Rush, Little Baby How the push for infant academics may actually be a waste of time - or worse. What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey Now, an organization from outside the teaching fold—McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments—has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says*, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. Social Decision-Making: Insights from Game Theory and Neuroscience...
Let's draw low-income students into college
University of Texas system chancellor Mark Yudof argues that we should give low-income families some clue about their financial aid status before their children's senior year in high school. As he explains, the details are very tough to manage, but it's a smart idea, and it should be part of the breadcrumb trail to college we need to leave for students from low- and moderate-income famili...
4 Million Dollars and 24 New School Nurses: Beyond Pedagogy to Collective Power (Community Organizing and Urban Education)
To read the entire series, go here.WINNING CONCESSIONS Last week, in the just-passed Wisconsin State budget, a couple of lines give four million dollars (in new state and federal money) to the Milwaukee Public Schools for 24 school nurses. Sometimes it’s hard to trace the influences behind policy changes. But in this case, I know for certain that these lines in the budget are a direct result of the work done by myself and a small number of leaders in Milwaukee’s MOVE congregational organizing group. It is because of MOVE and our work that thousands of the poorest students in Milwaukee...
Stereotype Threat, NCLB, and the Half-Way Solution
From Ed Week:Stanford University psychologist Claude M. Steele made headlines in 1995 with a study that introduced the phrase “stereotype threat” into the national lexicon. Put simply, it’s the idea that people tend to underperform when confronted with situations that might confirm negative stereotypes about their social group.Could there ever be devised a more consistent, hammering confirmation of stereotype for minority children and parents living economically disadvantaged lives: the more you struggle, the steeper the hill gets over time, and the more likely you are to fail the high stakes...
Conservatives Against Choice? What's Going On?
In this morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comes this report about a new study from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. The full report apparently isn't out yet (later today, I think), but the Sentinel article seems clear enough.The overall conclusion: Only 10% of MPS parents make school choices by a process that involves considering at least two schools and that brings academic performance data from a school into the choice. "Given this number, it seems unlikely that MPS schools are feeling the pressure of a genuine educational marketplace," wrote the report's author, researcher David...
One On One Interviews: Intentional Relationship Building for Organizing (Community Organizing and Urban Education)
Here is another of my introductory lectures to organizing. I just wrote this one this week, so it is very much a first draft (more, even, than most of the lectures). Click here for the text of the complete lecture and here or the complete series.Community organizing groups are made up of relationships between individuals. Of course, this is not all that holds them together. Long-term groups depend on a loyalty to the organization and its historical relationship to the community. And, as we will discuss later on, the specific issues that a group works on can draw in commitment. But at the...
The Week in Ed Science Links (and some poli sci)
Lifted from BOOKFORUM.COM: Playing nice and teaching good From Philosophy Now, an interview with Randall Curren, author of Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education; playing nice and teaching good: Carolyn Suchy-Dicey considers the dilemma of teaching moral autonomy. A review of An Introduction to Philosophy of Education by Robin Barrow and Ronald Woods. Schools as scapegoats: Our increasing inequality and our competitiveness problems are huge, but they can't be laid at the door of our education system. The flood waters that submerged New Orleans two years ago also sank the local school...
Education: an expert on assessment offers sage commentary
this is crossposted from dailykos because I felt it was also relevant to a blog on educational policyThe expert is Rick Stiggins, who is the founder of ETS's Assement Training Institute in Portland OR. The sage commentary appears in the current )Oct 17) edition of Education Week, the national weekly indispensable for news on Education (and even if you are not a subscriber you can register for free to read two articles a week). The article to which I refer is entitled Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences (this link might require you to register before you can use it). Below I will offer...
Hillary on Education -some promise but overall incomplete and somewhat disappointing
this is a continuation of my crossposting diaries from dailykos on the educational plans of the Democratic candidates for president. To read the original version of this diary on Clinton with all the comments, use this link. This is posted without changing the original date referencesYesterday the American Federation of Teachers, with over 1.4 million members endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Thus it seems an appropriate time to examine what Hillary has to offer about education on her website. When one goes to her issues page, there is no specific link to education, but if one goes to...
Questions for the AESA Executive Committee
Questions for the AESA Executive CommitteeThe American Educational Studies Association (AESA) is meeting next week in Cleveland. AESA is, according to its website, “a society primarily comprised of college and university professors who teach and research in the field of education utilizing one or more of the liberal arts disciplines of philosophy, history, politics, sociology, anthropology, or economics as well as comparative/international and cultural studies. The purpose of social foundations study is to bring intellectual resources derived from these areas to bear in developing interpretive,...
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