Krash Course 3

Ever wonder how you can become an educator, education expert, or education reformer?

Well, since 60 Minutes has bought into the most recent con-du-jour, the Khan Academy, let's consider how people become educators.

How about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan?

Peter Smagorinsky puts it best:

"Let’s trace his path to the presidential Cabinet. One of Duncan’s childhood friends, John Rogers, appointed Duncan director of the Ariel Education Initiative in Chicago. Duncan’s directorship led to Ariel’s reincarnation as a charter school, following which Duncan was advanced in the Chicago Public School system from deputy chief of staff to chief executive officer. Note that he worked exclusively at the executive level, never stooping to teach classes or learn about schools except from an operational perspective."

Or how about Bill Gates? This one is easy, to become an education expert or education reformer, amass billions of dollars.

And Michelle Rhee? Bypass the education establishment by not receiving any degrees in education, become a leader by entering the classroom through TFA, teach three years, and then attain your credibility by firing teachers and creating an education system built on fraudulent test data.

This brings us back to Sal Khan—whose wikipedia page identifies him as an "American educator."

Pretty impressive considering he, like Rhee, Duncan, and Gates, has no degrees in education, and like Duncan and Gates, has no experience teaching.

But he got tired of his day job, started tutoring his relatives, made some videos, and now is a full-fledged educator. And according to CBS, he may be the future of education.

I don't see myself grabbing billions any time soon, or having the connections Duncan and Rhee have to get on the appointment train.

So like Khan, I think I'll just announce what I am and go from there...

I am a nuclear physicist...

[waits patiently for CBS to call]

Reconsidering the Khan Academy

The Best Posts About The Khan Academy

This Khan Academy History Video Is Just Awful

Khan Academy: It's Different This Time

Finally, More Criticism of the Khan Academy

The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy

Khan Academy: Improving school by changing nothing

The Stomach of Austerity

Idiot!

 A very good article here from the pressofAtlanticCity:

By DIANE D’AMICO Education Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com 

Southern New Jersey towns with the highest unemployment and poverty in the state will also be among the hardest hit by school-funding reforms proposed by the state Department of Education and Gov. Chris Christie.

The four southernmost counties, Cape May, Atlantic, Salem and Cumberland rank at the bottom of the state in child welfare measures, according to the 2011 Kids Count report by Advocates for Children of New Jersey. Those four counties also have the highest unemployment rates in the state, with Cape May at 14 percent in December and Atlantic County at 12.4 percent compared with 9 percent statewide, according to Department of Labor statistics.

Yet while Christie’s proposed budget would increase state aid to schools almost 2 percent statewide, overall, school districts in Cape May and Cumberland counties will get slightly less aid, at least partly due to enrollment shifts.

Atlantic County will see a 2 percent increase as aid catches up to growth in suburban enrollment over the last decade, but its two most economically challenged districts, Atlantic City and Pleasantville, will lose funds.

Advocates for children said the reforms ignore the pervasive problems of poverty and the vital role schools play in giving children the opportunity to succeed. They worry that proposals will pit poor children who need funds against suburban families looking for property tax relief.

“The idea that you can somehow leave poverty behind at the school house door is foolish,” said Cecilia Zalkind, executive director of the Advocates for Children of New Jersey, or ACNJ, which will be monitoring the proposals.

Millions of dollars are at stake. Of the more than $8 billion proposed for state education funding next year, more than $2.5 billion targets programs such as preschool, bilingual and remedial programs, and extra services for economically disadvantaged or “at risk” students, according to the state formula.

Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, in an Education Funding Report that accompanied the state aid figures, questioned whether the state investment in its poorest students has paid off, noting the achievement gap that still remains between test scores of low-income and minority students and their more-advantaged peers.

Using the “more money hasn’t solved the problem” argument, Christie has proposed what he calls “common sense” changes to the state school funding law that would reduce funding to most of the state’s poorest school districts and would also affect districts with shrinking enrollment.

Local legislators said they still have to review the 83-page state report, but are concerned. State Sen Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, a teacher in Atlantic City, said he doesn’t understand the proposal by state Sen. Michael Doherty, R-Warren, Hunterdon, that all children get the same amount of state aid; Hunterdon County got a 10 percent state aid increase under Christie’s proposed budget plan, the largest in the state. Warren County got 1 percent more.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Whelan said. “Different children have different needs. Poor families need more help. I don’t understand the rationale.”

Rutgers professor Bruce Baker, who writes the “schoolfinance101” blog, noted in his analysis of the state report that the test scores of poor students have improved with extra state aid. But so has the performance of suburban students, so the achievement gap remains. He said if anything, taking money from struggling poor schools and giving more to already more successful suburban schools is only likely to increase the gap.

A report by Stanford University’s Sean F. Reardon found the “income achievement gap” increased by 30 to 40 percent for children born between 1975 and 2001. It attributed part of the growth to improved achievement for families above the median income.

David Sciarra, of the Education Law Center, which has represented urban students in court, said while the state proposal appears to help suburban districts, he believes Legislators will reject it once they understand their long-term impact on all schools. He believes over five years more schools will lose aid.

“Even schools that are getting increases are not getting all they are entitled to under the law,” he said. “It’s just going to take some time for people to realize it.”

State Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, said he has already been talking to his Republican counterpart state Sen. Steve Oroho, who represents districts in Sussex County, the only other county to lose state aid. Van Drew said since they are both on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, the school aid proposals will get a thorough review.

Van Drew said he is also concerned about the funding law’s “geographic adjustment” that gives proportionally less aid to districts in the southern part of the state.

“We are going to look at how to minimize the impact of the proposals,” Van Drew said.

Contact Diane D'Amico:

609-272-7241

How Pink Slime Got Its Name

Sign the petition.

Protect children from the effects of poverty: Response to Paul Peterson

Protect children from the effects of poverty
Sent to the New York Daily News, March 11, 2012

Paul Peterson says we should “Fix public schools before child poverty,” (March 11), arguing that low parental income is the not cause of low school performance. But Peterson agrees with the massive research showing that factors associated with poverty are related to school performance. These include factors Peterson doesn’t mention that have a powerful impact on learning: poor diet, lack of health care, exposure to environmental toxins, and little access to books. The best teaching in the world will have little effect when children are hungry, sick, and have very little to read.
We are now planning to spend billions on a huge nation-wide testing program, far more than is needed to accurately measure student achievement. We all recognize the need for assessment, but this money would be better spent if it were used to expand breakfast and lunch programs, provide more school nurses and improve school libraries in schools in high-poverty areas. Protecting children from the effects of poverty will raise test scores and improve school achievement, and, more important, it will improve the quality of life for millions of children.
Stephen Krashen

Peterson article: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/fix-public-schools-child-poverty-article-1.1036393#ixzz1opak85rR

some sources:
Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;
Coles, G. 2008/2009. Hunger, academic success, and the hard bigotry of indifference. Rethinking Schools 23 (2);
Rothstein, R. (2010). How to fix our schools. Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief #286. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/ib286;
Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership 55(4): 18-22;
Martin, M. 2004. A strange ignorance: The role of lead poisoning in “failing schools.” http://www.azsba.org/lead.htm.

Krash Course 2

(a) I have written four books on writers: Barbara Kingsolver, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and Ralph Ellison. Much of my time as a teacher of writing has also been spent searching for and listening to writers write (and talk) about how they came to be writers.

A recurring theme is that formal schooling wasn't helpful; in fact, formal schooling is often identified as a hurdle to their lives as writers...

See this excellent article from The Guardian (U.K.) that brings this issue to light:

Roddy Doyle: the joy of teaching children to write

An excerpt from the article:

The centre, which takes its name from a common Dublin expression meaning words used to advance an argument, was also partly a response to a lack of creativity in Doyle's own education. The Christian Brothers who ran his secondary school gave him no encouragement to write fiction. For years, Doyle simply assumed he didn't have the talent or discipline to put pen to paper. Today's children, he says, deserve better.

"When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did," he says. "There was an absence of thought [about creative writing] which seems daft in retrospect." Doyle didn't start writing regularly until he became an English and geography teacher in his 20s. "I didn't have the discipline until then."

(b) Somewhat related, are our schools building equity...or perpetuating inequity, particularly higher education?

Consider A Smug Education? (New York Times, March 8, 2012); an excerpt:

Consider the fact that SAT scores (a big factor in college admissions) correlate closely with family wealth. The total average SAT score of students from families earning more than $100,000 per year is more than 100 points higher than for students in the income range of $50,000 to $60,000. Or consider that a mere 3 percent of students in the top 150 colleges, as defined by The Chronicle of Higher Education, come from families in the bottom income quartile of American society. Only a very dogmatic Social Darwinist would conclude from these facts that intelligence closely tracks how much money one’s parents make. A better explanation is that students from affluent families have many advantages — test-prep tutors, high schools with good college counseling, parents with college savvy and so on.

Yet once the beneficiaries arrive at college, what do they learn about themselves? It’s a good bet that the dean or president will greet them with congratulations for being the best and brightest ever to walk through the gates. A few years ago, the critic and essayist William Deresiewicz, who went to Columbia and taught at Yale, wrote that his Ivy education taught him to believe that those who didn’t attend “an Ivy League or equivalent school” were “beneath” him. The writer Walter Kirn recalled that at Princeton he learned to “rise to almost every challenge ... except, perhaps, the challenge of real self-knowledge.” In my experience, a great many students at top colleges are wonderful young people whose idealism matches their intelligence. Yet the charge that elite college culture encourages smugness and self-satisfaction contains, like Mr. Santorum’s outburst, a germ of truth.

Cañon City improves access to books, I make a suggestion

Written in response to a very nice article in the local newspaper.

A suggestion for the Book Swap: Don’t include incentives
Sent to the Cañon City Daily Record, March 10, 2012

I was very pleased to read that as a result of my presentation at the Colorado Reading Association conference, there are plans to add a book swap along with the summer free lunch program in Cañon City (“Cañon City School District collecting books for summer reading,” March 10). I’m very happy that McKinley teacher Jamie Davis came to my presentation and passed my message about the importance of access to books to others.

The organizers of the summer program, according to the Daily Record, are considering providing incentives (prizes) for reading.

I have reviewed the research on incentives and reading, and have concluded that there is no clear evidence that incentives help. When students read more when incentives are provided, I suspect it is because of the increased access to books, not the prizes: As is well-known, access to interesting books stimulates reading, and reading itself stimulates more reading.

There are other reasons to be wary of providing incentives. Programs such as Accelerated Reader test children on what they read, award points for passing tests that can be cashed in for prizes. This encourages children to read primarily to earn points, which alters the nature of reading, with readers focusing on often irrelevant details in order to pass tests.

Incentives could also have the effect of discouraging reading in the long run: Reading is intrinsically pleasant. Substantial research shows that rewarding an intrinsically pleasant activity sends the message that the activity is not pleasant, and that nobody would do it without a bribe.

My suggestion: If there is extra money for the summer program, I would spend it on books, not prizes, and certainly not for tests.

For those interested in the research, please see articles available for free on my website (www.sdkrashen.com, in the section “Free voluntary reading,”) and Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished by Rewards.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

Original article:
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/news/education/ci_20143236/mckinley-elementary-school-collecting-books-summer-reading

Does Colorado Really Want to Litigate Parental Rights In Order to Preserve Invalid, Unreliable, and Abusive Tests?

The “primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an American tradition.” --Wisconsin v. Yoder (406 U.S. 205, 215)

In Texas, Colorado, New York, California, Washington, we can see and hear the gathering storm of national protest against the damaging, miseducative, and unethical use of high stakes tests in schools. On March 30-April 2, activists, parents, educators, scholars, lawyers, and other concerned citizens will gather in Washington, DC to occupy DOE and to kick off the 2012 campaign to end the corporate-sponsored testing madness.

Meanwhile, the Gates-Waltons-supported ALEC gets in gear with their "sincere ignorance" and "conscientious stupidity" to press passage of state laws mandating that students sit for the damaging, unethical tests that are leaving American students further and further behind other nations, as Duncan continues to implicate the federal government in the sham teacher evaluation schemes that will never survive judicial review. 

With a mountain of evidence to demonstrate the individual and collective harm of high stakes tests, does Superintendent Smith and the Colorado AG really want to try to make the case that parents do not have the right to protect their children from the demonstrated harm and pedagogical malfeasance that the State of Colorado continues to sponsor?  Here is just one statement by one professional organization on testing.  How many such statements are required before authorities stop listening to self-serving oligarchs for policy decisions, rather than heeding the researched opinions of professionals who have some knowledge of children's needs and rights?

__________

American Evaluation Association
Position Statement on
HIGH STAKES TESTING
In PreK-12 Education  

---

High stakes testing leads to under-serving or mis-serving all students, especially the most needy and vulnerable, thereby violating the principle of “do no harm.”  The American Evaluation Association opposes the use of tests as the sole or primary criterion for making decisions with serious negative consequences for students, educators, and schools.  The AEA supports systems of assessment and accountability that help education.  

_____________

The following letter is from a couple in New York who have decided that they will protect their child from the harm imposed by a system of schooling that shows blatant disregard for the intellectual and emotional health of children.  Use as your model, if you need one!

Dear fellow parents of NYC public school students,

We have two children in public elementary schools in Manhattan, and until this year, when one child entered third grade, we were extremely satisfied with the educations they were receiving. Their teachers and principals have been without exception smart, professional and deeply knowledgeable about our children as individuals. Our experience of our son’s third grade year thus far, however, has convinced us that the standardized testing that has come to dominate our schools severely compromises his teachers’ ability to do their jobs. They have been forced to adopt inferior test-oriented teaching practices and to take too much time away from classroom activities to accommodate endless practice tests. The reward for their efforts from the Department of Education has been a completely unwarranted test-based grade of “D” for their school, which is sapping their morale. Even before the recent disastrous release of flawed teacher evaluations based on test scores, which promises to drive good teachers from the profession in droves, we had come to the conclusion that the current heavy emphasis on testing seriously undermines the quality of public education.

As parents, we feel compelled to act. We will be boycotting state-mandated standardized testing of our children for the indefinite future, with the goal of restoring control over education to those who really understand how children learn – parents and teachers. If you would like to join us or just share your impressions, please contact us using the email address given at the end of this letter, or check out the information and resources at changethestakes.org.
Here are five basic reasons for our decision:

1) Testing is dumbing down our schools. Placing standardized tests at the center of the curriculum forces the reduction or elimination of subjects like history, science, the arts and physical education, as well as narrowing the ways the “core” subjects of reading and math are taught. (For more on our opinions about this see our piece in Schoolbook: http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/20/dear-governor-lobby-to-save-a-love-of-reading.)

2) Testing is unduly stressful for young children. The test preparations, including mandatory afterschool and weekend sessions and practice tests scheduled throughout the year, and the official test itself (six days of testing in the third grade, more in higher grades) are extremely onerous for young students who are compelled to sit through them. Testing often becomes torturous for special-education students, who are given the perverse “accommodation” of extra time. To make matters worse, this year the testing time is being substantially lengthened so that test designers can try out practice questions for future years, using our children as uncompensated guinea pigs.

3) Using test scores to grade teachers hurts the most vulnerable students. The use of standardized tests as the primary performance measure of teachers and schools creates a powerful incentive for teachers to avoid schools that serve students in need of extra help. Teachers often cannot significantly raise the academic performance of children who do not have adequate support for learning outside of school. Punishing teachers when students are struggling because of factors beyond their control, such as unstable home situations or learning disabilities, is gross social injustice – and it is the children who pay the price.

4) High-stakes tests force teachers to adopt bad teaching practices. The dire consequences for teachers who do not teach to the test prevent them from doing what they were trained to do: to educate our children based on their best professional judgment. Teachers who must constantly strategize to improve test scores at all costs do not have the time or the intellectual freedom to do their jobs properly, and our kids’ educations suffer.

5) Standardized tests are a waste of public money. In an age of scarcity, we should not be spending untold millions of tax dollars on practices that add nothing of value to children’s educations. Many of the finest school systems in the world do without standardized tests entirely, and such tests hardly figure in the lives of children in the elite private elementary schools that our political leaders send their kids to. We should stop funding the testing industry and use that money to hire teachers, build schools, and restore the arts and sciences to all our public schools.
We cannot allow our children to be used as tools in the enforcement of unjust laws and destructive, wasteful policies. They will be educated in public schools, and they will not take state-mandated standardized tests.

We have not come to this decision lightly. We have considered the central argument for the tests, that they are essential tools for assessing student and teacher performance, and rejected it. If the tests are necessary, why does the most successful school system in the world – Finland’s – do without them? The fact is, teaching is too complex an activity ever to be properly assessed by numerical models, which is why expensive evaluation systems based on test scores keep failing. Teachers know how to assess children’s progress, and principals, fellow teachers and parents know how to evaluate teachers, by observing their work directly.

We have been warned repeatedly of serious consequences that might arise from boycotting these tests: our children will not be permitted to move on to the next grade, or, even worse, their schools and teachers will be penalized because student absence from the tests is reflected in teacher assessments and the school’s grade. It has been suggested, in other words, that we should comply with the tests because our act of civil disobedience will cause the state to harm others. Because this is a very real danger, many parents opposed to high-stakes testing have chosen to petition for the legal right to opt out of the tests rather than to boycott them outright (information about this option is also available at changethestakes.org). However, we refuse to be intimidated by threats coming from the Department of Education into submitting to practices that we consider both unethical and harmful to our children. And we will challenge any actions taken by the DOE to punish our child or his wonderful teachers because of our decision.

Thank you for reading this letter, and please contact us to share ideas about how parents can play a leading role in restoring public education in our city.

Sincerely,
Jeff Nichols and Anne Stone
jnichols.and.astone@gmail.com

GUEST POST: Top 10 Things I Wish I Could Say Out Loud

Top 10 Things I Wish I Could Say Out Loud

[originally posted at ruralteacher]

10. The State Tests, SATs, ACTs and any other High Stakes Test that you take will NOT predict your future success in life.  If anyone tells you that your success in life – as a productive citizen who is well-adjusted- depends on a TEST score, they are LYING TO YOU! Your life, your child’s life will be measured in many ways, but I can guarantee you that NO ONE is going to care what score you or your child got on a 3rd grade State Assessment. For that matter, NO ONE cares what your SAT score is – in fact, many colleges and universities are now going “Test Optional” meaning you don’t have to submit your SAT or ACT test scores to be considered for enrollment. So, talk to the college you’re interested in and find out. If High Stakes tests aren’t required – why spend your time and money on something that is meaningless?

9. I did NOT become a teacher to have my summers off! It seems idyllic, having “nothing to do” in July and August doesn’t it? My summers are spent cleaning up last year and preparing for next year. (In my world – the year actually begins in September) I am in my classroom unpacking supplies, rearranging the room, organizing materials, throwing out what didn’t work, washing the cupboards, dusting the shelves, and planning the ‘big picture’ for my new students. Sometimes, I’m at endless training sessions by choice or at the demand of my school district. Yes, I do spend time with my family, but everything is timed around when I have to “get back to school”, which much to the chagrin of my own kids is about August 1st.

8. I only get paid for 10 months of work.  As my school district continually points out to me: I am a 10 month employee. I get a salary for 10 months’ work that I must spread over 12 months of living.

7. Having tenure does not  mean I have my job “for life” no matter what I do. All that being “tenured” guarantees me is due process and some representation in the event that I am accused of something that would warrant my dismissal as a teacher. Actually, with a contract, there are very easy ways for an administration to terminate me whether I have tenure or not: consistently being late, not completing report cards, any failure to complete my “job duties”, and now in NY two years of an “ineffective” student test score rating.  The fact that I was even granted tenure rests solely on the administrators who observed me in my first three years of teaching and decided that I was a teacher that they wanted to keep around.

6. Going to school sick is better than  writing plans for a substitute. I actually have LOTS of accumulated sick time simply because it’s MUCH easier to go to school and get through the day with a pounding headache or a cough than it is to try to write plans for a sub. Most often, the sub is not a certified teacher, and my plans have to actually include so much step by step detail that it’s just easier to go to school. Obviously, if I’m contagious, or a doctor tells me that I can’t be in school, I stay home. There are those days when the sinuses are just not cooperating and it would be heavenly to crawl back under the covers and sleep, but it’s just too much work.

5. The Principal’s Office and the Superintendent’s Office are STILL scary places to be! When I get the phone call or the email or the written note that the Principal or Superintendent wants to see me – I tremble a little.  I start to wonder if a parent has a concern that he or she didn’t address with me, or if something I’ve posted on Facebook has gotten me in trouble AGAIN. Worst are the ‘direct, explicit instructions’ to do or not do something that I know would be good for kids. If I don’t follow those instructions – I am insubordinate and could be fired. 

4. The Board of Education, the Governor, the President are taking advice and making decisions about your child’s education from people who have never taught a day in their lives! All the talk about EDUCATION REFORM in the US is being framed and led by people who have little to no experience as classroom teachers in any capacity. The ideas that are gaining momentum – more testing, using test data to rate teachers, privatizing schools, creating MORE charter schools – are NOT based on anything that educators know about child development, developmentally appropriate practices, or what we have learned about LEARNING.

3. The “experts” you see on TV during things like NBC’s “Education Nation” or in the movie “Waiting for Superman” do NOT have children’s best interests at heart. Sadly, many of the ‘experts’ are simply folks who have a whole heck of a lot of money and have decided to use it to shape education policy so that they can get richer. It’s interesting when you start to follow the money – from the approved test vendors to the pockets of the politicians. These ‘experts’ are looking to grab a piece of the pie in the form of MORE MONEY FOR THEM on the backs and lives of your children. They are shaping policies that have no basis in what may actually be good for students, but instead in what is good to add to their piles of money.

2. Even though, as a teacher I am vilified in the press, I still LOVE teaching! Teaching and being a teacher is MY LIFE. The smiles, the hugs, the drawings, the ‘aha moments’ that I get to see MAKE MY DAY! I am so lucky to have a career that I truly love- when I am left to do what I do best – TEACH!! I never imagined doing anything else with my life. I haven’t gone on to be an administrator because I honestly love being with my students every day. I would miss it terribly if I couldn’t do it.

1. My name  In my small town, if I ever attached my name to this blog, I’m not sure what would happen. Perhaps I would be praised, and perhaps I would be called to the Principal or Superintendent’s Office and politely asked to stop. The stories I tell are MY stories, but there are others  that could be impacted if my identity were known. This is the FEAR that teachers live with – fear of speaking up and out because we, quite honestly, have mouths to feed, kids to put through college, and mortgages and taxes to pay. It’s gotten so bad that many of us don’t speak up at Faculty Meetings or Union Meetings – we just put our heads down, dance faster, work harder and wonder how long til we can retire because teaching has become WORK………..

North Carolina Teachers Smothered in Tests

From the Advancement Project (ht to Monty Neill)

Taking Back Our Classrooms: The United Struggle of Teachers, Students, and Parents in North Carolina Against High-Stakes Testing

March 5, 2012

North Carolina students, parents and teachers say the state’s use of high-stakes testing as its primary means of evaluating students and schools is ineffective, counterproductive, and denies young people the quality education they deserve, according to a new report.

Released today by Advancement Project, Advocates for Children’s Services and the North Carolina NAACP, Taking Back Our Classrooms: The United Struggle of Teachers, Students and Parents in North Carolina Against High-Stakes Testing shares the experiences of more than 100 teachers, students and parents across five counties – Wake, Durham, Buncombe, Mecklenburg, and Guilford – and the results of a statewide survey of 600 teachers. The report offers their collective recommendations for structuring an accountability system which reflects the realities of classrooms across the state.

Key recommendations include:

• Establishing classroom-based assessment and accountability for students, teachers and schools by offering multiple methods of evaluating students with different learning styles and incorporates peer reviews into teacher evaluations.
• Equipping students to be active and engaged participants in society by focusing on the development of “life skills” and encouraging them to challenge ideas.
• Focusing on early interventions for literacy as a basis for all learning.
• Providing meaningful professional development opportunities for teachers around classroom management.
• Establishing a system for evaluating implementation of reform efforts and identifying disparities in access to quality education.

Attached files

• Taking Back our Classrooms Executive Summary (1.42MB PDF)
• Taking Back our Classrooms Report (14.60MB PDF)
• Taking Back our Classrooms Action Kit (1.57MB PDF)

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Krash Course with P.L. Thomas

* I plan to start a series of brief posts dedicated to the wise and persistent plea from Stephen Krashen for short and accurate commentary on education; thus, "Krash Course."

Krash Course #1

Journalism is failing U.S. public education. See two examples from Education Week:

Growing Gaps Bring Focus on Poverty's Role in Schooling 

This piece perpetuates as experts self-proclaimed reformers who have no or little experience as teachers or scholars. Even when journalists explore a valuable topic—the weight of poverty on education in the U.S.—that examination is ruined by the context (see THIS discussion of the same phenomenon at The New York Times). Journalists need to seek educators and scholars who are credible.

AERA Erasing Line Between Scholarship and Partisanship [blog by Rick Hess]

Here, the same dynamic as above—Hess is by his presence leveraged credibility—merges with the mantra from the Right: The Left is being political/partisan! Without context and without a challenge, these cries of partisanship and politics are allowed to appear "objective" themselves—yet, Hess is being political by calling for no more politics from AERA (see THIS discussion of the fact of teaching being always political and a distinction made between "partisan" and "political").

I recommend four valuable resources about navigating educational research:

Yettick, H. (2009). The research that reaches the public: Who produces the educational research mentioned in the news media? Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved from http://epicpolicy.org/publication/research-that-reaches 

Molnar, A. (2001, April 11). The media and educational research: What we know vs. what the public hears. Milwaukee, WI: Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation. Retrieved from http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/cerai-01-14.htm

Bracey, G. (2006). Reading educational research: How to avoid getting statistically snookered. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Thomas, P. L. (2011, September 13). A primer on navigating education claims. Reposted at The Answer Sheet.