Archive for the 'Weekly Roundup' Category

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 11, 2009 in Education News, Educational Policy, Homeschooling, Literacy, No category, Research and Reports and Weekly Roundup. 4 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

The Unbearable Whiteness of Newbery?
The last time a Newbery Medal winner featured a black protagonist was Christopher Paul Curtis’ depression-era historical novel Bud, Not Buddy in 2000.  The last Hispanic protagonist?  Maia Wojciechowska’s Shadow of a Bull in 1965.  A new study shows precious few nonwhite protagonists—or even secondary characters in Newbery winners

Why Nature (and Recess) Might Help Kids Learn
New research finds that interaction with nature is “restorative” — it provides a rest from the kind of directed that many people believe is important to schooling.  Dan Willingham notes this finding fits well with other data showing that recess provides a cognitive boost for students. ”

Class Discussion For Sale
You attended school in the bad old traditional days. Don’t deny it. Back then, the teacher lectured while you took notes, read dead authors, and regurgitated dry facts. There was no class discussion. Today, you would not have to suffer, writes teacher Diana Senechal Schools across the country have purchased and mandated an exciting new type of classroom conversation called Accountable Talk®.

Reclaiming the Value of Knowledge in Public Life
It’s time to reclaim the value of knowledge in our political and civic life, argues UCLA professor Mike Rose.  Not merely academic knowledge, but broad, practical know-how that enables people to solve problems.

Best of the Blogs

The conceit of “21st Century Skills” at Flypaper
21st Century Skills is “the latest incarnation of the ‘all kids need to learn is how to learn’ argument,” writes Mike Petrilli.  Call it the “life adjustment” movement, call it “outcomes-based education,” call it “21st Century Skills” or call it a “doomed pedagogical fad.” Or simply call it bunk, because that’s what it is.

The Boston Pilot/Charter School Study: Some Good News, and Some Cautions at Eduwonkette
“A study on the efficacy of charter and pilot schools is a well-done, careful study that provides us with a range of estimates of charter and pilot school performance. There is certainly enough positive evidence here to support the creation of more charter schools in Boston,” notes Eduwonkette, ”but I want to offer two cautions.”

Blaming Special Ed at Jay P. Greene’s Blog
“It’s all too common but also completely mistaken to blame special education for the shortcomings of the public k-12 system,” Jay Greene writes.  ”Most attempts to blame special ed don’t even bother presenting data or make the most crude use of data to support their claims.”

Curriculum and Teaching

Spelling Is an Integral Part of Learning the Language, Not a Matter of Memorization
American Educator
A common perception is that visual memory–taking a mental picture of the word–is the basis of spelling  skill. Teachers often teach spelling by encouraging whole-word memorization. More recent studies, however, do not support the notion that visual memory is the key to good spelling.

The Rush for ’21st-Century Skills’
Washington Post 
The phrase has inspired a flood of programs, notes Jay Mathews, including Lego engineering clubs for elementary schools, and the National Geographic’s science adventure Jason Project for middle schools.  But many teachers say it is just good teaching with a jazzy name.

Maryland schools rank 1st in nation in analysis by ‘Education Week’
Baltimore Sun
Maryland’s schools rank first in the nation in an analysis of factors such as high school graduation rates, student achievement, academic standards and accountability by Education Week.

Education Policy

Schwarzenegger proposes 5 fewer school days
Los Angeles Times
A proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to shorten the school year by five days is creating panic among educators across California, who say they barely have enough time to fit the state’s academic standards into the existing 180-day calendar.

Rhee Plans Shake-Up of Teaching Staff, Training
Washington Post
At the heart of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s vision for transforming D.C. schools is a dramatic overhaul of its 4,000-member teacher corps that would remove a “significant share” of instructors and launch an ambitious plan to foster professional growth for those who remain.

Are we testing kids too much?
Mlive.com (Michigan(
An increased reliance on assessment tests is a trend that some find unsettling but others see as one of the most positive recent developments in education. Advocates say assessment tests help school districts measure the quality of their curricula and instruction.  Still, for some, subjecting students to so many tests sums up what’s wrong with American education.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Homeschooling Grows
USA Today
The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007.

On the table
Boston Globe
Even as families feel the economic pinch, many eligible students don’t take advantage of free or low-cost breakfasts served at schools. Why?

Rhodes Scholar says parents rewarded achievements in the classroom over football field
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
FSU junior safety Myron Rolle has played his final college football game. But he’s not leaving to join the National Football League; Rolle is one of 32 U.S. students who have been awarded an all-expense paid scholarship for up to three years of study at Oxford University in England.

Politically correct parents ditch ‘offensive’ traditional fairy tales
Daily Mail (U.K.)
Two-thirds of British parents believe traditional fairytales have “stronger morality messages” than modern equivalents.  But some are ditching Cinderella and Rapunzel in favor of The Gruffalo or The Very Hungry Caterpillar, believing the older stories are politically incorrect or “too dark” to read to children.

Et Alia

Playing outside can prevent children becoming short-sighted
Daily Mail (U.K.)
Playing outdoors dramatically cuts a child’s risk of becoming short-sighted. Spending two or three hours outside each day halves the chance of developing the condition.  The finding by researchers in Australia challenges the belief that short-sightedness is caused by computer use, TV watching or reading in dim light.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 20, 2008 in Weekly Roundup. 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

Reform Realism
The Fordham Foundation issues an open letter to the incoming administration advocating “reform realism,” a “vigorous but realistic” federal role in education favoring, among other things, common standards and tests, high-quality data and solid research, and a “first do no harm” approach to ed reform.

The New Stupid
Gone are the days when educators dismissed data as having only a limited utility for improving schools and school systems.  What’s taken its place, argues Rick Hess, is “The New Stupid” — where data-based decision making and research-based practice “stand in for careful thought, serve as dressed-up rationales for the same old fads, or [are] used to justify incoherent proposals.”

The Spillage of Muddy Language
Core Knowledge teacher Diana Senechal on education reform and the terms “conservative,” “progressive,” “reformer,” and “establishment.” Lo and behold, she writes, they mean everything and nothing.

21st Century Skills: The Newest Edufad
Eduwonk Andy Rotherham sees a “false choice between teaching facts and teaching how to approach them.” Writing in U.S. News, Rotherham foresees the potential “to make the 21st-century skills movement another fad leading to little change in American education.”

 

Best of the Blogs

Obama’s Amazingly Un-Amazing Education Secretary
Pajamas Media
It really is amazing how totally uninteresting the choice of Duncan for education secretary is, Greg Forster writes waggishly.  “In fact, the selection has succeeded in fascinating me by achieving such an unprecedented level of anti-fascinatingness. It repels my interest so strongly that I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Teaching and Curriculum

Most Textbooks Should Just Stay On the Shelf
Washington Post
In the classrooms I visit, writes Jay Mathews, it is often a good sign that the textbooks are stacked on a corner bookshelf or window sill, gathering dust. The best teachers have an ongoing conversation with their class, calling on every student, challenging sloth, praising fresh ideas, moving the group beyond the text, which covers only the state’s or the school’s curricular requirements.

A Race Against the Clock: The Value of Expanded Learning Time for English Language Learners
Center for American Progress
Current efforts to promote the expansion of learning time suggest increasing the school day by two hours or lengthening the year by 360 hours—the equivalent of at least 30 percent more learning time. This additional time can be pivotal in closing both the academic and language gap for ELLs.

Education Policy

Obama Pledge Stirs Hope in Early Childhood Education
The New York Times
The $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. “People are absolutely ecstatic,” says the head of one advocacy group. “Some people seem to think the Great Society is upon us again.”

Ed Secretary Pick Noted for Hands-On Approach
USA Today
If he’s confirmed, Arne Duncan’s first job as education secretary will be hammering out accords on Obama’s top education priorities: college affordability and expanded preschool. His toughest task may be persuading Congress to reauthorize NCLB.  It has been largely forsaken by many congressional Democrats for its heavy reliance on standardized testing — and by many Republicans for its federal intrusion on local education decisions.

No Money, No Child
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nine school districts sued the federal government in 2005, arguing that enforcement of NCLB was unconstitutional and illegal, since it requires schools to do things without providing the money. The districts lost in U.S. District Court in Detroit, but the ruling was later reversed.  It seems certain that the case will be decided ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Geoffrey Canada and Education’s Future
Washington Post
There are no trumpets and violins at the end of Paul Tough’s book Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America.  “Tough makes the vital point,” notes Jay Mathews, “repeated by other urban educators, that if those early years programs can be expanded, there might be less need for the hero teachers working 10-hour days that one often finds in the highest-performing middle and high schools in low-income neighborhoods.”

Happy Birthday, Charter Schools
City Journal
Over the past decade, charter schools have gone from a quaint think-tank idea to a mass movement with broad parental support and bipartisan backing.  On the 10th anniversary of New York’s charter law, Thomas W. Carroll notes failures and missteps along the way also suggest a need for state chartering entities and charter advocates to pause for a moment of reflection. How did we get here, he asks, and where are we headed?

Homeschooling and Parenting

In Defense of Teasing
New York Times Magazine
The reason teasing is viewed as inherently damaging is that it is too often confused with bullying.  Teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life’s ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human.

Nut Bans in Schools May Be Spurring Hysteria
Health Day
Peanut and other food allergies are on the rise, with more and more children being diagnosed with potentially life-threatening allergies, and schools are responding by providing nut-free areas. But at least one expert wonders if schools are going too far, even creating hysteria over potential nut exposures. What’s worse, schools may be perpetuating the problem by limiting exposure to nuts in non-allergic children.

Et Alia

The Wheels on the Bus Go Ka-Ching!
NBC News
Three bills have been introduced by New Jersey legislators that would allow school districts to sell ads on the sides of buses they rent or own. The effort would help schools raise money while keeping New Jersey taxpayers a little richer and a lot happier, because they won’t have to pay higher taxes.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 13, 2008 in No category and Weekly Roundup. 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

Eich bin ein Reformer and Eich bin ein Reformer II
The anticipation and arguments over Barack Obama’s pick for Education Secretary are an internecine battle to determine whose vision of education reform will gain supremacy.  It’s also a battle over who can claim the title of “reformer.”

Do “Great Books” Still Matter?
To mark the publication of Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam’s new book, A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books, the Britannica Blog sets many minds to work on the question, “Do ‘Great Books’ still matter?”

Teachers and Quarterbacks
For all the attention to advanced degrees and other certification requirements, you can’t really know who will be a good teacher until they get to the classroom, says the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell, whose much-discussed article helps move us past the “by their test scores shall ye know them” way of thinking about the teaching profession.

Best of the Blogs

Let’s Go Camping at Teacher in a Strange Land
A true movement to radically improve public education in the United States would invite multiple viewpoints, weighing an array of complex data and alternatives, writes veteran teacher Nancy Flanagan.  Even with good data there is plenty of room for interpretation about what we’re doing right, and what practices are ineffective.  It’s about developing human capital, not being in the winning camp.

Tiny TIMSS at The Education Gadfly
Math, which is tested under NCLB (math) saw progress on the newly released Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study while science, which isn’t tested fell behind.  “We suspect that’s because elementary schools are spending more time on math and less time on science, depressing learning in the latter,” note Mike Petrilli and Amber Winkler.  “When and how are we going to give science its due? And how can we make sure that all subjects in the core curriculum get the attention that they deserve?”

Teaching and Curriculum

Math Gains Reported for U.S. Students
New York Times
American fourth- and eighth-grade students made solid achievement gains in math in recent years and in two states showed spectacular progress, an international survey of student achievement released on Tuesday found. Science performance was flat.  The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, found that fourth-grade students in Hong Kong and eighth-grade students in Taiwan were the world’s top scorers in math, while Singapore dominated in science at both grade levels.

Scores on Science Test Causing Concern in U.S.
Washington Post
U.S. students are doing no better on an international science exam than they were in the mid-1990s, a performance plateau that leaves educators and policymakers worried about how schools are preparing students to compete in an increasingly global economy.

Singapore math makes a difference
Philadelphia Inquirer
A small but growing number of schools around the country are using a curriculum modeled on math teaching in Singapore, which consistently ranks first in international math comparisons.

Superstar Educators
Britannica Blog
Once a year, The Education Trust honors successful high-poverty and high-minority schools. It is one of the rare occasions when successful educators are treated as the superstars they are.  This year, four schools received Ed Trust’s “Dispelling the Myth” award, writes Karin Chenoweth. They and other similar schools offer our nation an important lesson: We can educate all children to high levels.

Education Policy

Kennedy’s wish list won’t be left behind
Politico.com
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is well-situated to see his wish list for NCLB largely influence next year’s reauthorization.  Kennedy has already whittled down his priorities to several key focus areas: closing the  achievement gap, encouraging parents to get involved in schools and amending the legislation’s one-size-fits-all approach to low-performance schools.

Nontraditional Achiever
Rocky Mountain News
Michael Bennet’s name often is followed by the phrase “the smartest guy in the room,” but it is doubtful even he could have predicted his current status as a contender for the job of U.S. secretary of education. Three years ago Bennet sought the job running Denver Public Schools as a “nontraditional” candidate, which means he admitted he had never spent a day in a school as a teacher or a principal.

Teacher Pay and 21st-Century School Reform
American Enterprise Institute
“Although compensation reform can and should be used to meet specific and urgent policy objectives,” writes Frederick M. Hess. ”It should be understood and debated not as a stimulus to prompt short term increases in test scores but as part of a long-term strategy to attract, cultivate, and retain high-quality educators.”

Gates Foundation to study ‘cash for grades’
Los Angeles Times
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is throwing its weight behind the trend to offer “cash for grades” to keep low-income students in college, despite protests from some quarters that such incentive payments amount to little more than bribery. The foundation will devote $13 million to study whether paying low-income college students between $1,000 to $4,000 to stay on track is effective.

Homeschooling and Parenting

School for $6 A Month
Forbes.com
On a trip to India, Chester Finn reports an astonishing number of poor children in developing countries are being decently (and sometimes superbly) educated by a little-noticed army of low-budget private schools that receive no government support and, indeed, are paid for by those kids’ own parents.

Group Wants Obama to Name Officer to Fight Online Dangers
Washington Post
Online safety advocates are urging President-elect Barack Obama to put more resources toward protecting children from crime, harassment and predators on the Web. A Washington nonprofit organization is urging the new administration to appoint a national safety officer.
 

Et Alia

Dynamo Brought IB and Rigor To All Students
Washington Post
Jay Mathews writes a moving remembrance of teacher Bernie Glaze, who left the faculty of the celebrated Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to help start an International Baccalaureate program at Mount Vernon High in Fairfax County, then considered one of the worst schools in Northern Virginia.

Facebook face-off: Student, suspended for blog rant, sues
Miami Herald
A student who criticized a teacher online has filed suit against her principal in an effort to have her suspension removed from her academic record.

Carnival!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 10, 2008 in Weekly Roundup. 3 Comments

This week’s Carnival of Education is hosted by the stalwart Mamacita at Scheiss Weekly (The Scheissman Cometh?).  The usual heady brew.  Be sure to click through to Eduwonkette’s exegesis of ed-secretary-in-waiting Arne Duncan’s track record in Chicago, Dave Saba’s Student Success Strategy, Slice ‘em and Dice ‘em, a heartwarming tale of dissecting frogs at Bluebird’s Classroom, and Mamacita herself who hates what we’ve turned into. 

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 6, 2008 in No category and Weekly Roundup. 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

Education for the 21st Century: Balancing Content Knowledge with Skills
Britannica Blog
“21st-century skills require deep understanding of subject matter.  Gaining a deep understanding is, not surprisingly, hard,” writes Dan Willingham.  “Skills like ‘analysis’ and ‘critical thinking’ are tied to content.  If you don’t think that most of our students are gaining very deep knowledge of core subjects—and you shouldn’t—then there is not much point in calling for more emphasis on analysis and critical thinking unless you take the content problem seriously. You can’t have one without the other.”

“Poverty Matters” vs. “No Excuses”
As in most debates on education, there’s a false dichotomy at work.  Surely there is a difference between the teacher who walks into the classroom assuming poor children can’t learn, and simply ascribing every student failure to a bad teacher. 

Michelle Rhee is Scaring Me
Accurate or inaccurate, fair or unfair, the increasingly confrontational, impatient, blunt, even rude public persona that’s affixing itself to the Washington, DC schools chancellor runs the risk of getting in the way of what Michelle Rhee wants to accomplish. 

Best of the Blogs

“21st century skills” shenanigans in the Bay State
The Education Gadfly
“We can’t ask students to exhibit hard-to-measure 21st century skills if they haven’t mastered the English, math, science, and history upon which the skills are based,” argue Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass of the Pioneer Institute.  “We hope policymakers will make the right choice and resist the temptation to substitute vague, short-term skills for enduring academic content.”

What Do We Mean by Accountability? at Bridging Differences
“By making test scores the sole gauge of progress, one can expect to see cheating and test prepping, and other quasi-legitimate and outright illegitimate ways of reaching the only goal that matters,” writes Diane Ravitch.  “When teachers, principals, and students are given rewards and punishments for only one measure, that measure may well rise, but at a cost.”

Teaching and Curriculum

Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?
The Education Gadfly
Wouldn’t it be swell if during the hiring process districts had better tools with which to identify the most promising teacher candidates,” asks the Fordham Foundation’s Amber Winkler.  A technical study by a quartet of research heavy-hitters gets us one step closer to that administrator’s dream.

Red Pen Too “Aggressive” Teachers Told
The Daily Telegraph
Teachers in Australia have been told to stop marking children’s written work with red pen because it is an “aggressive” color.  Queensland’s Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle told parliament that teachers were being advised to reconsider their pen choice because it may offend children.

Education Policy

Lessons From 40 Years of Education ‘Reform’
The Wall Street Journal
Countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education, writes Louis V. Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, including setting high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.

The Looming Battle on Education Reform
The Huffington Post
“For all of the excitement that Barack Obama has elicited, progressives are currently mired in a bitter battle over the future of urban school reform,” writes David Whitman.  There may also be a compromise that would acknowledge the importance of early intervention before school starts but affirms the primacy of classroom reforms once children reach adolescence.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Media Bombardment Is Linked To Ill Effects During Childhood
Washington Post
A detailed review of 30 years of research on how television, music, movies and other media affect the lives of children and adolescents, finds strong connections between media exposure and problems of childhood obesity, tobacco use, and early sexual behavior.

Wanted, Male Models: There’s a good reason why boys don’t read
The School Library Journal
“Now, this is purely my opinion,” writes young adult author Gail Giles, ”but children copy their elders. They want to be what they see. A boy doesn’t want to be a woman. He wants to do what a man does. And if he doesn’t see a man reading, he won’t read.”

Teacher video can help parents boost literacy
Augusta (S.C.) Chronicle
Parents needing an example of good reading practices now have a hands-on tool that models real-life lessons.  The Aiken County (S.C.) School District released this month a 20-minute video guide Parents: A Child’s First Teacher to encourage parents to build literacy skills from birth.

Parent-teacher conference remains time-honored tradition
The Buffalo News
The conference is a time-honored tradition, and, especially with the drastic changes in classrooms over the last two decades, one that schools continue to value.  Parents should approach a parent-teacher conference as they would a checkup with the doctor, by making a list of observations and questions about the curriculum and the child’s performance.

Et Alia

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.
New York Times
The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the annual report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 30, 2008 in No category and Weekly Roundup. 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

What It Takes
You can’t ask kids to do “self-directed” writing about their family, their friends and their personal experiences throughout elementary school to the exclusion of nearly all else, then expect them to dazzle you with their insights into literature in middle school simply because you “raised expectations.”

Before 21st-century skills, teach basics
The Boston Globe
Massachusetts’ 21st Century Skills Task Force recommendations seem so reasonable at first glance: “Evolve” curriculum to include skills students will need to succeed in a rapidly changing world.  “But what those skills have in common,” write Charles Chieppo and Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute, “is that being proficient at each requires knowledge of the liberal arts.”

The Adult Literacy Paradox
Millions of children struggle to attain a functional level of literacy, but where does the reading problem go when children grow up?  Overwhelmingly–but not always accurately–adults rate their own reading skills very highly. 

Best of the Blogs

The Calculator Conundrum at Making Education Public
Proponents of calculator use, argue that computational fluency is not essential to higher level math. They observe that higher level math is abstract, symbolic, and largely computation free. What they miss in this argument is distressingly plain to see. Abstraction only works when one knows what is being abstracted.

Flunking the Electoral College at Joanne Jacobs
Seventy-one percent of adults failed a civic (and economic) literacy test, according to Our Fading Heritage by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Un-Transition at Edspresso
A look at President-elect Obama’s education transition team members is telling, worries the blog of the Center for Education Reform. “They come from the traditional, Kozol-esque education perspective that relies on well-intentioned government programs and court decisions to force schools to do good, rather than accountability and power in the hands of educators and parents to create good.”

Teaching and Curriculum

Students shortchanged in math teaching
Associated Press
Poor and minority students are about twice as likely to have math teachers who don’t know their subject, according to a report by the Education Trust, a children’s advocacy group.  The complete Ed Trust report is available here.

‘Intimidating’ boys put girls off science, minister says
The Independent
Britain’s new Schools minister advocates a return to single-sex education to get girls more interested in subjects like science and engineering.

Parents clash over kindergarten Thanksgiving costumes
The Los Angeles Times
For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast.  Parents are sharply divided over whether these construction-paper symbols represent a child’s depiction of the traditional tale of two factions setting aside their differences, or a cartoonish stereotype.

Education Policy

Show-And-Tell Time
Newsweek
The education community is badly split on the issue of how to hold teachers accountable. The establishment sees tenure as teachers’ only guard against politics and arbitrary firings. Reformers regard it as the chief obstacle to change. Obama has given mixed signals on accountability, and in his way, he has convinced each side that he agrees with them.

Schools deserve bailout, too
The Miami Herald
As banks, cities and the auto industry apply to the federal government for a bailout, the Miami-Dade schools chief Alberto Carvalho says Congress shouldn’t forget the nation’s public schools.

The true school scandal
The Los Angeles Times
The Obamas will send their two daughters to the expensive private school, Sidwell Friends. “Yes, that makes him something of a hypocrite,” writes Jonah Goldberg.  “But you know what? Who cares?  The scandal is that politicians tolerate such awful schools at all. For anyone.”

Support for magnet schools waning despite their success
The Los Angeles Times
The programs have frequently achieved their goal of voluntary integration and high-quality academic programs. But funding is stagnating, partly due to nation’s budget woes.

Homeschooling and Parenting

A New Face for A.D.H.D., and a Debate
The New York Times
The emergence of a major celebrity with attention deficit, Olympic star Michael Phelps, has revealed a schism in the community of patients, parents, doctors and educators who deal with the disorder. For years, these people have debated whether it means a lifetime of limitations or whether it can sometimes be a good thing.

Homeschoolers call for ABC boycott
Associated Content
Joy Behar, on ABC’s The View, remarked that “a lot” of homeschoolers are “demented.” This has many homeschoolers on the defense and even going as far as to call for a boycott of ABC programming.

Michelle Obama’s ‘Mommy’ Stamp
Washington Post
When Michelle Obama took to describing her new role as mom in chief, columnist Ruth Marcus winced. “What does it say about the condition of modern women that Michelle Obama, catapulted by her husband’s election into the ranks of the most prominent, sounds so strangely retro.  More Jackie Kennedy than Hillary Clinton?”

Et Alia

Children Who Live in Public Housing Suffer in School, Study Says
New York Times
New York City children who live in public housing perform worse in school than students who live in other types of housing, according to a study by New York University researchers.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 15, 2008 in Core Knowledge, Education Practice, Educational Policy, Parents, Research and Reports, Teaching, Weekly Roundup and accountability. 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

Core Knowledge is a 21st Skill
“The common idea that we can teach thinking without a solid foundation of knowledge must be abandoned, notes Lauren Resnick, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. “So must the idea that we can teach knowledge without engaging students in thinking.”

On Curriculum: The Silence of the Dems
Why do education reformers have so much to say about funding, choice, teacher quality and incentives–yet virtually nothing about what children are actually taught inside the classroom?

Gates Foundation Standards.  Why Not?
If it’s OK for the insurance industry to write health care legislation or the oil industry to craft energy policy, how can helping to draft national standards and assessments be off-limits for the Gates Foundation?

Obama and the War On Brains
The New York Times
American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual, writes Nicholas Kristof.  “Maybe, just maybe,” he notes, “the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life.”

In Education Blogs

Teachers don’t care, and they’re boring me at The Gradebook
Less than half of middle and high school students think teachers care about their problems and feelings, and less than a third think teachers make school exciting, according to national survey. 

Assessments for Learning at Borderland
If we’d have used an NCLB-style approach to the Apollo moon mission, writes teacher Doug Noon, “President Kennedy would have simply ordered NASA to fly conventional airplanes higher and higher until they fell out of the sky, and then blamed the pilots for lacking the will and the know-how to get the job done.”

Efficiency and Spelling at D-Ed Reckoning
“It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of constructivist and child-centered teaching practices,” writes Ken DeRosa. “And traditional practices aren’t very efficient either. In fact they are downright primitive compared to what we know about how children learn.”

Elementary math stumps teachers at Joanne Jacobs
Too many elementary teachers didn’t like math when they were in school, took very little in college and don’t understand it well enough to explain concepts like place value to children.

Teaching and Curriculum

Growth Data for Teachers Under Review
Education Week
As states’ information-collection systems grow more sophisticated, officials are grappling with where to draw the line on how “value added” data on teachers can be used.

Measuring Skills for the 21st Century
Education Sector Report
Multiple-choice tests in reading and math are useful for meeting the proficiency goals of NCLB and state accountability systems. But leaders in business, government, and higher education say the intellectual demands of 21st century work require assessments that measure more advanced skills.

School Districts Caught in a Squeeze
USA Today
School superintendents nationwide say the struggling economy threatens to reverse progress they have made in closing historic achievement gaps as schools face trimmed budgets now — and possibly worse ones next fall.

Thousands of families shut out of pre-k programs
The Associated Press
State prekindergarten programs reserved for low-income students are squeezing out thousands of middle-class families unable to afford early education.  A study by the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Pre-K Now shows that 700,000 middle-income families in 20 states are feeling the “pre-k pinch” as the economy spirals toward a recession.

School District Tries to Lure Asian Parents
The New York Times
The suburban Jericho, Long Island school district is trying to lure Asian parents into the schools with free English classes and a multicultural advisory committee that, among other things, taught one Chinese mother what to wear and what to bring to a bar mitzvah.

Education Policy

Gates’ New Approach Gets Good Reviews
Education Week
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation intends to refocus its education grantmaking efforts on three pillars: identifying and promoting higher standards for college readiness, improving teacher quality, and fostering innovations to aid struggling students.

Obama Is Expected to Put Education Overhaul on Back Burner
The Wall Street Journal
Critics of the Bush administration’s education policies had hoped that putting a Democrat in the White House would mean dramatic changes.  But with the financial crisis and other priorities bearing down, President-elect Barack Obama’s education initiatives are expected to be more about tinkering than bold change.

Homeschooling and Parenting

A Crucial Decision For the Obamas: Public or Private?
The Washington Post
Like many parents moving their children to Washington, Barack and Michelle Obama will be told to avoid D.C. public schools. Jay Mathews wonders: Is that good advice?

Obama may make parents a stronger player in education
The Providence Journal
By supporting the parents’ right to choose where their children go to school during his campaign, writes Julia Steiny, ”Obama signaled that he was willing to shift some power back to the families who have too long been left out of the education equation.”

Et Alia

Revenge of the Black Nerd
New York Magazine
In his speech at the Democratic convention four years ago, Barack Obama memorably challenged the myth that holding a book is “acting white.” Now that he’s been elected president, he might actually be able to do something about it.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 8, 2008 in No category and Weekly Roundup. 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

Thoughts on Election Day
May our students understand and appreciate that regardless of what lever is pulled inside the voting booth, every vote cast is a vote of confidence in something both grand and delicate.

How Not to Evaluate Teachers
UVA professor and Core Knowledge board member Dan Willingham says plans to evaluate teachers based on standardized test scores are “fatally flawed.”

Elvis is in the Building
Hats off to the Traut Core Knowledge Elementary School in Ft. Collins, Colorado, where 6th graders transformed their school gym into a living “wax museum” to show off what they learned about various historic people.

“I’m a Teacher and I’m Tired”
Educating all of our children requires “something more than sounding warning bells and asking teachers to pull up their boot straps time and again,” notes teacher-blogger Bill Ferriter.

In the Education Blogs

An Open Letter to President-Elect Barack Obama at Eduflack
Now is the time to be innovative and offer new ideas for the problems that have ailed our public schools for decades now.  Now is the time to build a non-partisan approach based on what is needed, what is sought, and what works.

Post Election Odds & Ends at Eduwonk
Real reform has an edge and, in the short term, requires picking some winners and losers if you really want to focus on traditionally ill-served students, writes Ed Sector’s Andy Rotherham.  “Balancing all this will be a tougher political act.   But, if the last two years are a guide, this guy’s up to it.”

Obama Wins! Have We Overcome the Scourge of Race? at Eduwonkette
Despite the election of Barack Obama, the social, economic and political forces that shape the educational opportunities of African-Americans in U.S. society remain deeply entrenched.

Looking Forward to NCLB at Ed Money Watch
The list of topics that is likely to make or break reauthorization of NCLB process is extensive and overwhelming, writes Jennifer Cohen of the New America Foundation.  First and foremost is the looming 2014 deadline for 100 percent proficiency on academic tests.

Curriculum and Teaching

An Addition to the Classroom
Washington Post
As pressure mounts to prepare elementary students for high-stakes tests and for algebra in middle school, the focus on instilling math’s most basic skills is intensifying.

Goal is to help those struggling in classes
San Diego Union-Tribune
The San Diego Unified School District will put together its most detailed account of student progress this year with help from new data analysis using the so-called “value-added” method.

Time Invested In Practicing Pays Off For Young Musicians
ScienceDaily
A Harvard-based study has found that children who study a musical instrument outperform children with no instrumental training on tests measuring verbal ability and visual pattern completion–skills not normally associated with music.

Texas considers online teacher certification
Cox News Service
Texans seeking an alternate way to a teaching certification could obtain some of their required training online under a proposal being considered by a state education panel.

Education Policy

Obama’s Possible Candidates for Education Secretary
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The suggested names include campaign advisers, current and former governors and state education officials, policy-research professionals, and people Mr. Obama knows through personal friendships or home-state ties.

Oregon public boys school to close
The Associated Press
Oregon’s only public all-boys school has failed to attract enough students and will be shut down.

Incentives Can Make Or Break Students
The Washington Post
Critics of student incentive initiatives are pointing to a body of psychological research suggesting that tangible rewards can erode children’s intrinsic motivation.

Healing America’s Sick Schools
The Boston Globe
Public and political support for NCLB reauthorization will require changes that give good schools some freedom from inflexible federal requirements while providing failing schools with more hands-on help.

Homeschooling and Parenting

5 Ways to Improve Children’s Literacy Skills
Stargazette.com
“Spending time together and learning as a family can be a simple, inexpensive and easy activity. It just requires a little time, imagination and creativity,” says the head of the National Center for Family Literacy.

Program trains parents to weave reading into kids’ lives
The Tennesseean
Even the busiest parents can play a big role in helping their children learn to read.  That’s the message behind “Love. Read. Learn!” a new program to teach parents how kids learn to read.

Et Alia

When Homework is a Headache–Literally
Children who develop headaches while reading or who struggle to complete their homework may be sufferring from an under-diagnosed vision problem.

Online Grading Systems Mean No More Changing D’s to B’s
The Washington Post
Parents and students can track fluctuations in a grade-point average from the nearest computer in real time, a ritual that can become as addictive as watching political polls or a stock-market index.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 25, 2008 in Education News, No category and Weekly Roundup. 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

Does “Nature Deficit Disorder” Affect the Brain?
Richard Louv, author of the best-seller The Last Child in the Woods, claims our children are suffering from “nature deficit disorder.” What’s the basis for his claim?

Attendance Is Not On The Test
More than 90,000 of New York City’s elementary school students–20 percent–missed at least a month of classes during the last school year.

The Motivated Will Inherit the Earth
Diane Ravitch on paying students to attend school and get good grades: “Interesting, isn’t it that while students in other countries are paying $1,500 a year for the chance to learn more, many American students will be paid that same amount just to do what they ought to be doing in their own self-interest?”

Grammar Makes a Comeback
The government has released a draft curriculum that unequivocally calls for the explicit teaching of the basic structures of the English language. In Australia.

At the Core
The Longmont Times
Next month, eight teachers from Flagstaff will present units at the Core Knowledge National Conference in Anaheim, Calif. — more teachers from a single school on a national stage than any other school.

In Other Blogs

A Disrespect for Knowledge at Bridging Differences
There’s a connection between the economic crisis we’re now in and our misbegotten effort to “reform” schools.  Maybe it’s got something to do with our disrespect for knowledge.

The Future of Charter Schools? at Eduflack
With both presidential candidates discussing school choice as a plank in their educational platforms, it is only natural to start thinking about the role of charter schools in the coming years.

No campaign education advisor left behind at the Education Gadfly
There are two education camps jockeying for position in a potential Obama administration–a “reform” and an “establishment” camp. This week their infighting spilled out into the public domain.

Two Steps Forward…Two Steps Back… at It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages
During the week that students in Mimi’s school are banned from recess, they have to bring books with them. So they can read. As punishment. Dude. “How do you think my little strugglers are going to take to finding a good book now?”

Teaching and Curriculum

U.S. cities’ math scores split compared to rest of the world
USA Today
Fourth- and eighth-grade students in six U.S. cities — Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Houston, New York City and San Diego — actually hold their own against international competitors.

Delighted — or Deflated — by Dollars
The Washington Post
Washington, DC’s experimental program to pay 3,300 middle school students for good grades and behavior is filled with valuable life lessons about hard work, thrift and showing up on time, its supporters say.

Colleges Continue Irrational Policies On IB Program
The Washington Post
Jay Mathews can’t understand why so many colleges refuse to give credit to students who do well on final exams in IB courses while giving credit to students for similar (but in many cases less-demanding) AP courses.

Schools in Need Employ Teachers From Overseas
USA Today
A growing number of school districts are hiring teachers from foreign countries to fill shortages in math, science and special education.

Judge Says No To Campaign Buttons
The New York Times
A federal judge on Friday upheld New York City’s policy prohibiting public school teachers from wearing political buttons in the classroom.

Education Policy

Report: Counting on Graduation
The Education Trust
Among industrialized nations, the United States is the only country in which today’s young people are less likely than their parents to have earned a high school diploma. A new report from the Education Trust calls on states to ratchet up expectations for high school graduation, substantially and immediately.

Texas Testing Rules Could Change
The Houston Chronicle
Under a proposed plan to overhaul the state’s school accountability system, Texas elementary and middle school students would no longer have to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test to advance to the next grade level.

Under the ‘No Child’ Microscope
The Washington Post
Like a struggling student in a class of high achievers, Hoffman-Boston Elementary School has fallen into an unenviable position. It is the first school in Northern Virginia under a federal mandate to restructure because of lagging student performance.

The Evolution of Teach for America
U.S. News & World Report
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her fellow Teach for America alumni could bring a new approach to education reform

Homeschooling and Parenting

Home-Schooling: State groups key to success, growth
The Washington Times
One of the key components of the success and growth of home-schooling in the United States has been state home-school organizations.

Will election affect right to homeschool?
The Appeal-Democrat (Ca.)
Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain have mentioned much about homeschooling. Joe Biden and Sarah Palin seem pretty mum on the concept as well. The best we can do is look at their views on education to try and figure out what that might mean to our families and our way of life.

Oklahomans are OK with homeschooling
The Edmond Sun
Oklahoma’s legal climate with respect to home education is probably the most favorable in the nation. The climate of public opinion in Oklahoma is also friendly. Sixty-nine percent of Oklahomans strongly or somewhat favor the right to homeschool, while 26 percent strongly or somewhat oppose.

Et Alia

Internet, Cellphones May Strengthen Family Unit, Study Finds
The Washington Post
The American family is as tight-knit as in the last generation — or more so — because of the widespread use of cellphones and the Internet, according to a new poll.

Social Skills Pay Off–Literally
USA Today.com
The study from the University of Illinois finds that the good social skills we displayed in high school — being conscientious and cooperative, for instance — are better indicators of future earnings than any academic honors.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 28, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Education News, Educational Policy, Homeschooling, No category, Parents, Research and Reports, School News, Teaching and Weekly Roundup. 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.

Core Knowledge

Counterfeit Equity
A new report from the Brookings Institution’s Tom Loveless notes many students are being pushed into algebra without having mastered basic skills such as multiplication, division and fractions. 

Hardy Perennials
From generous grading for failing work to “no homework” policies, there’s lots to cheer about if you’re a fan of lower standards and diminshed expectations.

Notes on a Scandal
Officials in South Carolina are investigating old test results at a poor, inner-city Charleston elementary school that had been hailed as a miraculous success story. 

Core Knowledge School Raises Money With Math
O’Dea Core Knowledge Elementary School students in Ft. Collins, Colorado are raising money for their school each time they take a math test until Oct. 3. Students are asking friends and family to pledge money for each correct math problem they get on a marathon test.  

Best of the Blogs

The Community Schools Con at the Education Gadfly
Checker & Co. find the idea ”gooey and emotional, focusing on the externalities of daily life that drip into America’s classrooms-poor healthcare, single parent families, unemployment–rather than on what schools can do with the kids who actually turn up there.”

Evolution in Play in Texas at Curriculum Matters
Texas officials are embarking on a revision of their state’s science standards, a process that has generated a furious debate in several states in recent years—most of it focused squarely on the topic of evolution. A first draft of the new standards, released this week, seems likely to please the scientific community.

Cool People You Should Know: Sean Reardon at Eduwonkette
Until recently, we did not have a clear portrait of the differences between black and white high-achievers in elementary school. Thanks to Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist of education who studies school segregation and the sources of racial/ethnic achievement gaps, we’ve come a long way.

My Kingdom for a Parking Space at It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages
“If one more person tells me to do it for the kids, I might throw a kid at them,” writes Mimi, who teaches at a NYC elementary school.  “It just seems at times as if this job teeters on the brink of being inhumane.”

Teaching and Curriculum

FCAT analysis finds misconceptions about science
Associated Press
Florida students have misconceptions about science, and they need more practice demonstrating its concepts and relating them to the real world, according to an analysis of the state’s standardized test.

Recalculating the 8th Grade Algebra Rush
The Washington Post
“Nobody writing about schools has been a bigger supporter of getting more students into eighth-grade algebra than I have been,” writes Jay Mathews.  “Now, because of a startling study, I am having second thoughts.”

Joy in School
Educational Leadership
If the experience of “doing school” destroys children’s spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests?

Education Policy

NCLB Testing Said to Give ‘Illusions of Progress’
Education Week
Harvard University researcher Daniel M. Koretz says rampantly inflated standardized test scores are giving the misbegotten impression that, as in the fictional town made famous by radio personality Garrison Keillor, all children are above average

Consensus on Learning Time Builds
Education Week
Under enormous pressure to prepare students for a successful future—and fearful that standard school hours don’t offer enough time to do so—educators, policymakers, and community activists are adding more learning time to children’s lives.

Study Details Barriers to Career-Changers Going Into Teaching
Education Week
Experts are pointing to a new opinion survey and research analysis as evidence of a need to overhaul teacher training, compensation, and support, in order to appeal to potential career-changers interested in teaching.

Are high-stakes tests making the grade?
Richmond Times-Dispatch
After a decade, have standards and high-stakes tests improved public education in Virginia? It depends on whom you ask.

Colorado Targets Achievement Gap
The Rocky Mountain News
School districts must focus on and organize help for failing students if Colorado is to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Minneapolis Sets Covenant on Black Achievement
Education Week
The Minneapolis school board and the local African-American community have taken an unusual step toward healing fractured relations and improving schooling for black children by signing a “covenant” that places responsibility for improvement on the shoulders of parents and district leaders.

Homeschooling Surges in U.S. as Parents Reach for Legal Rights
Fox News
States and school districts have a disjointed jumble of ordinances and measures that can make it tough for parents to know exactly what they are permitted to do as homeschoolers.

Father Abandons Nine Kids Under “Safe Haven” Law
KETV.com
A Nebraska father who dropped off his nine children at a hospital emergency room apparently cannot be charged under the state’s new Safe Haven law, which says any child under the age of 19 can be left at a hospital if they’re in immediate danger.

Et Alia

Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests
Science Daily
Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (’Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (’Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring, a new study suggests.  Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. 

Stand-up desks provide a firm footing for fidgety students
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Several schools are experimenting stand-up workstations in the classroom.  Anecdotally, teachers report greater attentiveness, fewer behavioral problems, better posture and more enthusiasm.

Bay Area Schools Need Earthquake Proofing
Contra Costa Times
Engineers say nearly 8,000 older school buildings in California are prone to collapse during a major earthquake.