Last Sunday, January 23, I introduced you to Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, where I told you that For the future of our children, we demand the following . . . * Equitable funding for all public school communities * An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation * Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policiesand that the date of the event was July 28-31, 2011.Starting today, I will begin to introduce you to some of the key people organizing the event, and explain why we are committing our time and energy to this...
Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action
Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action For the future of our children, we demand the following . . . * Equitable funding for all public school communities * An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation * Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies * Curricula developed by and for local school communitiesThose the four key demands of an important initiative on public education.It is geared towards a gathering in our nation's capital, It is geared towards a gathering in our nation's capital, July 28-31 sorry -...
Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus
If teachers, parents, school boards, administrators, community members, and lawmakers can listen to each other and work on this problem together, we can lessen the tide of teacher attrition, ultimately improving the learning and working environment in schools for everyone. (p. 156)Those are the final words of this new book by Katy Farber. Depending on what statistics you use, we lose up to 30% of new teachers in the first three years, up to 50% in the first five. Some clearly should not have been teachers in the first place. But others bring the passion, knowledge and, at least potentially, the...
Mario Small Responds
Dear all,Considering the visibility of the Boston Review piece---and given its numerous distortions and misrepresentations---I think it's important for people to read the original paper themselves and arrive at their own conclusions. The Boston Review piece is threatening to set the discussion back 30 years. The Introduction to the issue (Small, Harding, and Lamont 2010) is available for free here: http://ann.sagepub.com/content/629/1/6.full.pdf+html . I believe the full issue is available for free, too: http://ann.sagepub.com/content/629/1.toc . Inspired by Wikileaks, I believe people...
The Poverty of Culture of Poverty Arguments
Note: See Mario Small's Response here.Poor Reason: Culture Still Doesn’t Explain Poverty, by Stephen Steinberg Indeed, the comeback of the culture of poverty, albeit in new rhetorical guise, signifies a reversion to the status quo ante: to the discourses and concomitant policy agenda that existed before the black protest movement forced the nation to confront its collective guilt and responsibility for two centuries of slavery and a century of Jim Crow—racism that pervaded all major institutions of our society, North and South. Such momentous issues are brushed away as a new generation of sociologists...
Faculty at WSU College of Education Weigh in on WA Governor's Proposal
When Gov. Chris Gregoire proposed a major overhaul of the state’s education programs last week, I needed some expert input in order to have an informed opinion. I’m still learning what I can. So far, most educators I’ve asked agree on the need for change, but have reservations about the governor’s approach. Or they like her proposal, but doubt it will get past the political hurdles.Here are some of the comments I’ve received from my best source of information, the College of Education faculty:Darcy Miller: It is a long overdue change. Folks involved with education from preschool to graduate school...
Arne Duncan on School Reform
On many issues, Democrats and Republicans agree, starting with the fact that no one likes how NCLB labels schools as failures, even when they are making broad gains. Parents, teachers, and lawmakers want a system that measures not just an arbitrary level of proficiency, but student growth and school progress in ways that better reflect the impact of a school and its teachers on student learning.Most people dislike NCLB's one-size-fits-all mandates, which apply even if a community has better local solutions than federally dictated tutoring or school-transfer options. Providing more flexibility...
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