January 2011 Archives

Two months after a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education told a national teacher's convention in Florida that he didn't know how to increase parent accountability, lawmakers in the Sunshine State introduced a bill that would require teachers to evaluate parents of early elementary school children, according to a CNN report. Parents would receive a "satisfactory," "needs improvement," or "unsatisfactory" rating based on their communication with teachers as well as their child's attendance, homework completion, test readiness, and sleep schedule, states CNN. It's easy to imagine that this would upset many parents, but many teachers are also unhappy ...

Former Teacher staffer Bryan Toporek just launched a new blog on Education Week about K-12 athletics, named—appropriately—Schooled in Sports. An avid sports fan himself, Bryan has already posted entries about NCAA recruiting in middle schools, phys ed requirements, and student-athlete concussions. Bryan previously reported on high school sports for the Falls Church News-Press in Virginia, and is a former NBA Team Leader for bleacherreport.com. The new blog's definitely worth a look (and an add to your RSS feed)....

In a somewhat satirical post, ASCD blogger Steven Weber proposes the idea that school reforms have killed social studies. "At some point between the standards movement and high stakes testing, some school districts decided that social studies was an add-on, rather than essential to developing a well-rounded citizen prepared for life and work in the 21st century," writes Weber. " ... [W]hat gets measured gets done and some principals even joke that 'social studies better not be taught in my school until all students are proficient.'" Since the implementation of NCLB, the amount of time spent teaching social studies has ...

Responding to the State of the Union address, Mr. McNamar of the Daily Grind thinks that if the president really wants to elevate the teaching profession, he needs to put his money—or somebody's money—where his mouth is: I'm not looking to be on the cover of Forbes magazine or sitting next to Oprah ... But I wouldn't mind being reasonably compensated. Let me be clear, I don't complain about teacher salaries often, but my paltry $45,000 after 8 years of nation building compared to the $65,000 a friend makes for managing a restaurant (he does a great ...

In Tuesday's education-heavy state of the union address, President Obama gave repeated nods to teachers--and the critical role they'll play in rebuilding the U.S. economy.

A new online series developed by the education arm of NBC News offers free videos and resources for chemistry teachers that aim to show students the subject's relevance in everyday life. The series is called Chemistry Now (no relation to Teaching Now) and has 31 weekly lessons. As of now, only three are available, but NBC Learn plans to release a new segment every week of the school year. The project, which was created in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, covers a variety of topics ranging from the chemical breakdown of all the components of a cheeseburger to the ...

Students in England will begin to see gay issues popping up in their classes, as the government pushes to raise awareness about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual community, according to the Daily Mail. Beginning in February, which is LGBT History Month in the U.K., the organization Schools Out will make lesson plans with gay themes available for math, geography, science, and English teachers to download. Math problems and assigned reading will involve gay characters, and language classes will use words such as "outing" and "pride," reports the Mail. The Department of Education is backing the initiative, which includes ...

A new study says taking tests helps people learn, even moreso than some studying techniques.

Looking for ways to save money? Gift Card Granny provides a list of stores that reward teachers with discounts on everything from food, clothing, and school supplies to hotels and museums....

A Chinese mother's explanation of how she raised such "stereotypically successful" children has made more than a small stir. An excerpt from her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in the Wall Street Journal has prompted more than 7,000 comments and a sharp rebuttal from New York Times columnist David Brooks. Amy Chua—author, Yale Law professor, and parent of two musically acclaimed, straight-A students—points out the differences between Western and Chinese parenting, which she says are why the latter "produce[s] so many math whizzes and music prodigies." She points out in the Journal that the...

"Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong," Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo writes in a recent editorial. Old-fashioned typewriters used monospaced type, which produced a lot of white space between characters and words, so using two spaces after a period made the text easier to read, explains Manjoo. But as of the 1970s, monospaced type went out of style. Electric typewriters and computers now both use proportional fonts, eliminating the need for the extra space, Manjoo writes. "Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule," he says. "It's one of the canonical rules of the ...

Some teachers, students, and parents in Florida are less than satisfied with the virtual classrooms that are being used to deal with class size limitations, according to the New York Times. In response to a 2002 amendment restricting the number of students in classrooms—but not virtual labs—the Miami-Dade school district placed 7,000 students in e-learning labs for core subjects, such as math and English, starting at the beginning of this school year. Instead of teachers, each classroom has a "facilitator" who monitors students' progress and assists with technical problems, says the Times. Although this means more computer...

There's a way to improve students' test scores and it only takes ten minutes, according to a study released in the journal Science and reported on by the Chicago Tribune.

Five Ponds Press, which published two error-ridden Virginia history textbooks— leading to a media feeding frenzy—said it will distribute the corrected Second Edition books at no cost to the school districts.

Somewhat ironically, the success of Chinese students on recent international tests has been met with a mixture of embarrassment and soul-searching back home, according to a Los Angeles Times story.

This week Education Week released its annual Quality Counts report. The focus this year is on the "new economic reality" in education. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, you should. And I'm not just saying that because it's an Education Week publication. Reading it this morning, I was struck by how important this topic is to teachers (though admittedly that seems pretty obvious in hindsight). It's not something that should be of in-depth concern only to the report's target audience of administrators and policymakers. I especially encourage you to read the overview article by Sean Cavanagh. ...

Teachers should spend less time worrying about students' problems at home and more time creating a positive learning environment at school, wrote Edutopia blogger Ben Johnson. He raised the concern that some teachers, especially those in training, "think that their number one calling in life is to dig deep into the lives and homes of their students, ostensibly, so they can better understand them to teach them." But rather than doing the work fit for a school counselor or social worker, Johnson said, teachers would benefit students more if they focused on giving them the best education possible. "Of course ...

In discussing a proposed new alternative licensure program, a Minnesota legislator—chair of the House Education Reform Committee, no less—makes reference to the qualms of the "teacher Gestapo", i.e, the Nazi Germany secret police. After a deluge of negative reaction, she apologized....

A new public television multimedia project for teens combines algebra instruction with hip hop, fashion, video games, and reality television.

The Council of Chief State School Officers has announced the four 2011 National Teacher of the Year finalists.

The National Association of Headteachers in the United Kingdom says it is receiving an increasing number of calls from its members saying they are being defamed by parents on social networking sites.

A high school student has proven there's a way to reduce chronic absenteeism—and it's not by taking parents to court. In the Huffington Post, 15-year-old Zak Kukoff describes TruantToday, a Web application he originally created for a science fair project. The program sends text messages and e-mails to parents when their kids skip school. Exactly how the parents deal with the information is not prescribed, but when Kukoff tested the program at a high school in Staten Island, N.Y., it proved effective. Half of the chronically absent students returned to class that day, and 75 percent of student's...

Commenting on an NPR story on the disparity in language exposure between poor children and children in professional homes, urban educator Dan Brown questions how much individual teachers can do close student achievement gaps. He writes:

Last week, six middle school girls in Nevada were arrested for planning to participate in a "Teacher Attack Day" organized through Facebook.

After the Washington Post exposed dozens of errors in Virginia history textbooks, several districts removed them from schools to prevent the impairment of learning. But Post ed columnist Jay Mathews thinks the mistakes would actually enhance learning. "We might even encourage publishers to salt their volumes intentionally with a few mistakes. (Don't be horrified. Each could be identified in the teacher's guide.)" Then the students' task could be to identify the factual and conceptual errors, which "would motivate careful student reading and lively discussion," wrote Mathews on his blog. Mathews argues that finding the faults in required reading would not ...

Will Richardson highlights a new book co-authored by innovationist John Seely Brown, "A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change."

Something is missing from most early childhood and elementary school curricula, according to a growing number of educators, psychologists, and scientists: play time. The New York Times uncovered a growing movement to restore play time to school days. Studies, such as one by the Kaiser Family Foundation finding that children spend more than seven daily hours looking at a screen, suggest that "the culture of play in the United States is vanishing," according to the Times. This past October, more than 50,000 people flocked to Central Park for what the Times called a "giant play date," sponsored by the ...

Last week we highlighted some news about how South Korea is introducing robot teachers in kindergarten classes. This week, Education Week reported on a teacher-training program that uses virtual, computer-generated "students." Makes you wonder: Maybe eventually we could do this whole schooling thing without actual people....

On Doug Noon's Borderlands blog, high school teacher Karl Fisch defends the use of conceptually-oriented math programs like Everyday Math in elementary schools.

The 1998 British study linking autism to childhood vaccines--a finding that caused a wave of panic among parents and led to a sharp drop in vaccination rates--has been declared a fraud.

Weary of her participation in the "teacher wars," Cindi Rigsbee resolves to de-stress in 2011.

With a growing Muslim student population, Minnesota schools are struggling to fill their shelves with books these students can relate to.

In part to counteract its gradual disappearance from school reading lists, the publisher NewSouth Books plans to release a version of Mark Twain's Adventures Huckleberry Finn that eliminates the "n" word.

Ariel Sacks, an English teacher in New York City, says that, despite what you might think, the time is ripe for teachers to be heard on education policy issues:

Two teachers in Hawaii have found a way to make lessons about centuries-old people and events relevant to their high school students: Teach them to the tune of Lady Gaga. According to the Honolulu Star Advertiser, Amy Burvall, a history teacher, and Herb Mahelona, a technology curriculum coordinator, joined forces four years ago to create history-themed music videos to the tune of today's most popular songs. Their repertoire includes Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance," which they've turned into an origins and events of the French Revolution, and Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl," which they use to address the Bubonic Plague. According to ...

Several weeks ago, we reported on a wonkish panel discussion in D.C. in which Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in proping up the performance pay idea, lamented that school systems currently treat teachers like "interchangeble widgets."

In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan highlights several areas where Democrat and Republican lawmakers should be able to agree when it comes to revamping the No Child Left Behind Act.