The Blues City is earning its name when it comes to public schools. Both the Broad and Gates Foundations have seen to it. The other day I posted about cuts to Memphis (Shelby County Schools). I was quickly reminded, rightly so, that these were proposed cuts—like maybe there would be some kind of rollback in […]
Transforming Teacher Preparation—Gates Style
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have a quote on their website that says “Nobody knows teaching like teachers.” If they believe that, why don’t they let teachers teach the way they know best? Or, why don’t they ask them what they need to teach better? Instead, Mr. and Mrs. Gates are going to now […]
Professional Teachers—Click, Click! Poof! You’re Gone!
The attack on teacher education is fast and furious. Privatizing America’s public schools means getting rid of career teachers who support instruction geared to a child’s needs. A way to purge the country of real teachers is to extinguish their teacher education programs and make teaching look like a regimented practice that any drill sergeant […]
Purging U. S. Education History: Ignoring Past Mistakes and Successes
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. Maya Angelou They are doing strange things to Colleges of Education in this country, and one of the weirdest is dropping education history courses from required teacher preparation. According to Education Week there is a decline in […]
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 […]
University Teacher Education Takeover in Memphis
What Relay is doing largely breaks the mold. Its students are full-time elementary and middle-school teachers, almost all of them fresh out of college, almost none of them with a traditional teaching degree. June Kronholz, Education Next At the University of Memphis there are professors disturbed about a rather secret plan, one that college officials […]
Teacher Preparation: Which Way is the Best?
Here are some questions I would like to explore today with the help of teachers and parents and anyone with a vested interest in public education. Should teachers be prepared professionally in accredited colleges and universities? Or, does a fast-track training program that places graduate students and career changers, from various majors and possibly for-profit […]
Important Education Research Repeatedly Ignored
Have you noticed we are bombarded by articles and reports about what is right and wrong in education by think tanks and non-educators? In fact, I have heard a variety of education reformers claiming there is little education research. They are wrong. There are many serious studies that these same people continue to ignore. Not […]
You Can’t Trust Alternative Teaching Programs
The flim-flam report National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ) just reared its ugly head again. Those who follow education news know the report is bogus. Many bloggers have been justly slamming the report. You only need to look at the NCTQ Advisory Board and Board of Directors to understand what they are up to. Most […]
The New Teacher Project’s Speedy Miracle Immersions! Who’s Your Child’s Teacher?
My husband is an accounting professor. Two weeks ago he received a perky email from Anh-Thi Mouradav out of Nashville’s The New Teacher Project (TNTP) Teaching Fellows looking for him to forward her email request to accounting students who would make, in her words, “highly-effective math teachers.” He was quick to reply telling her that […]