Op-Ed Contributors – Smart Child Left Behind – NYTimes.com.

Good article.  My dad and I, prior to my joining TFA, debated whether an educational system should help high achievers reach their potential, or help those who struggle the most to gain the skills they need to be functional members of our society (which hopefully entails more than our work force).  I argue for the latter, and though issues of test validity and the induction of a test-oriented mentality lead me to be generally unsupportive of NCLB, I don’t think I buy the argument that our focus should be on students that are capable of helping themselves – that’s the American way.  And the new American way – to create educational equality, so that human potential is no longer stifled by systemic inequity.

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I.B.M. to Buy SPSS, a Maker of Business Software – NYTimes.com.

Thoughts:
-SPSS would have been a good stock to own
-So business is going to turn more directly toward data analytics, and a “predict-and-act” model, eh?  I’ll believe it when I see it.
-Wish I would have learned more permanently how to use SPSS!

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A story about the school I used to teach at, via Bronx Principal’s Tough Love Gets Results – CBS Evening News – CBS News.

“One New York City high school principal is trying to improve his school, **which has a reputation for street gangs, shootings and drug dealers.**”  I’m sorry, but did I miss something?  I mean, I remember breaking up that fight between exiius and BCSM, but *shootings?*

“I’m not always going to make the decisions that are popular,” he said.  **and he can say that again**

Well, ah well, I guess we’ve al got new families now, even our favorite little “Kierzyn.”

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U.S. to resume Peace Corps and scholarship program in Indonesia – The CNN Wire – CNN.com Blogs.

From my friend Chris, who said “something seems a bit wrong with it.
See if you can spot where CNN went wrong.”

His reference:  Hillary seems to be a bit confused, as she is saying “The United States also plans to start sending Fulbright scholars to Indonesia.”…but, uh, while she was saying that, we were serving as Fulbright scholars in Indonesia.

Fact Check!

(But as an aside, I do hope the start up Peace Corps in Indonesia, because I would so go!)

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This article was pretty damn cool.  I’m sad to hear about the court case, as it effectively suggests administrations can pin teachers to curriculums provided to schools by for-profit companies, most of which have nothing to do with education as anyone but a Regents board would define it.  That said, I think the professor in question is at fault to the extent that he didn’t show up to class.  You can’t practice a radical pedagogy of a critical education without showing up – and his case seems less defensible to me with this in mind.

The Two Languages of Academic Freedom – Stanley Fish Blog – NYTimes.com

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Afghan girl says acid attack won’t stop her lessons

A victim of an acid attack on schoolgirls in Afghanistan said Saturday she was determined to stay in school and finish her education even if that meant risking death.

The girl, who gave her name as just Shamsia, was the most seriously injured of a group of girls attacked outside their school by unidentified men in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday.

“I’ll continue my schooling even if they try to kill me. I won’t stop going to school,” Shamsia said from her bed at Afghanistan’s main military hospital in Kabul.

Shamsia, 17, suffered damage to one of her eyes when the men pulled off the girls’ head scarves and threw acid in their faces.

This girl is a hero, and her dedication to her studies exemplifies a disposition that should be followed by students around the world.

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Mumia Abu-Jamal – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I want to read more from and about this man.

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A Victim Treats His Mugger Right : NPR

Kinda like when I got “jumped” by a bunch of kids at 169th and 3rd, and one of them ended up being in my roommate’s class.

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At Charter School, Higher Teacher Pay – New York Times

While I am personally supportive of this initiative on the theoretical level, I think the difficulties wil come in servicing special needs populations such as ELLs and students with IEPs.  And running such a short staff will work as long as teacher have an incredible amount of autonomy in their classrooms – something I’m confident the principal already intends to give them.  All in all, an interesting experiment.  I look especialy highly upon it because it inverts a power pyramid that has no legitimacy.

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The below article is from the union, but don’t need to hear the other side of this argument – there aren’t always two sides! The NYCDOE is surreptitiously collecting data on teachers? Bullshit!

UFT fights teacher evaluation pilot

The New York Times reported on Monday that the city Department of Education has undertaken a secretive pilot program in which 2,500 teachers at 140 city public schools are being measured without their knowledge on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests. DOE officials said that they are considering using an analysis of this data to evaluate teachers and to make decisions on teacher tenure, a step that would be in violation of our collective-bargaining agreement and state tenure law.

UFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following response that day:

These standardized tests were never designed to be used to evaluate teachers individually. As we’ve said before, school and teacher accountability must be based on multiple indicators that make sense to teachers, resonate with parents and are fair, accurate and transparent. Secretly collecting test score data and basing teacher evaluations on them run counter to any of these principles.

The data being collected by the DOE in this secretive pilot cannot isolate and identify the effect or influence of any individual teacher, and no statistical Band-Aid can change that. Even the experts agree on that. Neither the law nor collective-bargaining agreements ever anticipated data being used this way, and we intend to use both to stop such a misguided use. Imagine principals dictating to teachers who their students are, how many they must teach and what curriculum to use and then evaluating them on standardized test scores!

Most important, this is a terrible thing to do to kids. It risks turning our school system into Test Prep, Inc., with educators doing nothing else but preparing students for standardized math and English tests and denying kids the balanced and well-rounded education they need. In addition, it undermines the commitment to collaboration and working together on a school level that was codified in the School-Wide Bonus program. In sum, there are so many educational and technical flaws in this concept that I find it shocking that the school system is even considering it. The United Federation of Teachers will fight this on all grounds – educational, legal and moral.

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