Five Best Blogs: Our Long, Fat, Stupid Summer

How Summer Is Making U.S. Kids Dumber and Fatter - Bloomberg ow.ly/ckgy7 via @Wonkblog

72 percent increase in pay for teacher's xtra degrees costs states $15B in 2009, reports @TeacherBeatow.ly/ckgV2 

People in their 40s struggle most with student loan debt - WSJ ow.ly/ckgDx  OK to lay off more 20-30 teachers of the year!

The New Complacency About Schools Is Ill-Informed | TIME Ideas |http://TIME.com  http://ow.ly/ckbqd  

From Jay Mathews: A cure for bad teaching of writing: Forty-five years ago, I married the best editor I have eve... wapo.st/NOUeaM

Stimulus Aid Saved Education Jobs, Research Group Concludeshttp://ow.ly/ckaO3  @politicsk12 

 

Comments

[Bruce]

Putting together the blog posts by Jay Mathews, Peter Orszag, and Joel Klein, one might (correctly) conclude that summer is no time to be complacent about students' writing. Here, especially, the culture of the home trumps the work done by school teachers during the regular school year. Although Mr. Orszag has a number of proposals about how this problem might be ameliorated, like so many of the Obama administration's initiatives, it is unlikely to be implemented, in part because it is a plan that focuses on an underserved minority of our nation's people rather than on all or at least a majority of them. The president's most ardent supporters are perhaps starting to realize that they will have real problems getting anything accomplished when they so persistently introduce programmes that only benefit isolated demographic constituencies instead of the broader public.

[Sarah]

I don’t think it’s exclusively students’ of the governments’ faults, though. It’s much to do with parent attention, and the inability or ability of parents to pay attention in general. Unfortunately, the need for many parents to hold one or often two jobs in order to afford a home, food, clothing, etc. trumps the attention factor too bringing it back to local economies and tax rates.