Commercial Alert, a Washington, DC-based watchdog group that aims to “keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere” is raising alarms about a new children’s book series from HarperCollins. Mackenzie Blue, according to the publisher, is the “charismatic, fashionable and down-to-earth star of this fresh new tween fiction series that chronicles the adventures of a diverse crew of friends who try to survive middle school at the prestigious BrookdaleAcademy.”
The “author” of the series is Tina Wells, chief executive of Buzz Marketing Group, which specializes in marketing to children and adolescents. In announcing the series, HarperCollins notes the book deal includes “dynamic corporate partnerships with an international recording company and a Fortune 500 marketing firm.”
Translation: product placements. Ick.
Continue reading ‘No Cash Left Behind’
California homeschoolers don’t have to worry for now about ending up on the wrong side of the law. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, the Golden State’s top ed official says his department will not force parents who homeschool to pack their kids off to standard-issue schools. A state court issued a ruling last month that parents who home school their children must have a teaching credential.
It sounds like O’Connell is saying the ruling won’t be enforced. Undoubtedly the state’s 150,000+ homeschoolers will feel better if it’s reversed.
Reports say New York’s governor will resign at 11:30 this morning. Joe Williams at DFER isn’t waiting for the official announcement, waving bye-bye to Spitzer, and greeting the new Governor, David Paterson as “one of the smartest individuals with whom we have ever worked.”
Proponents of a more traditional, rigorous approach to teaching mathematics should read this piece from the Los Angeles Times about the success a struggling Hollywood elementary school has enjoyed with Singapore Math.
Several Core Knowledge schools have reported strong results from Singapore and Saxon math programs, and the paper does a good job of showing why. Describing what appears to be a standard timed drill (the dreaded “drill and kill” that reform advocates blithely dismiss) the Times smartly reports: “What isn’t obvious to a casual observer is that this drill is carefully thought out to reinforce patterns of mathematical thinking that carry through the curriculum. ‘These are ‘procedures with connections,’ math coach Robin Ramos said, arranged to convey sometimes subtle points. This thoughtfulness — some say brilliance — is the true hallmark of the Singapore books, advocates say.”
As the paper notes, California recently became the first state to include the Singapore series on its list of state-approved elementary math texts, and will subsidize schools’ purchase of the books. “Being on the list puts an important imprimatur on the books,” notes the Times, “because California is by far the largest, most influential textbook buyer in the country.”
Also this week: an anticipated report from the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which is expected to urge U.S. teachers to promote “quick and effortless” recall of arithmetic facts in early grades. Taken together, it’s a potent one-two punch that coupled with a rising tide of parent activism, may be turning the tide against reform or constructivist math programs like Everyday Math.
A consummation devoutly to be wished.
Before I blundered in to education some years ago, I did many years of service in Big Media. I acquired many of the habits of mind, I confess, that are still found in their halls. So for years I ignored blogs. I found myself taking in more and more of my news online, but blogs? A bunch of wannabes copping an attitude. Ho-hum.
Education has taught me what I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see. If you really care passionately about something, blogs (the best of them, anyway) are now the medium of first and last resort. Case in point, last week’s scathing Reading First report by Sol Stern for the Fordham Foundation. Go over to Google right now and key in “Sol Stern and Reading First” and be sure to choose “News” not “Web” on Google. Go ahead, try it. I’ll wait.
As I write this, there’s one print media result, from Ed Week. There’s also a great piece by Sara Mead if you’re just catching up to this story. Now, look again at Google. See that little link in the lower left that says “Blogs”? Click it.
There’s eduwonk, Joanne Jacobs, Ken DeRosa, Dean Millot, eduflack and a host of others. If you’re not following the blogs, you don’t know about it. This is happening more and more. Remember the last time Sol Stern set a match to powder with his heretical City Journal piece on vouchers? The blogs had picked the bones clean and left them bleaching in the sun when the New York Times finally got around to it a month later.
I suppose it’s the frustration of the major media not picking up on Stern’s Reading First smackdown that prompted the Fordham Foundation today to issue a statement calling for an investigation “into scandalous efforts by the executive and legislative branches to sabotage the Reading First program.” That call got just as much play as the original report, from the dead-tree traffickers. All I can say to Checker & Co. is fear not, gentlemen. The Times and the rest will be by eventually. Keep a light on for them.
Every time a local chamber of commerce or radio station wants to push the easy publicity, feel-good button, they mount an essay contest for local kids to describe, “Why I Love My Teacher.” Then there’s the Center for Union Facts in Washington, DC. They’re asking kids, parents and even other teachers to nominate “the worst unionized teacher in America.” Those teachers will then be offered $10,000 to quit.
If there were a $10,000 prize for understatement, it would be won by Rick Hess, of American Enterprise Institute, who has been critical of the difficulty in identifying ineffective teachers and removing them. He tells USA Today, “that kind of stunt is not what I have in mind when advocating a more informed and honest debate, or seeking to raise the level of debate.”
Andy Rotherham, aka Eduwonk, grabs hold of the world’s best megaphone, the New York Times op-ed page, to weigh in on teacher’s contracts. A contract hit, if you like.
“While laws like No Child Left Behind take the rhetorical punches for being a straitjacket on schools, it is actually union contracts that have the greatest effect over what teachers can and cannot do,” opines the talented Mr. Rotherham. “These contracts can cover everything from big-ticket items like pay and health care coverage to the amount of time that teachers can spend on various activities.” He argues that frustrated teachers are starting to see their own contracts as an impediment to effective schools.
It’s hard not to be struck by the odd balancing act of teaching wanting to be seen as a profession while organizing like labor. Rotherham calls union contracts a throwback and argues that “schools are not factories. The work is not interchangeable and it takes more than one kind of school to meet all students’ needs. If teachers’ unions want to stay relevant, they must embrace more than one kind of contract.”
Wander on over to Joanne Jacobs and Dangerously Irrelevant for one of the more interesting and emotional discussions about life in the classroom you’re likely to read. It started when DI last week posted a collection of You Tube student-filmed videos of teachers losing their cool over classroom disruptions. Joanne blogged about it this weekend and both sites are now crackling with debate. Is it the teacher’s fault? The students? The parents? Is video taping student activism or turning provocation into a sport for entertainment.
Watch the videos and read the posts, which feel like nothing less than a contemporary education rorschach test.
Michael Hawks (not his real name) has wanted to become a firefighter all of his life. After years of involvement with the junior version of the local fire brigade, it was time for him to take the classes he would need as a firefighter. But at 16 years of age, his high school was not willing to allow him to take the courses at the local community college. So he left the public high school and enrolled in a private school that would. This June, at 18 years of age, he will turn out as a firefighter, on his way to becoming a paramedic.
Cory Page (also not his real name) is a child actor enrolled in the private school. He does commercials and background work while also attending the same community college. Every semester the private school vouches for his attendance, enabling him to pursue both career and classes.
The students cited above attend what is known in homeschooling parlance as an “umbrella,” which vouches for their attendance in a private school while allowing them to pursue a course of study that serves their needs. The school is building a close relationship through a “bridge” program with the community college. The college provides diagnostic testing that goes beyond the state exit exam, proficiency support (remedial classes), talent and interest mentoring, and dozens of career certificates besides the A. S. and A. A. degrees. Teenagers who have lost faith in the school system attend a school that considers them to be the client of a service provider, one that can turn a once- compulsory attendee into an active educational consumer.
Continue reading ‘Guest Blogger TM Willemse on California Homeschooling Decision’
I’ve been meaning to get to Sol Stern’s eyebrow-raising exegesis of the rise and fall of Reading First. But whether you’ve read it or not, read this blistering response, which imagines a conversation between a smug reading teacher and a fourth-grader who can’t read. It may peel off your wallpaper. Tip ‘o the hat to Ken DeRosa of D-Ed Reckoning for posting this.
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