family the previous year, knew it was more. The sisters grew up, with two brothers, in a family that was almost completely isolated, they say, held captive by their mother’s extreme anxiety and explosive anger. “I was basically raised by someone with a mental disorder and told you have to obey her or God’s going to send you to hell,” Lauren says. “Her anxiety disorder meant that she had to control every little thing, and homeschooling and her religious beliefs gave her the justification for it.”

the post-MOOC-hype landscape: what’s REALLY next?

Bonnie Stewart:

The short version (see slide 4) is this: there are currently two solitudes in the MOOC conversation, and it’s not a cMOOC/xMOOC divide. One solitude – the mainstream media discourse – is essentially a unicorn, in the sense that its promises are fantasies of salvation and solutionism that have very little to do with the actual practice of higher education. The other – the practitioners’ discourse(s), broadly represented by the various interests around the table at #mri13 – is a Tower of Babel. Still, this solitude, loosely and cacophonously affiliated as it is, nonetheless leans towards discussing MOOCs in terms of learning. And in the wake of twenty-odd months of hype in which the dominant public narratives about higher ed have been all glorious revolution or ghastly spectre, I think it’s time to seize this (likely momentary) lull in unicorn sales and try to talk about MOOCs as learning. We need to make ourselves familiar with what the post-hype landscape of higher ed looks like, and address the issues and opportunities it’s left us with. In learning terms. On as many public platforms as we can. In stereo.
In other words, challenge the empty narratives that your administrators or your faculty have been sold. Find ways to talk about why what you’re doing matters. Change the narrative from unicorns back to what education is about: learning. End story.

Even Gifted Students Can’t Keep Up In Math and Science, the Best Fend for Themselves

NY Times Editorial, via a kind reader:

“Federal, state and local governments and school districts have put little effort into identifying and developing students of all racial and economic backgrounds, both in terms of intelligence and the sheer grit needed to succeed. There are an estimated three million gifted children in K-12in the United States, about 6 percent of the student population. Some schools have a challenging curriculum for them, but most do not.”
…..
In a post-smokestack age, there is only one way for the United States to avoid a declining standard of living, and that is through innovation. Advancements in science and engineering have extended life, employed millions and accounted for more than half of American economic growth since World War II, but they are slowing. The nation has to enlarge its pool of the best and brightest science and math students and encourage them to pursue careers that will keep the country competitive.
But that isn’t happening. Not only do average American students perform poorly compared with those in other countries, but so do the best students, languishing in the middle of the pack as measured by the two leading tests used in international comparisons.
On the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment test, the most recent, 34 of 65 countries and school systems had a higher percentage of 15-year-olds scoring at the advanced levels in mathematics than the United States did. The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland all had at least twice the proportion of mathematically advanced students as the United States, and many Asian countries had far more than that.
Other tests have shown that America’s younger students fare better in global comparisons than its older students do, which suggests a disturbing failure of educators to nurture good students as they progress to higher grades. Over all, the United States is largely holding still while foreign competitors are improving rapidly.
Federal, state and local governments and school districts have put little effort into identifying and developing students of all racial and economic backgrounds, both in terms of intelligence and the sheer grit needed to succeed. There are an estimated three million gifted children in K-12 in the United States, about 6 percent of the student population. Some schools have a challenging curriculum for them, but most do not.

Related: parents file talented & gifted complaint with the Madison School District.

2 New York City Colleges Draft Rules That Restrict Protests

Ariel Kaminer:

At Cooper Union, it was outrage over a new tuition policy. At City College, it was anger over the closing of a community center. At both Manhattan colleges, student protest shut down buildings, garnered headlines and largely defined campus life over the past year. Now those two very different institutions are considering policies that could restrict how, when and where students can express dissent, while raising the penalties for those who disobey.
Representatives of Cooper Union’s student government were surprised when, a few weeks ago, administrators showed them a draft of a new code of conduct. In addition to addressing matters like fire safety and drug use, the document would forbid “deliberate or knowing disruption of the free flow of pedestrian traffic on Cooper Union premises” and “behavior that disturbs the peace, academic study or sleep of others on or off campus.” A section on bullying and intimidation mentions communication, in any medium, that “disrupts or interferes with the orderly operation of the Cooper Union.”

Taiken nyuugaku: Experiencing local school in Japan

Grace:

Pristine was born in Japan and she was only 3 years old when we moved to Dubai in 2007. She only spoke Japanese then but as our stay in the UAE became longer and longer (7 years in a few weeks!) and with Pristine attending British curriculum international school, she has lost her grip not just on the language but also being away from Japan too long, been detached from the Japanese culture and tradition aspect.
When we went for vacation to Japan this summer, we enrolled Pristine in the local Japanese public school – something we’ve always wanted to do for years now. She has spent more of her years here than in Japan and we didn’t want her to forget half of what she is.
More specifically, we want her to experience both worlds.
Taiken nyuugaku: a special program for Japanese kids who lived overseas. They come home for the summer, and experience life in a Japanese school. We knew lots of children who did it. We thought it was a great way to reconnect with her roots, not mention hone her Japanese language skills and most importantly, to be with Japanese children her age, in Japan.

Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: MOOCs and Anti-MOOCs

Audrey Watters:

Barely a week has gone by this year without some MOOC-related news. Much like last year, massive open online courses have dominated ed-tech conversations.
But if 2012 was, as The New York Times decreed, the year of the MOOC, 2013 might be described as the year of the anti-MOOC as we slid down that Gartner Hype Cycle from the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” and into the “Trough of Disillusionment.” For what it’s worth, Gartner pegged MOOCs at the peak back in July, while the Horizon Report says they’re still on the horizon. Nevertheless the head of edX appeared on the Colbert Report this year, and the word “MOOC” entered the Oxford Online Dictionary – so whether you think those are indications of peak or trough or both or neither, it seems the idea of free online university education has hit the mainstream.
MOOCs: An Abbreviated History
To recap: in 2008, Dave Cormier coins the term “MOOC” to describe George Siemens’ and Stephen Downes’ course “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.” In the Fall of 2011, Stanford offers open enrollment in online versions of three engineering classes: Artificial Intelligence (taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig), Machine Learning (taught by Andrew Ng), and Databases (taught by Jennifer Widom). In December 2011, MIT unveil MITx. In January 2012, Thrun announces he’s leaving Stanford to launch Udacity. In April 2012, Ng, along with Stanford colleague Daphne Koller, launch Coursera. In May 2012, Harvard and MIT team up for edX. In December 2012, 12 British universities partner to launch their MOOC platform, FutureLearn. And in 2013…

Madison’s latest budget spends about $15K per student.

Get politics, unions out of education

Indystar:

I read with interest all of the comments about the Glenda Ritz/Indiana State Department of Education controversy, both pro and con. I am of the opinion that the office, regardless of who is elected or appointed, or Democrat or Republican, will have little if any effect on the kind of education our children will continue to receive.
I grew up in rural South Texas and went to two-room schools through middle school and to a 100-student high school. The 21 graduates in my high school class all could read by second grade and none ended up in prison or with a felony conviction. I think that held true for most of the students in that era. We had no stadium, no swimming pool, no state and federal education standards, no teachers union, minimal school funding, and yet we all learned to read and write and do basic math, and how to get a job and get to work.
Today, our public schools are about everything but teaching the basics, and yet that is what makes the most difference in our students’ future. Vast amounts of public tax dollars are spent on impressive buildings and facilities, indoctrinating instead of teaching, teaching a vast array of non-essential subjects, political correctness, huge sports complexes, and on and on. Yet many of our students do not gain the basic skills of reading and writing and financial literacy.

Advocate for children in special education has witnessed big changes

Alan Borsuk:

It is not easy to make Tom Phillipson happy when it comes to the way a child who needs special education is being served in Milwaukee.
He’s a charming, warm guy in many ways. But get him involved in a child’s needs and he’s demanding and persistent. I doubt “puppy dog” is the phrase that comes to mind first for people on the receiving end of his attention.
It is time to sing praises of Phillipson and to provide some perspective on changes in how special education is handled in Milwaukee and beyond. In some ways, the last few years have been a time of significant improvements, but there is much more distance to go.
The improvements can be summed up with two points:
There are more ambitious goals for children with special-education needs than there used to be.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act, 12 years old now, has a lot of failings. But one good thing it did was set out that schools were expected to see every segment of their student population achieve, and that included kids in special-ed. It was a bold statement that led to much more focus on the academic needs of the children, not just on taking care of them in school.
And, with a lot of pushing, compliance with special-education laws has gotten better. Milwaukee Public Schools is a good example of that. The impact of a lawsuit brought against MPS in 2001 is one of the reasons.

Teachers Seek to ‘Reclaim’ Education

Michelle Chen:

After years of being backed into a corner, on Monday public-school teachers stood up in defiance against what they see as their chief bully–budget-slashing school reforms that have made school more stressful and less fulfilling for both them and their students.
Under the banner of a National Day of Action to Reclaim the Promise of Public Education, educators, students and community groups coordinated demonstrations, rallies and other public gatherings in dozens of cities. In the long run, the day of action kicked off a broader campaign by a coalition of unions and community groups to chart an alternative path to education reform.
According to a policy statement by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the leading union behind the campaign, and its partner groups, the goal is to foster “a community-union movement for educational equity and excellence.” While that agenda may sound neutral to the uninitiated, it speaks to growing resentment toward the prevailing reform rhetoric pushed by the White House and many politicians: corporate-oriented “standards” and “management,” leading to a test-heavy curriculum focused on math and reading at the expense of all else. First imposed under the No Child Left Behind law of the Bush administration, this hardline approach rests on the belief that a lack of academic rigor and “ineffective” educators are impeding U.S. students’ performance. The prescription has been an avalanche of high-stakes testing, public-school funding cuts and free-market privatization measures such as charter schools, often funded by corporate-oriented philanthropists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Museums, MOOCs and MoMA: the future of digital education realised?

David Scott:

When pressed on what the main issues confronting educators in the 21st century are, Deborah Howes is unequivocal in her response. “The biggest challenge in looking ahead is letting go of familiar habits preventing you from reaching other audiences that expect and need to learn in different ways.”
Ms Howes, the Director of Digital Learning at New York’s iconic Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is well placed to reflect on the future of education, particularly as it increasingly evolves – and involves – online.
MoMA’s digital education offerings include seven fee-based courses (offered via their website) and, more recently, a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered via Coursera.

via Noel Radomski.

Maryanne Wolf on Dyslexia as a Gift

To the best of our knowledge via the Wisconsin Reading Coalition:

Jim Fleming: Maryanne Wolf knows as much as anybody on the planet about what the human brain is actually doing when it reads. She runs The Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and enjoyed significant popular success for her last book, “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.” But as Anne Strainchamps found out, Wolf is equally passionate about the dyslexic brain.
Maryanne Wolf: I like to say that the dyslexia brain is proof and daily evidence that the brain was never wired to read. Now there are all these children in the world, all these individuals are walking around with brains that are so often, I can’t say that for every single person, but so often these are brains that are wired to see spatial patterns, to see the big picture, to go outside of the box, to think holistically. Often they’re artists, they’re architects and yeah, that same advantage or set of advantages which made them before literacy, our generals, out builders, a lot of our great figures, that made a disadvantage at the same time for some of the wiring that goes into left hemisphere language processes.
Now the real, if, if you wanna know my real task in life, it’s to re-conceptualize or to help re-conceptualize dyslexia from being thought of as a deficit or something wrong with the brain, to realizing this is an extraordinary and beautiful brain that we have failed as an educational system to know how to teach easily when it comes to reading. But that is the failure, not the child, but of us to understand.
And one of the joys for me in brain imaging is that we’re able to look and see how many of our individuals with Dyslexia have such interesting right hemispheric processes, and when you look at how t hey read are using the right hemisphere inefficiently for a left hemisphere-like task.

The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder

Alan Schwarz:

After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating.
Severely hyperactive and impulsive children, once shunned as bad seeds, are now recognized as having a real neurological problem. Doctors and parents have largely accepted drugs like Adderall and Concerta to temper the traits of classic A.D.H.D., helping youngsters succeed in school and beyond.
But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington. He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990. He questioned the rising rates of diagnosis and called them “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”

Building Brain Literacy in Elementary Students

Judy Willis:

For many students, the brain isn’t a hot topic of conversation. This is especially true for younger students who are still trying to understand the world around them, and are still far from developing physiological self-awareness of the very thing that gives them that self-awareness.
But helping students develop “brain literacy” doesn’t have to be a matter of dry science pumped full of confusing jargon. Understanding the brain can be empowering for students as they recognize their ability to strengthen it each time they use it. As a teacher, you can emphasize how using the executive functions, both in the classroom and outside of school, increases their strength for academic success. Practice makes perfect!
To reduce anxiety about new “stuff” in the classroom — whether related to Common Core State Standards, struggles with reading, or something else entirely — you can find opportunities to emphasize students’ ability to literally build the brains they want. Remind them that, when they turn in a story, demonstrate a science principle in a skit, or even raise their hand to respond to a question, they grow more dendrites and add new layers of myelin to their axons. To them this may sound gross, but it’s actually good news. By activating these brain networks, they continuously use their executive functions as they apply new learning. Like a muscle, the brain responds to interaction and activity.

Let’s Bring The Polymath — and the Dabblers — Back

Samuel Arbesman:

I noticed recently that books with the phrase “The Last Man Who Knew Everything” all share in common that their subjects lived during the period close to the Scientific Revolution, roughly between 1550 to 1700. (The examples I own are about Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit priest born in 1602; Thomas Young, who studied topics such as optics and philology and was born in 1773; and Philadelphia area professor Joseph Leidy, who was born in 1823.)
It’s as if the Scientific Revolution — and the knowledge it spawned — killed the ability to Know Everything. Before then, it was not only possible to be a generalist or polymath (someone with a wide range of expertise) — but the weaving together of different disciplines was actually rather unexceptional. The Ancients discussed topics such as ethics, biology, and metaphysics alongside each other. The Babylonian Talmud discusses everything from astronomy and biology to morality and law, weaving them together into a single compendium.
So what changed? Scientific knowledge exploded in size, mainly due to the application of the scientific method to our surroundings. As that knowledge base and its domain experts grew exponentially, we began classifying and ordering all that we understood — from the classification taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus to manuals for categorizing mental disease. We made sense of our world by dividing information into manageable portions and distinct areas of proficiency.

How ‘flipped classrooms’ are turning the traditional school day upside down

PBS NewsHour:

GWEN IFILL: Here’s an idea for improving the learning environment in a low-performing urban school: Stand the traditional classroom model on its head. That’s the experiment under way in a suburban Detroit school.
Jeffrey Brown has the story as part of our American Graduate project, a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
MAN: So, you see how they are in the same family.
JEFFREY BROWN: What if you took the traditional school day and flipped it on its head, not literally, of course, but having lessons offered at night at home and homework done by day in the classroom?
That’s the experiment under way at Clintondale High School just outside Detroit, an area still reeling from the economic and social ills of the nearby city. The school serves many low-income families and faces tight budgets and declining enrollment.
MAN: So what’s the number part that I’m going to need for all three?
RELATED INFORMATION
Creating the flipped ‘lecture’ for at-home use

Usual suspects mounting opposition to Camden charter school expansion

Laura Waters:

Philadelphia’s Mastery Charter Schools is hoping to run a school in Camden. This week, Camden Public Schools announced that is now accepting applications from charter operators. But despite Mastery’s track-record, not everyone is excited by this idea.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this week that New Jersey’s Education Law Center (ELC), the primary advocate for New Jersey’s 31 poor Abbott districts, believes that the Camden Board of Education should not approve any more charter schools and instead focus on facilities repairs.
It’s not so hard to divine the politics of ELC’s anti-charter school stance. After all, the non-profit has made its bones lobbying for equitable school funding in the traditional public school sector and is closely allied with anti-choice groups that look askance at progressive instructional models. ELC was also one of the very few opponents to the Urban Hope Act, a 2011 bipartisan piece of legislation that allows non-profits to build up to four new schools in Camden, Trenton, and Newark, subject to approval by the local school board.

Trial Urban Districts Assessment: What the results could show

Maisie McAdoo:

TUDA results for New York City will be exceptionally important this year. While Mayor Bloomberg has highlighted selected indicators of improvement during his tenure, the Trial Urban District Assessment results will be a final, objective assessment of student progress during the Bloomberg years. They will also allow us to measure New York City against other major urban districts, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Houston, Atlanta, and a large-U.S. cities average.
What TUDA results have showed so far — and 2011 was the last time they were updated — is that New York City’s 4th- and 8th-graders have improved in 4th grade math and reading and 8th grade math, but not as much as their peers in other major cities. On 8th-grade reading between 2003 and 2011, the city showed an especially disturbing trend of no improvement. New York used to lead among urban districts. But city scores have moved towards the middle of the pack of major urban school systems over the past decade. – See more at: http://www.edwize.org/trial-urban-districts-assessment-what-the-results-could-show#sthash.zCd2n4Op.dpuf

William & Mary faculty approve new general education curriculum

William & Mary

Academic departments and programs already have been reviewing their course offerings in relation to the new curriculum, looking at possible changes in courses that already exist, new courses, and courses that will no longer be needed. That planning ramps up in Spring 2014 with more formal assessments conducted with the A&S Dean’s Office. Simultaneously, Provost Halleran will join President Taylor Reveley in a full review of the proposed curriculum, including projected costs.
There will be some development and transition costs, Halleran said, as faculty design and implement the new courses, and some modest increased permanent costs in expanding the engaged learning model that characterizes a W&M education. Now that faculty have approved the new curriculum, the A&S Dean’s Office will conduct a formal assessment of temporary costs, associated costs such as increased faculty support and new, direct costs.
“From what I’ve seen so far, those costs appear to be reasonable and appropriate,” said Halleran, adding the College will support the new curriculum through a combination of resources, including reallocation of existing funds, budget priorities through W&M’s annual strategic planning process and private donations.

William & Mary.

Closing the achievement gap: Not failing, but too slow

Chris Rickert:

Lead researcher Sara Goldrick-Rab also said the most recent study — released Monday, of the 2012-13 school year — provides better evidence that the advancements probably come as a result of the program (i.e., they aren’t just a coincidence or a result of other causes).
This is good news for a district that has seen the percentage of low-income students reach 50 percent and now enrolls more students of color than whites.
But it’s not as if these demographic changes were sudden, and the district’s failure to reach low-income, minority students is longstanding.
The achievement gap is clear in state testing data online that goes back to 1996, but it almost certainly existed for many years before that.

Much more on the achievement gap, here.

Parents say they don’t need state test results

Jay Matthews:

Last month, I asked whether parents and grandparents were worried about threats to annual testing caused by the national switch to the Common Core standards.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had warned that California would be shortchanging students and their families if it held to its plan not to report school test averages next year. Almost everyone who responded to me said Duncan was wrong.
I proposed in that column a year’s respite from reporting state test results, while teachers adjusted to the new Common Core lessons and tests. “Schools can give the new tests but use the results only for improving teaching methods, not for assessing students and teachers,” I wrote.
Virginia parent Wendy Hoskins was among many who think that was a good idea. In fact, she said she would be happy if her kids didn’t take the tests at all.
“Standardized tests do not give a true sense of a child’s abilities,” she said. “If it’s so great, why don’t private schools jump on the bandwagon?”

Comments made by Wis. superintendents on Common Core standards released

channel3000.com:

Responses from nearly 100 school superintendents across Wisconsin with their feelings about the Common Core academic standards have been released by a legislative committee.
The special panel created by Republicans to study the standards released results of the four-question survey on Tuesday. The committee is expected to release its recommendations related to the Common Core curriculum on Wednesday and vote on it Thursday.
The survey was sent to all 426 public school districts in Wisconsin and 94 superintendents responded. Their comments can be seen online.

View the complete report, here (24mb PDF).

When Professors Oppose Grad Student Unions

Corey Robin:

Rick Perlstein has a great piece on how faculty respond to grad student unions.
He quotes at length from a letter that a professor of political science at the University of Chicago sent to graduate students in his department who are trying to organize a union there.
What always amuses me about these sorts of statements from faculty is how carefully crafted and personal they are — you can tell a lot of time and thought went into this one — and yet somehow they still manage to attain all the individuality of a Walmart circular. No union contract was ever as standardized or as cookie-cutter as one of these missives. The very homogenization and uniformity that faculty fear a union will foist upon their campus is already present in their own aversion.
Anyway, here’s what the good professor has to say:

The west is losing faith in its own future

Gideon Rachman:

What defines the west? American and European politicians like to talk about values and institutions. But for billions of people around the world, the crucial point is simpler and easier to grasp. The west is the part of the world where even ordinary people live comfortably. That is the dream that makes illegal immigrants risk their lives, trying to get into Europe or the US.
Yet, even though the lure of the west remains intense, the western world itself is losing faith in its future. Last week Barack Obama gave one of the bleakest speeches of his presidency. In unsparing terms, the US president chronicled the increasing inequality and declining social mobility that, he says, “pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the world”.
A Pew Research Center opinion survey, conducted in 39 countries this spring, asked: “Will children in your country be better off than their parents?” Only 33 per cent of Americans believed their children would live better, while 62 per cent said they would live worse. Europeans were even gloomier. Just 28 per cent of Germans, 17 per cent of Brits, 14 per cent of Italians and 9 per cent of French thought their children would be better off than previous generations. This western pessimism contrasts strongly with optimism in the developing world: 82 per cent of Chinese, 59 per cent of Indians and 65 per cent of Nigerians believe in a more prosperous future.

AUTODIDACT

The term “autodidact” is usually reserved for those who, like Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, and so on, did not have the advantages of spending much time in school or the help of schoolteachers with their education.
I would like to suggest that every student is an autodidact, because only the student can decide what information to accept and retain. Re-education camps in the Communist world, from Korea to Vietnam to China, no doubt made claims that they could “teach” people things whether they want to learn them or not, but I would argue that the threat of force and social isolation used in such camps are not the teaching methods we are searching for in our schools.
And further, I would claim that even in re-education camps, students often indeed reserve private places in their minds about which their instructors know very little.
My main point is that the individual is the sovereign ruler of their own attention and the sole arbiter of what information they choose to admit and retain. Our system of instruction and examination has no doubt persuaded many sovereign learners over the years to accept enough of the knowledge we offer to let most of them pass whatever exams we have presented, but the cliché is that after the test, nearly all of that information is gone.
Teachers have known all this from the beginning, and so have developed and employed all their arts to first attract, and then retain, the attention of their students, and they have labored tirelessly to persuade their students that they should decide to attend to and make use of the knowledge they are offering.
One of the best arguments for having teachers be very well-grounded in the subjects they are teaching is that the likelihood increases that they will really love their subject, and it is easier for teachers to convince students of the value of what they are teaching if they clearly believe in its value themselves.
It should not be forgotten, however, that the mind is a mercurial and fickle instrument, and the attention of students is vulnerable to all the distractions of life, in the classroom and out of it. I am distressed that so many who write about education seem to overlook the role of students almost entirely, concentrating on the public policy issues of the Education Enterprise and forgetting that without the attention and interest of students, all of their efforts are futile.
It seems strange to me that so little research is ever done into the actual academic work of students, for instance whether they ever read a complete nonfiction book, and whether they every write a serious academic paper on a subject other than themselves.
For many reformers, it seems the only student work they are interested in is student scores on objective tests. Sadly, objective tests discover almost nothing about the students’ interest in their experiences of the complexity of the chemistry, history, literature, Chinese, and other subjects they have been offered.
There was a time when college entrance decisions were based on essays students would write on academic subjects, and those could reveal not only student fluency and knowledge, but something of their attachment to and appreciation for academic matter.
But now, we seem to have decided that neither we nor they have time for extended essays on history and the like (except for the International Baccalaureate, and The Concord Review), and the attractions of technology have led examiners to prefer tests that can be graded very quickly, by computer wherever possible. So, when the examiners show no interest in serious academic work, it should not surprise us that students may see less value in it as well.
The Lower Education teachers are still out there, loving their subjects, and offering them up for students to judge, and to decide how much of them they will accept into their memories and their thoughts, but meanwhile the EduPundits and the leaders of the Education Enterprise [Global Education Reform Movement = GERM, as Pasi Sahlberg calls it], with lots of funding to encourage them, sail on, ignoring the control students have, and always have had, over their own attention and their own learning.
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The School-to-Prison Pipeline Is Targeting Your Child

Zerlina Maxwell

Most of us have heard the term the “school-to-prison” pipeline, but perhaps you aren’t completely clear on what it is or how it works. A new video by the Advancement Project that uses throwback clips of classic television shows, “The Cosby Show” and “Saved By the Bell,” is meant to illustrate exactly what drives the mass incarceration of Black and Latino youth. The video highlights the fact that kids today are more poorly behaved than in the past, but that punishment for even minor disciplinary infractions in school casts them criminals. When Zach Morris was disciplined for using a phone in class, we didn’t see Mr. Belding calling the cops.
“It has been this way for a long time but in the 1980s, there was a shift in the discourse around young people and there was this new term used to describe them, ‘superpredator.’ Young people had been dubbed superpredators right in the middle of the crack cocaine epidemic and the height of the war on drugs,” Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, told EBONY.com. “The intersection of these things, were the leading cause to a crackdown on young people’s [behavior].”
“Schools then started to adopt ‘zero tolerance policies’ along with drug sniffing dogs and metal detectors. Then came the 1990s, with the Drug Free School Zones Act which requires expulsion for carrying a gun on school grounds. Zero tolerance policies are the kind of discipline that requires a particular kind of exclusion and it is a practice of harsh discipline.”
It wasn’t always like this. Before and during part of the 1980s, kids engaged in many of the same behaviors that are the grounds for suspension and expulsion now. Talking on a cell phone, having a food fight in the cafeteria, lateness, dress code violations,disrupting class—-minor infractions that used to result in a trip to the principal’s office and maybe a few days of detention. Now, these types of behaviors can result in criminal penalties, fines, and young people getting caught up in the criminal justice system with ramifications that can last a lifetime.

MOOCs as Neocolonialism: Who Controls Knowledge?

Philip G. Altbach:

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are the latest effort to harness information technology for higher education. While they are still in a nascent stage of development, many in academe are enthusiastic about their potential to be an inexpensive way of delivering an education to vast audiences.
Yet one aspect of the MOOC movement has not been fully analyzed: who controls the knowledge. MOOCs are largely an American-led effort, and the majority of the courses available so far come from universities in the United States or other Western countries. Universities and educators in less-developed regions of the world are climbing onto the MOOC bandwagon, but it is likely that they will be using the technology, pedagogical ideas, and probably significant parts of the content developed elsewhere. In this way, the online courses threaten to exacerbate the worldwide influence of Western academe, bolstering its higher-education hegemony.
For the most part, MOOC content is based on the American academic experience and pedagogical ideas. By and large, the readings required by most MOOC courses are American or from other Western countries. Many of the courses are in English, and even when lectures and materials are translated into other languages, the content largely reflects the original course. The vast majority of instructors are American. It is likely that more diversity will develop, but the basic content will remain the same.

The Case for SAT Words

James Murphy, via Carrie Zellmer:

On several occasions in the past year, David Coleman, the president of the College Board, which administers the SAT, has suggested that changes need to be made to the vocabulary tested on the exam. In a talk he gave at the Brookings Institution a year ago, Coleman remarked, “I think when you think about vocabulary on exams, you know, how SAT words are famous as the words you will never use again? You know, you study them in high school and you’re like, gosh, I’ve never seen this before, and I probably never shall.” Coleman co-opted an old criticism of the SAT, that it forced students to learn difficult vocabulary that is useless for much of anything other than scoring well on the exam. He went on, “Why wouldn’t it be the opposite? Why wouldn’t you have a body of language on the SAT that’s the words you most need to know and be ready to use again and again? Words like transform, deliberate, hypothesis, right?”
Jim Montoya, the College Board’s Vice President of Higher Education, in an interview on NPR, reiterated Coleman’s criticism of “SAT words.” Asked why the SAT is “always [testing] the word ‘unscrupulous’,” Montoya replied, “Yes, you’re right. It’s one of those words people identify as an SAT word. All I can say is that as we move forward, one of the things we want to make absolutely certain of is that the vocabulary that students are expected to know will be vocabulary that they will be able to use as college students, and which will be valuable to them.”
Coleman’s comments on vocabulary provoked little response at the time, although one commentator accused him of “sending a message that devalues language.” The notion that some words are not worth knowing is bound to raise the hackles not only of people who love the wealth and power of all kinds of words, including fancy ones, but also of people who know just how much importance educational experts attribute to what they call “lexical richness,” or a large and diverse vocabulary. Coleman just so happens to be both of those kinds of people, and he understands that the question is less what vocabulary students should learn vocabulary than how they should learn it.

Learn some Mandarin but master English too

Michael Skapinker

If they are to make progress, children should start learning early. But Mandarin is very different from European languages and harder for an English speaker to learn than French or German. Also, in the race to learn other languages, the Chinese are way ahead in learning English. Although the English-language component of the Chinese university entrance exam has been reduced, there are 50,000 English-language teaching companies in the country. Internationally-minded companies regard English as important. Lenovo, the Chinese computer company, has made it its official language.
Throughout Europe, English is now essential for anyone wanting to reach a senior corporate position. It is a given, a background skill like knowing how to create a PowerPoint presentation or find your way to the office.
That will be the case in China too. Foreign Mandarin speakers may establish better contacts and win business. But if China follows the European pattern, its future young executives will listen as their anglophone counterparts struggle a while in their school-learnt Mandarin and they will then switch to English because it wastes less time.

Teachers Union CNTE Gives Mexico a Harsh Lesson

Jose de Cordoba:

During a recent teachers strike in this Zapotec Indian town in the poor southern state of Oaxaca, parents who brought in replacement instructors discovered that the children hadn’t been taught the words to Mexico’s national anthem. Instead, they had been trained to sing a popular leftist song which acts as an unofficial anthem to a local chapter of the teachers union.
“We don’t know the words to the Mexican anthem,” said Leticia Diego, a student, apologizing to a visitor one recent morning. About a dozen seventh-graders then shyly sang the leftist anthem, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.”
The union here is the National Coordinator of Educational Workers, or CNTE, a radical and powerful wing of the country’s national teachers union. Analysts say it has long maintained an iron grip over some of Mexico’s poorest states–one that goes beyond what children are taught, and extends to lengthy strikes, disruptive protests and violent clashes. Now, as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto begins to implement an overhaul of Mexico’s troubled public school system, the CNTE has stepped up its efforts to fight the government.

At $10,000 per child yearly, high-quality early education is a bargain.

Austin Goolsbee:

Most of us watching the looming budget showdown do so with a sense of dread. The last one left congressional approval at 9%, the president’s popularity at a new low, and consumer confidence at levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. The trouble, of course, is finding common ground on a 10-year budget framework or even on a six-week punt. Hopefully, they will find common ground.
If we are committed to evidence, though, there’s one area where we ought to be able to agree: early-childhood education. Investments in pre-kindergarten education have among the highest payoffs of any government policy, and whatever budget agreement emerges should restore the country’s long-standing commitment to early education.
The budget-sequester cuts agreed to in 2011, under the guise of saving money, have knocked as many as 70,000 kids out of such programs. How myopic. It doesn’t save money beyond the narrowest definition of the immediate term. Incarceration, special education, teen pregnancy, low earnings–avoiding these outcomes will actually save money, and early education helps achieve that.

Has UC Berkeley mortgaged itself to football?

Peter Schrag:

Release of the numbers last month, amplified by an attention-getting analysis authored by retired UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor John Cummins and graduate student Kirsten Hextrum, has sent shock waves around the campus. The department of athletics and its friends are playing full-court damage control.
Sandy Barbour, Berkeley’s director of athletics, acknowledged the problem and promises to turn things around. Early indicators of academic progress in the past year are encouraging, she says, “But, we need to do better.”
A year ago she fired football coach Jeff Tedford, in part, say her friends, because he failed to do enough to help his players succeed academically. In the sports world, the explanation was simpler: Tedford’s three losing seasons. Barbour told me it was some of both: “downward trends” both on the field and in the classroom.
But in the eyes of some Berkeley professors and administrators – and for many beyond the campus – the attention given the new numbers about athletes’ graduation rates seems to raise the specter of older and more fundamental issues.

John Cummins and Kirsten Hextrum (PDF):

This white paper is based on a larger project being conducted with the Regional Oral History Office at the Bancroft Library. The purpose of the research is to explore the history of the management of Intercollegiate Athletics at UC Berkeley from the 1960s to the present. The project began in 2009 and will include, when completed, approximately 70 oral history interviews of individuals who played key roles in the management of intercollegiate athletics over that period of time – Chancellors, Athletic Directors, senior administrators, Faculty Athletic Representatives, other key faculty members, directors of the Recreational Sports Program, alumni/donors, administrators in the Athletic Study Center and others. The interviews are conducted by John Cummins, Associate Chancellor – Chief of Staff, Emeritus who worked under Chancellors Heyman, Tien, Berdahl and Birgeneau from 1984 – 2008. Intercollegiate Athletics reported to him from 2004 – 2006. A publication of the results is underway and will be co- authored by Cummins and Kirsten Hextrum, a PhD student in the Graduate School of Education, a member and two-time national champion of Cal Women’s Crew from 2003 – 2007, and a tutor/adviser in the Athletic Study Center since 2009. This paper addresses administrative and management issues that typically concern those responsible for the conduct of a Division I-A intercollegiate athletics program. It assumes that such a program will continue for many years to come and that it provides important benefits for the Cal community. Its focus is principally with the market driven, multi-billion dollar phenomenon of the big-time sports of Men’s football and basketball, their development over time and their intersection with the academic world. The Olympic or non-revenue sports at UC Berkeley more closely resemble the amateur intercollegiate ideal with high graduation rates and successful programs. Even these sports programs, however, are gradually being pulled into the more highly commercialized model.
In the spring of 1999, a Professor in Ethnic Studies provided passing grades to two football players who did little or no work for his course. The NCAA cited Cal for academic fraud and a lack of institutional control, and placed the department on probation for five years. These kinds of incidents exact an emotional toll on the AD and the senior administration. They are a major embarrassment for the campus and remain so. In the NCAA’s own accounting of schools by major violations in its history, Cal, along with a few other schools including UCLA, with 7, ranks just behind Oklahoma (8) and Arizona State and Southern Methodist University (9). Stanford has none. Future work by these authors will investigate the nature of these violations, the culture that led to them and suggest efforts to mitigate further infractions. This paper primarily addresses the academic issues.
…..
Kasser did complete the Haas Pavilion during his watch despite the conflicts and difficulties associated with it, unquestionably a major accomplishment. He made great strides in addressing the inequities between the Men’s and Women’s programs. He upgraded the coaching in some of the Olympic Sports and his appointment of Ben Braun as the Men’s Basketball coach, who brought an inclusive, team oriented approach to management boosted the morale of the department. Kasser valued the Rec Sports program as part of the merged department and was an excellent public ambassador for Cal.
…..
The graduation rate for UC Berkeley’s revenue generating teams are the lowest in the department. Men’s basketball went four years with none of their scholarship student athletes graduating. This brought down their average to a 58% graduation rate over this eight year period. Football also has sub-par graduation rates. Over the past eight years, football graduation rates have ranged from a high of 72% to a low of 31%. Football has the lowest average team graduation rate with only 50% of their scholarship athletes graduating. The numbers are even more grim when broken down by race. In particular, the black scholarship football players, many of whom are special admits, have gone from a high of 80% to a low of 18%. The NCAA also tracks graduation rates by compiling four-year averages to even-out any anomalies. In this data set, the black graduation rates range from a high of 63% to a low of 30%. Three of the seven four-year averages mark the black graduation rate in the 30s.
…..
With a new Chancellor, a new football coach, a new stadium and high performance center, a larger and more monied conference, the present surely marks a transitional period for intercollegiate athletics at UC Berkeley. These changes all signal Cal’s continued escalation as a Big-Time sports program, and the difficult dilemmas campus administrators face. To fund an intercollegiate program of this magnitude they cannot alienate a substantial donor base. The recent blowback after the elimination, and subsequent reinstatement of five varsity sports, makes the possibility of cutting sports again as a cost saving measure extremely remote for years to come. Further, the athletic deficit places enormous pressures to win. This increases the temptation to gain an extra edge on the competition whether through newer facilities, higher-paid coaches, or longer practices. All this must be achieved on the backs of student athletes who are enrolled in a full-time course load at one of the most prestigious academic universities in the world. Rather than resolving the dilemma of how to maintain a nearly $70 million per year athletic enterprise while still providing a world-class education for the participants, campus administrators continue to muddle through.

The Flipped Classroom: Can watching lectures at home and doing homework in school improve high school learning?

Dana Goldstein:

Is school backward? In the latest education trend, “flipped learning,” students watch video lectures at home, and then do what is often traditionally thought of as homework–problem solving, writing, or hands-on activities–in the classroom, with personal assistance from their teachers. Who’s excited about this? Tech companies, app developers, and some teachers have eagerly embraced “the flip.” But other educators are skeptical. Is more screen time what our kids need? In this episode, I talk to Jonathan Bergmann, a teacher and educational technology advocate, and Frank Noschese, a science teacher and blogger who is skeptical of flipping.

High schools jump into Monday night football tradition with shifted playoff schedules

Matt Wixon:

The start of the week was expected to include football teams preparing for UIL semifinals and celebrating TAPPS state titles. Instead, on the day when the Cowboys play the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, high school teams are joining the party.
A dozen teams from North Texas will be playing Monday, starting with the 1 p.m. showdown of DeSoto (13-0) and Euless Trinity (11-2) at Waco ISD Stadium. Both schools are releasing students early so they can head south for the Class 5A Division I Region I final.
Playing on Monday won’t be a big adjustment, DeSoto coach Claude Mathis said.
“But playing in the cold weather? That’s something different,” he said. “But we’ve played some in the cold, too.”

Why Government Institutions Fail to Deliver on Their Promises: The Public Choice Explanation

Veronique de Rugy:

Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding the limitations of government intervention.
Despite Washington’s recent focus on the disastrous Affordable Care Act website rollout, policymakers are missing what the rollout glitches symbolize: the fundamental flaws that imbue government intervention.
The work of public choice economists such as Nobel laureate James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Mancur Olson, and William Niskanen has shown that, despite good intentions and lavish use of taxpayer resources, government solutions are not only unlikely to solve most of our problems–they often make problems worse.
Public Choice Economics: Politics without Romance
Congress spends a great deal of time discussing the need to address market failures such as monopolies and pollution.
However, even when such a problem does exist, the policies implemented to address it are often ineffective or undesirable.1 That’s because, as public choice economists have pointed out, while there may be market failures, there are also government failures. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, popularized in his famous essay “Public Choice: Politics without Romance,” James Buchanan explains why looking to government for solutions often results in more harm than good.2

‘We Cannot Forget People Who Did Not Graduate From High School’

Fawn Johnson:

LaGuardia Community College is a GED machine. At this urban school, near the Long Island Expressway in the New York City borough of Queens, the prep courses for the state’s high school equivalency exam aren’t just textbook reviews–they are professional-development classes. There is a course for would-be health workers, another for business students, and yet another for anyone interested in technology and engineering.
LaGuardia’s free classes, funded by state, city, and foundation grants, have a months-long waiting list. Students willing to pay for courses (at about $3.50 per hour of instruction) can usually get a spot in the next scheduled class, although those fill up, too. Most students are black or Latino.
Gail Mellow, LaGuardia’s president, says postsecondary educators who don’t reach out to high school dropouts are ignoring many of the young people who most need their help. In big cities such as New York, almost 40 percent of students who enter high school don’t finish. “To really educate the American populace,” she says, “we cannot forget people who did not graduate from high school.”

School Spotlight: Foam boards help students understand math

Pamela Cotant:

The foam board models of dream homes created by seventh-grade students at Glacial Drumlin School in Cottage Grove sported extra features like swimming pools, an airplane and the “world’s biggest hot tub.”
While they were busy conceptualizing their fantasy homes, the students were using math as they learned how to create something to scale.
Trenton Herber, 12, and Henry Huston, 13, decided to make a house in the shape of a pyramid, which was spray-painted gold and taken apart in three pieces to reveal the interior, which included a basketball court.
“It was pretty hard because all the angles had to be like perfect or it would just fall apart,” Trenton said.
Peyton Blang, Anissa Dimmig and Ali Dorn, all 12 years old, had a Cape Cod-style home in mind when they used Popsicle sticks to create siding for their home. The group ended up making adjustments when they realized their blueprints didn’t account for the thickness of the foam board.

Man Doesn’t Know How Parents Ever Going To Pay Off Massive Student Loan Debt

The Onion:

Recent Wesleyan University graduate Zach Wallace confided to reporters Thursday that he has no clue how his parents are supposed to earn enough money to settle his $40,000 in student loan debt. “My God, they’ll be lucky if they’re able to pay this off while they’re still in their 70s,” said the 23-year-old film studies major and unpaid intern, noting the minimum monthly payments his father and mother will need to make just to keep their heads above water. “The student loan system takes advantage of a lot of parents who simply don’t realize what they’re getting into. Then four years later it’s like, ‘Welcome to the real world, Mom and Dad!'” Citing the present trend of tuition hikes and stagnant wages, Wallace added that his parents might well be forced into bankruptcy by the time he has completed a decent Ph.D. program.

WYSO founding conductor and music educator Marvin Rabin dies

Gayle Worland:

He went on to found the Kentucky Youth Symphony in Louisville, and later was hired by Boston University to start the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, which performed for President John F. Kennedy at the White House. At age 50, Rabin was lured to Madison to help shape and lead WYSO.
Rabin received countless service awards, including the 2000 Wisconsin Governor’s Award in Support of the Arts. Both WYSO and the American String Teachers Association named awards for outstanding arts leaders in his honor.
“Marvin Rabin was the most passionate advocate for youth orchestras that the world has ever known,” said Bridget Fraser, executive director for WYSO, which plans to memorialize Rabin at its Winterfest concerts in March.
“He really believed in making music accessible, and not an elitist thing,” his son Ralph told the State Journal in a 2011 profile. “As a teacher, he makes students feel the importance of who they are and what they can become.”

A great example of what one person can accomplish. I am thankful for the many arts opportunities available to our students. Much more on Marvin Rabin, here.

Teachers unions face moment of truth

Stephanie Simon:

It’s designed to be an impressive show of force: Thousands of unionized teachers plan to rally Monday in cities from New York to San Francisco to “reclaim the promise of public education.”
Behind the scenes, however, teachers unions are facing tumultuous times. Long among the wealthiest and most powerful interest groups in American politics, the unions are grappling with financial, legal and public-relations challenges as they fight to retain their clout and build alliances with a public increasingly skeptical of big labor.
“I do think it’s a moment of truth,” said Lance Alldrin, a veteran high-school teacher in Corning, Calif., who has split from his longtime union after serving for a decade as the local president.
The National Education Association has lost 230,000 members, or 7 percent, since 2009, and it’s projecting another decline this year, which will likely drop it below 3 million members. Among the culprits: teacher layoffs, the rise of non-unionized charter schools and new laws in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan freeing teachers to opt out of the union.
The American Federation of Teachers has been able to grow slightly and now represents 1.5 million workers — but because many new members are retirees or part-timers who pay lower dues, union revenue actually fell last year, by nearly $6 million, federal records show.

After Years of Troubles, Largest Student-Loan Servicers Get Stepped-up Oversight

Marian Wang:

Sallie Mae and other large student-loan servicers — the companies that act as a go-between for borrowers and lenders — will soon be getting some regular oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency announced this week.
ProPublica and others have long documented student borrowers’ troubles with the companies that handle the day-to-day collection of student-loan payments and communicate with borrowers.
“Student loan servicers can have a profound impact on borrowers and their families,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said Monday in a call with reporters. “Given how quickly this market has grown and the recent uptick in delinquency rates, it is important for us to ensure that borrowers receive appropriate attention from their servicers.”

Madison schools look to make discipline about growth, not punishment

Pat Schneider:

But statistics showing African-American students in the district were eight times more likely to get an out-of-school suspension than white students last year raises questions about whether the discipline code works against efforts to close the achievement gap.
Among big school districts reconsidering such measures is Broward County in Florida, where a zero-tolerance policy led to arrests for such infractions as possessing marijuana or spraying graffiti, the New York Times reports. That district, which had more than 1,000 arrests in the 2011 school year, entered into an agreement last month with community organizations to overhaul its policies to de-emphasize punishment. School districts in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago and Denver are undertaking similar reviews of get-tough policies.
“Everybody knows that suspensions don’t always achieve a change in behavior,” says Tim Ritchie, dean of students at Madison Memorial High School. “When we send some kids out of school (on suspension) they don’t have anywhere appropriate to go — their homes can be very chaotic environments.”

Related: Gangs & School Violence Forum.

Encouraging Competitive Madison School Board Elections

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

t would be terrific if three or more people run for Passman’s open seat, triggering a Feb. 18 primary, followed by the general election April 1. That would allow more debate — and community engagement — on the future of our schools.
The School Board seat held by president Ed Hughes also is up for election this spring. We admire Hughes for his public service. He’s capable and level-headed.
But incumbents shouldn’t get a free pass. We hope someone — or more than one challenger — will step forward to give voters a choice.
When it comes to School Board elections, the more candidates, the better. Our community deserves the best leaders possible.

Much more on the 2014 Madison School Board election, here.

Unfilled Substitute Assignments (Madison); Class Covering Compensation

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

The District is currently experiencing a shortage of substitute teachers, which has led to a high number of unfilled assignments when a teacher or SEA is absent. As a result, many principals are asking teachers and other professional staff to cover for the absent teacher. When this occurs, members of MTI’s “Teacher” Bargaining Unit are likely to qualify to receive “class coverage compensation.” Class coverage pay is $22 for each hour of covering another teacher’s students. The Contract mandates that in the event a teacher’s absence cannot be covered by a substitute, volunteers must first be solicited to cover the classes. If no volunteers come forward, the building administrator can assign other certified staff.
Compensation for class coverage is provided by Section III-R of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and is paid under the following conditions:

One Size Fits All Commentary

Greg:

But this year, thanks to Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee and State Board of Education, the magic number is 28 points. Score more than 27 and it is presumed that the child is wholly prepared to advance forward without required intervention while a score of 27 or less forces the child, the school, and the parents to engage in interventions that may not be appropriately aligned to any particular reading deficiency nor specifically aligned to the exact struggles the child is dealing with.
It is this type of one-size-fits-all educational approach that has widespread opposition from a diverse group of education advocates on the left and the far right:
“When it comes to learning, one size does not fit all.” – School Choice Ohio
“In this environment, and especially in this age of sophisticated data, we shouldn’t put too much stock in an instrument as crude as a “one size fits all” standardized test.” – NEA President Dennis Van Roekel
“I think one of the problems that we have had in public education is thinking that one size fits all, and we just know that doesn’t work for all children.” – Ohio Superintendent Richard Ross

O.E.C.D. Warns West on Education Gaps

DD Guttenplan:

Like a school principal handing out a clutch of C grades, Andreas Schleicher unveiled the results from the latest round of the Program for International Student Assessment tests last week.
For Britain, the United States and most of Western Europe, the results ranged from “average” to “poor.” British students, for example, scored exactly average in mathematics and slightly above average in reading and science. French students were slightly below average in science and slightly above in reading and mathematics. The United States were below average in mathematics and science but slightly above in reading.
For Asian countries, the news was much more encouraging, with students from Shanghai topping the chart by a considerable margin, but with students from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea all closely bunched at the high end.
Mr. Schleicher, the head of education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the tests every three years to about half a million 15-year-olds in 65 countries around the world, also noted significant improvement in Vietnam. He described it as a poor country whose students outperformed peers from many wealthier nations — and did even better once differences in income were taken into account.
“On a level playing field, the British look even worse,” he said at a press conference here.
Western countries, Mr. Schleicher warned, should not to comfort themselves with the myth that Asian high performance is the result of education systems that favor memorization over creativity.

“Clever” Raises $10M to Develop Standardized API For School Data

Ryan Lawler

Clever launched about a year and a half ago to provide a standardized API for K-12 schools that allows them to unlock and share data with outside developers. It’s managed to get 10,000 schools signed up to use its tools since then. Now, according to our sources, the company has raised $10 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital.
The funding comes as Clever is finding ways to make schools more connected and accessible for developers. Most schools today use a variety of legacy Student Information Systems (SIS) as a way to store student data. But many of those systems tend to be outdated or custom-built, meaning that the information held within — which includes class lists, attendance, and grades — can’t be shared or accessed by outside developers.
For developers, that means integrating with individual schools on a one-to-one basis, and that just doesn’t scale. Clever, by contrast, provides a single, universal API that will allow developers and education companies to access all the data that has been locked up in legacy silos and use it in their apps.

Curated Education Information