Archive for November, 2008

Are You Smarter Than a Sub Prime Lender?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 24, 2008 in Education News. 0 Comments

The housing and credit crunch has claimed a high-profile victim in the education world.  Georgia’s State Schools Superintendant Kathy Cox and her husband have filed for personal bankruptcy.  Cox’s husband is a homebuilder and the couple is more than $3 million in debt, mostly due to debts associated with the business. 

It’s a case off no good deed goes unpunished: Just two months ago, Cox won $1 million on the game show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” She said she would donate her winnings to a pair of schools for the deaf and one for the blind, and still plans to make good on that pledge despite the bankruptcy filing. 

A statement issue by the Georgia schools chief over the weekend says “this filing does not affect my ability to perform the duties of my job as state superintendent of schools.”

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 23, 2008 in No category. 0 Comments

A weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.

Core Knowledge

No Effect on Comprehension Seen From ‘Reading First’
Education Week
The $6 billion Reading First helped more students “crack the code” to identify letters and words, but it has not had an impact on reading comprehension among 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders in participating schools, according to one of the largest and most rigorous studies ever undertaken by the U.S. Department of Education.

Americans Don’t Know Civics
USA Today
From high-school dropouts to college graduates to elected officials, Americans are “alarmingly uninformed” about the USA’s history, founding principles and economy — knowledge needed to participate wisely in civic life.

Teaching and Curriculum

Title 2.0: Revamping the Federal Role in Education Human Capital
Education Sector
“From recruitment and training to compensation, low- and high-performing teachers are treated much the same, and poor and minority students are less likely to get the most effective teachers,” notes Andy Rotherham.  “While American society and what’s expected of public schools has changed a great deal, our approaches to human capital in education have not.”

Playtime Valuable—and Under Siege, Experts Warn
Education Week
Early-childhood experts are urging policymakers to arrest what they see as the loss of free, unstructured playtime for children both in and out of school.

Bill Gates and His Magic Bullet
Forbes.com
“The Gates Foundation, with its vast resources, has pledged to devote its attention to what happens in the classroom,” writes Diane Ravitch.  “If it targets its dollars wisely, exercises a measure of humility, and continues to evaluate its efforts rigorously, it can make a positive difference.”

Education Policy

Even in an economic slump, Obama can’t afford to ignore education
Houston Chronicle
Obama should call for one national test, and internationally-based achievement standards, to consistently measure how well public schools are preparing each American child. He also should seize NCLB as a tool to study and foster innovation.

What Happens When States Have Genuine Alternative Certification?
Education Next
Students attending schools in states with genuine alternative certification gained more on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 2003 and 2007 than did students in the other states. Also, minorities are represented in the teaching force to a greater extent in states with genuine alternative certification than in other states.

Could ‘Open Source’ Testing Help Resolve the Testing Impasse?
Education Week
One way to address the concerns of both the national-test and local-assessment proponents, writes Charles Barone, a former House Education and Labor Committee staffer, is to create a national databank of “locally” developed test items, an “open source” testing system.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Home Schooling Goes Mainstream
Education Next
Survey research has revealed a heterogeneous population of home schoolers and higher rates of minority home schooling than expected.  Home schoolers whose motivations are primarily religious have certainly not gone away, but they are now joined by those whose reasons range from concerns about special education to bad experiences with teachers or school bullies to time-consuming outside activities to worries over peanut allergies.

Et Alia

Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing
The New York Times
Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

Obama Elementary School

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 22, 2008 in School News. 0 Comments

A Long Island school is changing its name to honor President-elect Barack Obama–apparently a national first.  Hempstead’s school board has voted unanimously to rename its Ludlum Elementary School as Barack Obama Elementary School.  The school’s enrollment is about two-thirds Hispanic and one-third African-American (Test scores, as reported by greatschools.net look very solid).  Long Island’s Newsday reports:

A Web search finds no mention of other schools or public facilities in the United States named for Obama, though such moves are being advocated in Calumet City, Ill., and Portland, Ore. In Antigua, the prime minister has said he’s taking measures to have the island’s highest peak renamed Mount Obama, according to the AP. A school in Kogelo, Kenya, birthplace of Obama’s father, was named for the president-elect after he was elected senator.

The View From Inside

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 21, 2008 in Opinion and School News. 0 Comments

Nice to see this honest and clear-eyed post over at Fordham’s Flypaper about the minute-by-minute stress of trying to be effective in a high-needs school.  Eric Osberg describes his recent behind-the-scenes visit (as opposed to the typical VIP dog-and-pony show often given to visitors) to a friend’s “new paternalism” school.

It was amazing how many problems my friend encountered in the hour I was there – we must have been interrupted 20 times by students needing discipline, teachers needing guidance about discipline, others needing observation while they worked with a struggling student, etc. It was a whirlwind, and it was tiring just to watch. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the special talent, constant hard work, and unwavering attention to detail that it takes to run one of these schools.

I’m cheered to see this on Flypaper for no other reason than it’s nice to see policy types speak candidly about just how hard this work is.  Teachers often feel that policy types don’t get it, so credit to Osberg for merely reporting what he saw instead of writing a prescription.   “My friend confessed her fear that the ‘model’ of such hard work and long hours won’t be sustainable,” Osberg concludes.  “That principals and teachers who exert that kind of energy day after day will inevitably burn out. From my vantage point, it was hard to disagree.”

Obama Girls to Attend Sidwell Friends

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 21, 2008 in Education News. 1 Comment

A spokesperson for the family confirms future First Daughters Sasha and Malia Obama will enroll at Sidwell Friends School, the Washington, DC private school where Chelsea Clinton also matriculated.  So this means President-elect Obama will back school choice initiatives in Washington, right?

Nag Schools

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 21, 2008 in Education Practice. 2 Comments

Over at City Journal, Joanne Jacobs reviews Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, David Whitman’s book, and sees in it echoes of her own parenting.  “Nagging is love,” she writes.  ”If you care about a kid, you tell her what she’s doing right and what she’s doing wrong. You stick with her when she makes mistakes. You honor her successes. You nag.”  Whitman’s book, the title of which was much debated in the edusphere over the summer, looks at successful secondary schools, like KIPP and Amistad.

Many of the students at these schools are being raised by single mothers (or grandmothers) who provide unconditional love at home. Maternalism they’ve already got. At the “new paternalistic” schools, authoritative, caring adults demand good behavior as a condition for approval, adopting the traditional father’s role. Paternalistic schools explicitly teach students how to walk in the halls, sit upright in class, listen to speakers, ask questions, take notes, collaborate with classmates, and study for tests. They also teach students to shake hands, tuck in their shirts, and speak courteously using standard English. Street slang is banned.

“In some cases, the schools support values that parents hold themselves but have trouble enforcing on their own,” Jacobs writes.  It’s an important observation.  People who have never taught in inner city neighborhoods often don’t appreciate just how traditional many families are.  The methods and mindset described by Whitman are almost certainly more controversial among educators than among the parents of the children these schools serve.

Who’s Bigger?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Education News. 8 Comments

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli is showing us no love. 

Mike has a piece about edublogs in the new Education Next.  It’s good; you should read it.  But in a table of the top education policy blogs, the Core Knowledge blog is conspicuously absent.  And it’s not like we wouldn’t have made the Top Ten, based on Mike’s methodology, Technorati’s “authority ranking” — the number of blogs linking to a particular blog in the past 180 days. 

Here’s how the edublogs in my bookmark list stack up based on Technorati’s authority rankings:

Joanne Jacobs  217
Eduwonkette  167
Eduwonk  146
Campaign K-12  125
The Education Wonks  119
Flypaper  95
Jay P. Greene  93
The Quick and the Ed  87
Matthew K. Tabor  85
Core Knowledge 84
This Week in Education  79
Edwize  74
Intercepts  69
Schools Matter  68
Bridging Differences 66
D-Ed Reckoning 56
Edspresso  46
NCLB Act II  40
Sherman Dorn 39
Eduflack 29
Swift and Change Able 27
Thoughts on Education Policy 25

Note, this list excludes pure teacher blogs, even though some of them do veer off (how could they not?) into policy from time to time.  Petrilli’s piece, meanwhile, heaps well-earned praise on Eduwonkette, who came out of nowhere in the past year to (by Mike’s Top Ten list) become the Top Wonk.

The story of Eduwonkette is particularly illuminating; she was recently revealed to be Jennifer Jennings, a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University. Rather than merely toiling away in the vineyards of the American Educational Research Association, writing papers for fellow academics, she recently overtook Eduwonk as the top education policy blogger, even though her competitor is a former Clinton White House aide and cofounder of a major Washington education think tank. It’s clichéd to say that the Internet evens the playing field and makes the traditional trappings of power and influence obsolete, but so it is.

Mike is also dead-on in noting the absence of an authoritative parenting blog.  “There’s no significant parent voice in the national online conversation,” he writes, “just as there’s no national parent advocacy group in Washington. That’s a real shame; someone should blog about it.”

Don’t Know Much About History

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 3 Comments

Pencils out, clear your desks.  Pop quiz!

What ”inalienable rights” are referred to in the Declaration of Independence?  What are the three branches of government?   Name a right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Which branch of government has the power to declare war?  And finally, what percentage of Americans failed a test of these and other basic civics, history and economic questions? 

Seventy-one percent.  Yep.  More than seven out of ten earned an F.The average score was 49%.  USA Today reports that of 164 respondents who say they have held elected office, 44% was average.  

Without knowledge of your country’s history, key texts and institutions, you don’t have a frame of reference to judge the politics and policies of today,” Richard Brake, head of the institute’s American Civic Literacy Program, tells the paper.

Take the quiz yourself, or give it to your students right here.  And after they’re done and you’re thoroughly depressed, here’s a link on how to become a Core Knowledge school.

No Quick Fixes On Schools

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Curriculum, Educational Policy and accountability. 1 Comment

Diane Ravitch applauds the Gates Foundation’s decision to shift the focus of its educational philanthropy, while reminding us that their effort to transform high schools into smaller learning communities is a cautionary tale of seeking a “magic bullet” solution. “We must give the Gates Foundation and its founders credit for their honest self-scrutiny,” Ravitch writes on Forbes.com.  ”Most proponents of education reform defend their ideas against all critics, regardless of what evaluations show.”

“The press for small schools, now taken up by almost every big-city district, has diverted our attention from the need to strengthen curriculum and instruction, beginning in elementary schools. Whether a school is small or large, the essential questions in education cannot be ignored: What should students learn? How should they be taught? Are classes too large, especially for struggling students? Are teachers well-prepared in the subjects they teach? Do teachers have the resources they need? Do students arrive in school ready to learn? Until we answer these questions, the size of schools is not a relevant issue.

It’s good news, Ravitch concludes, that Gates is pledging to devote its attention to what happens in the classroom. “The first thing it will learn is that there are no quick fixes. If it targets its dollars wisely, exercises a measure of humility, and continues to evaluate its efforts rigorously, it can make a positive difference,” she says.

Handmaid Ladling Norm?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Educational Policy. 1 Comment

For months, Democrats have been squabbling back and forth as to what Barack Obama really believes on education.   Is he a reformer?  Is he for school choice, charters, accountability?  Or is he a traditional democrat, who will echo the teacher’s unions positions on NCLB, merit pay and other issues?

The whole ”reformers vs. status quo” meme is a bit tired and something of a false dichotomy.  You can favor accountability and still think NCLB is doing harm.  There are legitimate reasons to oppose merit pay without being labeled a defender of the status quo.  That said, those who thought Barack Obama was something new in the Democratic firmament are having an “uh-oh” moment with word that Linda Darling Hammond is Obama’s choice as his lead education advisor. 

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli wonders if Obama will kill education refrom.  Liam Julian, writing in National Review Online, looks at the appointment of the “self-described advocate of progressive education” and concludes that “so far, it seems, tradition trumps change.”  American Prospect blogger Dana Goldstein calls the selection of LDH a conservative choice.

Not ideologically conservative, but rather, conservative in terms of what it says about Obama’s plans for education. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform – which favor charter schools and merit pay — have been hoping for Obama to embrace their agenda. And indeed, early in the primaries, Obama was booed at a teachers’ union event for saying he supported merit pay. But since he clinched the nomination, Obama’s statements on education have been more circumspect. The appointment of Darling-Hammond, a teacher quality expert who opposes merit pay and is more critical than supportive of NCLB, signals that Obama wishes to avoid a fight with the unions. He’ll spend his political capital on energy and health care instead.

My internet time waster of choice is the anagram server.  Type in a name and in seconds it will summon up every conceivable acronym.  It’s great for cheating at Scrabble.  On a lark, I typed in Linda Darling Hammond.  At the top of the list, it came up with:  “Handmaid Ladling Norm.”

Time will tell.