What We Know
“What’s an education system without profiteers? No education system at all!” says this stock tout, who notes ”unemployment is a cash cow” for investors in education stocks. Charming…..Washington State schools chief Randy Dorn said he would do away with the WASL and replace it with two better, shorter, less-expensive exams. One week into the job, he’s doing just that……All your speech are belong to us! A U.S. District court has ruled a school was within its rights when it disciplined a student for an Internet post she wrote when not on school grounds…..If you’re over 35, you rememberThe Electric Company on PBS. It’s back on the air.
What We Want to Find Out
Will Rupert Murdoch take Mike Petrilli’s advice? Mike gives Karl Rove the Marvin K. Mooney treatment over NCLB at Flypaper and encourages Sir Rupert to do the same…..If you’re homeschooled, are you more likely or less likely than average to become a teacher when you grow up? This urban homeschooler is now a NYC Teaching Fellow…..When was the last time you saw a headline like this one in the Philadelphia Inquirer: City schools have too much space?……Will parents in an East Detroit school make good on their threat to keep kids home on the state’s student count day? They’re upset about a too-stringent discipline policy. An attendance undercount would cost the school $8,000 per pupil.
What We Learned
A federal judge has ruled that a Texas school district can’t punish an American Indian kindergartner for wearing his hair long in violation of school policy……An Illinois school bus driver has been found guilty of intentionally slamming on the brakes to throw misbehaving children from their seats……Musician Quincy Jones is circulating an online petition asking Barack Obama to create a Cabinet-level Secretary of the Arts…..Britain’s Family Planning Association is running a course for youth workers who visit schools to help them “support” teenagers who view pornographic websites and magazines. It’ll stop them seeing women as sex objects. That’s the idea, at least.
How We Can Learn More
Children in the U.K. spend up to six hours a day in front of a screen, a study finds……Another excuse to devalue curriculum? Visits to museums, TV documentaries, and even walks in the park contribute to people’s knowledge and interest in science, says a new report from the National Research Council….Check out this week’s Carnival of Education at Teacher in a Strange Land, the great blog by uber teacher Nancy Flanagan.
An intriguing study in the U.K. looks at the effects of a school’s surroundings, looking for links between a neighborhood’s physical decline and student behavior, teacher morale and test scores. The results are reported in The Guardian.
The report’s chief author, Katy Owen, says she found that urban decay could ‘easily impact upon pupils and their teachers.’ She says: ‘They may demonstrate poor behaviour in the classroom, have low self-esteem, little appetite for educational attainment and have little cultural or social capital to draw on. Their teachers may become disillusioned and frustrated with their limited ability to teach in a community where crime and incivility is rife.’
No surprise to anyone who teaches in a hardscrabble neighborhood, certainly. Every morning when I climbed the stairs from the subway to go to my South Bronx school, I was greeted by a sign marking the bus stop for the Riker’s Island Shuttle, which was always a cheery way to start the day–and a reminder of why you were there.
The study’s authors found it harder to link environment and test results.
A government ministry in England has been called on the carpet for the “impenetrable language peppered with jargon” in its reports. OK class, let’s use our reading strategies to make sense of this passage, shall we?
An overarching national improvement strategy will drive up quality and performance underpinned by specific plans for strategically significant areas of activity, such as workforce and technology. The capital investment strategy will continue to renew and modernise further education establishments to create state of the art facilities.”
Turn and talk to your neighbor and see if you can find the main idea. No? Hmmm. Let’s use context clues, then. The agency that wrote the passage in question is the “Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.”
They’re responsible for courses in basic literacy for adults.
A Florida school is holding a mock funeral to help kids get ready for the upcoming FCAT writing test (HT: Gotham Schools). ”Mourners will file past an open coffin, and a teacher will deliver a eulogy, surrounded by faculty members wearing black at the West Palm Beach campus,” the Palm Beach Post reports.
The mortician, Principal Glenda Garrett, said this ‘FCAT writing funeral’ will be a solemn occasion with a powerful lesson. Students will list and drop in the casket essay mistakes such as poor word choices — so they will avoid digging their own graves at test time. ‘We bury all of the things we should not do for writing,’ she said. ‘No baby words. Throw that into the casket. It’s dead. Goodbye.’
The “mourners” at Roosevelt Elementary School are 4th graders. Nine and ten-year olds will bury their mistakes. I don’t think this is what Obama had in mind when he urged us to “put away childish things.” Perhaps this is intended as something “fun” for the kids, but there’s still something that sounds a little off about it.
In recent years, the standardized test pep rally seems to have taken root in many elementary schools. “Watch me take my ELA! Watch me score a 4. Watch me score a 3. Watch me take my ELA,” Buffalo students chant and sing. Principals vow to shave their heads or sleep on the school roof if kids fare well on the Big Test.
The stunts and pep rallies are inevitably describes as a way to “ease pre-test jitters.” This begs the question, of course where exactly those jitters emanate from.
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