I hope this doesn't offend...someone showed it at a session at AERA, and I thought it was spot on. I also realize it's a little dated, so if it needs to be deleted feel free to do ...
Budget Meltdown
From the "It's going to get worse before it gets any better" department (h/t docudharma):By Daniel B. Wood, The Christian Science MonitorFri Mar 21, 4:00 AM ET Los Angeles - California, home to 1 in 9 American schoolchildren, is on the brink of what may be the biggest public education crisis in state history. Facing a $16 billion state budget shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $4.8 billion in school-funding cuts, or 10 percent of education spending. In the past week, over 20,000 preliminary pink slips were sent by school districts to teachers and administrators state wide, according...
"We need a teacher."
I just think this blog entry by Will Richardson says what I would like to say about the speech by Barack Obama yesterday about race: We need a teacher (as president).I couldn't agree more. THAT is what should truly qualify someone as "the education president."As Will writes: "We need someone who can create some lesson plans for the millions of us who want to engage, want to contribute, want to work to solve the problems together. We need someone who I can hold up as a role model for my own children as a steward for the environment, as a peace maker, as a listener, as a deep thinker."I've met...
Ed Links
Natural selection and cultural rates of change It has been claimed that a meaningful theory of cultural evolution is not possible because human beliefs and behaviors do not follow predictable patterns. However, theoretical models of cultural transmission and observations of the development of societies suggest that patterns in cultural evolution do occur. Here, we analyze whether two sets of related cultural traits, one tested against the environment and the other not, evolve at different rates in the same populations. Using functional and symbolic design...
Contesting Progressivism: Discretion as Oppression
[This is a follow-up to this earlier forum post. I know many blog members, especially, are caught up with AERA prep, and it’s pretty long (and, dense, yes, okay) anyway. But what the heck.] A core value of progressive visions of democracy is flexibility in response to the shifting realities of life in a complex society. True democracy, progressives believed, required capacities for constant and fluid adjustment to the unpredictable contingencies of life in modern society. Dewey and others argued, for example, that the U.S. Constitution should be revisited over time and freely, democratically...
The Shrinking Professoriate
See this article:In the fall of 2004, 50.6 of professional full-time employees in higher education (excluding medical schools) were faculty members. In the fall of 2006, for which data were released Tuesday, 48.6 percent of professional, full-time jobs in higher education were held by faculty members.I had no idea. Fascinati...
Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing in Milwaukee: Community Organizing and Urban Education
[For other entries in this series, go here.]I have been playing around with a way to frame the key challenges that seem to block the emergence of a robust ecology of community action organizations in my city, which is probably fairly similar in many ways to a range of mid-sized, segregated U.S. cities. I tried to get it on two typed pages, but ended up with three. Many of the basic issues won't seem particularly surprising to people familiar with organizing, and it repeats some points I've made before (as usual) but it seemed useful to put them all together.Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing...
Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America
I read this book in manuscript and plan to use it in my seminar on 20th C educational reform this fall. Glass uses Jared Diamond’s idea of analyzing and explaining social change through three key material factors (Diamond used guns, germs, and steel). Quite ingenious…and being at a Moo U, I was fascinated by the discussion of fertilizer!"This is the most original book about education in years."~ Ernest R. House, University of Colorado, Boulder; Harold E. Lasswell Award RecipientFertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in AmericaGene V Glasshttp://www.infoagepub.com/products/content/p474f75aec2d61.phpGlass...
Ed Links
[Irrelevant but fun:] Things Vital to the Honor of Human Life Samuel Johnson once cautioned against the practice of “recommending” Shakespeare through the greatest-hits approach of quoting selected passages. Remarkable as the chosen passages might be, Johnson warned, the critic who relied simply on quotation was like the man “who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.” [See the comments for other favorite lines. E.g. : “Reading is thinking with the mind of a stranger” - Borges —AS] Pedagogy of Human Capital ...
Social Justice Teaching
From Inside Higher Ed:By Thomas R. TrittonWhat does a college president do after leaving the high intensity rigors of the job? One likely calling is the classroom, whence many of us came in the first place. So after a decade as president of Haverford College, I returned to the classroom at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.Professor Judy McLaughlin — she one of the world’s experts on college presidents — created the unique position at Harvard of “President-in-Residence”. Each year Judy invites one of the newly departed to join the faculty, participate in a seminar on the broad...
What Educators Everywhere Can Learn from Finland
Posted, too, at SM:Unlike the U.S., the Finns do not believe in beginning the social sorting in kindergarten with high-stakes tests. Unlike the U.S., the Finns are not committed to crushing the teaching profession and the public schools. Unlike the U.S., the Finns believe in the importance of play and personal autonomy.So how come they are doing so great on international tests?From the Wall Street Journal (not blocked to non-subscribers): Finland's teens score extraordinarily high on an international test. American educators are trying to figure out why.By ELLEN GAMERMANFebruary 29, 2008; Page...
Ed Links
Suburbia’s March to Oblivion “Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading” thro'gh cul-de-sac suburbia, he writes in the March issue of The Atlantic. And it is not just because of the mortgage mess. A “structural change” is occurring in the housing market — a “major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work,” moving social problems out of the city and into the suburban fringe. [This is a huge issue, by the way, likely to fundamentally change the meaning of "central city" and to actually increase the oppressive nature of concentrated...
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