March 13, 2010
No School Left Behind
The dirty dark secret of NCLB is that we may know how to identify the worst performing schools, but no one (yet) knows how to turn them around in any consistent and reliable way. And I mean no one. Not the Gates Foundation to date. Not most charter programs. No one.
That's from a review of Diane Ravitch's new book renouncing No Child Left Behind and most of the data-driven approaches that created it. It's that "consistent and reliable way" that gets me. After all the money flung at the problem where are we? And if all we got from NCLB was a way to identify the worst-performing schools - I'll bet that a candid interview with the central staff of each school district in America could have done that in a year for a lot less - we've always known which were the worst schools in any system. I taught high school Latin part-time in two radically different districts in Georgia - Atlanta City and Cobb County - and there was certainly a clear idea of which middle schools that fed us were the worst.
Joanne Jacobs round up some reactions to the proposed national standards.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 6, 2009
It's always nice to know the British can be ignorant too, despite their nice accents.
In a savage attack, Andrew Grant, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), compared the Government's crackdown on independent schools' charitable status to Henry VIII's seizure of land and property in the 1500s.. . .
He compared the move to Henry VIII's decision in the 1530s to shut down English monasteries and nunneries, confiscating all land and property for the crown. It was sold to pay for Government expenditure.
Addressing headmasters on Monday, Mr Grant said: "Let's be clear: the threat that currently underlies the Charity Commission's guidance is the well-tried mediaeval one of confiscation of land and property and it looks no less crude and ugly under the rose of Labour than it did under the rose of Tudor. Down in St Albans, we've been there before, of course, in 1539, when the monastery was dissolved."
By any stretch of the historiographical imagination, of course, Henry VIII is Renaissance or Early Modern. Keep your objurgations more current, Mr. Grant!
Then there's this interesting bit of academic class warfare:
The comments came as the University and College Union, which represents lecturers, said private schools' charitable status should be abolished. It claimed the £100m a year saving could pay for 20,000 extra university places.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)
September 8, 2009
Historical context? Why bother.
George H.W. Bush addressed students from a classroom. Democrats investigated.
Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," the president told students. "If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.
No one's interested in education - just in scoring points.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2009
Studies show . . . or maybe not
American college freshmen know fewer facts about science than do their Chinese counterparts, according to a new study, but both groups have a comparably poor ability to reason scientifically.
In other words, the Americans tested were bone ignorant and the Chinese at least knew some facts. A lot of facts, if you trust the test scores. I think I'd rather teach a class of freshmen to reason who knew things than to teach a class who knew nothing both facts and how to reason - but maybe that's just me. Now this sounds likely:
Lei Bao, the study's lead author and director of Ohio State University's Physics Education Research Group, said this runs contrary to the commonly held belief that reasoning skills develop as students are "rigorously taught the facts."
O.K. - reasoning skills do not come automatically with learning facts. But unless you can show that teaching the Chinese students lots of facts made it harder to later teach them scientific reasoning I'm not sure this study proves that Chinese secondary science education is anything like as bad as that in America, which that first paragraph suggests. Go look at the comparative scores!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)
January 8, 2009
Chicago Public School Cappuccino
The Chicago Public Schools, bailiwick of the man soon to be Secretary of Education*, spent $67,000 on Cappuccino machines. Perhaps they were bought to stock kitchens in vocational schools, training future baristas (as we all know there are never trainees at Starbucks, after all).
Well, no.
Go read it all at Joanne Jacobs.
*No, it's not his direct fault, but he's certainly fair game for mockery.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:11 AM | Comments (1)
December 26, 2008
The Americans with No Abilities Act in real life
Joanne Jacobs has a great story, LA builds arts palace for the untalented:
Los Angeles Unified's new arts school will have a very expensive "world-class" building -- but the school won't enroll the most talented students, reports the LA Times. In fact, students with artistic, musical and dramatic talent will be urged to go elsewhere.
You have to read it to believe it. My post title comes from an Onion story someone in the comments remembered - Congress passes Americans With No Abilities Act.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:41 AM
November 2, 2008
Halloween Idealism from the Philospher-Mom
You know, only an ethicist!
The plastic pumpkin shells we supplied were tossed aside in favor of pillow cases, which were then tossed aside in favor of barrel-sized black drawstring Glad bags. The kids returned, eyes glowing neon with avarice. "Look at how much I got!" was answered by, "Pssh. Wimp. Look at how much I got!" which invariably garnered the whining response, "Hey, they got more than me!" which brought me into the conversation. "I. More than I."That's when the orange lightbulb came on. We could reclaim the Catholicity of Halloween AND AT THE SAME TIME wage a holy war against avarice.
I went to the basement and got an industrial-sized Rubbermaid storage bin, then placed it on the table. Surrounded by eight variously-towering mountains of candy.
"Put it all in."
The silence was more intense than anything our family had achieved in church.
"Like this -- " I grabbed two fistfuls from random piles. "Put all the candy in the bin. All of it."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2008
Joanne Jacobs lets out her inner mean girl
I agree entirely.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:06 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2008
Language comparison
Speaking of Francophonie and language instruction in schools, Prof. Tom Smith has two sons in high school, one taking Spanish, the other taking Latin. You can guess my preference, but read his examples of textbook translation exercise sentences:
Spanish:1. Please tell Juan to recycle the plastic.
2. Henry's mother is going to the political rally.
3. The labor union was organized and everyone was happy.
4. By travelling to South America, Robert broadened his perspective.
5. Let's foment a violent revolution against the capitalist oppressors.Latin:
1. The centurion bravely slaughtered the barbarian.
2. The batallion invested the hill fort by digging a trench around it and flinging stones upon the Gauls with their catapaults.
3. The doughty lad caught the wild horse and tamed it.
4. Having burnt the Carthagian ship with Greek Fire, the trireme captured the survivors and enslaved them.
5. The soldier was at peace because he knew his duty.
Heh.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:03 PM | Comments (2)
Francophonie retreats - Rwanda officially turns to English
In another blow to the language of love, the Rwandan government has decided to change instruction in schools from French to English.All government employees are now required to learn English, and everyone here from lawmakers to taxi drivers to students to businesspeople seems to believe that the usefulness of French, introduced by Belgian colonizers, is coming to an end.
"When you look at the French-speaking countries -- it's really just France, and a small part of Belgium and a small part of Switzerland," Theoneste Mutsindashyaka, Rwanda's state minister for education, said in English. "Most countries worldwide, they speak English. Even in China, they speak English. Even Belgium, if you go to the Flemish areas, they speak English, not French."
. . .
As a minor bonus, Mutsindashyaka -- who is in charge of rolling out the English-language curriculum for 2.6 million students and 50,000 teachers -- said he was happily surprised to find that English textbooks are far cheaper than French ones. A fourth-grade English math book costs 70 cents, for instance, compared with $4 for the French version.
Economies of scale, I guess.
Further: I thought I'd google around on the issue and found this blog: The Worldwide Decline of French, whose tagline describes it thus: "This is the only web log to specialize in the declining use of the French language, both globally and within France itself. We use recent and less recent web articles, blog entries and books written in French, English, German and other languages to document the failure of costly Francophonie policies in- and outside France."
Here's the Unfrench Frenchman on Rwanda.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:28 PM
October 23, 2008
Michelle Rhee - the most important teacher in America?
When I'm feeling optimistic about American Lower Education I think that Michell Rhee is the best chance we've got. Read this US News and World Report article and see what you think.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:28 AM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2008
Using Art to talk about elections, or elections to talk about art?
Well, it's probably fair either way - need a teaching resource for elections? Use a Caleb Bingham 1852 painting, The County Election and the resource guide from the National Endowment for the Humanities called Picturing America to drive the K-12 classroom discussion. The quick introduction points out:
* It depicts an election that took place in 1850, in Saline County, Missouri.
* The artist had, in fact, run for a place in the State Legislature during this election.
* There is one African American present in the scene.
* There is one more African American present in the scene than there is a woman.
* In one canvas, there exists the perfect opportunity to discuss and reflect upon the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Just saying.
I came across this on about.com's art history page.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:40 AM | Comments (1)
September 10, 2008
What? The Obama Girls go to a Non-Government School?
So it is with huge grief-filled disappointment that I discovered that the Obamas send their children to the University of Chicago Laboratory School (by 5th grade, tuition equals $20,286 a year). The school's Web site quotes all that ridiculous John Dewey nonsense about developing character while, of course, isolating your children from the poor. A pox on them and, while we're at it, a pox on John Dewey! I'm sick to death of those inspirational Dewey quotes littering the Web sites of $20,000-plus-a-year private schools, all those gentle duo-tone-photographed murmurings about "building critical thinking and fostering democratic citizenship" in their cherished students, living large on their $20,000-a-year island.
And it's in the New York Times.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:57 PM
August 30, 2008
Church bells and waves of nostalgia
The Methodist Church chimes just rang six o'clock - and then played the bit of Brahms' First Symphony which some of my readers know by heart as the Bright School Song. There - bet you're humming already, Shelton! Follow the link and you can download the music for Country Gardens, too!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:05 PM | Comments (0)
July 8, 2008
What you get if you don't make young people tuck in their shirts!
And here I always thought they just wanted us to look neat.
via Joanne Jacobs
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:16 AM
January 12, 2008
This is an odd story of suicide in academe
This is a very strange story - the president of Woodward Academy, one of the really good prep schools in Atlanta, committed suicide
Payne came to Woodward in 2000 after resigning abruptly from elite Williams College in Massachusetts, where at the time he left he was the highest-paid college president in the country, with more than $878,000 in salary and benefits as part of special package related to his departure, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.On Monday, he gave a speech at a Woodward Academy faculty and staff luncheon, and Johnson said he seemed upbeat and "was at the top of his game." Hours later, Payne's body was found outside the Marriott Courtyard in midtown Atlanta.
I'm hoping that the Atlanta-based European historian readers might have some links to send!
Thanks, Dan, for the pointer.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:09 AM
May 8, 2007
Save the Catholic Schools!
A non-Catholic's call to save the urban Catholic schools in City Journal. The article centers on Rice High School in Harlem but certainly doesn't stop there. Here's a bit:
We almost lost Harlem’s Rice High School a few years ago. And what a defeat that would have been for all New Yorkers, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. For the past three decades, Rice has rescued at-risk African-American boys and turned them into responsible men who go on to college and then give back to the community. Yet despite this academic success, Rice almost succumbed to the demographic changes and financial pressures that have led to the closing of thousands of excellent inner-city Catholic schools and needlessly deepened the nation’s urban-education crisis.
Read it all - it's a great article about what can be done - but Stern doesn't skirt the hard issues - money, changes in religious orders, demographic shifts, competition from the public schools.
via Eduwonk, one of my daily reads.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM
November 21, 2006
On teaching English grammar
I've been thinking about language teaching lately (see the Latin textbook post) and a fragment of my past swam into view that reminded me of one of the basic problems in teaching 2nd languages - lack of clarity about the structure of your own first language.
As long ago as 1970, whoever was choosing textbooks at my grammar school decided that there wasn't anything on the market in North America that satisfied her. So in third or fourth grade (1969 or 1970 - I forget which year it was, though I seem to remember the book showing up for more than one year) we used an Australian grammar series. It was an ugly little brown book with wacky marsupials on the cover and in the example sentences - but we learned prescriptive English grammar.
Then in 7th grade we had a particularly unattractive little workbook designed entirely to assure the 8th grade Latin teacher that we understood the parts of speech and how they worked. The teacher had written the book himself and called it A Brief, Usable Grammar. And if you made a mistake diagramming a sentence at the board, woe betide you!
So when I take students to Italy who are going to be studying Italian in an immersive situation in which all grammar explanation is in Italian, I require them to buy and take with them English Grammar for Students of Italian. I don't think it matters how talented the Italian teachers are (and they're great!) or how smart the American students are - there will be times when what they need is an explanation not in the target language but in English - especially when, like most contemporary Americans - they know so little about how English works.
When I taught high school Latin (1990-1999, with one year off to finish the dissertation) I knew damn well that most of my students couldn't do much more on the first day than tell an English noun from a verb - and they couldn't explain very well how they could distinguish the two. That's a big part of why I reject direct methods that don't begin with serious grammatical analysis in English of both English and the target language.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM
November 15, 2006
On Language learning, particularly Latin
I commented a few times on Rich Leonardi's post on learning Latin - he was asking for suggestions for what text to use next and stepped into the direct method (sometimes called "natural") vs. traditional method vs. modern linguistic method trap.
Me, I firmly believe in the direct method to be used by native or highly competent non-native speakers who are instructing little children (what? You don't want to hire someone as a live in tutor?), the traditional method of grammar and extensive memorization for anyone past puberty, and the modern linguistic method for someone working in a classroom with a modern linguist. Resources for all three types exist for learning Latin, though some are more available than others.
Rich Leonardi was wondering about the decision between the workhorse traditional Wheelock's Latin, Collins Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, and Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina. I own the first two and was criticized for criticizing the third without having seen it (I swear I criticized the method, not the book or its otherwise unknown-to-me author). I do, however, own a different direct method course from a group called The Family of St. Jerome which denounces the 'traditonal' grammars in the same terms in which the advocate for Orberg's series denouced Wheelock. Let's see what the two have to say:
Rich's commenter Scott said about the non-direct method:
If you want to learn to _puzzle_ through syntax, and _decode_ Latin (rather than understand it as a language), pick up Wheelock's or Collin's.
The Family of St. Jerome says about the direct method over others:
...you learn from the very beginning to think in Latin and to avoid the usual method of "deciphering and decoding" by grammatical analysis and by constructing "translations".
Do you see a pattern here? You should. This is a pedagogical position that attacks other methods. That makes me feel better about attacking their approach (not them, their approach).
The direct method is indeed the way babies learn languages. Adults have great powers to puzzle through problems and decode - it's part of what separates us from the pre-pubertal.
That's why the "direct method" is not how adults learn languages best, even in a total immersion environment - and that's not an environment that most of us can pull off for home instruction. I tried it for Italian in 2002-03, including a 5 month stay in Rome. I had a 30 day immersion course and then during the five month stay 4 lessons a week - all with extremely well-prepared native speakers. Yes, I learned to speak Italian, but I'm still not sure if I did it as well as I did French at 19 - and I know my Italian vocabulary will never be as large as my French vocabulary. One of the serious problems of teaching languages for speaking rather than reading is that the repetition rate has to be much higher for aural (ear-aimed) learning; therefore there's just less vocabulary and fewer syntactic patterns presented in an oral/aural course than in a paper-based course. Here's an earlier posting of mine on spoken Latin in the modern world.
I learned Latin the unfair way - I went to a reasonably old-fashioned school that offered 5 years of Latin (8th-12th) and I took it all. I learned using Jenney - and not the new fangled edition with color pictures! Then I went to a college where the requirement for getting AP credit, if I remember correctly, was taking a course at level placed -- and I continued with Latin. We used to joke that the only requirement for majoring in classics was 4 or more years of high school Latin, and that rings reasonably true (though one of the two classicists here at these Colleges didn't take a classical language until college, but she's smart as a whip and had 4 years of German and at least some French in high school).
Have you ever heard the old saw "What's the best Bible version?" "The one you READ!" I feel much the way about the following. Anything you do and do consistently will work, but . . . here's a list of my suggestions for those learning Latin divided by the kind of learner.
First of all - decide on your target!
This is essential. Every professional language text author has made a selection of vocabulary to teach and has repeated the most important words frequently in example sentences to drill your memory. What's the goal? To read Caesar in 2nd year Latin? To let you read the Aeneid in 4th year Latin? To participate in the Mass? To pray the Breviary in Latin? Those are very different vocabulary lists! If you bought an old edition of Jenney and then tried to follow the Mass you'd be lost. If you memorize Scanlon & Scanlon perfectly you'll find Caesar very, very hard going - let alone Virgil.
Are you an adult who wants to read Cicero?
Why on earth? Oh - pardon me - I don't wish to question your motives! Latin is wonderful, whyever you want it.
1. Sign up for formal courses with someone who knows Latin.
2. Buy Wheelock and hire a tutor (I tutored someone through Wheelock once myself).
3. Buy Wheelock and join a self-study group - here's an online one called Atrium which I found through Rich Leonardi's follow up posting.
In at least the first two cases there's money involved - that is a fine mechanism to motivate an already interested adult to keep up with assignments. Adults need puzzles and interesting sentences to read. Some of us do better at memorizing verb conjugations than others, but an adult learner can see the pattern and extend the pattern much more readily than a 12 year old.
4. Don't buy Wheelock and do it all by yourself. It's way, way, way too complicated. So is Latin grammar in general - you need a guide.
Are you an adult who wants to understand the Mass?
1. Buy Scanlon and Scanlon's Latin Grammar and Second Latin - especially if you are a devotee of the 1962 Missal. They were designed, as far as I can tell, for previously unlucky (pre-1968) religious and laity who hadn't been tracked into Latin in high school. They're the two dullest books in the world physically, but they have a controlled and graduated vocabulary list based on the Mass and the Psalter. If you memorized every word in the Grammar you'll do o.k. with the missal and breviary. 2nd Latin is aimed at the same audience who now want to read philosophy, theology, and canon law.
2. Buy Collins's Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, which is much the same thing. I've never used it to teach or studied its vocabulary lists, but it seems less complete to me. It's a one-volume version of Scanlon & Scanlon and mixes and matches its order. S&S has the virtue of restricting the vocab and syntax in vol. I. Back in September when I was contributing to Rich Leonardi's question post I spotted an online study community for Collins, though, so that would help.
3. Buy one of the direct methods sets for the sake of hearing it. The Family of St. Jerome (see above) not only offers a course, but has lots of recorded books of the Bible. Father Suitbert H. Siedl, of St. John of the Cross, O.C.D., has a German accent that drives me NUTS, but you may not react that way. Don't think you're going to learn Latin by listening to tapes anymore than folks learn Spanish in the car on the way to work who aren't massively linguistically talented already - but hearing won't hurt, especially if you stick to the Psalter while using the Scanlons' book. Oh - and the "direct method" in its pure practice depends on native or near-native speakers and frequent contact; that's why it just won't happen on your own. Sorry.
So you're an adult with long-ago Latin who wants to expose your children to the language?
This is the hardest category. You're going to have to recommit to learning some Latin. The target is also messy - do you want ecclesiastical (complete with Italianate pronunciation) or classical (with the modern reconstructed classical pronunciation one tends to learn in high school and college in America)? How old are they?
One resource I'd recommend is a phrase book, like the Family of St. Jerome's Quomodo Dicitur (How is it said?) - that kind of thing is fun and handy for answering questions. Children always want to know things no one can answer without reference books. Bolchazy-Carducci sells a computer based version called Words of Wisdom from the Ancients which looks very interesting - but they admit it's aimed at high school and college students.
For the ecclesiastically-inclined I'd recommend getting the texts of the standard daily prayers in Latin and starting there (there are any number of books or places on the web to find Latin prayers). You already know what they mean - but finding a decent word-by-word break down of the syntax is trickier. I think the best system is to teach children to parrot the prayers (but to separate the words carefully) and then move on to analysis. I managed to explain the dative better to a bunch of home school children using the Lord's prayer (give TO US our daily bread) and the Rosary (pray FOR us) than with anything else. Of course, the home schooled tended already to know English grammar. The prayers are a limited vocabulary to start with, but kind of an eccentric one. I mean, is it really useful for any reason other than praying the Rosary to learn the Latin word for belly/womb and no other body parts? Cotidianum is not a word I have run across often in Latin other than in the Lord's Prayer.
Buy a Cassell's dictionary - it has Latin/English AND English/Latin - it helps.
While googling I found this great bibliography of Latin for Kids - you have to scroll for the language resources - but just look at all the great books about the classical world! They have some neat things - the one which I'd like to try out is Minimus: Starting out in Latin, aimed at the 7-11 year old set, which comes from the British Joint Association of Classical Teachers. There are lots of resources in that JACT constellation, too. The JACT upper level books are a little 'direct' for my taste, but they're still sound.
No list of classical resources for home or school would be complete without a plug for and link to the Bolchazy Carducci folks! They publish masses of interesting stuff - including Artes Latinae, the mid-20th century linguistics-driven direct method system, which I understand is very popular with home schoolers. Again, I think the promotional literature overstates wildly the accessibility of this material to people without good guides (whether full-time teachers or occasional tutors). The current version includes options for "classical" and ecclesiastical pronunciations, which is an enormous concession on their part to the market. Bolchazy has grammars and readers and workbooks of all sorts.
The best thing about teaching the small is that you get to use games. Even when I taught high school I used chocolate kisses to teach the indirect object (Da MIHI basia mille!) but it can go a lot further. Use post-it notes to label everyday objects Door = porta or janua, floor = solum, chair = sedes or sella. When you get to hinge = cardo you'll realize that eventually you need to start teaching the oblique cases, because you can't get cardinal without cardinis, but hey - it's a process. This, by the way, is how I learned the names for Italian household objects - that and a picture Duden!
Animal noises! All language learning should include animal noises! Here's Dr. Weevil's quiz.
Omigosh! I forgot English Grammar for Students of Latin! This is a great series - buy it for every language anyone in your house is trying to learn. I, again, had an unfair advantage. Captain Tate, my 7th grade English teacher, believed in teaching the English subjunctive (after all, weren't we all going to be begin learning foreign languages that had a lot more of it left?) and diagramming sentences. In 8th grade Latin I Mr. Humphreys seldom had to explain the difference between noun and verb, subject and object. Imagine the luxury!
Thanks to TVG from Atlanta for asking me for more detail. I hope this helps!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 PM
June 2, 2006
The word is Ursprache
I love spelling bees - naked competition! Excellence on stage! Trivia!
I think I may do a spelling bee in Art 101 in the fall....
Here's a nice story on this year's national bee.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:50 AM
April 12, 2006
Education Policy: Partisan. Bi-partisan. Non-partisan.
Jay Mathews has an interesting article in the Washington Post on education policy and partisanship. He's looking at a dispute between various folks about the identification of policy suggestions as non-partisan, whether by the suggesters themselves or by the press.
Read the article here.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM
April 10, 2006
The first SAT lawsuit
One of the high school seniors whose SAT was misscored is suing.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:25 AM
February 28, 2006
How to GET to College Graduation
One of the best regular things to read on education in America is the Washington Post "Class Struggle" columnn by Jay Mathews; this week he has an especially interesting one about a government report on success in college -- how to graduate.
Lots of the advice is particularly aimed at the less-likely-to-succeed, but some of it explains things that have been bothering me here at these Colleges, a place where really all our student could do the work pretty easily. Here are some excerpts:
But many of our assumptions about how they managed that feat are wrong, Adelman says. For instance, despite our national obsession over picking the right school, Adelman shows is it not where you go to college but how you use that time in college that most closely correlates with getting a college degree. If you earn at least 20 credits your first year, don't take more than one break from college of more than a semester (not counting summers) and keep your grades up, your chances of getting a bachelor's degree are very good.Here in the highly selective liberal arts zone we believe in the where a lot -- part of what we sell is admissions anxiety -- but he makes a great point. Here's one that I wish we would take to heart:Also, Adelman says, it is not true that freshman year is the make or break time for undergraduates. Ninety percent of them show up for sophomore year, although those with bad first-year grades are unlikely to survive much longer.
He says colleges that allow students to drop courses with no penalty long after an initial sampling period, or allow students to repeat no-credit remedial courses, are creating conditions that raise the likelihood that those students will not graduate. They are also are depriving other students of a chance to fill those seats.We have an especially late drop deadline and a horrific policy of an "honorable withdrawal" that does both of those things. I have had a number of advisees who "walk but don't graduate" -- who are allowed to walk across the stage and get an empty diploma holder; if they complete the 1 or 2 courses within a set time and transfer the credit back they can get a diploma for their original class year. The usual patter is that these students have used their honorable withdrawals and dropped below the minimum number of courses in more than one semester. I'd never heard anyone point out that those students are keeping others out of the seats -- which now seems incredibly obvious I'll try to use that argument the next time we discuss the policy. And it's not that I don't appreciate a marginally smaller class than I had intended when the drop deadline comes close and a few seats empty out, but I do think about those who I turned away earlier in the term.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:54 AM
February 27, 2006
Field Trips for Peace
high school Peace Studies - protesting for credit.
Students might spend one class period listening to a guest speaker who opposes the death penalty and another, if they choose, standing along East West Highway protesting the war.Yeah, I've always found that offering students course credit for standing around outside is very conducive to participatory learning. Civic engagement, protesting on school time.But that, students said, is part of the course's appeal.
"We're all mature enough to take it all in with a hint of skepticism," said Megan Andrews, 17. "We respect Mr. McCarthy's views, but we don't absorb them like sponges."
And if someone got hit by a car? I'm really surprised the district doesn't put a stop to this silliness masquerading as instruction on those grounds, alone.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 PM
December 16, 2005
Optimism.
Many American students don't work very hard. We don't know their potential until they're held to high expectations and taught by competent teachers. Maybe it will turn out that the gap can't be closed 100 percent. It can be narrowed.That's Joanne Jacobs on the achievement gap, and it's why you should rush out and buy a copy of Our School where you can read about people who find ways to get low-achieving students to work hard and become achievers. It's pretty inspiring stuff. It's hard -- very hard -- but it can be done.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:23 AM | Comments (2)
December 7, 2005
Joanne's Book
Do you have a library you occasionally give books to? Do you buy uplifting non-fiction for anyone? Do you wonder how charter schools work from the inside? Have you ever wanted to start a school yourself? Go buy Joanne Jacob's book Our School : The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM
December 5, 2005
Like How-to Fixerup Programs?
This story about a DC city school renovation and its cost overruns reads like a how-not-to guide. Yeesh.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 AM
December 1, 2005
Rain delay
Cnn.com tells us that even the public schools in New Orleans are now reopening. In contrast, the Cathedral Academy reopened October 17th. Those wacky Dominicans! I like htis note on the school News page:
Uniforms: Students coming from other schools are permitted to wear their school uniforms during this year. If a student does not have a uniform, they must obtain one by November 15th. Plain navy blue or khaki skirts and pants are permitted in place of uniform plaids. (See a sample of the plaid on the "Wish List" button.)
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:39 AM
November 16, 2005
Another Professor with no sense of history
"It will change . . . the way children everywhere think about themselves in relation to the world," said Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus of education and media technology at MIT, believing that the result may be less violence and dissension as kids plug into education and international culture.Well, evidence of the 20th century aside. Germany was the most literate country in the world . Education doesn't make people better - it makes them more efficient. That doesn't reduce violence and dissension -- it just makes it more murdereous.
This is all in praise of a promised $100 laptop to revolutionize education in developing countries. I always read articles like this and think that if computers are so great why don't we do something about making them cheaper here, first?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:59 AM
Good News from the Supreme Court for School Districts
This Washington Post story reports a ruling from the Supreme Court that seems to promise to cut down on litigation over Special Education, which would be a Good Thing.
A federal law, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, guarantees disabled students an education tailored to their individual needs -- and gives families a right to a formal hearing before a neutral decision maker if they believe school officials have not come up with a good enough plan.I agree with someone in the story that this won't block parents from disagreeing with IEPs, but it may cut down on the number of disagreements that end up in court. That would be a very good thing.Jocelyn and Martin Schaffer of Potomac felt an education plan for their learning-disabled son Brian was unacceptable and argued that it was up to the Montgomery County public schools to defend it. They sought $17,000 in tuition reimbursement for the year Brian spent in a private middle school after disagreeing about his education plan.
In practice, the vast majority of litigation in special-education cases is initiated by families seeking changes to individualized education programs, known as IEPs, proposed by the schools.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:53 AM
November 10, 2005
Yay, Joanne!
Go order Joanne Jacobs' book! Our School : The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds. Maybe you should go order it through her blog, in case she has an Amazon affiliate thing set up so that she gets points? That's here. If you click on my first link there won't be any of that - I don't have any advertisements or paybacks set up.
Joanne was one of the main reasons I started blogging, by the way.
Joanne posts:Since none of the newspaper or radio coverage has kicked in yet, this will be a test of blogosphere marketing power. By posting about the book at 6:30 pm Eastern time yesterday, Glenn Reynolds moved the ranking from 490,648 to 5,980 by the end of the day. Let's see what today brings. When I bought my two at about 10:30 EST (one for me, one for a Christmas gift) it was at #1,715.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:28 AM
October 24, 2005
Eeek!
Remind me to tell my students not to bring snakes in shoe boxes to school. Alternative headline, "Catholics Don't Believe in Snake Handling Anyway, Though We Do Wash Feet."
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:26 AM
October 19, 2005
Podcasting in Elementary Education
Here's a story in the Washington Post about podcasting in elementary education. As a devoted user of audio books on my iPod, I think this could be useful. One sad fact of modern American life is how poorly many students read aloud -- I found that again when students in my European Studies 101 read their favorite aphorism from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius on Monday.
Too many of them, even at a high priced and reasonably selective institution like these Colleges, read aloud haltingly. It was seldom painful to listen to, but they don't all read fluently at first sight. Early practice for podcasting would help that!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:03 AM
October 1, 2005
Highschool football
If some sense of tribal loyalty compels one to attend a highschool football game, it is good for one's team to crush the opponent 42-17. Especially if during one's own youth the opponent regularly crushed one's team. Hah, hah!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 AM | Comments (1)
August 25, 2005
Block Scheduling - Does it Work?
The Washington Post has a collection of anecdotes about block scheduling in one Northern Virginia school system; the general impression is that this isn't a magic solution to our woes, either.
It's interesting, but no one expressed what I thought would be a serious drawback. Let's say Mary and Louise both take Latin I in 9th grade under a block schedule and Latin II in 10th grade under a block schedule. Mary takes Latin I in the 2nd semester and Latin II in the first semester. She would have the summer slippage, but she would also have 90 minute classes from January to December of one calendar year -- I think she would do pretty well. What about Louise, who gets stuck with Latin I in the fall term of her 9th grade year and Latin II in the spring term of her 10th grade year? Even if she's a good student that puts an entire calendar year between the two courses. No block schedule advocate (and there were lots percolating around Atlanta in the 1990s) even tried to convince me that this wouldn't happen regularly.
I think that would be an academic disaster for Louise. Mary - hmm. I think she'd benefit; how much is open to question.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:06 AM
August 23, 2005
Lawyering Up for High School Sports
For the first time this season, Severna Park Athletic Director Wayne Mook required his coaches to record running times and player evaluation grades, then hand in that paperwork to him. It is an arduous process that many coaches find tiresome, but Mook instituted it for a reason: After a player was cut from the girls' lacrosse team last spring, the family hired lawyers to meet with the school.That's really the best part of this story (the rest is the sad tale of a lad who works hard but doesn't make it -- sorry to spoil the suspense).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:29 AM
August 11, 2005
Charter school successes?
KIPP students are in school at least nine hours a day, compared with fewer than seven hours in regular public schools. Three weeks of summer school is mandatory. Students are urged to call teachers at home if they have questions about homework. Those who do not complete homework are disciplined. Good work and behavior are rewarded with points toward items from the student store and school trips, from which students with few points are excluded. Teachers are trained to be very active in their classrooms, involving all children in lessons and taking points off from those who do not pay attention.Is it much of a surprise that the KIPP schools seem to be succeeding? I don't think so, but more studies will be done.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:47 PM
August 10, 2005
OK - let's try THIS -- Smaller Schools?
The New York Times ran a long article yesterday on New York's smaller schools experiment. This attempt at saving secondary education in America is predicated on school size (rather than class size).
The hope is that schools with fewer than 500 students will create a more intimate learning environment, improving attendance and achievement by making it easier to identify students' needs. Themes like peace and diversity are used to make school more engaging, even as the curriculums focus on basic requirements, not vocational training or electives.I think the "engaging" part isn't much use, but the size might help. Everything's anecdotal after the first year (the attendance records haven't even been reviewed to see if small school improve attendance) but the experiment will expand by another 50 or so schools this year. We'll see. The article sounds hopeful, and I have to admit that my predjudice is that surely 500 students is better than 3,000 -- but then I attended a small high school and spent a very discontented year teaching in a very large one.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM
July 20, 2005
Block that Euphemism!
Rather than use "fail," some British teachers wish to describe their students as having "deferred success."
via Joanne Jacobs.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:00 AM
June 23, 2005
Virginia drops PRAXIS I requirement for teachers
This Washington Post story talks about the changing requirements for teachers in Virginia -- including dropping a math requirement for non-math teachers.
What's not at all clear from the article is what the 'Instead, they will have to pass a new "literacy and communications skills" exam that will be introduced in January' is. Will it be a product of the ETS people, like Praxis? Will it be home-grown, in which case I dread the first 3 or 4 years of results and controversies.
I took the Praxis I a long time ago, by the way, and it really IS at the 8th-10th grade level (I was half-heartedly pursuing certification to teach high school Latin). If people can't pass it (the Post's anecdote has a PE teacher passing on her 6th attempt) they probably aren't capable of figuring their own grades.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:51 PM
June 22, 2005
"Why is my report card lying?"
Go read this. The college remediation industry is the biggest waste of money and time in America; everything it does was supposed to have been done earlier. My father always referred to these classes as "high school" when he taught them, and that's what they are. 8 out of 10 of the entering students at the "University" in question need remediation in English, 7 out of 10 in math. 80% are unprepared.
The students have been defrauded. They have been required to attend institutions (lets stop calling them "schools") which have wasted their time and taught them much less than they need.
via Joanne Jacobs and Eduwonk.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM
Revoking a Charter
The DC School Board revokes a school charter. As hopeful as charter schools are, they are experiments. Some experiments will fail. This one had 3 management companies (in 5 years, I think).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 AM
June 20, 2005
So what IS the Dropout Rate in Washington, D.C.?
The story is about discovering that flexibility can help some students finish high school (big duh!), but the hidden nugget of Educational Administration Truth is here:
School officials also acknowledge that their graduation, dropout and attendance statistics are unreliable and that they need to generate more accurate numbers so they can estimate how many youths would benefit from a five-year program.All that money and so little accountability with the numbers used to beg for more.One D.C. school system report showed that though 4,207 students enrolled as ninth-graders in 2000, only 2,740 graduated four years later. But the study did not account for students transferring into or out of the D.C. system.
The school system's official dropout rate is 6.9 percent. But that is based on the number of students in grades seven through 12 who dropped out during a school year. Most experts said they believe it is far better to calculate the dropout rate by following a ninth-grade class for four years and determining how many from that group quit school.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:28 AM
June 16, 2005
Day care or Education - what's the important part?
Mandatory, state-funded pre-school movements cut to the quick of the question about government schools -- day-care or education? Yes, both are real, but which is more important? Joanne Jacobs has an interesting post today on the California situation (it's an ongoing issue on her blog).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:42 AM
June 14, 2005
It's not about money.
Ignorant voters insist more money pour into the schools, not knowing California spends more on schools than the entire operating budgets of each of the 49 other states, including New York.That's Jill Stewart, who I found via Mickey Kaus. Go read the article. Whatever should be done with lower education, and the suggestions are myriad, "more money" isn't the place to start. And the ignorance is bipartisan:
The PPIC poll shows how misconceptions are driven by partisanship in California. Democrats tend to believe (ridiculously) that California’s prisons get the most state money. Republicans tend to believe (absurdly) that social welfare gets the most state money.And this is the union that took a half-day last month to protest in Sacramento.People are ignorant in part because our crisis-driven media often lazily push the myth that California is near “the bottom” in school funding. That myth is a product of the education lobby, led by the California Teachers Association, which makes sure California teachers earn the highest salaries in the nation, yet constantly whines that schools are under-funded.
Joanne Jacobs commented on the Stewart piece, too, but I hadn't noticed it there (which is odd, since I read her every day and kausfiles only every once in a while).
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM
June 10, 2005
High Schol Policy - Yeesh!
This seems pretty indefensible -- refusing a graduation walk over a bolo tie.
Those readers who know me understand (and those who only know me from here may be able to intuit) that I am no fan of the bolo tie. However, the school seems not to have exercised any definition of the code beyond "tie." They allowed bad ties. I understand the county-wide policy that "they [graduating seniors] are not to wear any kind of additional accents". A bolo tie would not, however, be additional.
Allowing a child to wear an orange tie with that godawful purple robe and mortarboard was considerably worse than allowing Mr. Benya to wear a bolo.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:18 PM
June 8, 2005
School Lunch Critic
I think I've asked recently if everyone who reads here reads Education Next regularly, but here's another fun article - What's for Lunch, by Mark Zanger, a professional food critic and author of a food history. Very interesting!
I always knew that the common school was a tool of homogenization in America, but I never really thought about the school lunch that way -- or the school lunch as a tool to improve cannon fodder. Click and read.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:30 AM
May 29, 2005
Education Next Out
The summer 2005 issue of Education Next is online - yay! Go browse and learn . . . so far I've read an article about reading instruction in Great Britain which seems to help boys a lot and an article about what principals learn and don't learn in education administration graduate degree programs.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:28 PM
May 27, 2005
Docents Back on at National Gallery -- Schoolchildren NOT relegated to what their teachers know about art
Update on earlier entry: I blogged not terribly long ago about the National Gallery's decision to suspend docent-led tours for school children for 18 months while they thought about what to do instead. I thought that was stoooopid.
Good news - the museum reconsidered and won't cancel the program. Somehow they'll soldier on and run tours and consider other options at the same time!! Your tax dollars very, very hard at work. Pffffft.
via ionarts
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:13 PM
The Abecedarian Project
It's always heartening to see follow-up to educational experiments. Joanne Jacobs provides a link to the the Carolina Abecedarian Project age-21 follow-up. The question - does early intervention with EDUCATIONAL pre-school do anything? The answer looks like "yes."
The problem I always see is that these are carefully designed, university-run day care centers. So how do you extend the "best practices"? By forcing day care workers to get education school certification? By requiring them to be literate? What? For every requirement you add you've just put your day care out of the reach of a lot of people. Are you going to make it free? With what pot of cash?
There's a really disturbing verb in the Executive Summary under "Policy Implications"
The Abecedarian study began treatment in early infancy, emphasizing the importance of providing a learning environment for children from the very beginning of life. my emphasis
"Treatment?" Oh, dear.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:51 AM
May 26, 2005
The Brave Counter Demonstrator
Darren at Right on the Left Coast attended the union rally (made easier by many schools teaching only a half-day yesterday so that teachers could go protest ) in Sacramento. He carried a sign that said I'm a teacher and I vote Republican and was harassed by someone wearing a police union t-shirt. Lovely. He says A.N.S.W.E.R. was involved. Lovely. Revolutionary Socialists and the CTA -- what a combination.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM
May 25, 2005
Want to be a K-8 Principal of a Catholic School in Seattle?
Go west, young person! Well, certified person who is a strong Catholic leader with teaching experience. I think a speaking knowledge of Spanish would help, too. Details at Open Book.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:26 PM
May 24, 2005
Charter School Successes
Joanne Jacobs relays some news on NYC charter school test scores. One hopes the New York Times notices.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:15 PM
May 19, 2005
How to improve test scores by 10% in just a few weeks.
Chris Corea on one way to improve test scores practiced by the state of Michigan -- redefine proficiency after the scores are released!
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:52 AM
May 11, 2005
Exam boost for pupils if pet dies
I read a horrific thing over at Cronaca just now. I didn't believe it. I clicked. Unless someone has hacked the BBC, it's true -- here's their story: Exam boost for pupils if pet diesGCSE and A-level pupils in England are given 5% more if a parent dies close to exam day or 4% for a distant relative. They get 2% more if a pet dies or 1% if they get a headache. Critics say the system panders to an "excuse for everything" attitude.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:10 PM
May 1, 2005
Centralization of Lower Education in New York City
Well, New York City's experiment in get-tough-centralization doesn't seem to be working so far, Diane Ravitch suggests.
Integral to the reorganization was 1) a complete centralization of all authority; 2) the elimination of the policy making powers of lay central and local boards, which were replaced by toothless boards; 3) imposition of a mandated citywide curriculum for all but a select number of exempt schools; 4) creation of a Leadership Academy to recruit and train principals. (The Leadership Academy spent $25 million in its first year and produced about 65 principals.)She has some numbers. She admits that the scores might go up in 2005, but note that they haven't, yet.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:08 AM
April 28, 2005
School Discipline Meltdown Gets to Newspapers
When a school discipline disaster involving marijuana use on a school field trip (to a foreign country -- I'm shuddering to think of a Costa Rican jail!) gets written up in the local papers it's a very bad thing for the school. And it's not just a local paper -- the Key School is in Annapolis and the paper is the Washington Post. Of course there are the "let them finish the year (or their education)" parents and the "back the administration" parents. And if one of them had gotten arrested? I bet no one would have backed the administration, then. Also, there's no mention in the story of previous offenses.
A friend of mine taught for a year at a school in North Georgia. Another teacher who came in the same year stayed at the school; he has led an annual field trip to the Gulf Coast for kayaking. This year one of the students drowned. I don't want to know how it's turned out.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM
April 27, 2005
Eduwonk
Remember - for all your not-Republican-education-person-but-pro-NCLB-needs go to Eduwonk. Click, scroll, as the angel said to St. Augustine.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:56 PM
Opening to Charters
The Washington, DC, Board of Education agrees to lease some underused (or unused) buildings to charter schools! Yay! They have an incentive:
A few hours before the board's vote, D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) introduced legislation that would provide the school system with an extra $100 million to repair and modernize buildings -- doubling the amount it was to receive next year -- if school officials make additional progress on using space more efficiently.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:23 PM
April 24, 2005
Remember Magnet Schools?
Here's an interesting article about the history of magnet schools from Education Next.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM
April 23, 2005
The NEA and NCLB
NCLB funding easily pays for the additional costs of testing. The lawsuit implies that educating poor and minority children is a new cost mandated by NCLB, not the ordinary business of the public schools.That's Joanne Jacobs on the NEA's attempt to portray No Child Left Behind as an unfunded mandate. Meanwhile, education spending is up (NOT a metric for good education, but it puts the lie to the NEA). As Ms. Jacobs points out, even the New York Times editorial board understand the NEA. The Times:
The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, made headlines this week when it engineered a lawsuit asserting that No Child Left Behind illegally requires states to spend their own money on enforcing new federal requirements. The N.E.A. has misrepresented the law to the public from the start, and the primary aim of its suit is to throw out the baby with the bath water. The union doesn't want a better No Child Left Behind Act; it wants to make the law disappear entirely.(my emphasis)
And here's Eduwonk on the same subject:
NCLB, though not without its flaws, is a law aimed at forcing states and school districts to do right by poor and minority kids. In the long run, does the NEA really want to be remembered for having gone to court to stop that?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:12 AM
April 22, 2005
21st Century School Malfeasance
It says something about the enormous wealth of America that a county school chief executive* can be accused of giving a ONE MILLION DOLLAR contract to his live-in girlfriend's employer.
The board hired the Chicago firm in response to controversy stemming from a $1 million purchase last year of educational software and equipment. Hornsby failed to disclose at the time of the purchase that he was living with a saleswoman for the vendor, LeapFrog SchoolHouse of Emeryville, Calif. He later denied wrongdoing.*he's a chief executive, not a superintendant. That says something, too.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:54 AM
April 21, 2005
Core Knowledge
Joanne Jacobs linked to a story of success today that's worth reading. City Journal reports on a charter school in New Haven that has a 6 year record now of success. There are lots of ingredients, but I'd like to single out the Core Knowledge curriculum. I would be delighted to teach students who had gone to school under that model. A great deal of my time is spent remediating for ignorance -- not reading ability, not poor writing skills, but ignorance. Core Knowledge would solve that problem. Go look; start with the "About Core Knowledge page - I think you'll be impressed.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM
April 20, 2005
The Principal, the School Secretary, and the Lunch Ladies?
How many non-teachers worked in your elementary school? More than you thought, of course, but more than 50%? Joanne Jacobs tells us (I'd link directly to her source, but it's a link to a "communique" rather than a hard link) that 18 states and the District of Columbia (of course) employ more non-teachers than teachers in K-12 education. The highest percentage of teachers is 65%.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:02 AM
April 12, 2005
Good News for Fidgetters
This is the first popular education news I've read in a while that raised my self-esteem -- Fidgeting Children Learn More.
via Mirabilis.ca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:21 PM
March 25, 2005
Speaking of Proofreading . . .
I commented about spelling a few days ago - the forth/fourth error is one I see occasionally - but seldom expect to see on the printed cover of a manual for FOURTH grade math teachers. The deputy chancellor for teaching and learning blames staff mistakes, the president of the United Federation of Teachers blames the evils of top-down administration (sharing and group work, of course, solves all errors). I blame poor reading skills and innumeracy. It only takes one person to proofread.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:13 AM
March 23, 2005
Spelling Woes
This is an absolutely fascinating article about spelling and brain science from the Washington Post; it's the kind of article that makes me marginally more sympathetic about my students -- though why they can't seek out proofreaders I don't know. Steve Hendrix, a career journalist, can't spell to save his life. A lifelong friend of mine - one of the best-educated people I know - is in exactly this position, too. Of course, he's left-handed, to boot, and we all know about those people.
Hendrix does seem to think that spelling education as practiced in his daughter's school is better than it was in his day, but is afraid that it's too late for him.
I came across this via Chris Nolan, who says she can't spell either.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM
March 2, 2005
The Absence of Merit Pay
Here's an interesting article at Education Next on the decline in quality of those entering the teaching profession. From the conclusion:
Put another way, we cannot expect high-performing college graduates to continue to enter teaching if that is the one profession in which pay is decoupled from performance. Indeed, other professions have been raising the reward for performance over the past few decades. We suspect that this trend exacerbated the degree to which pay compression pushed high-aptitude people out of teaching. A push from one direction has more effect on someone who is being simultaneously pulled from the other direction.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:10 PM
March 1, 2005
Work to Rule in Berkeley
There's awork to rule action on the part of teachers in Berkeley. No homework, since they haven't had a raise. No volunteering time for science fairs. I suppose they don't have an "other duties" clause. One of the sad things about this is how many teachers probably want to actually do their jobs (they were never, after all, being "paid to grade" -- it was part of the expected duties) but have been convinced that they are workers.
via Joanne Jacobs.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:29 PM
February 27, 2005
Bill Gates + National Governor's Association = Ray of Hope
I'm a pessimist about the possibility of systematic reform in American lower education, but the combination of Bill Gates and the governors might have some effect. It has little to do with the amount of money he's willing to spend (read through these charts* if you think American education is merely underfunded) but the fact that his money is a carrot outside their usual control. The governors, too, are mainly outsiders (though sometimes beholden to teacher organizations). We can hope.
*via Joanne Jacobs
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:55 AM
February 23, 2005
Interested in NEW Catholic Colleges?
If you have a strong feeling that people should go to NEW Catholic colleges because they're more likely to be orthodox than old ones, try this one - Southern Catholic College. I'm not at all sure that I agree with the put-your-college-in-an-isolated-location model*, but Dawsonville isn't far from Atlanta.
Read this article about the high level administrators at Southern Catholic. These are people with appropriate professional experience to do their jobs and with good local connections. They look well-financed, and without all the money coming from a single donor.
Their reason for starting the college isn't some quirky view of education or some idea that they will provide the salvation for Catholic education -- they wanted a Catholic college in the Atlanta area and they have the money. The archdiocese of Atlanta has seen an explosion of Catholic schools - both diocesan and independent - and this is the fruit of that growth. There are now at least 6 Catholic high schools in the archdiocese (4 diocesan, 1 Marist, 1 Legionaries of Christ**, 1 independent [though with an interesting relationship to the chancery]). THEN there are all those other Catholics across the South who are severely underserved by Catholic colleges without snow on campus.
*I know, I know - I teach in centrally isolated Geneva, NY. - but I chose to go to college in Houston, myself.
**Pinecrest is up to 10th grade this year, so in 2 years they'll be k-12. They already have 700 or so students. Demography in Atlanta is kinda scary.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 PM
February 16, 2005
Bible Classes, Public Schools
I never cease to wonder how districts doing this fend off lawsuits - Staunton, Virginia, sends 1st-3rd graders for 30 minute (once a week) Bible classes during the school day. The article mentions that so long as they are held off-premises the Supreme Court has allowed them, though. 80% of the students attend.
Here's the real mystery -- I also don't see why those who choose not to attend "sit idly." Make 'em read at their desks! The school board is going to "send teachers to workshops to develop instructional techniques for the period." We're talking 30 minutes, once a week; they're saying that certified teachers can't already develope an instructional plan to cover 30 minutes once a week for 20% of their usual student load?
whoops! I deleted a comment off of here by mistake - blacklist overenthusiasm. I hadn't even read it yet -- I was too quick off the click. By the way, my interest isn't the religious instruction, it's the CLUELESSNESS of the certified professionals who can't figure out what to do with an extra 30 minutes a week! --MCT
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:46 AM
January 26, 2005
Professor Plum Rants Again
The funniest take on the horrors of anti-racist "math" in Mass is from Professor Plum. Run read. See why reform has to start with a great pruning at the top. I wonder if there are a significant number of mathematically-literate parents out there supplementing their children's miseducation?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:50 AM
January 25, 2005
Underreporting Success - Heaven forbid we disclose information!
Every student in last year’s 11th-grade class at the DeBakey High School for Health Professions passed every section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.Heaven forbid we should -- shudder -- disclose information!
But officials at the Texas Education Agency are reluctant to report that happy news, fearing it might violate a federal law.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is designed to protect students’ privacy. The argument goes that, knowing 100 percent of the students passed a test would let the world know how each student did.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:54 AM
What Are Schools For?
Say you have to cut $18 million from your school district's budget. What goes? Who's brave enough to touch the live rail of American secondary education? No, I don't mean the classroom (though some teachers will go), but sports.A new edublog* by a math teacher considers the question for his district.
*Right on the Left Coast, noted via #2 Pencil
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:42 AM
January 19, 2005
Microsoft Counts Home Schoolers
In the latest MacConnection catalog I noticed that the Office:Mac 2004 Student and Teacher edition is available under these conditions: "Qualified Educational Users include: 1. Full of part-time students 2. Home-schooled students, 3. Full or part-time faculty or staff of an accredited educational institution" (my emphasis).
My.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:17 PM