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Education Opinion Halloween Edu-Parade, 2008!

It’s Halloween, and time for skoolboy to present eduwonkette’s second annual Edu-Parade. Here are some of the few costumes you won’t see at the Greenwich Village Halloween parade in New York City:

Education Opinion Where Do Teachers Come From? (Other than the Stork)

Recently, skoolboy’s students had a spirited discussion of Subtractive Schooling (SUNY Press, 1999), Angela Valenzuela’s wonderful book chronicling the social relations between teachers and students in Seguin, a Houston high school serving a high concentration of Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American youth. A central theme of the book is that teachers and students often fail to understand one another’s orientations and values, resulting in a kind of mutual alienation. Valenzuela, now on the faculty of the University of Texas-Austin (and founder of a blog on educational equity in Texas) demonstrated that students often felt that their teachers didn’t care about their family, community and national histories as Mexican immigrants with a strong attachment to Spanish language. In turn, many Seguin teachers felt that their students didn’t care about doing well in school. Both groups calibrated their effort and engagement with the other based on these perceptions. A particularly vivid quote from a teacher is: “’As if teaching were not enough to preoccupy myself with’ she sighed, and then continued in a more defensive tone, ‘It’s overwhelming to think that this is the level we’re dealing at, and frankly, neither was I trained nor am I paid to be a social worker.’”

Education Opinion Is the Term "Lame Duck" Offensive?

Maybe to a duck. The term originated in the world of finance, accompanying bulls and bears, and gravitated from referring to businessmen who couldn’t pay their debts to describing politicians who lose political power in anticipation of their scheduled loss of office. It’s hard not to view President George W. Bush and the men and women who surround him as lame ducks. But lame duck status generally doesn’t serve as a muzzle.

Education Opinion 2nd Annual Halloween Edu-Parade!

eduwonkette's Halloween parade last year was such a big hit, it's time for a reprise. Because she's on the road, skoolboy (who lacks her Photoshop chops) is at the wheel. Please post suggestions for parade participants and their costumes below, or e-mail them to me at skoolboy2 (at) gmail (dot) com. This year, participants will be on floats. There could be a big-city mayor float, with mayor-for-life Mike Bloomberg and Adrien Fenty; big-city superintendents, such as the ever-popular Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and Paul Vallas; high-flying free spenders, such as Eli Broad and Bill Gates; policy entrepreneurs, such as Wendy Kopp, Steve Barr, and Roland Fryer; and the bloggers you love to love or hate, such as Andy Rotherham, Checker Finn and the Flygirls/Flyboys, Kevin Carey, Deborah Meier & Diane Ravitch, and Alexander Russo. And how can we leave out last year's parade marshal, Margaret Spellings, or Randi Weingarten, or even Bill Ayers?

Education Opinion Educational Malpractice? Why NYC School Progress Reports Deserve an F

Apologies for being AWOL, folks - both skoolboy and I are on the road. Below, you can find the beginning of an op-ed about the NYC Progress Reports that the two of us wrote for our local West Side Spirit - the link to the full text is below.Click here to read the rest.

Education Opinion Miscellany: NYC Teaching Fellows Conundrum, Absenteeism, & Dorn-onomics

1) 8% of This Year's Teaching Fellows to Be Let Go in December: 139 teachers, or 8% of the 1840 teachers who joined the NYC Teaching Fellows June 2008 cohort, will be let go on December 5th because they have not yet been placed in a teaching position. As Gotham Schools reports, they are now organizing. Matthew Rudansky, a teaching fellow speaking for a group of Fellows that have banded together, explains the situation below:2) Broader, Bolder Plan to Address Absenteeism?: 20% of New York City elementary schoolers missed more than a month of school last year. I'm sure these kiddos enjoyed the fruits of the accountability revolution in NYC from home. Gotham Schools has a nice map up and the summary.

Curriculum Opinion Fall Books!

Dan Brown's book, The Great Expectations School, is out in paperback now with some new endorsements. (As a sidenote, it turns out that the two of us went to the same elementary school, pictured left, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and even shared four of six elementary school teachers.)

Education Opinion Brownsville's Station

On Tuesday, the Broad Foundation awarded the 2008 Broad Prize for Urban Education to the Brownsville, Texas School District. skoolboy has a soft spot in his heart for Brownsville: skoolboy’s spouse (who has made it clear that he is a dead man if he refers to her as Mrs. skoolboy here) is a product of the Brownsville schools, and she briefly taught English as a Second Language at the middle-school level there a long time ago. I don’t know enough about the Broad Foundation process or what the administrators and teachers in Brownsville have done to warrant this recognition to comment. But I imagine that very few readers here know much about Brownsville, so I wanted to tell you a little bit about the city on the border by the sea.

Education Opinion Carnival of Education! The Debate Edition

Have you noticed that presidential debates are a bunch of loosely related thoughts haphazardly pulled together? Kind of like this carnival. To pregame tonight’s debate, I let our fine candidates speak. I’ve done my best to give all of them, irrespective of party affiliation, a hard time - though may not have been entirely successful in achieving parity, and for that you will have to forgive me. Snippets of the candidates' real policy plans are drawn from McCain and Obama’s excerpted speeches in this month’s Phi Delta Kappan. Will McCain “whip Obama’s you-know-what?” Only time will tell. Enjoy.

Education Opinion And the winners are...

As a public service to the central district offices everywhere (and especially the NYC Department of Education), readers have proposed new names for administrative positions. I've chosen two winners:

Education Opinion Get Your Carnival Posts In!

I'm hosting the carnival on Wednesday, folks. Send your posts to me at eduwonkette (at) gmail (dot) com by 7pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, October 14th, or use this submission form.

Education Opinion Sol-lywood! Stern Hits the Big Screen on Mayoral Control

In this interview with Simon Doolittle at AfterEd, Sol Stern explains where mayoral control went awry, tries to sell you some stock in Lehman Brothers, and gives Mayor Bloomberg a gentleman's C. Watch a clip below, or check out the whole 15 minute interview here.

School Choice & Charters Opinion Cool People You Should Know: Cecilia Rouse

Ceci Rouse is a labor economist who teaches at Princeton. She has evaluated the effects of vouchers in Milwaukee, and more recently has studied the effects of accountability in Florida with fellow cool person David Figlio.

Education Opinion Driving Michelle Rhee, Plus: Joel Klein Needs Your Help!

If you just got laid off from Lehman, do I have an edu-job for you!

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