On the Town

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's calls for accountability are always in style, mainly because someone has to take the fall. Still, last week's news that a Rhode Island town had decided to fire all 94 of the faculty and staff of the local high school because of poor student performance was kind of surprising. The Washington Post's blog,  Higher Education, calls it a "sad, desperate" decision--reporting that the "school committee in Central Falls, Rhode Island's smallest and poorest city", voted to fire all of the faculty members at local Central Falls High School as a response to scandalously low levels of student proficiency in core subjects. Among other statistical atrocities, in 2009, only 7 % of the town's 11th graders were proficient in math.

President Barack Obama threw his support behind  the vote to throw the teachers out, saying "If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year...then there’s got to be a sense of accountability...And that’s what happened in Rhode Island last week.” 

Also: A CNN opinion piece says the number of long-term discouraged job seekers is increasing.

Also: Pete Seeger - The Fox

Schooled

A recent issue of Time Magazine reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has never been a regular classroom teacher or school principal, visited Columbia University Teachers College and gave a speech in which he said to the students in training "By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom."

TGIF: The Galaxy Song (Monty Python) and ATA is on Facebook.

New Money

Over at Arts Journal, Richard Kessler reports on U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's announcement of a $650 million dollar Investing in Innovation Fund.

Bloomberg.com says that "School districts and nonprofit groups would have to team up with private-sector organizations to qualify for $650 million in stimulus grants..."

It appears that the administration of Nobel Peace Prize Winner, President Barack Obama is looking to solve the most intractable problems of our broken school system, once and for all. Mr. Duncan describes the kind of innovators our new leaders are looking to invest in:

"Some will find ways to establish a network of new schools or develop models that turn around low performing schools. Others will find new ways to use technology. Others might explore how to engage children in the arts to help them improve. We want the best ideas to move us forward. We will be investing in great work to scale up existing programs that have already shown success, can validate ones that need to establish evidence of their success or to develop new ideas to determine their potential."

Also: 16-year-old Derrion Albert's beating death was captured on video last week.

And: Eurythmics - I Saved the World Today

New Things

According to Education Week, the U.S. Department of Education has started spelling out its spending priorities; letting school districts know how they should be planning to allocate their shares of the federal stimulus package. The funding involved is something close to $100 billion for K-12 education over two years.

Arne Duncan's list of favorite things includes improved data collection processes; using teachers as coaches and mentors; creating new teacher evaluation systems based on student progress; and developing online individualized education plans for students.


Also: The Three Sisters - Anton Chekhov. Translated by Carol Rocamora

TUSENBACH: What about it? Those who live after us, they'll fly around in hot air balloons, the style of their clothing will change, perhaps they'll even discover a sixth sense and develop it, but life will remain just as it is, difficult, full of joys and mysteries. And even after a thousand years, people will sigh and say: "Ach, life is hard!" --just as they do today, even then they will fear death and will not want to die.

VERSHININ: (After a moment's thought. How can you say that? It seems to me that everything on earth must change, little by little, indeed, it is changing even now, right before our very eyes. After two hundred -- three hundred years, after a thousand years, even, -- it's not the length of time that matters -- a new life will finally dawn, a life of happiness. And we shall not take part in that life, of course, but we are living for it now, we are working for it now, yes, even suffering for it, we are creating it --- and this, and this alone, is our reason for being, indeed, this is our happiness.

MASHA laughs softly.

TUSENBACH: What is it?

MASHA: I don't know. I've been laughing like this since this morning.

Make the Case

The New York Times editorializes about the impact of the stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama on school reform efforts:

"The stimulus package has given a real chance to resuscitate school reform, but these reforms will only happen if the new education secretary ignores political pressure from resisting states."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited a Brooklyn Charter School last week and much of the buzz, as usual, was about common achievement standards, data collection and stronger systems of accountability. Reforming or strengthening Arts Education was not one of the newly appointed secretary's talking points.

New York City schools will receive about $1.5 billion over the next two years, a significant increase in spending. Reforms on the table include a data collection system that will supposedly allow teachers to share best practices.

The stimulus package included $50 million for the NEA. A relatively tiny sum which Greg Sandow described in the Wall Street Journal as "a bubble on a wave."

If the secretary of Education doesn't think we are worth a mention, then who are we expecting to make the case for arts in the schools?

Maybe we should all write letters to Michelle Obama?

About the image: Mr. Fish is a political cartoonist over at Harpers Monthly.

The Impossible Dream

In the Washington Times via Richard Kessler, I see that Diane Ravitch, historian of education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells secretary of education Arne Duncan to abolish No Child Left Behind.

She has her reasons:

The law's remedies don't work. The law's sanctions don't work. The goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is ludicrous; no nation or state has ever reached it.

Achievement gains have been meager. Test scores improved more on federal tests in the five years preceding NCLB than in the years since it was implemented.

I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Ravitch, but I have to say the fact that she found all that free time to write her book The Language Police makes me a reluctant fan. It's not that she's unrighteous. I just think there are other things to stress about. Like the fact that there are usually about 20 actual police holding down the metal detectors in many New York City High Schools where we go to teach.

I mean real police who, after I sign in and show my ID, say things like, "Ok, you're free to go now." Which is the same thing they say to you at Rikers.

You think poorly written textbooks strangle young minds?

I think treating our children like they are in training to go to prison is more of an impediment to their learning. I think the panopticon is the problem.

Anyway, I'm probably one of those "ethnic activists" she mentions in the opinion piece she penned for the Wall Street Journal.

Words, words, words.

Zip a dee doo dah!

Kōan # 1

William Powell

Joan Blondell

Carolyn Kennedy

Arne Duncan

Fred Rogers

I Want the World

Hurrah! He finally settled on a safe bet that no one seems to hate.

Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.

Demand "Change!" 

Get "Compromise."

I'll take it.

You may find this unacceptable. 

I'm sure she would.  Veruca Salt (youtube)