Web Watch
Teacher’s look at education news from around the Web. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teaching profession.
Education
Hold the Presses
In 2004, Teri Hu, a California teacher was removed as the advisor for the student newspaper after it questioned the judgment of the school and a teacher, according to the San Francisco Gate. Last spring, it was widely reported that Amy Sorrell, an Indiana journalism teacher was placed on paid leave for insubordination and then transferred after the student newspaper ran an article advocating gay rights. The 1988 Supreme Court ruling, Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, allows principals and teachers to censor objectionable articles in public school newspapers, but what protects the many teachers who are demoted or lose their jobs in the fray?
Education
Papal Picketing
The Lay Faculty Association, a teacher’s union representing over 450 lay educators in New York City Catholic schools, is threatening to strike when Pope Benedict XVI visits the city for the first time next week as pope, according to the Daily News. Union leaders have been negotiating for new contracts and have protested their comparatively low pay, which, coupled with rising costs of living, falls well below the average for public school teachers in the city. They’re hoping that the threat of a strike at a time when the Catholic Church is in the national spotlight can bring the Archdiocese of New York back to the bargaining table.
Education
Too Much Freedom of Speech or Too Much Money?
A Facebook/MySpace war being waged at Horace Mann, an elite private school in New York City populated by children of the rich and powerful, is raising questions that even lesser mortals have been grappling with. For example: Who has the right to control online teacher taunting? In lurid detail, New York magazine describes the disturbing Internet hijinks played on Web sites, including Mann’s own Facebook group page, by the school’s students and their powerful parents who protect them. The imbroglio erupted at the high school after students posted lewd and exploitive comments about their teachers (one referring to a faculty member as an “acid casualty” is about the only expletive suitable for printing here).
Education
Remembering Dr. King
Across the country people are sharing memories on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Some are from the classroom.
Education
The Truth and Beauty of Science
A seminar at Boston’s Museum of Science combines a passion of many young girls with an industry in which many of them are missing: makeup and science. Cosmetic Chemistry is designed to pique their interest in the subject by teaching the science of beauty products, according to the New York Times.
Education
Benchmark Breakdown
Tensions are high in a San Antonio school district as allegations surfaced that New Braunfels Middle School principal John Burks threatened to kill the school’s science teachers if they did not improve their science scores on the TAKS test, a Texas standardized exam, and other benchmarks. According to Anita White, one of the four teachers present for the outburst, in an interview with a KSAT12 News, "He stated if the scores were not to his liking, he would kill us all and then kill himself. He was very emphatic, he was not laughing, he was not being funny.” She said he threatened her again on the day she was reassigned to another local school, calling her into his office to tell her, “I told you I was ruthless.”
Education
Politics in the Classroom
The heated Democratic presidential primary is apparently boiling over into the schoolhouse. To wit: A Delaware government commission is investigating a complaint from a ten-year-old student that her teacher alledgedly told her class that she would not vote for Barack Obama because he is a Muslim who “believes in different things and is scary,” according to Delaware’s News Journal. The alledged incident occurred before the February 5th Super Tuesday mock election at Lord Baltimore Elementary School in the Indian River School District.
Education
Car Wars
Tensions are high in the nation’s fourth largest school district. Unionized teachers in the Miami-Dade district are charging that administrators, led by 2008 AASA Superintendent of the Year Rudy Crew, are exacting an excessive cost on the school’s already stretched budget. Specifically, they point to reports showing that 413 district officials earn in excess of $100,000 a year and that 31 employees have district owned-cars (ranging from Crews’ 2007 GMC Yukon’ to, oddly, a 1998 Chevy Monte Carlo valued at $645). Meanwhile, schools are facing some $200 million cuts over the next year, and teachers are in a contractual battle over health insurance premiums.
Education
Testing and Mental Health
Teachers in the U.S. have been known to voice strong opinions about standardized testing, but the Brits appear to be taking things to a new level. In a speech this week at the annual conference of the UK’s Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Mary Bousted, the union’s secretary general, charged that testing in schools not only detracts from learning, it’s also contributing to an increase in mental illness among students. “Children suffer stress and anxiety as the test loom and the rise in [British] children’s mental health problems cannot be divorced from their status as the most tested in the world,” she said.
Education
Microphone Check
Technological advances have fueled a growth in the use of special microphones and speaker sets in the classroom that promise even the most soft-spoken teachers the ability to be fully heard by their students. Originally intended only for classrooms with special needs students, many schools are planning to install systems in all of their classrooms at a cost of up to $1,500 a room, according to a report by The New York Times.
Education
Over a Barrel: Pensions and Slots
The Baltimore Sun reports that Maryland State Senate President, Thomas V. Mike Miller is putting pressure on the leaders of the Maryland State Teachers Association to support a referendum to legalize slots in order to raise hundreds of millions of education dollars. In a do-or-die scenario, Miller told the MSTA that a failure to support the measure would cause the General Assembly to seek other funding sources for teacher pensions (like counties and school boards). State Comptroller Peter Franchot, who has other ideas for filling the coffers (like putting pressure on tax evaders), said Miller was giving the MSTA a “false choice.” “I keep reminding them [the MSTA],” said Franchot “that slots are forever; the budget problems we have are temporary.”
Education
Why Can't We All Just Get Along?
Earlier this year, researchers reported that the number one source of frustration for teachers is parents. This week, the L.A. Times provided details on just how strained those relations can be, particularly, and this may come as no surprise, during conference time. In spite of the mood lighting and refreshments that some teachers offer to tamp down tension, stories of parents striking students or towering over their teachers or refusing future meetings can make for unpleasant encounters.
Education
Banning Bully
Canada’s Globe and Mail reports that a worldwide coalition of teachers’ unions is denouncing this week’s release of the video game Bully: Scholarship Edition for “condoning bullying in school.” The Wii and Xbox 360 game features a boarding school bully who harasses students by assaulting them, pushing their heads in toilets, and photographing them naked. Emily Noble, the president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation which is spearheading the protest, said the game “doesn’t help us as teachers in the work that we’re doing at school.” Teachers’ unions in the U.S., Canada, Britain, South Korea, and Australia, among other countries, want stores to ban the game.
Education
Grades for Contraband
Last week in New York City, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced the start of another student-incentive program, according to the New York Times. For 2,500 Brooklyn middle school and charter school students, Samsung flip-phones with 130 prepaid minutes will be their reward for doing well in school. Teachers and administrators will be able to text reminders to students about homework or say, an upcoming test. How can students, who are not known for telephonic brevity, earn more minutes? Behave in school, maintain good attendance, and keep their grades up.