September 5, 2008

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McCain-Bush GOP Policy Agenda: “Drill And Kill”

Filed under: Charter School Education by Leo Casey @ 6:51 pm

Teachers have always known that the McCain-Bush Republican educational policy agenda was one of “drill and kill.” What we didn’t realize until the recently concluded GOP convention was that their energy and foreign policy followed the same formula — with the same empty promises that such practices would actually produce something positive and valuable. The sight of GOP delegates chanting “drill, baby, drill” in unison has been the source of more than one nightmare for American schoolchildren.

Some interesting education-related news has become public over the course of the Republican national convention. (more…)

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Paying Kids To Show Up — Rheelly Dumb

Filed under: Charter School Education by Maisie @ 3:00 pm

Michelle RheeD.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee will select the middle schools to participate in the pilot program (AP)

Michelle Rhee, superintendent of the Washington DC school system (with a total of three years of teaching under her belt) and now BFF of our own Joel Klein, has taken incentive pay to new and astonishing heights.

Liam Julian, in the Fordham Institute’s Education Gadfly this week, analyzes her latest incentive, and he is deeply skeptical. Rhee plans to pay some 3,000 middle school students $100 a month to attend class and do their homework.

The program is being overseen by Roland Fryer, the same Harvard wunderkind who is managing the program to pay students for test scores here in New York City schools.

“Is it a good idea?” Julian asks. “Yes, in a world in which schools are charged only with increasing their students’ test scores and nothing else; in which attaining that end justifies any means; and in which unintended consequences can be blithely ignored. But we do not occupy such a world.” (more…)

September 4, 2008

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The Alternative To The GOP’s Know-Nothing Populism

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 6:02 pm

The game plan of the Republican election campaign was laid out last night at their Minneapolis-St. Paul convention. It relies almost totally on what is now an old and tested Karl Rove/George W. Bush theme — a faux populism, directed against “cultural elites,” that ignores the economically powerful and the great concentrations of corporate wealth. At times, the result verges on self-parody: a parade of East Coast millionaire and billionaire speakers, from Giuliani of New York to Romney of Massachusetts,  railing against East Coast elites.

It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate the potential political appeal of this faux populism. (more…)

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Hunting For School Supplies

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 4:01 pm

school suppliesphoto by Brandi Tressler

[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Queens. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]

Most New York City public school teachers worth their sharpened pencils can tell you that Aug. 1 is the date on which teachers may start purchasing supplies with their “Teacher’s Choice” money. You spend every last penny of your money, save all your receipts and, as long as they’re dated after Aug. 1, voila, you get your reimbursement in, like, December.

Last year I didn’t do such a great job of saving my receipts, and then in March I was scrambling to spend all the money I had left over. Which meant I got to buy a lot of neat stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise bought, but I didn’t get reimbursed for all the supplies I purchased earlier in the year. So this year I was determined to itemize all my receipts – starting on Aug. 1. So I purposefully was staying far, far away from teaching supplies of any kind until that date. (more…)

September 3, 2008

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Your Future’s Mirror Image

Filed under: Education by Ron Isaac @ 11:41 am

Generalizations and cliches often carry an element of truth. The same can be said of “self-fulfilling prophecies,” which are usually negative and, when linked to lack of confidence in the good-faith of the Department of Education, frequently provoked.

“Self-fulfilling prophecies” can come true just through the magical and sometimes unhelpful power of belief. An unbroken pattern of bitter experience, haunting regrets and stifled hopes may cause us to expect the worst outcome, regardless of our own efforts. It’s as though no agent of change will matter and nothing can deliver improvement. Veteran educators may feel especially jaded as they recall the days when the Department of Education was content not to constantly play their adversary. (more…)

September 2, 2008

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Vouchers Do Little, Meta-Analysis Shows

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 3:03 pm

In light of the prodigious amounts of smoke produced lately on the subject of vouchers by Jay Greene and his comrades in the United Cherry Pickers [see here and here], it is perhaps a sign of the “mandate of heaven” that Henry Levin’s National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Columbia University today published a paper by Cecilia Rouse and Lisa Barrows, Do Education Vouchers Improve Student Learning and Public School Achievement? It will be published in the Annual Review of Economics in January 2009.

Here is the NCSPE description of the paper: (more…)

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First Day of School Blogging

Filed under: Education by W.J. Levay @ 2:00 pm

Schoolhouse Rock, Slate’s new education blog, debuted today. In his inaugural post, NYC-based writer Paul Tough introduced himself and his new project.

Welcome to the edublogosphere, Paul.

September 1, 2008

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A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 9:19 pm

In honor of Labor Day, the words of the John Lennon classic. [Here is the Green Day version, which appears on the Amnesty International CD Instant Karma -- a fundraiser for the campaign to end the genocide in Darfur.]

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be. (more…)

August 29, 2008

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Uppity Teachers Talk Back Again

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 6:09 pm

On cue, the Fordham Foundation’s Flypaper finds worthy the argument of Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein on behalf of Washington School Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s efforts to eliminate tenure.  “Sure, there will be times when teachers will be treated in an arbitrary and capricious way if they give up their tenure rights,” Pearlstein explains. “Guess what: It happens all the time in the private sector, where hiring, promotion and pay decisions are sometimes made with incomplete information, favoritism, or undue emphasis on one factor or another.” (more…)

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Back To School

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 4:55 pm

[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school reading teacher. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]

Last year I read this in the blogs of second-year teachers and it made me want to cry, but it turns out it’s true: It is infinitely better being a second-year teacher than it is being a first-year teacher. It was very satisfying to walk into the building today and move my time card, search out my new mailbox (already full of information) and greet people I hadn’t seen all summer. (It didn’t hurt that last year on the first day of school I did not receive a schedule, an office, a desk, keys, or any darn clue what I was supposed to be doing there, whereas this year I have all of these things!) (more…)

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