The Core Knowledge Blog

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

Handwriting Is Still Alive!
Guest blogger Kitty Burns Florey, author of the new book Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, observes that hardly a day goes by when the average person doesn’t have to write something on paper. “Penmanship isn’t dead,” Florey argues. ”It’s not feeling great, it’s struggling to breathe, it’s limping along. But we can keep it alive. And we should.”

Who’s To Blame for Bad Schools? Look in the Mirror
The Chancellor of Nevada’s state university system delivers a blistering address in which he defends teachers and administrators and blames the public and parents for the state’s poor education system.  “The state of K-16 education in Nevada is where the public has allowed it to sink,” said James Rogers.

Best of the Blogs

Where in the World Have Geography Classes Gone? at Florida Today
Where is Sudan? What is the capital of Afghanistan? How many people live in China? Could today’s high school students tell you? Probably not.  Geography classes are disappearing from many high school course lists, and students say it shows. That has many concerned, especially as students prepare for college and the work force in an increasingly global society.

Snow Days, Recess and ‘Flinty Chicago Toughness’ at Early Ed Watch
Given what we know so far about the importance of recess, hurdles to letting kids go out and play should be overcome on days that are not dangerously cold.  “Most should agree, especially given the obesity epidemic, that children need time and space for climbing, leaping and running around,” writes Lisa Guernsey. “We should be doing everything we can to make that happen.”

Kids Say the Darndest Things at NYC Educator
Teacher-blogger NYC Educator says he ought to be happy with his literature class.  “They read the books, they pass the tests, and I must be doing a fantastic job,” he writes. ”But he’s not reaching them the way he wants to. “I’ve got another few months to fool them into thinking reading is worthwhile,” he writes.  “It’s getting tougher to compete with the new toys, though, which seem to get better each year.”

Texas’ Big Education Gamble at Dallas Morning News Opinion Blog
Will Texas legislators end up watering down the way the state measures and rank schools? “We really risk our students’ future in a very complex economy if we go wobbly here,” writes William McKenzie.

Teaching and Curriculum

Getting Accountability Right
Education Week
“The federal No Child Left Behind Act has succeeded in highlighting the poor math and reading skills of disadvantaged children,” writes Richard Rothstein. ”But on balance, the law has done more harm than good because it has terribly distorted the school curriculum. Modest modifications cannot correct this distortion. Designing a better accountability policy will take time.”

L.A. Teachers’ Union Calls For Boycott of Testing
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles teachers union and the city’s school district are battling over “periodic assessments.” The goal is to give teachers insight into what students need to learn while there remains time in the current school year to adjust instruction. The union Tuesday directed teachers to refuse to give them to students on the grounds that the tests are costly and counterproductive.

States get D-plus On Teacher Reviews
Associated Press
States are not doing what it takes to keep good teachers and remove bad ones, a national study finds.Only Iowa and New Mexico require any evidence that public school teachers are effective before granting them tenure, according to the review released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Recess Makes for Better Students
U.S. News and World Report
A study in the February issue of Pediatrics documents the value of recess: Children who have it during the day behave better in class. Although it’s unclear how much recess children in the United States are getting, some studies have documented a dramatic decrease, and this study reported that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has resulted in less recess for many children.

Education Policy

An Education Stimulus?
Washington Post
Education is the big winner in the proposed economic stimulus plan.  But it remains to be seen whether America’s schoolchildren really will be helped by the huge investment of public funds.  After all, it seems that much of the billions of dollars of new federal spending is aimed at continuing programs and policies that largely have failed to improve student achievement.

2009 Annual Letter from Bill Gates: U.S. Education
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
“Based on what the foundation has learned so far, we have refined our strategy,” writes Bill Gates. ”We will continue to invest in replicating the school models that worked the best.”  Almost all of these schools are charter schools, notes Gates, who adds that improving teacher quality will be another major initiative of the Foundation.  “Our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up.”

Will The Recession Kill School Reform?
Forbes.com
This time of economic hardship may represent the beginning of the end of the modern school reform movement, write Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation. “That’s because of what turns out, in retrospect, to be a tragic flaw in the strategy of many reformers in recent decades: to offer the education establishment a lot more money in return for a little reform.”

Homeschooling and Parenting

Showing Up For the Kids
Denver Post
A proposed law in Colorado would allow workers to take up to 40 hours of unpaid leave each school year to attend parent-teacher conferences or other school activities.  Why the need for a law? “Because of the parents whose kids are failing, most can’t rely on flexibility at work,” writes columnist Susan Greene.

Web-Savvy Activists Push For Educational Change
Washington Post
For a new generation of well-wired activists, it’s not enough to speak at Parent-Teacher Association or late-night school board meetings. They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions, partnerships with business and student groups, and research that mines a mountain of electronic data on school performance. These parent insurgents are gaining influence — and getting things changed.

Virginia Parents Fight for Easier Grading Standards
TIME
Residents of Virginia’s Fairfax County, the high-powered Washington suburb, have been battling the school district’s tough grading practices. Chief among their complaints is that a score of 93% gets recorded as a lowly B+.  Parents formed an official protest group and goaded the school board into voting on whether to ease the standards, a move critics consider a defeat in the war on grade inflation.

Et Alia

How Caroline Kennedy Can Best Serve the People of New York
New York Daily News
She won’t have the chance to be New York’s senator, but Diane Ravitch has another job in mind for Caroline Kennedy. “She can save New York City’s Catholic schools, which are in the throes of a fiscal meltdown.” The research on Catholic education is overwhelmingly positive and few people are better suited to ride to the rescue than Kennedy, who helped raise almost $240 million for NYC’s public schools.  “If the same amount had been raised for the city’s Catholic schools,” Ravitch notes, “not a single one of them would have to close.”

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

Obama’s Inauguration and the Limits of Symbolism
It’s bittersweet to think that many students–indeed, many Americans–couldn’t fully appreciate Barack Obama’s inaugural address and the watershed moment in history it represents.  The speech was rich in historical, literary, and biblical references, lending meaning, resonance and emotional weight to his words.  Yet these allusions were unfamiliar to many of those watching. 

Reading War II: Content Knowledge vs. Reading Strategies
If phonics vs. whole language was Round One of the reading wars, the new battle is shaping up to be reading strategies vs. content knowledge, says Dan Willingham. “Most of us think about reading in a way that is fundamentally incorrect. We think of it as transferable, meaning that once you acquire the ability to read, you can read anything,” says Willingham on Britannica Blog. ”But in order to understand what you’re reading, you need to know something about the subject matter.”

Best of the Blogs

Analysis of Education Provisions in the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan” at Swift and Change Able
The good news is that the House is set to approve an unprecedented sum of money for federal education programs. If the basic numbers in the deal hold, this will be the largest increase in federal education funds in history. As giddy as some of us may be about the numbers, however, there are some policy issues that should be examined closely as this deal moves forward.

Let’s Put an End to Tappa Tappa Tappa at D-Ed Reckoning 
“Much of what goes on in elementary education is just a bunch of tappa tappa tappa,” writes Ken DeRosa, a reference to an inscrutable dance method taught in an episode of The Simpsons. ”Try reading this non-decodable children’s book. Can’t do it, then try looking at the pictures or the first letter of each word for cues. Still can’t do it, then its time to call in the reading specialist.”

Avoiding The Education Reform Trap at Taking Note (The Century Foundation)
“The marketplace model offers an easy and familiar road map for change,” writes Anthony Shorris, who notes that until there is a comparably simple alternative reform model, the worshipers of the invisible hand will be the loudest and easiest to hear. “It is incumbent on educators across the nation to develop research-based instructional strategies that can credibly offer to address these gaps in what we give our kids.”

Teaching and Curriculum

In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate
New York Times
The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.

Cursive, Foiled Again
Boston Globe
Is the handwriting on the wall for cursive writing?  If you predate the computer age, you might remember a school subject called penmanship, which trained your cursive handwriting. It’s still taught, to be sure, but it’s no longer emphasized.

Education Policy

Stimulus gives schools $142B — with strings
USA Today
Public schools stand to be the biggest winners in Congress’ $825 billion economic stimulus plan unveiled last week. Schools are scheduled to receive nearly $142 billion over the next two years.  But tucked into the text of the proposal’s 328 pages are a few surprises.

For Catholic Schools, Crisis and Catharsis
New York Times
Enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago. But recently, a sense of urgency seems to be gripping many Catholics who suddenly see in the shrinking enrollment a once unimaginable prospect: a country without Catholic schools.

Homeschooling and Parenting

Outrage Over U.K. Homeschool Review
Daily Mail (U.K.)
Parents who educate their children at home could be using it to cover up abuse, neglect and forced marriage, the U.K.’s Children’s Minister claimed, as she ordered a review of how the estimated 55,000 children who are taught at home or have dropped out from school are treated. Her controversial comments immediately provoked fury from home schooling groups who branded them ‘offensive’.

Homeschoolers May Be Ahead of the Technological Curve
EdNews.org
According to a recent poll, 64% of homeschoolers use technology every day in their homeschool.  That same percentage also rated their expertise with technology as “intermediate.”  “One reason that homeschoolers may be so technologically adept,” observes EdNews.org, ”is that many times, home-taught students have individual access to computers, cell phones and  MP3 players for the entire school day.”

Wordplay’s the name of game on new ‘Electric Company’
Boston Globe
Appealing to a super-sophisticated generation of kids is likely to be the biggest challenge for Sesame Workshop, which is producing a new version of the familiar 70s educational program ”The Electric Company” for PBS.  While the message remains the same – language is power – the sounds, visuals, and reference points have been updated for today’s youth, who have already been shaped by pop culture at the tender ages of 7, 8, and 9, the show’s target demographic.

Et Alia

At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool
New York Times
The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries.

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

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.

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.