I didn't want to like the HBO documentary on the Little Rock Nine that's been playing over and over, and had been avoiding it (and most of the rest of the 50th anniversary coverage) thinking that I'd seen the footage before, knew that things hadn't changed that much, etc.
But the documentary (see segment above) spends most of its time following current students, and there's power in seeing the nearly complete (though not particularly hostile) segregation and disparate academic experiences that are still there. Here's a NYT review of the show. Check it out.
Everyone hates conservative columnist Ann Coulter right now (she recently joked that perhaps women shouldn't get to vote). But she did write something a little funnier in her new book: "“President George W. Bush is evidently the first mentally retarded person to get a Harvard M.B.A., graduate from the U.S. Air Force Flight School, be elected governor of Texas and then be elected President of the United States twice. I Guess that's what they call 'mainstreaming.'” Yikes.
Finishing out what's been an informal TFA Week, TAPPED's Dana Goldstein puts it pretty well: "It feels heartless to criticize a program that's, well, so good-hearted...But while it appears that TFA is very effective at connecting business leaders and young professionals with the public school reform movement and imbuing them with a sense of commitment toward public education, it's unlikely TFA is impacting student achievement in any broadly-defined way."
Check out David Hoff's post on what Hill staffers like Jill Morningstar (House Dems, pictured, I think) have to say about the latest NCLB doings. No Kennedy bill yet, however, and no real timeframe.
Thanks to the folks at ASCD's SmartBrief for including me on their list of SmartBlogs, and welcome to all of you SmartBrief readers. Bookmark the SmartBlog page or click on the right to get a daily or weekly email summary.
I have my fingers crossed that there's going to be another even more interesting piece on TFA coming out in the very near future. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, there's a fascinating and somewhat frightening discussion about the Times Magazine article going on in Chicago -- with some commenters pointing out that TFA is better than nothing and others calling it a "glorified substitute pool" for struggling schools.
A kind reader also sent me this new (to me) report from Stanford (PDF here): "Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. This study of 12 high-impact nonprofits [including TFA], however, shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others."
The New Yorker takes on the Jena 6 case in large part to make the point that despite our tendencies towards denial what's happening down there is not old school, it's present-day -- and not just in the South, either. "Discrimination in the American justice system is not only a Deep South thing; it is a national embarrassment...America's predominant response to racism, of course, has long been denial. In Jena, the town fathers effected a vivid evasion. Their problem, they concluded, was not themselves but their tree: they cut down the offending oak and hauled it away." (Disparities). Meanwhile, a Chicago student has been expelled for showing a picture of his topless girlfriend to classmates.
Universal preschool is going to be education campaign issue Number One, says Richard Whitmire (Preschool) based on all the proposals out there. Many would agree with him. But the recent Presidential veto of the S-CHIP shows that it might not be so easy to get something done. President Bush vetoed the S-CHIP on the grounds that it doesn't focus on the poorest kids who already have preschool and creates a major new "entitlement" program. Of course, politics play a part and Bush will not be there in the future, but the struggle shows just how difficult it is to get new programs created even when little kids are involved.
Edwards' education plan is a good one, says the Ed Sector's Kevin Carey, except for just one crazy idea (Super Tutors). Denver can learn some lessons about closing schools from what other cities have done, says Schools For Tomorrow's Van Schoales (Closure lessons from other districts). TFA is a great place to start a career, says BusinessWeek via EdWize (Teacher News of the Day). Exactly. Refomers should stop making such a big deal out of New Orleans, says Eduwonk (A Little Less New Orleans?). Jenny D says that it won't be long before there's a US Department Of Education "blog" (Been Gone Too Long).
Forget those puny authorizing committees -- it's all about budget and appropriations. That's where the money (and an awful lot of policymaking) happens. That's why New America is holding an event today on the latest FY 2008 spending developments, featuring the House budget committee's Barbara Chow and New America's Heather Rieman (right).
The same day that the national teachers union AFT announced that it was supporting Hillary Clinton for president, the Chicago local announced that it was going with the local guy: Barack Obama. Here's the announcement -- what do you think?
"United States Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama picked up a major labor union endorsement today as members of the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates voted to endorse him for President in the upcoming primary. “Senator Obama is Illinois’ favorite son and a good friend of teachers, paraprofessionals and labor. We want to show him our appreciation and support by endorsing him as our candidate for President,” added Stewart. The endorsement will activate the 32,000 membership and political action component of the Union in helping Senator Obama reach out to educators across Chicago and the suburban counties."
I wish Slate had taken my piece about Al Shanker (How Al Shanker Blew Up No Child Left Behind) instead of Sara Mosle's recent review, but I'm happy to report that Mosle and I make some of the same points. For example, that Shanker's work unionizing teachers affects nearly every classroom teacher to this day. ("Today, there isn't a teacher in America whose life hasn't been touched by Shanker's own.") But we disagree about his legacy, in that Mosle (The Man Who Transformed American Education) gives more credit to Shanker for his ideas and "prescience" than I do. Journalists and pundits and wonks (and AFTies) like to focus on all the rest -- the "good" Shanker, the ideas, the potential -- but to me, Shanker is all about his real-world accomplishments, which are powerful and far-reaching but aren't most of them really about school reform.
This week's Carnival of Education is up, including promising posts such as Bellringers' comparison of NCLB and "My Rather Large Behind," Right On The Left Coast on teachers and free speech, What It's Like on the pros and cons of teaching to the test, and Scheiss Weekly on the food stash for kids who forget their lunch.
Joanne Jacobs links to a much-discussed story a crossword puzzle that includes one question in which the N-word is the answer. Says Jacobs:"A parent complained that this is one word students don’t need to be taught, the teacher apologized and it appears that life will go on at Sequatchie County Middle School."
I guess all that pandering and NCLB-bashing worked. The AFT just announced that it's endorsing HRC for President. It's not much of a surprise, except maybe to Bill Richardson (pictured) who has so many good education ideas, or to Edwards folks who were hoping his proposal (see below) would give him some pull.
About the Ravitch op-ed (see below), Eduwonk asks "didn't we try this already?" (States Right?). The AFT blog is concerned about the NYT piece on New Orleans from a couple of weeks ago (Predictable Sign Of The Times) -- namely whether the focus should be on poverty or school reform. School closings are getting too much coverage, says Sari Levy at Schools For Tomorrow (School closures bring out the drama queens). Educators and researchers don't usually get along, writes Eduwonkette -- except in one case (Cool people you should know). EdWize lets us all know that Ms. Frizzle is back to blogging and has some things to say (Ms. Frizzle on TFA).
Thanks to JM for passing along this link from DCist about the upcoming taping of the Ellen Degeneres Show at Ballou High School. Check out this video snippet from a new documentary that's coming out on the school and it's band:
Or if your'e in the area go see the taping tonight at 9:30 live.
Education historian Diane Ravitch proposes a radical overhaul of NCLB in today's New York Times (Get Congress Out of the Classroom). She points out all the usual flaws in the law, and, as in the past, she proposes that the feds collect and report out data (including the results of national testing), and the states and districts take back the whole school reform thing. However, Ravitch overstates NCLB's reach into the process by quite a bit. Districts and schools aren't actually doing what the current NCLB tells them to do with struggling schools, finding loopholes and complying nominally without making bigger changes. And they aren't to my mind particularly likely to do more revamping with fewer prescriptions from Washington. National standards just aren't viable this time around. And, perhaps most important, Congress is unlikely to pass (or fund) education programs that don't give them a substantial say in trying to make education better. A big part of the funding increase that accompanied NCLB's first years was lawmakers' enthusiasm for the law.
Earlier in the week, the Washington Post's Jay Mathews used what must have been hypnosis to get three DC-area school superintendents to say that they supported national standards -- an idea that, as Mathews himself notes, has traditionally only been advocated by wonks and pundits (Superintendents Suggest Fixes For 'No Child'). What kind of hell do you think those three superintendents are going to get when the Mathews spell wears off and their colleagues read what they've said? Note also that one of the superintendents represents Fairfax, VA -- the folks who didn't want to test their ELL kids in English as required by NCLB. They don't want the current NCLB but they want national standards. Hmmm.
One Oak Park Illinois school's "hugging ban" has captured the media spotlight, for however briefly. Maybe this is a new part of Ed In '08's strategy to win more attention for education issues. And it's working. (You know they convinced Kozol to do that partial fast thing.) Or maybe it's just a slow news week and schools are easy targets. Check here to see 200-something stories published on the topic. Not known for accuracy, many of the media stories miss the fact that the hugs being banned are big group hugs not the usual greeting kind.
Get Congress Out of the Classroom NYT (Diane Ravitch)
Unless we set realistic goals for our schools and adopt realistic means of achieving them, we run the risk of seriously damaging public education.
Schools Embrace Ways to Help Environment AP
Jacob Chapman hopes to plant a rooftop garden at Olathe South High School, encourages classmates to recycle plastic bottles and paper, and wants them to reduce their use of disposables in the school cafeteria.
Superintendents Content in Jobs, But Stressed, Too EdWeek
Today’s school district leaders overwhelmingly have positive relationships with their school boards, tend to be satisfied in their jobs, and think of themselves as effective, according to a survey.
Do Charter Schools Improve Behavior? Washington Post (Jay Mathews)
Charters are hot commodities, the public school equivalent of hybrid cars or left-handed relief pitchers. But many people are puzzled why that is so.
School investigates Jena 6 event where kindergartner wore noose Chicago Sun Times
Grambling State University President Horace Judson said the school is probing a Sept. 20 incident at Grambling's elementary school in which a noose was placed around a kindergartner's neck.
Education issues are nowheresville, writes New America's Sara Mead (here). And that is unlikely to change. But at least Edwards' plan doesn't eviscerate NCLB, says Mead. And at least he has one. Most of the others -- except Dodd -- don't have any real K-12 education proposal (beyond bashing the current law). And they probably won't show up with one anytime soon, despite past promises. Why get into that mess when college costs and universal preschool are so much more fun -- and only 1 percent of Americans rank education as their top priority?
Everybody seems to like the Bob Herbert column on school reform, but not me. I mean, I get that it's cool when a New York Times columnist writes about education, and even gets it pretty right (we need to do more than fiddle at the margins here). But the solutions -- charters, measuring teacher effectiveness -- seem pretty run of the mill among a certain set. And, as usual, there's nothing there about how to accomplish such things. (Kevin Carey here. Eduwonk here. American Reality here. Whitney Tilson here.
My favorite part of this PBS NewsHour segment on DC schools superintendent Michelle Rhee is where she talks about how seeing all the unused books and supplies in the central warehouse made her want to throw up.
The rhetoric surrounding "children first" is powerful and needed stuff, I'd argue, but not to the point of disregarding the needs of classroom teachers whose needs are often not being met by schools, either. Sherman Dorn makes this point eloquently in a recent post: "Elementary and secondary schools are environments that are about the least adult-friendly you can imagine, outside sweatshops," writes Dorn (The adults v. children meme). "Where else can adults be vulnerable to being hit by children, be told when they can go to the bathroom, and be told that their own intellectual development does not serve the organization's interests?" I guess that leaves only administrators to gang up on. Yeah, it's all the administrators' fault. Faceless bureaucrats, etc. Get 'em!
"In 1992, filmmaker Sam Lee moved from England to teach second grade at a unique school in Harlem aimed at helping disadvantaged youth. Ten years later, she decided to revisit her former students, now seniors in high school, and find out what had become of their dreams, their families, and their lives." (Choices: The Perfect Life).
Our Schools Must Do Better NYT (Bob Herbert)
The U.S. has not yet faced up to the fact that it needs a school system capable of fulfilling the educational needs of children growing up in an era that will be at least as different from the 20th century as the 20th was from the 19th.
The cost of killing education reform Long Beach Press-Telegram
This could be the end of the line for No Child Left Behind. And some educators couldn't be happier...Public schools have, for generations, crafted an environment that caters to the needs and wants of the adults who work in the schools rather than those of the children who attend them.
"The secretary and the veteran Democratic congressman made a bit of an odd couple in the school, also known as the Harriet Tubman School, which is in his district, just steps from his local office...But to hear her explain it, the success of schools is as much a part of national security as, say, negotiations with the Iraqi government." (From Capitol to Halls of the Nation’s Future NYT)
Be sure to check out the PBS NewsHour tonight, which will include a segment on Michelle Rhee that attempts to balance the hopes and expectations for her success with the realities of the situation in DC and her relative inexperience at the job.
"Disaggregation is the key to comparability," writes former Miller staffer Charlie Barone in a new analysis of NCLB then and now. "Comparability is the key to assessing equal opportunity. Equal opportunity is the key to closing achievement gaps."
The kids love Obama Education Election
Obama and John Edwards said in last week's New Hampshire debate that they would be comfortable reading the book "King and King," which has same-sex relationships as a theme, to their young children and would support its use as part of a school curriculum.
Evolution of Complexity AFT Blog
It seems that NCLB 2.0 is adhering to the principles of evolution--it's getting more complex, but I'm not sure it's a higher level organism.
Teachers vs. performance pay Joanne Jacobs
Teachers strongly oppose linking pay to performance, concludes a survey of teachers in Washington state.
NCLB Lawbreakers TQATE
Via Eduwonk, a story of what appears to be a widespread conspiracy within the Missouri Department of Education to systematically violate the No Child Left Behind law.
"A recent incident at the elementary school on the Grambling State University campus that resulted in a noose hanging around a small child's neck has left university officials scrambling for answers. Grambling State University President Horace Judson was driving to Dallas on Friday afternoon for the Saturday football game between GSU and Prairie View when his secretary called him, describing certain pictures that had been posted online by the student newspaper, The Gramblinite."
In China, of course -- not in time to help the women's World Cup team (they lost on Friday to Brazil) but rather to help out with that whole Special Olympics thing.
September's big education stories are sliced and diced by stalwart journalists Greg Toppo, Stephanie Banchero, and Jay Mathews in the first "Month In Review" of the 2007-2008 school year. It's nearly 30 minutes of banter and insight (featuring super lo-fi sound quality and even more amateurish than ever hosting by me): Download audio0907.mp3.mp3
For the last three weeks the NEA and most of the news coverage (for example here) have been referring to the merit pay provisions in George Miller's NCLB plan as "mandatory," but on Friday the Center on American Progress think tank put out a fact sheet claiming that the requirements are voluntary (and that Miller is not against collective bargaining). Who's right? It's hard to say. After all, NCLB itself could be described as voluntary -- states don't have to take the money and implement its rules -- but in reality it's not that way (states need the money). Still, it looks like there's more wiggle room and protections for teachers and local contracts in there than has been advertised (or reported).
School struggles under rising federal standards San Deigo Union Tribune
Two years ago, NCLB forced Principal Sylvia Gonzalez to replace 70 percent of her teachers at Balboa Elementary School in southern San Diego.
Missouri Cited for Accountability Breakdown Title I Monitor
The state of Missouri was forced to put more than 150 school districts in improvement — with dozens of schools undergoing further sanctions — after a U.S. Department of Education...
LAUSD mulls fees for youth groups LA Times
The money would help ease the budget, officials say. Parents -- who might have to pay extra -- could choose not to let their children continue extracurricular activities, critics say.
Detroit Students Miss Two Weeks after School Shuts Detroit News
About 750 students whose school was padlocked by fire marshals Sept. 16 have had no classes for nearly two weeks, and many spent Thursday hanging out on a church parking lot.
