Tim Walker moved to Finland with his family. They have moved permanently, as Tim’s wife is Finnish. Tim now teaches fifth grade in Helsinki. He experienced culture shock. Here is what he learned: children need time to refresh, teachers need time to refresh. Both groups take frequent breaks during the day. But that’s not all: read on.
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Leaders of the New York State legislature called on the State Education Department to put a halt to their plan to turn over confidential student information to inBloom, the controversial program funded by the Gates and Carnegie Foundation with technology supplied by Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation.
According to Gotham Schools:
“Last week, Republican Senator John Flanagan introduced a bill to address looming concerns around the plan’s data privacy and security. He also called for the state to halt the initiative, which is scheduled to begin next month, for at least a year.
“Now, a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Speaker Sheldon Silver and Education Committee Chair Cathy Nolan, are raising their own red flags. Like Flanagan, they want the state to halt the plan, but they are also suggesting that they might not ever want to see it start up again.
“The controversy is over an initiative funded in part by federal Race to the Top grants designed to help districts use information about an individual student’s personal and academic history to create more individualized lesson plans and inform a teacher’s instruction. Some data elements being collected include test scores, report card grades, information about special needs, attendance records and disciplinary records.”
Sheldon Silver, the powerful leader of the State Assembly, wrote a letter warning:
“Until we are confident that this information can remain protected, the plan to share student data with InBloom must be put on hold,” said Silver in a statement Monday.
Legislators were reacting to widespread parent outrage over the prospect of data mining and hacking of their children’s personal information.
The parent opposition was galvanized and led by Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, who has traveled the state and nation explaining what inBloom is and the danger it poses to student privacy.
InBloom would not have been possible without the decision by Secretary Duncan to weaken the protections in FERPA, the federal legislation that is supposed to protect student privacy.
Chris Christie is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016.
Jersey Jazzman here reveals what Christie has done about the high school in the state Capitol, Trenton Central High School.
Listen to the students. Watch the video. The high school sends kids to Ivy League colleges, but Christie rants about “failure factories.” He never acknowledges that New Jersey is one of the nation’s highest performing states, and his policy towards the districts with high concentrations of poverty and racial segregation is privatization and, as Trenton High School vividly demonstrates, neglect.
As the video shows, the building is literally falling apart, crumbling, parts of it are unsafe.
On education, Chris Christie deserves an F.
This is an excellent and balanced article that explains why Asian nations swept the top places on PISA and at what cost to the students.
In the U.S., we have long had a belief in a “well-rounded” education, and many teachers believe they educate “the whole child,” thus putting concerns about social, emotional, and physical development in context with academic learning. Historically, there have been heated battles between those who want more or less emphasis on academics.
But in the test-centric Asian nations, academics come first, and some education officials in these nations are concerned about the lack of other dimensions of youth development.
It says:
“As a ninth-grader, Shanghai’s Li Sixin spent more than three hours on homework a night and took tutorials in math, physics and chemistry on the weekends. When she was tapped to take an exam last year given to half a million students around the world, Li breezed through it.
“I felt the test was just easy,” said Li, who was a student at Shanghai Wenlai Middle School at the time and now attends high school. “The science part was harder… but I can handle that.”
“Those long hours focused on schoolwork — and a heavy emphasis on test-taking skills — help explain why young students like Li in China’s financial hub once again dominated an international test to 15-year-olds called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, coordinated by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.
“Students from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — all from Asia — were right behind.
“Students in the wealthy city of Shanghai, where affluent families can afford to pay for tutors, are not representative of China overall, although they are ranked as a group alongside national averages for countries such as the United States and Japan. Still, they are indicative of education trends in China and elsewhere in Asia — societies where test results determine entrance into prestigious universities and often one’s eventual career path.”
But listen to the educators, who worry about what is sacrificed to get high test scores:
“Still, Chinese educational experts are taking a more somber view in the face of the stellar achievements by their students, saying the results are at most partial and covering up shortcomings in creating well-rounded, critical thinking individuals.
“This should not be considered a pride for us, because overall it still measures one’s test-taking ability. You can have the best answer for a theoretical model, but can you build a factory on a test paper?” asked Xiong Bingqi, a Shanghai-based scholar on education.
“The biggest criticism is that China’s education has sacrificed everything else for test scores, such as life skills, character building, mental health, and physical health,” Xiong said.
“Even the party-run People’s Daily noted the burden on Shanghai students. “While many countries have been urged to increase more study time and more homework for their students, Shanghai clearly needs some alleviation,” the editorial reads.
“Japan’s education minister, Hakubun Shimomura, pointed to the test results as evidence of success in reforms aimed at reducing class sizes — despite continued criticism of the pressure-filled university entrance examination system. Many Japanese students also attend cram schools to get an extra edge.
“Asian countries do better than European and American schools because we are ‘examination hell’ countries,” said Koji Kato, a professor emeritus of education at Tokyo’s Sophia University. “There is more pressure to teach to the test. In my experience in working with teachers the situation is becoming worse and worse.”
Like many other states, South Carolina has been wooing foreign corporations, hoping to create new jobs and stimulate the economy.
When a German firm relocated to produce heavy engines, it was unable to find enough skilled workers.
So the company leader “did what he would have done back home in Germany: He set out to train them himself. Working with five local high schools and a career center in Aiken County, S.C. — and a curriculum nearly identical to the one at the company’s headquarters in Friedrichshafen — Tognum now has nine juniors and seniors enrolled in its apprenticeship program.”
“South Carolina offers a fantastic model for what we can do nationally,” said Ben Olinsky, co-author of a forthcoming report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington research organization, recommending a vast expansion in apprenticeships.
“Despite South Carolina’s progress and the public support for apprenticeships from President Obama, who cited the German model in his last State of the Union address, these positions are becoming harder to find in other states. Since 2008, the number of apprentices has fallen by nearly 40 percent, according to the Center for American Progress study.
“As a nation, over the course of the last couple of decades, we have regrettably and mistakenly devalued apprenticeships and training,” said Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor. “We need to change that, and you will hear the president talk a lot about it in the weeks and months ahead.”
“In November, the White House announced a new $100 million grant program aimed at advancing technical training in high schools. But veteran apprenticeship advocates say the Obama administration has been slow to act.
“The results have not matched the rhetoric in terms of direct funding for apprenticeships so far,” said Robert Lerman, a professor of economics at American University in Washington. “I’m hoping for a new push.”
“In Germany, apprentices divide their time between classroom training in a public vocational school and practical training at a company or small firm. Some 330 types of apprenticeships are accredited by the government in Berlin, including such jobs as hairdresser, roofer and automobile electronics specialist. About 60 percent of German high school students go through some kind of apprenticeship program, which leads to a formal certificate in the chosen skill and often a permanent job at the company where the young person trained.
“If there is a downside to the German system, it is that it can be inflexible, because a person trained in a specific skill may find it difficult to switch vocations if demand shifts.
“In South Carolina, apprenticeships are mainly funded by employers, but the state introduced a four-year, annual tax credit of $1,000 per position in 2007 that proved to be a boon for small- to medium-size companies. The Center for American Progress report recommends a similar credit nationwide that would rise to $2,000 for apprentices under age 25.
The emphasis on job training has also been a major calling card overseas for South Carolina officials, who lured BMW here two decades ago and more recently persuaded France’s Michelin and Germany’s Continental Tire to expand in the state.”
South Carolina has 28,000 people working for German corporations.
What’s the lure?
“Of course, there are other reasons foreign companies have moved here. For starters, wages are lower than the national average. Even more important for many manufacturers, unions have made few inroads in South Carolina.”
Interesting, since Germany itself has strong unions.
Just as the textile industry fled South Carolina for nations where wages were lower and there were no unions, South Carolina now meets that need for European nations.
In response to an earlier article by psychologists and social workers about abusive tactics in certain schools in Texas, this parent wrote the following comment:
Quote from the above article: ” During the same 30 years when A.D.H.D. diagnoses increased, American childhood drastically changed. Even at the grade-school level, kids now have more homework, less recess and a lot less unstructured free time to relax and play.”
In my children’s school, the principal thinks ADHD meds are “steroids for the brain” and has a standard recommendation for all parents whose children can’t sit still for 8 hours of drill each day. Last year, when my 7 year old son could not sit still in 2nd grade for two days of four hour STAAR test practice, it was recommended that I take him to the doctor and say that he could not “focus” on his schoolwork. All the doctor did was write out one sentence stating an ADHD diagnosis and a script for meds. The doctor seemed to be under the influence of the school? I decided it was not my son that needed changing, it was the school! I changed both my son and daughter to a private school this year, even though we cannot afford it. What is happening in elementary schools of Texas is abusive. I’m glad it is finally being called what it is:
Mental and Physical cruelty for children is psychological abuse!
Parents, educators and other Chicagoans disgusted with authoritarian control of public education organized their own Board of Education, which held a public meeting one day before the mayor-controlled board held its meeting. The agenda was the same, but the tone and process were very different.
For one thing, the “People’s Board” met from 6-8 pm, in contrast to the regular board’s “banker’s hours.”
The star of the evening was a high school junior. Read her comments in full.
They start like this:
“Hi, my name is Dalia Mena. I’m a student organizer from the Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools, and I am a junior at Steinmetz High School. Last week Rahm Emmanuel gave Lincoln Park Elementary, a school in a rich neighborhood, $20 million. But when the problem is in a poor Black or Latino community suddenly CPS and the city are broke.
“We are a group of students that are not required to meet, but we do anyway because we deserve more than what CPS is giving us. This year, CPS took millions of dollars from neighborhood schools while giving more to charters…..”
Jersey Jazzman has words of wisdom for Néw York Times columnist Frank Bruni. Bruni recently wrote, in defense of the Common Core standards, claimed that American kids are “coddled.”
Read his post in its entirety. He calls it “Dumb Things White People Say About Schools: Frank Bruni.”
This is how he begins:
“Let me start by apologizing to Tom Friedman. You see, for years I’ve thought that the Mustache of Understanding was the silliest, most wankeriffic pontificator within in the NY Times’s Op-Ed Page hierarchy of mandarins. But it’s clear to me now I was completely wrong. The proof?
Frank Bruni’s latest column, in which he jumps into the pool of education policy unencumbered by the water wings of knowledge.”
Leonie Haimson reports that Chicago has pulled out of inBloom, the massive data collection project funded by the aGates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
Leonie has been the key figure nationally in alerting parents, educators, officials, and the media to the plans of inBloom to collect hundreds of points of data about children, using software developed by Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation, and stored on a “cloud” managed by amazon.com, with no guarantee that this personal and identifiable information cannot be hacked or sold to marketers.
New York is now the only state that continues to collaborate fully in sharing confidential student data with inBloom. State officials take an almost incomprehensible glee in their insistence that no one can stop them. I have no doubt that Leonie Haimson, champion of children, will beat them all: Gates, Carnegie, Murdoch, Bezos, and the New York State Education Department.
As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Leonie proves that Mead was right.
Paul Karrer teaches fifth grade in a low-income community in California.
He writes:
Frank Bruni’s New York Times piece “Are Kids Too Coddled?” basically states tougher education standards like the Common Core may require a tough love that some parents and educators don’t like. So some parents are opting their kids out of testing.
Mr. Bruni is a journalist not an educator and it shows. He’s done a very harmful fluff piece on parents who “coddle” their young kids. He misses the many valid points that testing is a total waste unless it is diagnostic for kids. It should not be used for teacher evaluations. It is a destructive input into our educational system because it is subtractive to the content of what we teach. High stakes testing only causes test preparation. Plus, it sucks money out of the classroom.
Mr. Bruni is most fortunate that his life experience is around the sheltered, pampered, and the entitled. But even so, the conclusions he draws are incorrect. Even the entitled know testing is basely wrong, but testing and more testing for those who reside in the clutches of poverty is criminal.
Putting aside my first impulse to deeply insert some number two pencils (erasers first will be my humane gesture) in Mr. Bruni’s ears, I’d like to comment on coddling and reality for the vast majority of us in schools with children swaddled in the luxurious lap of desperate poverty.
Two weeks ago we had parent conferences – my cherubs are ten or eleven years old. A nice age. One parent confided that her child wore a diaper. (I hadn’t noticed – AH HA… THAT’S WHY THE CHILD WEARS BAGGY PANTS ALL THE TIME. )
Later, another parent had her kids spinning around me during our conference. One is on meds (not something I like or recommend) turns out the parent is a recovering meth addict, only the recovering part is in much doubt.
At last year’s conference an Anglo mom brought in her three children. All incredibly low performers, with low attendance rates, and low ability. In the middle of the conference her cell phone rang. For a milli-second this annoyed me. The youngest of the girls beamed at me, “Dad’s ready to cross.”
“Cross?” I asked.
“Yup, he’s at the frontier.”
“Frontier?”
The mom interrupted her daughter, “We are at the girls’ teacher conference. Her teacher is here.” The mom addressed me, “Their dad says hello.”
The mom refocused on the call, “When you going? Ok..we love you and will pray for you.”
She turned her phone off and couldn’t eyeball me. “Their dad was deported. He’s in the Mexican desert ready to make an illegal crossing on the frontier…the border.”
The girls are all 100% US citizens as is the mom. They linked up with their dad days later, but live on luck’s flip and poverty’s edge. They also moved….again.
Coddle….no, Mr. Bruni we don’t coddle our kids very much. I wish we could. But I hug them a lot…it keeps me from crying.
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