This image was tweeted last night by David Duke (@Drdavidduke). Here are the Deplorables, the men and woman who are inciting racism, sexism, xenophobia, nativism, homophobia, etc.
Archives for category: Education Reform
Fifteen years ago today, our nation was subject to a horrific terrorist attack. Four civilian airliners were hijacked, two smashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, one struck the Pentagon, and a fourth was forced down into a field as a result of the bravery of the passengers who sacrificed their lives to prevent further loss of lives.
If you were alive and cognizant, you will never forget that day. I remember the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I will never forget 9/11/2001.
I can never forget that day because I lived right across the harbor from the World Trade Center, in Brooklyn Heights. It was as gorgeous, cloudless day, as beautiful as it ever gets in the fall. I was sitting at my breakfast table when I heard a thunderous sound, which I wrongly assumed was either a sonic boom or a crash on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a highway that abuts New York Harbor. My partner called from work and told me to turn on the television; something terrible had happened at the World Trade Center. I did, and I saw one of the tall buildings on fire at the top. What happened? Did an airplane hit it by accident? I ran down to the waterfront, a two-block jaunt, and as I looked up, I saw the second airplane hit the second tower. I stood there with half a dozen people. We didn’t speak. We all took a deep breath. We knew it was no accident. I watched the plumes of thick black smoke and the flames, and I knew that people were being incinerated. I could see what was happening but at the same time, I didn’t know what was happening ran home to watch television to find out what was going on. After 15 minutes watching and listening, I ran back to the waterfront. Then the wind shifted, and the dense cloud of smoke turned towards east, where I was standing. I could no longer see anything. Small bits of debris and ash were falling everywhere. The cars were coated with ash. Later, in my backyard, I found a charred piece of paper that had been on someone’s desk, and except for some burn holes, it was intact. It had floated gently from his or her desk across the river to my yard. After my partner came home, we went to the nearest hospital to see if we could give blood. They turned us away. They said no blood was needed. We walked to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge and watched hundreds of people trudging slowly across the bridge, from Manhattan to Brooklyn. They were dazed. Some were shoeless. All of them were coated in ashes. We went back to the house. We were glued to the television, filled with apprehension and sorrow. We watched the buildings collapse, one after the other, knowing that many people were still inside. We stayed inside, because outside, the air was thick with the dust from the burning towers. There was a peculiar smell in the air, an acrid smell of burning plastic. That smell remained for weeks. We watched television, we were glued to the screen. The city ground to a halt. No subway service, no bus service, nothing flying overhead except fighter jets. It became very quiet, except for the sound of sirens. The sound of sirens continued for days. Gasoline stations quickly ran out of gasoline, so not many people were driving. After some days, when we were able to walk across the bridge, we saw the photographs, posted everywhere, on every empty wall: have you seen this man? have you seen this woman? Missing. Help. For months afterwards, I could not stop thinking of the people who were trapped in the towers, especially at night. I traveled to a family wedding in November in Texas, and people were surprised that I was so obsessed with what had happened. To them, it was a news story, but it was over. For me, and for everyone else who had a personal connection with that day, it will never be over. I don’t have nightmares anymore, but the vivid memories will be with me always.
Let us never forget. I won’t.
So Hillary spoke ill of half of Trump’s supporters.
Did she mean the delegates who chanted, “Lock her up!” at the GOP convention?
Or was she thinking of these gentlemen?
So Hillary spoke ill of half of Trump’s supporters.
Did she mean the delegates who chanted, “Lock her up!” at the GOP convention.
Or was she thinking of these gentlemen?
Earlier today, I posted a piece by Andy Jones, a high school language arts teacher in Hawaii. In the introduction, I mistakenly said that Hawaii had eliminated the teacher evaluation system that was created in response to winning Race to the Top funding. I wrote: “This past spring, Hawaii dropped the test-based teacher evaluation that Race to the Top had forced on the state as a condition of winning RTTT funds. The money was all gone, and so was this bad idea.” That was not completely accurate.
Andy Jones sent this note to correct me:
“I so hate to ask, but…the HSTA secretary, who along with everyone else here is a great admirer of your work, just asked me if I could mention to you that your intro to my article is somewhat inaccurate, in that the teacher evaluation system (EES) is still in place. We were merely successful in eliminating test scores from the evaluation. We are, however, almost equally angry at present, because in the months since that announcement was made, they have insisted on maintaining the excoriated SLO component (Student Learning Outcomes) – the mindbogglingly ridiculous quasi-action-research template we have to go through in our evaluations in which we choose learning objectives, administer pre-assessments, make predictions about student learning, collect evidence of student growth, etc., and are only rated “distinguished” if 90% of our predictions are accurate. This is now worth 50% of our evaluation, along with the standard Danielson-based observation cycle and Core Professionalism (basically a portfolio on Danielson Domain 4) comprising the other 50%.
“HSTA secretary Amy Perruso wanted me to post you on this, because she’s afraid that HSTA will now be bombarded with emails and telephone calls asking “How did you get rid of the teacher evaluations?” – which, unfortunately we have not and which we’re going to be attempting very aggressively this year to get rid of.
– Andy”
A federal judge refused to issue a preliminary injunction to stop work on an oil pipeline that traverses Native American sacred grounds.
The injunction was sought by the Standing Rick Sioux tribes.
As readers know, I met Hillary Clinton at a fund-raiser on August 28. It was not the in-depth meeting I had hoped for, but it was better than nothing.
I endorsed Hillary after she secured the Democratic nomination. I assured you that I would support the winner of the Democratic nomination. I consider Trump to be an ignorant buffoon and a danger to our nation and the world. I wrote an even stronger endorsement in July.
As I watch this bizarre campaign unfold, I feel even stronger about the importance of stopping Donald Trump. His admiration for Putin, who murders journalists, stifles a free press, harasses homosexuals, invades another nation, and is re-establishing a dictatorship–makes me feel that what Trump admires in leadership is a disrespect for human rights, a commanding style that censors opposition: in short, dictatorship. Nothing in Trump’s background is reassuring. He should return to reality television to rant and boast.
So, I reiterate, on every issue that matters, I’m with her. Given Trump’s desire to turn $20 billion of federal spending into support for school choice, I now am certain that she will be far better than he on education, even if she doesn’t stand up to fight all forms of privatization
Valerie Strauss invited me to elaborate on my brief meeting with Hillary, which I did here.
As the response from the campaign makes clear, she is walking a fine line between major donors who support charters and the teachers’ unions, which know that the charter movement is meant to demolish them (90% or more of the nation’s charters are non-union).
As I have said to readers on many occasions in the comments, I don’t know what Hillary will do on education, although after Trump revealed his full-throated support for school choice, I am sure that Trump will be a wrecking ball for public education. She said that she would stop federal funding for for-profit charter schools, and that would be a big step forward.
But on every other issue, from climate change to gun control to civil rights to Supteme Court appointments to international relations, I support her enthusiastically and without reservation.
Zephyr Teachout is a law professor who ran against Cuomo in the Democratic primary and gained a third of the vote without any TV advertising or money. Now she is running for Congress in the 19th District of New York, where she grew up.
She took time from her campaign to describe what school ought to look like. It is a description that will be familiar to those of us who were in school long before the testing era began. Those who know only the last 15-20 years may find her article surprising.
She writes:
We are in the middle of a national fight about public education. Some people — backed by big billionaire hedge funders who would rather do away with the public part of public education — are trying to push Common Core high stakes testing down the throats of kids. But they have run into powerful resistance by parents, leading the national opt-out movement, who understand that children aren’t widgets, and teachers are good people who care deeply about their kids.
On this first week of school, let’s talk about what public education should look like, and what we, as a society, should aim for.
Schools need the resources and staff to keep them clean, comfortable, and safe. There should be nurses to meet health needs, counselors and social workers to make sure that children are making healthy choices. In a strong school system, teachers establish connections with the home, and ensure that anti-social behavior like bullying is addressed, while children struggling with such behaviors are supported to change.
I remember when I got in trouble in second grade, acting up in music class, I was disciplined; but I wasn’t rejected from the school and didn’t feel shut out: my teachers made sure I knew what was acceptable and unacceptable, but also treated me like I had potential and things to learn and contributed, instead of as a pariah.
Every child is different. It is essential to have a challenging and enriched curriculum, that respects the diversity of learners in the class. Students who struggle should get the support they need in the classroom and outside of it — my first job out of college was as a special education teacher’s aide in small rural public school, and I saw what a difference a supportive school system made.
Every school is different, too — look at Monticello, Tri-Valley, and Liberty, three school systems within 30 minutes of each other but each with different populations, with children bringing different gifts and different challenges. The one-size-fits-all model of the high stakes testing just doesn’t respect the differences within rural areas, let alone within the entire country. Local leadership in schools not only strengthens schools, but strengthens community.
Every school deserves well-prepared teachers who are evaluated and supported by well-trained school leaders and expert peers — not arbitrary high stakes tests. Teachers have some of the most rewarding jobs in the world, but the most difficult, because all the world — and the challenges in it — comes to the classroom. Teachers should have ample time to collaborate, learn, and grow.
It is painful to see great teachers, bringing enthusiasm and commitment to children, having to spend their time teaching to the test — and to Common Core testing standards that are disconnected from the curriculum. High Stakes testing narrows the curriculum, encourages teaching to the test, does not work, and pushes great teachers out of teaching when we need great teachers more than ever. Standardized low-stakes testing, given to a random sample of kids, can provide the feedback we need to know how our schools are doing.
It is all so commonsensical. Why are our “policymakers” wedded to so many bad ideas?
It would be wonderful to have someone in Congress who understands what schooling should be and who recognizes the failure of the punitive test-driven policies of the past 15 years.
I was interviewed by Brian Lehrer this morning about Common Core. It was a good show. Here it is.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/30-issues-whats-good-or-bad-common-core/
Perhaps you are sick and tired of hearing about the wonderful schools of Finland. Well, I am not. They demonstrate that it is possible to do the right things for children and succeed by every metric. It is important to have a demonstration in real-life of an entire nation that gets it right; not just one school, that picks its students, but an entire nation. No high-stakes testing. No charters. No vouchers. No Teach for Finland. Every public school is a good school, regardless of its neighborhood (or, as we would say, its zip code [I don’t know if Finland has zip codes.]) I have visited Finland. I have toured Finnish schools. I have seen students of every age taking a recess break after every class. I have seen students displaying their artistic accomplishments. As long as there is Finland, we can all hope for a better future for American education. As Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg often says and writes, “we got many of our best ideas from the U.S.”
William Doyle, author and film-maker, is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Eastern Finland, where he lectures on education and the media. This column appeared originally in USA Today.
He notes that Finland is experiencing social and economic problems. It has also seen slippage in its educational results on international tests. But it is doubling down on what proved successful instead of following the U.S.’s abysmal test-and-punish “reforms.”
He writes:
Social and economic pressures are increasing sharply. Inequity is growing among schools. Severe budget cuts are hitting vocational and higher education. High-performing students often don’t feel challenged, and Finnish children face problems common to many the world over — bullying, big drop-offs in math and reading skills, digital overload, and feeling bored or disengaged from school. The performance of Finland’s 15-year-olds in international tests has fallen in recent years.
The United States for more than a decade has responded to its own education challenges with a bizarre, bipartisan and ineffectual mix of mass standardized testing, de-professionalization of teachers, dismal quality “cybercharter schools,” the elimination of arts and recess for children, and the botched, now politically toxic Common Core attempt at national curriculum guidelines.
Finland is taking largely the opposite approach. It is doubling down on many of the things that made its schools great in the first place.
Finland has adopted a new curriculum, but it is nothing like our Common Core, which makes everything “harder,” even in kindergarten and first grade.
Finland’s brand new National Core Curriculum emphasizes a child’s individuality and says “children have the right to learn by playing and experience joy related to learning.” It says they should be encouraged to express their opinions, trust themselves, be open to new solutions, learn to handle unclear and conflicting information, consider things from different viewpoints, seek new information and review the way they think. Teachers are directed to give students daily feedback and measure them against their starting points, not other students. In grades one through seven, schools now have the option of dropping numerical grades in favor of verbal assessments. (Failing students will still receive a “fail” grade, and can be held back as a last resort.)
The new guidelines strengthen traditional roles of play and physical activity. Preschool and kindergarten students will continue to learn through songs, games, conversation and playful discovery, not military-style drilling and stress at ages 4, 5 or 6 as is increasingly the case in American schools. A number of studies have supported the advantages of play-based early education for children, including those from low-income backgrounds. Formal academic training in Finland will continue to start at age 7, when many children are best ready for it. That corresponds with research indicating that any advantage gained by earlier instruction, when children are not developmentally ready, washes out a few years later.
In addition:
Finland is also continuing other policies that work: Primary school teachers will still have to earn master’s degrees and undergo at least two years of in-classroom training by master teacher-trainers before being allowed to lead classes of their own. Grades one through nine will offer instruction not only in math, science and history, but also in two or three languages, physical education, music, visual arts, crafts and religion or ethics. And home economics, a rare subject in American schools, will be taught in grades seven, eight and nine.
No high-stakes testing. No vouchers. No charters. No Teach for Finland temps in the classroom.
