Today, it is unusual to hear anything said about early childhood education that doesn’t end with remarks about the good of the nation’s economy. This involves pushing young children to do better in school. I have written about this, in regard to other issues, even most recently in discussing the push to extend the school […]
Corporations to Steal Family Time with Your Children—Happy New Year!
There is insufficient evidence to suggest that increased learning time is an effective approach for promoting the academic outcomes of all students in all settings. IES, National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance—U.S. Department of Education. More Time IN School = Less Time to BE a Family. Remember the above sentence, because corporations are […]
The Kennedy Center Honorees’ School Backgrounds
On Tuesday, December 30th, the Kennedy Center Honors will be televised. We know the names of the Honorees. I thought it would be interesting to find whether these individuals were influenced to become the artists they are today by their schooling. I also looked at the 2013 Honorees. While information about schools is a bit […]
Art Charters v. Traditional No Art Schools
Why are the arts removed from traditional public schools while at the same time charter schools are given carte blanche to create art schools? The New York Times has an article about Voice Charter School where students sing and “outperform” their peers…. Academically, students at Voice did significantly better than the city average on New […]
How to Size-Up an Ed. Reformer in Five Minutes–TN Example
Due to troubling school reforms like Common Core, it is important to study those who are running schools very carefully. Whenever anyone new is placed in a position of power, we must figure out what they will do to improve public schools and be good stewards of children. This isn’t always easy, because the language […]
What’s Behind the Teacher Shortage/Crisis? Or is there One?
There has been much talk about a critical teacher shortage, that many say nothing will solve unless drastic measures are taken. But serious teacher shortage talk was emphasized in 1990. Voila! We got Teach for America (TFA). Before that, there were attempts to address teacher shortages in the emergency areas–special ed., science and math et […]
The Damn, Destroy then Privatize Special Ed. Plan
Watching the demise of our public schools, and the dissolution of special education services, we see a common ploy that takes place within local school districts. Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine wrote about how, after Katrina, elderly and ailing–free market Guru–Milton Friedman, with help from the Bush administration, used the NOLA devastation to shutter […]
How Common Core Disparages Teachers and Drives Critical Moral Thinking out of the Adolescent English/Language Arts Classroom
Why are schools and teachers permitting Common Core to take over what they have always done well, teaching middle and high school English/Language Arts (ELA) classes? And how destructive is it to students who don’t learn to foster ideas about what they think about a novel, instead, merely picking out technical points of the text? […]
The Sneaky Takeover of America’s Teacher Ed. Programs: Today’s Target Eastern Michigan University
My last post was about the sneaky way the University of Memphis education school was being side-swiped by the Relay Graduate School, a faux education group of pretend-educators who will end professional teacher preparation as we know it. Now, Eastern Michigan University (EMU) has a similar, but slightly different, situation brewing. Moveon.org has a petition […]
Happy Thanksgiving: The Role of Public Schools
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It doesn’t have the hyperactivity of other holidays. And it isn’t dominated by one religion or another, although it certainly, for many, is religious. While there are certainly attempts to drag commercialism into the day, people, in general, seem to recognize it is a quiet time–simply to enjoy […]