A Round of Applause for . . . .Catholic Education!

Interesting article on Catholic education and its effect on income later in life.  The statistics teacher in me is looking for the lurking variable, (demographics? God's blessings? etc.) but I'll let the reader decide.

Maybe principals will become obsolete

I've often wondered if school will really look different sometime in my lifetime.  The author of this article seems to think many different things will become obsolete.  I sure hope she is right.

Social Media and Teachers

Does it seem common sense for a teacher NOT to blog about specific things that happen with students?  Apparently not if school districts have to spend money to train teachers about appropriate social media use.

Fallacies in Education

I had the pleasure of hearing Randy Trani speak at a conference recently.  He's outside the box, controversial, but brilliant in his assessments of how we educate children.  And, he's getting results.  Looking forward to reading his book, Fallacies in Education.

Luving English

I've seen this coming for a while.  I've noticed it in the way that kids, when forced to use email, will compose their messages.  Now it seems to be taking over written work as well.

My favorite line in the article is when the young man just claims that his entire generation is just lazy.  Hilarious.

It's been a while . . .

Through the challenges of our school year - I haven't done much blogging! It's time to start again. Especially since so much is going on in the public school world. Never has the material been richer. Looking forward to getting back at it.

The effects of no money , , ,

Another post in the "how will lack of funds affect public schools?" category . . .

I'm writing this post on June 24th, in the year of our Lord 2010.

And I'm labeling it that way because I can.

More than I can say for this high school in Connecticut. Maybe they should go with "in the year of our self." Just a thought.

The economy and higher education . . .

One of my colleagues and I were commenting the other day that more and more high school graduates seem to be choosing the path of least cost versus the path of elite schools. As family income drops and college has become increasingly expensive, many students are unwilling to take on the debt of a higher level four-year institution. This becomes especially true if the desired profession will not make enough money to pay off an obscene amount of student loan debt.

I saw an article today that describes this situation as the higher education bubble. The author thinks that having a "four-year degree from a decent to elite school" will be less impressive in the future:

Post-bubble, perhaps students -- and employers, not to mention parents and lenders --will focus instead on education that fosters economic value. And that is likely to press colleges to focus more on providing useful majors. (That doesn't necessarily rule out traditional liberal-arts majors, so long as they are rigorous and require a real general education, rather than trendy and easy subjects, but the key word here is "rigorous.")

Interesting stuff.

Update: Please note that I posted this and then noticed almost the identical post at powerlineblog.com. I didn't steal their post - I wouldn't dare - they only have about a few million more viewers than I do.

Summarizing the problem . . .

Great article detailing the major issues of education today. In short, the author points to four main problems:

1. Passing kids along from one grade to the next even if they are not ready.
2. Teachers doing students' work for them.
3. Graded inflation so kids pass.
4. Cheating the standardized tests.

Good stuff.

No idea what to do?

Good to know that the rest of the educational world has no idea what to do with student cell phones either.

I am waiting for the article on the larger issue that faces today's high school students: their inability to concentrate on anything that does not have a screen.


Update: Found it! - Check this out.

Challenging the union?

One day after reading this story in the Denver Post about the inability of the state of Colorado to fire teachers, my eyes about jumped out of my head to see this headline:

Colorado Renews Teacher Tenure Debate

A bill is being introduced in the Colorado state legislature that would tie teacher tenure with student performance. I read that and thought, "really? - what must the union be saying?" Well, they aren't happy. But then I thought, "What's the catch?"

Colorado is in the running for federal Race to the Top education grants being offered to states with the most ambitious education reforms. Colorado could receive up to $175 million.

Many education experts believe Johnston's bill gives Colorado a better chance at winning the money in the second round.

Tennessee and Delaware, two states that won $600 million in the Race to the Top's first round, reworked their laws to tie student academic growth to teacher tenure. In Colorado, teachers effectively get tenure after three years.

State Education Commissioner Dwight Jones, in an op-ed piece for The Denver Post, said he believes Johnston's bill would "boost our chances in the second round."


The key to challenging teacher tenure has been discovered: make federal money contingent upon it.

Quite the School!!

Class sizes

I've already blogged about the effects of the current economy on schools, class sizes, etc.

Here is a recent article justifying teacher layoffs with the lack of research showing that small class sizes are better.

Interesting line from the article: "It's much better to have a large class with a good teacher than a small class with a mediocre teacher," said Eric Hanushek, education researcher at Stanford University.

I've used that line before as well. Never used it justify classes over 30 though.

Update: Yikes, more bad news on this front out of Illinois (hard to believe I once lived there.)

A little sarcasm to get you through the weekend . . .

OK - this is funny. Remember - it's the Onion. I claim no responsibility for any other links on that page.