This Week In Education
Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education was an opinion blog that covered education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge. (For archives prior to January 2007, please click here. For posts after November 2007, please click here.) This blog is no longer being updated.
Education
Opinion
Friday Video Snippet ("Test The Kids!") & A New Blog
The irrepressible David Denis Doyle is now blogging (The Doyle Report) and it's already clear that one of his strengths is finding and posting video snippets like this music video whose refrain is "Test The Kids!":
School & District Management
Opinion
Three Lessons From Newark
The shooting of three Newark teenagers against the wall at a local elementary school playground earlier this week doesn't have much to do with education but may have a lot to do with education reform. First, it has put reform-minded Newark mayor Cory Booker on the defensive, potentially disrupting his efforts to revamp the state's largest urban school system. Second, as The Gadfly reminds us, it highlights the utter uselessness of NCLB's unsafe schools option. That's also a timely reminder of what happens when states and districts are allowed to come up with their own definitions (in this case, for "persistently dangerous"). Congressman Miller may say he wants a law that's fair and flexible, but we should all worry about what happens if he gets his wish.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Looking For More "Paying Kids" Examples, Good Or Bad
Joanne Jacobs points to another district, in Arizona, that's trying something similar to what they're planning in NYC (see "Paying Kids..." below). Are there any places that have tried this and it hasn't worked, I wonder? Or where it's worked but they've run out of money for it like with teacher bonuses?
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Lessons From A Select School?
US News interviews author Alec Klein about what lessons there might be from super-selective schools like New York City's Stuyvesant High School, which admits just 3 percent of the kids who take the entrance exam (Lessons From a Select High School). He says parents, many of them poor immigrants, are remarkably involved in the school, and that the school makes itself a home away from home for the students.
Federal
Opinion
More Tests! Can States & Testing Industry Handle "Multiple Measures"?
Gerald Bracey points out in this Huffington Post post (Nothing Will Happen with NCLB) that adding more tests (ie, multiple measures) is no guaranteed solution because it could well overwhelm the testing infrastructure. It's an interesting argument, in part because I hadn't heard it before and mostly because it puts Bracey in the position of arguing against multiple measures.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Childhood Rebellion -- And Phonics? -- The Cat In The Hat Turns 50
"In the 50 years since The Cat in the Hat exploded onto the children's book scene, Theodor Seuss Geisel—pen name "Dr. Seuss"—has become a central character in the American literary mythology, sharing the pantheon with the likes of Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald," according to this US News story (The Birth of a Famous Feline). "The particular endurance of Cat, many critics say, is owed partly to its origins in an emerging philosophy of phonetic learning. Most of the 236 individual words in the book were taken from a list of beginner words for new readers, and only a few are more than one syllable."
School & District Management
Opinion
Paying Kids & Parents To Do Better In School - What's The Difference?
Though it's not my favorite thing in the world, I'm not nearly as opposed as some are to the idea of paying poor kids and their parents for doing things like going to school and doing well there. And it's not just because a young Harvard professor named Roland Fryer (pictured) says it's a good idea, or because it's worked in Mexico.
Federal
Opinion
The Left Slaps Down The Center During Primary Season
Hard times for centrist Democrats when NCLB reauthorization is lurching left and all the candidates go to YearlyKos in Chicago and no one shows at the DLC confab. So much for claims that left-right politics were a thing of the past -- during primary season at least.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Indigo Kids -- And More
Tucked into the corner of a fancy-looking website funded by Knight and others is this story about so-called "indigo" children: Indigo Children. "Some parents believe their children are the vanguard of a new generation of gifted kids sent to save the world — but many doctors say these kids may need medical help." But that's barely the start of it, according to this review (Students produce the future of newsgathering). "These student presentations are better than anything I've seen from "real" news agencies and could serve as a model for the future of interactive/online journalism."