Traumatised by the destruction of their homes and lives, Haiti’s children are finding some refuge in schools resurrected from the rubble
If there is a drier, dustier, more desolate place in the Caribbean I’d be amazed to see it. A few weeks ago, this vast space in Haiti now know as Corail Cesselesse was a vast scraggly grassland about 20km outside the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Now, after the 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on 12 January, it is home to several thousand of the 1.5 million who have been displaced. Many are children – in a country where half the population is under 18 – and for those who have moved to giant camps, they have also been uprooted from their homes, their families and their schools.
Corail is an official camp – the product of inter-agency co-operation and government consent – and there is plenty of evidence of the foreign money pouring into the country in the aftermath of the earthquake. It is guarded by armed UN guards, and there are well-organised latrines and water tanks.
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Interest in Chinese language soaring in Indiana
Nearly four dozen public and private schools in Indiana are offering Chinese language instruction for credit as part of an effort to make Mandarin Chinese the next world language.
Many of the programs are taught by Chinese educators through a collaboration between the College Board and Hanban, a government-funded organization affiliated with the Chinese Education Ministry.
Since 2006, China has sent more than 325 “guest teachers” to work in U.S. schools to help launch Chinese language programs. The teachers can stay for three years, then reapply to stay for another three years.
New Jersey education commissioner prefers ‘educational effectiveness’ over seniority when cutting teacher jobs
Bret Schundler is like no education commissioner the state has ever had. He’s not an educator, but a businessman and a politician. He is more of an advocate for private schools than for public schools. He is a true believer in parental choice, something he deems “a human right.”
And, in the midst of an ugly fight between his governor and the state’s largest teachers union, his spokesman refers to New Jersey schools as “wretched” — just when they led the nation in a countrywide test of educational achievement.
Okay, so he repudiated the word “wretched” when legislators and educators protested — but what does he really think of the public schools he is constitutionally sworn to support?
That’s not an easy question to answer, even after sitting with Schundler for three hours and talking about the schools.
Iterative Development
Qualcom technologist Marie Bjerede wonders if the top-down reform model doesn’t work, why there’s not more iterative development:
In the software world, we address this dilemma through an iterative development model. That is, we assume that when we are thinking about what users might need or how they will use our product, we will get some things wrong. So we code up some simple end-to-end functionality, throw it out for people to use, and then improve it iteratively based on feedback from our users. This feedback may be explicit, in the form of questions and requests, or implicit, based on our observations of how the software is used. It may well be automated, in the way Google instruments the applications we use and modifies them based on how we engage.
This approach is often best for application development and is related to the lean capitalization approach to building a business that usually works best these days. But it’s tough to do in schools. Here’s a few of the reasons
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Cost of Retirement
For many, saving for retirement is a difficult process even during the best of times. And in 2009, according to a recent survey from Wells Fargo, 20% of pre-retirees have reduced funding to their retirement savings. Many who once thought they were secure are now forced to delay their retirement plans by several years. What’s even more troubling is that 41% of women and 32% of men now believe they will have to work after retirement just to make ends meet. Considering that saving $1 million will only amount to about $40,000 per year for the average retiree (assuming you stick to a widely accepted rule of thumb that says you should limit your withdrawals to 4% of your savings during your first year in retirement), it’s easy to understand why retirement has become almost a luxury. Below, Kiplinger.com examines the cost of retirement.
Oklahoma Education budget cuts force drastic district moves
ith the Washita Heights School District out of money and no help apparent on the horizon, Superintendent Steve Richert went before the school board and told its members he needed to lose his job — because the district would have to be shut down.
The district’s already precarious financial situation became untenable when state appropriations began to be cut as legislators scrambled to make up a $669 million budget hole for the current fiscal year. Richert worked the numbers and determined his school district — which served the tiny Washita County towns of Corn and Colony — would run out of money by May 1.
The western Oklahoma district was able to finish out the school year, barely, and now has been consolidated with neighboring Cordell, leaving Richert to wrap up Washita Heights’ remaining business by June 30.
“Technically and legally, Washita Heights is a memory right now,” Richert said Wednesday, sitting in his office. “We no longer exist.”
Technology may help poor schools by starting with rich ones
My wife often starts a book by reading the last few pages. I think this is cheating. It spoils any surprises the author might have planted there. She suggests, when I say this out loud, that she is better able to appreciate the writer’s craft if she knows where the story is going.
But I yielded to the temptation to do the same when I read the table of contents of Harvard political scientist Paul E. Peterson’s intriguing new book, “Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning.” It is an analytical history of key American school reformers, from Mann to John Dewey to Martin Luther King Jr. to Al Shanker to Bill Bennett to James S. Coleman. I knew about those guys, but the last chapter discussed someone I never heard of, Julie Young, chief executive officer of the Florida Virtual School.
Peterson is always a delight to read. Even his research papers shine. I enjoyed the entire book. But I read first his take on Young and the rise of new technology because it was a topic I yearned to understand. I have read the paeons to the wonders of computers in classrooms, but I don’t see them doing much in the urban schools I care about. The 21st century schools movement in particular seems to me too much about selling software and too little about teaching kids.