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Why I took a stand against WASL and why the state should abandon it
By Carl Chew
Publication Date: May 08, 2008
Quick Summary: from the Seattle Times, May 8, 2008.

A remarkable teacher explains his so-called insubordination as "a small act of peaceful civil disobedience," voicing his concern that "so many have forgotten that in this country our moral duty is to act when we see wrongdoing."

Advancing Beyond AP Courses
By Bruce G. Hammond
Publication Date: May 06, 2008
Quick Summary: from Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2008

The author observes that Without the required curricula and tests, students and teachers could rediscover their passion and creativity.

Words That Destroy Your Child's Future--And My Profession
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: May 02, 2008
Quick Summary:

America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree
By Marty Nemko
Publication Date: May 01, 2008
Quick Summary: From Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2008

Carl Chew Chimes In
By Carl Chew
Publication Date: April 28, 2008
Quick Summary:

Fighting for Recess: One Parent's Story
By Marie Walton
Publication Date: April 24, 2008
Quick Summary: "Thank you, Mrs. Walton for getting us recess," summarizes the story of one parent's determination.

Another parent summarized the problem with this statement: "I think prisoners basically have a little bit more social interaction than our children."

Crossing the Rubricon
By Carolyn Foster Segal
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
Quick Summary: Using a rubric, the author provides a final assessment report of Emily Dickinson.

from Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2008

Conclusion: "It all comes down to just two categories: great and sh____." It's actually a very handy rubric.

Bitter? You Should Be!
By Nicholas Von Hoffman
Publication Date: April 17, 2008
Quick Summary: from The Nation, April 17, 2008.

Those who aren't bitter and/or angry at this point are simply not paying attention.

Students Organizing Themselves??
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: April 09, 2008
Quick Summary: Here is a Q & A from my website.

Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End
By Tara Parker-Pope
Publication Date: April 09, 2008
Quick Summary: from The New York Times, April 8, 2008.
This one is a must-read. And follow the hot link. Take the time to listen to Randy Pausch's most remarkable lecture. You will be glad you did.

A Nation at Risk Twenty-five Years Later
By Richard Rothstein
Publication Date: April 07, 2008
Quick Summary: from Unbound, Cato Institute

April 7, 2008

NOTE: The article contains graphs, which are viewable at the Cato site.

Ohanian Note: Rothstein offers a good analysis. . . with one exception. I dispute that Nation at Risk was "well-intentioned." People say the same thing about NCLB. Baloney. Read Why Corporate America Is Bashing Our Public Schools?

High Standards
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: April 06, 2008
Quick Summary: This chapter appears in Knowledge & Power in the Global Economy: The Effects of School Reform in a Neoliberal/Neoconservative Age, Second Edition, ed. David Gabbard (Lawrence Erlbaum 2008).

Book Review: Testing: The Real Crisis in Education
By FairTest
Publication Date: April 03, 2008
Quick Summary: from The Examiner, April 2008

Quality-Managing the Country
By Marc Bosquet
Publication Date: March 31, 2008
Quick Summary: from Chronicle of Higher Education, March 31, 2008.

Think about what Quality Management has meant in the classroom: DIBELS in kindergarten and absence of novels in middle school.

Church of Scientology and Public Education
By Pamela Lichtenwalner
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Quick Summary: This commentary shows, among other things, the connection between Scientology and NCLB.

My 'Little Professor'
By M. Patterson
Publication Date: March 24, 2008
Quick Summary: from The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 29, 2008.

Ohanian Comment: I admit to awe and applause at this second grader speaking in the voice of the turkey. But I understand a smidgen of the agony that travels along with this precocity.

The Schools To War Collision: Whither the Resistance?
By Rich Gibson and E. Wayne Ross
Publication Date: March 22, 2008
Quick Summary: from Counterpunch, March 2008

Our task is to connect reason to passion, passion to power, and power to a critique of what is, what we are doing, and what can be.

Schools must produce contributors
By Lynn Stoddard
Publication Date: March 21, 2008
Quick Summary: Standard-Examiner, March 14, 2008

Lynn Stoddard asks a crucial question. Ask parents what their priorities are for their children.

A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names
By J. Marion Tierney
Publication Date: March 11, 2008
Quick Summary: from New York Times, March 11, 2008

Ohanian NOTE: I looked up the American Name Society and became so interested in the article titles of their journal, that I joined.

Numbers Guy: Are our brains wired for math?
By Jim Holt
Publication Date: March 08, 2008
Quick Summary: from The New Yorker, March 3, 2008

According to Stanislas Dehaene, humans have an inbuilt "number sense" capable of some basic calculations and estimates. The problems start when we learn mathematics and have to perform procedures that are anything but instinctive. But here is a quarrel with Holt:

Dear New Yorker Editor:


Jim Holt, writing about Stanislaus Dehaene's research on neurobiology and arithmetic, tells us about findings which are new and tantalizing ("Numbers Guy," March 3rd.) But one might expect a writer on research to have done some research himself. As a longtime curriculum developer in school math and researcher in the learning of mathematics I can say without hesitation that Holt's claim that the "new math" was grounded in the theories of Jean Piaget is utterly false. "New math" or "modern math" as known in the USA amounted to the imposition on children of mathematics as known by university mathematicians, most of whom would not have heard of Piaget — most certainly not in the nineteen-fifties, a time in which Holt claims Piaget's views were "standard." At that time, Piaget's research was virtually unknown in the United States.

Second, the notion that "reform math" calls for children to discover things their own way gives the impression that they wander aimlessly and randomly through math. A substantial body of research shows that this is fundamentally wrong. The one thing that we humans do is to make sense of things; what "reform math" curricula do is to challenge pupils to make sense of math, usually in the face of thoughtfully constructed problem situations. This is not chaotic or chance discovery. Rather it provokes adaptation involving the evolution of children's networks of ideas in terms of complexity, stability, economy and generalizability (and, not the least, the quest to go further in their investigations).

Holt's slippery characterization of reform math could support the authoritarian approach to the teaching of mathematics so common these days, a policy virtually identical to "modern math" with the widespread message to children, "You're incompetent. You are capable only of following orders."

Third, one should keep in mind that there is an enormous gap between research showing that the notion of subtraction, for example (not to say anything about a wide range of more complex mathematical thinking), resides in these or those neural folds and evidence for the success of educational methods/school curricula which enable children to subtract.

Thomas C. O'Brien
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Senior Research Fellow in Science

All Our Students Thinking
By Nel Noddings
Publication Date: February 21, 2008
Quick Summary: from Educational Leadership February 2008

Nel Noddings makes a convincing case for educating students for the real world, and this means acknowledging that not everybody will go to college.

Cover the Material—Or Teach Students to Think?
By Marion Brady
Publication Date: February 21, 2008
Quick Summary: Kudos to Marion Brady, a leader in the call for real curriculum reform. Brady asserts that to move beyond rote memorization and use a full range of thinking skills, students need to tackle issues straight out of the complex world in which they live. This article should be in every faculty room.

From Educational Leadership February 2008

Teaching for the Test
By Emmet Rosenfeld
Publication Date: February 17, 2008
Quick Summary: Washington Post
Feb. 17, 2008

How hard could it be for a top teacher at an elite high school to win the coveted National Board certification? You'd be surprised. He sure was. You may not be so surprised to see how biased National Board scoring is. Emmet's conclusion shows his real teacherliness: on a more fundamental level, I wonder if I really want to be a member of a club that doesn't get the canoe. For all their rigor, the National Board certification seems to flunk on the essence of teaching.

The Reality of Art
By Michael Martin
Publication Date: February 13, 2008
Quick Summary: Michael Martin asks, Suppose we stopped teaching math and science and schools only taught singing and dancing and painting and photography and acting and music. How impoverished would we be?

Of Snips and Snails and Snowplows
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: January 31, 2008
Quick Summary: A New York City snowplow driver knows what's developmentally appropriate for little boys.

The U.S. Psycho-Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex
By Bruce E. Levine
Publication Date: January 31, 2008
Quick Summary: from Z Magazine, November 2007.

Levine observes that As mental illness has become profitable, we are seeing more of it

Reading Emerson
By William A. Proefriedt
Publication Date: January 27, 2008
Quick Summary: from Education Week, Oct. 29, 2003. Posted with permission of the author.

The author asks us to look to Emerson in our current NCLB woes because Emerson He offers an idiom that allows us to grasp our educational problems by the right handle.

The Colorado Coalition for Better Education: An Interview with Don Perl—Teacher, Advocate, & Activist for Better Education
By Yvonne Siu-Runyan and Don Perl
Publication Date: January 25, 2008
Quick Summary: Here is the inspirational story of an education activist whose spirit and work influences many people.
-Jan. 25, 2008

Who Made Education Week the Gradebook of the Universe?
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: January 24, 2008
Quick Summary: Quality Counts, the annual report from Education Week, rears its ugly head once again.

Musings on the Latest Crisis
By Gerald Bracey
Publication Date: January 25, 2008
Quick Summary: Gerald Bracey urges teachers to stop accepting the blame and to take the initiative.
Jaunuary 23, 2008

Iraq Policy/NCLB Policy, With Liberty and Justice for the Privileged Few, Part 2
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: January 16, 2008
Quick Summary: This is Part 2 of a document designed to help us think about the devastation our government has brought to people in a distant country and to children and teachers in our own. here.

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
By Carol S. Dweck
Publication Date: January 14, 2008
Quick Summary: from Scientific American, Nov. 28, 2007

Hint: Don't tell your kids that they are smart. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life

Iraq Policy/NCLB Policy, With Liberty and Justice for the Privileged Few
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: January 02, 2008
Quick Summary: This is the opening part of a lengthy document designed to help us think about the devastation our government has brought to people in a distant country and to children and teachers in our own.

Children Learn What They Live
By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.
Publication Date: December 30, 2007
Quick Summary: I found this on Richard Lakin's website, a place worth visiting. His book Teaching as an Act of Love is available from Amazon.com.

Twilight of the Books
By Caleb Crain
Publication Date: December 28, 2007
Quick Summary: from The New Yorker, Dec. 24, 2007

Words and Phrases About School You will Hear Coming Out of the Mouths of Those Who Would Be President
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: December 23, 2007
Quick Summary: Think about what the politicos are saying AND what they are not saying.

Harmony Through Diversity
By Dr. Tom Keating
Publication Date: December 15, 2007
Quick Summary: This article is from School Planning and Management Magazine, November 2007.

During visits to other countries and through his role with an international organization, this nationally known crusader for better restroom care confirms his expectations that some problems are not unique to U.S. schools.

The Case Against Standardized Testing
By Peter Henry
Publication Date: December 12, 2007
Quick Summary: Peter's article was named "best submission" in the Minnesota English Journal. It delivers on its title. Site space limitations cut off the notes at the end. They can be accessed using the hot link above.

Math Considerations
By Norm Matloff
Publication Date: December 11, 2007
Quick Summary: Norm's remarks were posted on EDDRA, Dec. 11, 2007. He gave me permission to post them here. They are certainly worth reading.

The Most Effective Learning Tool
By Peter Campbell
Publication Date: December 09, 2007
Quick Summary: We are robbing young children of important developmental skills in order to stuff so-called reading skills into them.

Dec. 8, 2007

Gaps
By Philip Kovacs, Educator Roundtable
Publication Date: November 20, 2007
Quick Summary: Join the conversation on this important subject. Educator Roundtable has provided a place where you can put in your two cents worth on education issues you care about. Come take a look.

Triumph of the Wills
By Daniel Brook, with comment by Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: November 19, 2007
Quick Summary: Article from The Nation, Dec. 3, 2007.

Ohanian Comment: As you read about the average American mill worker in the 1920s tending more than 700 spindles per hour, while the average Indian worker was tending just 118, think of today's teachers under the thumb of corporate-politico rules demanding passive obedience, allowing no say in job conditions and materials, and offering pay bonuses based on criteria that harm children.

Another parallel comes to mind: As the reviewer points out, under medieval Catholicism, ordinary people were forbidden to read the bible on their own. Today NCLB's Reading First denies teachers the right to choose books suited for their students needs and demands a rigid, time-dominated , scripted delivery of commercial product. What teachers--and the children in their care--desperately need is a Martin Luther nailing a proclamation on the politicos' doors. Luther had 95 theses. Educator Roundtable offers just 16 reasons for saying NO to NCLB.

With this continued silence, teaching is no longer a profession. Soon it will be piecework.

Good Things Never Die
By Joseph Lucido, 5th Grade Teacher
Publication Date: November 15, 2007
Quick Summary: In addition to being a fifth grade teacher and a father, Joseph associates himself with
Educators and Parents Against Test Abuse and
Educator Roundtable

Election '08 Meets The Great Education Myth
By David Sirota
Publication Date: November 15, 2007
Quick Summary:
This must read is from:
Campaign for America's Future

Please send it to your friends who support Hillary or Obama.

New York and Chicago: Same Script
By Jim Horn and George Schmidt
Publication Date: November 13, 2007
Quick Summary: Whether it's New York or Chicago, the charterizing brigade is in full force, financed by Broad, Gates, and Walton and aided by the AFT. Jim Horn and George Schmidt document what's happening. Your city may be next.

Do We Need National Standards with Teeth?
By Zalman Usiskin
Publication Date: November 09, 2007
Quick Summary: Educational Leadership
November 2007
pages 38-42

Kudos to Zalman Usiskin for pointing out that national standards with teeth might exacerbate rather than solve the problem. Haven't we learned anything from NCLB?

Promises Worth Keeping
By Doug Christensen, Nebraska Commissioner of Education
Publication Date: November 06, 2007
Quick Summary: Opening Speech at the Leadership for Classroom Assessment conference, October 17th. It was a conference about Leadership in Classroom Assessment. . . a day and a half about the promise and practice of classroom-based assessment.

Doug Christensen's passion will take your breath away.

American Business Hasn’t A Clue
By Roger Schank
Publication Date: November 01, 2007
Quick Summary: This is from The Pulse: Education's Place for Debate, Nov. 1, 2007.

Kudos. Stop the math and science fixation.

A Graduation Test: The Wrong Cure for Pennsylvania's Education Problems
By Monty Neill, Ed.D., Co-Executive Director, FairTest
Publication Date: October 30, 2007
Quick Summary: Monty Neill gave this talk to an emerging alliance of education, civil rights, community, parent, disability organizations that have come together to oppose a proposal that students who do not pass a state test cannot get a diploma. We can all learn from it.

The Uncanny Symphony of Oliver Sacks
By Leonard Cassuto
Publication Date: October 30, 2007
Quick Summary: This review is from Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 2, 2007. In Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Oliver Sacks, quirky as ever, again shows the reader unexpected human complexity and mystery, connecting this to how we perceive "the disabled" in our current world. We need to read all we can about the richness of human possibility. . . and the weirdness.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at No Child Left Behind
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: October 10, 2007
Quick Summary: Apologies to Wallace Stevens who must be rolling in his grave.

Going Beyond Jonathan Kozol's Manifesto: How Can We Overcome the Weapons of Mass Destruction
By by Rich Gibson, emeritus professor, San Diego State University
Publication Date: October 09, 2007
Quick Summary: I posted this essay once before. I urge you to read it again.

Schools as Scapegoats
By Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein
Publication Date: October 01, 2007
Quick Summary:
This article is from American Prospect, Sept. 24, 2007. You need to be a paid subscriber to access it.

National Educational Assessment Rubbish
By Walt Thiessen
Publication Date: September 30, 2007
Quick Summary:
The U.S. Department of Education is all aglow because 4th and 8th grade Math scores are two points higher than they were two years ago. They don't even want to consider the idea that intensive testing only proves that kids are learning to study for the tests, at the expense of their real educations.

This is from Nolan Chart, Sept. 26, 2007.

Next year in the garden: Famous Last Words
By Stephen Morris
Publication Date: September 09, 2007
Quick Summary: This essay about gardening contains more good advice for teachers than anything offered by the U. S. Department of Education or, for that matter, many in-service training sessions inflicted on teachers.

Back to School
By Sam Smith
Publication Date: September 05, 2007
Quick Summary: Sam Smith edits Undernews, an e-mail service sending out provocative news items on all sorts of topics. Sometimes, readers get the treat of an essay by Sam. This one has a number of gems. Imagine: a journalist who respected teachers and who was willing and able to learn from young children.

Smith's website is Progressive Review: An Online Journal & Archive of Alternative News & Information. ( http://www.prorev.com)

Questions and Answers About What is to Be Done Within the Testing and School Reform Movement
By Rich Gibson
Publication Date: September 04, 2007
Quick Summary: This dissection of NCLB comes from Substance News, February 2007.

Humanity
By Kip Zegers
Publication Date: August 29, 2007
Quick Summary: Kip Zegers says, "I'm readying to return for my 24th year at Hunter College H.S. in New York City. I'm a
poet, have 7 small press books, and here's my
back to school poem, which I thought might give support to fellow workers.

The Unknown Teacher
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: August 29, 2007
Quick Summary: An update on an old poem, with apologies to W. H. Auden.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
By Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
Publication Date: August 28, 2007
Quick Summary: Recent flurry over schools paying students to achieve led me back to Edward Deci's work. Below is a brief excerpt from Why We Do What We Do: The Dynamics of Personal Autonomy, Putnam 1995.

Unplugged Schools
By Lowell Monke
Publication Date: August 23, 2007
Quick Summary: from Orion
September/October 2007

Education can ameliorate, or exacerbate, society's ills. Which will it be?

If I Were the Goddess of Education in the World…
By Cindy Lutenbacher
Publication Date: August 08, 2007
Quick Summary: Cindy and I invite your additions.

Three Things a School Needs
By Donna Metler
Publication Date: July 30, 2007
Quick Summary: A Memphis mom has come up with a simple test for any future school she's willing to let her young daughter attend.

Steve Orel: Don't Stand by my grave and weep. . . .
By The family and friends of Steve Orel
Publication Date: July 13, 2007
Quick Summary: Keep the legacy alive. Send a memorial gift to the WOO.

The Gregarious Brain
By David Dobbs
Publication Date: July 04, 2007
Quick Summary: From the New York Times Magazine
July 8, 2007

Distorted Statistics on Graduation Rates
By Paul Attewell and David E. Lavin
Publication Date: July 03, 2007
Quick Summary: The methods now used to determine college-completion rates produce a warped and outdated picture of how today's students experience and benefit from higher education.

from The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2007

Why a Student and Parent Testing Protection Act?
There is a need to protect students, families and communities from abusive assessment practices that violate due process, civil rights and liberties.
By Harold Berlak
Publication Date: June 29, 2007
Quick Summary: June 2007

This Protection Act clearly states the problems and the needed protections to prevent further child abuse by misuse of standardized testing.

When States Seize Schools: A Cautionary Tale
By Walt Gardner
Publication Date: June 24, 2007
Quick Summary: from Education Week
June 13, 2007

Substituting one level of government for another has done little to improve educational quality. The state possesses no more inherent wisdom than local communities.

Anti-capitalism in five minutes or
By Robert Jensen
Publication Date: June 23, 2007
Quick Summary: from ZNet Commentaries
May 15, 2007

[Remarks to the final "Last Sunday" community gathering in Austin, TX, April 29, 2007. For a PDF of all five of the talks in this series, write to rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu .]

Why is it that we must choose an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the most inhuman? Robert Jensen provides answers.

Frederick Taylor and Science of Education
By Dr. Alan A. Block
Publication Date: June 21, 2007
Quick Summary:
June 20, 2007

This prescient comment was written in response to an ongoing discussion about Taylorism on Gerald Bracey's EDDRA discussion list. It is certainly worth noting that so-called models of good teaching never seem to take into account the nose-scratching idiosyncratic rituals of good teachers. . . but claim to rely instead on science.

Dr. Alan A. Block
Professor of Education
University of Wisconsin-Stout
Menomonie, Wisconsin 54751

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of The American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies

http://ariseandgonow.blogspot.com

The Body Electric
from Salon.com, June 19, 2007
By Ann Bauer
Publication Date: June 19, 2007
Quick Summary: Our son's condition kept getting worse, and everything we tried to help him failed. Then we discovered there was one final option: Electroshock therapy.

Education: the learning of skills we will never need?
By Teacherken
Publication Date: June 17, 2007
Quick Summary:
Picking up on a discussion on Gerald Bracey's, EDDRA discussion list of whether or not studying calculus in high school is useless, Kenneth Bernstein's comments on Dailykos have elicited lots of responses, many of them interesting. Ken's article is posted here. Go to the url for the reader responses.

June 16, 2007

Who Give's a Rat's Patootie About High School Calculus?
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: June 13, 2007
Quick Summary: Susan, Tom Magliozzi of Car Talk, and George Schmidt, editor of Substance, weigh in on calculus.

June 13, 2007

A Transformational Model of Public Education
(To Counter the Counterfeit No Child Left Behind Law)
By Lynn Stoddard
Publication Date: June 11, 2007
Quick Summary: Lynn Stoddard offers a plan to help schools become accountable for skills communities value, skills that will truly help students grow as contributors to society. And he has a tool for assessing school effectiveness in reaching this goal, a great counter to what the federal government is piling on us in NCLB. Which is of more value to the parent of a second grader: his child's DIBELS score or whether the child is learning to ask good questions and developing the ability to work independently?

A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights
No Child Left Behind and the growing divide in how educational equity is understood
By James Crawford
Publication Date: June 07, 2007
Quick Summary: This important article is from Education Week, June 6, 2007. Among other things, James Crawford shows that words matter and the shift in terminology fostered by politicos hurts the very children NCLB purports to help. The inescapable conclusion is that, despite its stated goals, the No Child Left Behind law represents a diminished vision of civil rights.

When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?
By Elizabeth Weil
Publication Date: May 30, 2007
Quick Summary: from New York Times Magazine, June 3, 2007.

Increasing the average age of the children in a kindergarten class is a cheap and easy way to get a small bump in test scores, because older children perform better, and states’ desires for relative advantage is written into their policy briefs.

If we raised kindergarten starting age to 12, maybe all the kids would be able to read by first grade. And then we would get a bigger bump in test scores.

The Specter Haunting Your Office
By James Lardner
Publication Date: May 29, 2007
Quick Summary: from The New York Review of Books
June 14, 2007

THE FUGEES: Adjusting to America; Outcasts United
By Warren St. John
Publication Date: May 21, 2007
Quick Summary: This article is from the New York Times, January 21, 2007. It shows the best and worst of people.

HOW DATA WILL SAVE US
By Jo Scott-Coe
Publication Date: May 18, 2007
Quick Summary: This is from Swink Magazine.

Don’t say data equals children. Equals learning. Say something gentler. Say No Child Left Behind.

The Graduates
By Louis Menands
Publication Date: May 16, 2007
Quick Summary: from The New Yorker
May 21, 2007
Ohanian Comment:
I'm not sure I get the tuna-fish-salad metaphor here but found this worth reading anyway. I majored in English and got an MA in medieval lit. What could be more useless in terms of finding "a slot?"

By the way, I'm all for grade inflation.

Evil Empire: Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America
By Chalmers Johnson
Publication Date: May 15, 2007
Quick Summary: This article is about the horrendous war in Iraq, but initially one can't help but be struck by the parallels with the federal government's war on public schools which travels under the name of NCLB.

This article cuts deeply, getting at fundamentals. As Johnson observes: But the war itself is the outcome of an imperial presidency and the abject failure of Congress to perform its Constitutional duty of oversight. And then, of course, there's the failure of the press. Had the government been working as the authors of the Constitution intended, the war could not have occurred. This is a tough read--and a necessary one.

Go to the article at Information Clearinghouse for many links to more information.

Chess Champion Offers Success Strategies for Life
By Josh Waitzkin
Publication Date: May 15, 2007
Quick Summary: Remember "Searching for Bobby Fisher?" Why Josh Waitzkin, the chess phenomenon, grew up to be a man who no longer plays chess should be of interest to teachers and to parents. Here, he reflects on the learning process that applies equally well to business, athletics, and to life.
I think in the learning process it’s really valuable for people to go very, very deeply into one thing at one point in their lives and touch quality. And then they can, like you’ve described, translate that quality into other things, because I believe these principles are the same. They transcend specific disciplines.


Talk of the Nation
May 14, 2007)

What's Wrong with Doctors
By Richard Horton
Publication Date: May 14, 2007
Quick Summary: As you read this brilliant essay, think about the parallels with teaching. After all, we teachers are continuously enjoined to adopt a medical model in our work. As Richard Horton observes, "On average, about 15 percent of a doctor's diagnoses are inaccurate." Nonetheless, unlike teachers, doctors are revered rather than belittled and scapegoated. Except when a surgeon cuts out the wrong kidney or some such travesty, doctor shortcomings get no headlines. Sensationalism aside, Horton's more important point is that "There is a rich and rather disturbing variety of human weaknesses to consider when watching a doctor at the patient's bedside." It is these human weaknesses that offer provoking contrasts with good teaching.

As teachers administer the omnipresent DIBELS, for example, they might think about this declaration: "The emotional temperature of the doctor plays a substantial part in diagnostic failure and success."

The doctor whose book is being reviewed advocates that his fellow physicians seek a new ally in helping to correct their own cognitive limitations. Teachers should take to heart who this ally is.

from The New York Review of Books
May 31, 2007

Little income makes big difference in schools
By Leah C. Wells
Publication Date: May 09, 2007
Quick Summary: When low-income kids get the assistance they need to reach school ready to learn, and when children from low-income and middle-income families go to school together, all students' performance is enhanced.

Review: Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: May 02, 2007
Quick Summary: Book Review: Nichols, Sharon L. & Berliner, David C. (2007). Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America�??s Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Pp. 250 $25 ISBN-13: 978-1-891792-35-9

Education Review

Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard
Michael Winerip
By
Publication Date: May 04, 2007
Quick Summary: How does one summarize what Michael Winerip does, other than to say he provides a context for thinking about issues that matter.

A Call for Slow Schools: Rethinking Education in the Green Mountains
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: May 11, 2007
Quick Summary: This call to Vermonters to take back their schools appeared in Vermont Commons, April 4, 2007.

Concerned citizens in every state should take a look at what the Feds are doing to their schools and join the fight to end NCLB. Childhood is at stake, and so is teacher professionalism.

America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters
By Chip Ward
Publication Date: April 27, 2007
Quick Summary: from AlterNet, April 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50023

There are at least 200,000 people across the nation living more or less permanently on the street, enough to fill a thousand public libraries every day. . . . Most of them are mentally ill.

America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters
By Chip Ward
Publication Date: April 02, 2007
Quick Summary: from AlterNet, April 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50023

There are at least 200,000 people across the nation living more or less permanently on the street, enough to fill a thousand public libraries every day. . . . Most of them are mentally ill.

Brain Trust: Dr. Groopman On 'How Doctors Think'
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Dr. Jerome Groopman
Publication Date: March 31, 2007
Quick Summary: Ohanian Comment: Because teachers are so inflicted by exhortations to be "more scientific," to "be more like doctors," it is always illustrative to look at how doctors work. It is of particular value when a doctor admits to error. I read Dr. Groopman's new book on a recent long plane ride (but I don't blame him for arriving home sicker than the proverbial dog). Groopman has provocative and disturbing things to say about how doctors think. For starters, But today's rigid reliance on evidence-based medicine risks having the doctor choose care passively, solely by the numbers. Statistics cannot substitute for the human being before you; statistics embody average, not individuals. This is just for starters.

Educating for Human Greatness:
By Lynn Stoddard
Publication Date: March 29, 2007
Quick Summary: (Editor�?s Note: For several years the Sutherland Institute has articulated the need for systemic reforms in Utah�??s public education system. The following short essay by long-time Utah public school teacher and administrator, Lynn Stoddard, is one example of a systemic reform we can embrace. It addresses the purpose of public education and concludes that public education should focus on serving children and society �? that as we constructively assist the one, we constructively build the future of the other. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, �?standardization
�? is a pedagogical evil and relic of an inhumane factory system for teaching children. The federal No Child Left Behind Act only exacerbates this fundamental error. This essay is right on target if we truly care about the future of our children and one public institution we have entrusted to their care. Inasmuch as the essay sets forth a framework for substantive changes to our public education system, we urge readers to copy and use it for discussion.)

This essay is from The Sutherland Institute

Dinosaur Scientist to Lecture, Inspired 'Jurassic Park' Character
By Mary Challender, Register Staff Writer, Des Moines Register, 3/28/07
Publication Date: March 28, 2007
Quick Summary:

Kay's Comment: I love success stories like this one! Bad grades in high school. Failed out of college seven times. Only college degrees are honorary. Inspite of having dyslexia, this dinosaur genius is now a respected scientist. John "Jack" Horner says: "For kids with dyslexia, inoculated in failure, Horner hopes his life is evidence to the contrary. Success, he said, has nothing to do with grades. The interest and the love of a field are what's important."

How the governor can advance 'career tech'
By Mike Rose
Publication Date: March 27, 2007
Quick Summary: from San Francisco Chronicle
March 26, 2007

Anyone who has read Mike Rose's powerful books knows that he speaks from experience about vocational ed.

By Mark Fisher, with comments from Annie
Publication Date: March 22, 2007
Quick Summary: Mark Fisher writes: No Child Left Behind is built on a mirage. At some point that's always just over the horizon, the law assumes, all children in the nation will miraculously read and compute at grade level, simply because they have been tested and tested and tested again.

By Mark Fisher, with comments from Annie
Publication Date: March 22, 2007
Quick Summary: Mark Fisher writes: No Child Left Behind is built on a mirage. At some point that's always just over the horizon, the law assumes, all children in the nation will miraculously read and compute at grade level, simply because they have been tested and tested and tested again.

By Mark Fisher, with comments from Annie
Publication Date: March 22, 2007
Quick Summary: Mark Fisher writes: No Child Left Behind is built on a mirage. At some point that's always just over the horizon, the law assumes, all children in the nation will miraculously read and compute at grade level, simply because they have been tested and tested and tested again.

Proposed Academy Would Serve ADHD Kids [MN]
First-of-its-kind Charter School Seeks State Approval
By Kay Jones, Educator, k4teens.info
Publication Date: March 16, 2007
Quick Summary: Sad, but true: the needs of some special students cannot be met in the mianstream public schools and some charter schools might meet their needs better.

High Stakes Tests: A Harsh Agenda for America's Children
By Paul Wellstone
Publication Date: March 15, 2007
Quick Summary: It is past time to revisit Senator Paul Wellstone's speech at Teachers College, Columbia University, March 31, 2000. Tragically, Senator Wellsone died in a plane crash Oct. 25, 2002, and our schools are far worse because of his loss. Paul Wellstone was willing to fight for what is right.

Read the bill on testing proposed by Paul Wellstone.

The Overscheduled Child?
By The Chronicle Review
Publication Date: March 14, 2007
Quick Summary: This is from The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 20007.

High-Stakes Testing is Putting the Nation At Risk
By David C. Berliner & Sharon L. Nichols
Publication Date: March 12, 2007
Quick Summary: This article appeared in Education Week, March 12, 2007.

Why Can't We Talk about Peace in Public?
By Matt Taibbi
Publication Date: March 01, 2007
Quick Summary: WARNING: This contains offensive language and even more offensive "ideas."

For anyone interested in the parallels of government strategy and operations in Iraq and NCLB, surely the reactions of the fighting forces is telling.

Travels to a Distant World
By Norm Scott
Publication Date: February 23, 2007
Quick Summary: Footnote:

�??No Child Left Behind�??: The Song
U. S. Department of Education
by Christopher Cerf and Sarah Bruce Durkee

We�??re here to thank our president,
For signing this great bill,
That�??s right! Yeah,
Research shows we know the way,
It�??s time we showed the will!

Worst Place to Be a Kid
By Gerald Bracey
Publication Date: February 22, 2007
Quick Summary: The story has played big in Brunei, Georgia, Thailand, & Seychelles. It is not about bashing public schools so it has not played in New York or Washington.

No Child Left Behind as an Anti-Poverty Measure
By Jean Anyon & Kiersten Greene
Publication Date: February 18, 2007
Quick Summary: This article appears in Teacher Education Quarterly, Spring 2007.

Here is the dirty little secret: for better scores on achievement tests and increased education to secure better jobs for low-income folks, there have to be better jobs available.

This article is must reading. It takes the NCLB argument where it should have been all along.

Doubt
By Kay Ryan
Publication Date: January 27, 2007
Quick Summary: This is from Elephant Rocks, poems by Kay Ryan, Grove Press 1996.

As a former teacher of third grade chicks, I found the first line haunting. I think the rest is directed at teachers, who MUST remain steadfast to their vision of what teaching is supposed to be.

And then the poem gets very personal me. As I shut down my computer around midnight, I always tell myself, "Tomorrow, I WILL work on my book." But the next morning I always take a peak at my e-mail--and there's always something from Porlock. Coleridge claimed he had perceived the whole of Kubla Khan in a dream, but as he was writing it down, someone from Porlock interrupted him. . . and he never finished the poem.

Goodbye teachers
Hello to the Brave New World of NCLB
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: January 26, 2007
Quick Summary: The recent decision of a Maryland superintendent of schools is a clear illustration of the destructive nature of NCLB policy.

Charles Murray and the Wall Street Journal: A Muddled Look at Education in the U. S.
By Michael T. Martin
Publication Date: January 25, 2007
Quick Summary: NOTE: This essay expresses Michael Martin?s views
alone, and not those of the organization that employs him. The essay appeared on Gerald Bracey's discussion list Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency (EDDRA).

The Importance of Play
By Dan Laitsch
Publication Date: January 24, 2007
Quick Summary:
January 22, 2007 | Volume 5 | Number 1
Research Brief
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

by Dan Laitsch

The Question: How important are play, unstructured time, and recess in the social and academic development of children?

The Low Road
By Marge Piercy
Publication Date: January 24, 2007
Quick Summary: This poem speaks so strongly for the need to find an ally--one person who stands with you. And then find another one. And another.

Pretty soon you'll join Educator Roundtable, sign the petition, speak out, send in a donation. Next comes workbook refusal. And then. . . we take on the tests. Yes, it starts when you say We.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

Reform Trumps Race
By David Nicholson
Publication Date: January 23, 2007
Quick Summary:
Book Review: The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial, by Susan Eaton (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), Publication Date: January 23, 2007

The book offers a reminder that people, unlike rats, will continue down the same tunnels long after it's apparent there is no cheese. This is, I know, harsh, but it seems an apt characterization of superintendents, principals, and educational consultants who keep devising solutions that are only variations of old ways of failing.

This review first appeared at Education Sector.

Sister leaves behind a lifetime's worth of lessons
By Jerry McGovern
Publication Date: January 18, 2007
Quick Summary: from the Press-Republican, Jan. 14, 2007.

This lovely tribute reminds us where kids learn the lessons that count.

Aztecs vs. Greeks
Those with superior intelligence need to learn to be wise.
By Charles Murray
Publication Date: January 18, 2007
Quick Summary: Appearing on January 18, 2007, this is the third of three articles on the topic of IQ appearing in The Wall Street Journal.

A Declaration of Independence and a Bill of Rights for American Education
By Jeffrey L. Peyton
Publication Date: January 17, 2007
Quick Summary: Go to Jeff's website at http://www.puppetools.com

Join the Forum and you can discuss this.

What's Wrong With Vocational School?
Too many Americans are going to college
By Charles Murray
Publication Date: January 17, 2007
Quick Summary: This appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 2007.

The New, Improved Educational Machine
(But Where Are the Children?)
By Peter W. Cookson Jr.
Publication Date: January 16, 2007
Quick Summary: This essay appeared in Education Week, Dec. 16, 2006.

Intelligence in the Classroom
Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them.
By Charles Murray
Publication Date: January 16, 2007
Quick Summary: This appeared in The Wall Street Journal January 16, 2007

School Daze
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: January 12, 2007
Quick Summary: The policies of NCLB are leading our schools away from an appreciation and understanding of the individual; that works well for no child.

The Crisis in Urban Education: Resisting Neoliberal Policies and Forging Democratic Possibilities
By David Hursh
Publication Date: January 11, 2007
Quick Summary: Educational Researcher, May, 2006

Review:

High Stakes Education: Inequality, Globalization, and Urban School Reform. Pauline Lipman. New York: Routledge, 2003. 224 pp., $25.95 (paper). ISBN 0415935083.

Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement. Jean Anyon. New York: Routledge, 2005. 240 pp., $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0415950996.

Here is a provocative review of two books, providing a beginning for the analysis required to reverse the tide of neoliberal policies and to develop a new social movement.

Happiness 101
By D.T. Max
Publication Date: January 07, 2007
Quick Summary: Read about the distinction between feeling good, which according to positive psychologists only creates a hunger for more pleasure ? they call this syndrome the hedonic treadmill ? and doing good, which can lead to lasting happiness. Read far enough, and you might, like me almost fall out of your chair. Guess what charter group is interested in applying positive psychology? One can hope they will start with their own behavior toward children.

Everything I Know About NCLB I Learned from Primetime Live
By Gary Stager
Publication Date: January 05, 2007
Quick Summary: Gary Stager brings us a shocking update on the infamous Milgram experiment and this one relates directly to test prep and teachers' willingness to participate in practices that harm children. There is no getting around it: Many people are participating directly. Many others are pretending not to notice that harm is being done.

Here, you'll find links to the illustrations in the notes at the end. At The Pulse they appear right in the essay.

January 4, 2007

An Inconvenient Truth:
By Gary Stager
Publication Date: January 03, 2007
Quick Summary:
District Administration
January 2007

This is an important notion: Why don't we embrace children's happiness?

We Will Finally Get Mathematics Education Right
By Keith Devlin
Publication Date: January 02, 2007
Quick Summary: Every year, Edge The World Question Center asks leading scientists "What are you optimistic about?" Here's one answer.


Keith Devlin: Mathematician; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford; Author, The Millennium Problems

The Real Purity of Pure Science
By Piet Hut
Publication Date: January 02, 2007
Quick Summary: January 2007

http://www.edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html

Every year, Edge The World Question Center asks leading scientists "What are you optimistic about?" Here's one answer.

Piet Hut: Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Why Teacher Unions Are Good for Teachers and the Public
They Protect Teachers' Rights, Support Teacher Professionalism, and Check Administrative Power
By Diane Ravitch
Publication Date: December 22, 2006
Quick Summary: Kudos.

This is from American Educator, Winter 2006

Swingin' in the Rain
By Judith, Parent
Publication Date: December 20, 2006
Quick Summary: Here's a thought: If children had time to swing, might some of the ADD, anxiety disorders, depression, insomnia, and oppositional behavior disappear?

Snapshots from School
By Cynthia Peters
Publication Date: December 13, 2006
Quick Summary:
ZNet Commentary
A searing look at today's high school. As Peters observes, the really terrible thing about all this is that the children are trained to think that there is no other way it could be.


December 12, 2006

Largest Science Teachers Organization Rejects Gore Video ... Why?
By John F. Borowski
Publication Date: November 28, 2006
Quick Summary: This is from t r u t h o u t, November 28, 2006


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112806N.shtml

We need someone to expose the corporate connections of our other professional organizations. Then we'd begin to see why they don't make a full frontal assault on NCLB.

Teachers: The Ruby Slippers
By Peter Henry
Publication Date: November 25, 2006
Quick Summary: from the Minnesota English Journal
Fall 2006

Peter Henry asks What makes a teacher effective as a professional?

Interrogating Kids About Literature: HELP!
By Jeff Westergaard
Publication Date: November 22, 2006
Quick Summary: Jeff is asking for help from other teachers. Please respond to him.

jwestergaard@yahoo.com

Assignment: Persuasive Speech
By Hallie Garrison, high school student
Publication Date: November 15, 2006
Quick Summary: Given a suggested list of topics for a required speech, Hallie decided to chose her own, writing about high-stakes testing. She provides a provocative student-eye view of the system. This high schooler observes, "Our classes are like bombs, and in each one, if the teacher doesn?t figure out the code in time, well, you know what happens."

Edward in Deep Water (Edward-the-Unready): Book Review
By various reviewers, including Sarah Puglisi
Publication Date: November 09, 2006
Quick Summary: Here we get contrasting views of what types of books we should bring to young children. A librarian argues for always presenting The Little Engine that Could cheering section. Sarah, deeply involved with children who are struggling and one who isn't, celebrates a book that gently acknowledges that sometimes we aren't quite ready for the task at hand.

Grand Visions and Possible Lives
By Mike Rose
Publication Date: November 07, 2006
Quick Summary:
First published in Education Week, 10/11/06.
Mike Rose is so right: In all the blather, good and bad, written about schools, few document "the common, everyday detail of classrooms, the words and gestures of a good teacher." A decade ago, I took a similar journey, visiting classrooms in 27 states and witnessing that everyday detail. And feeling proud to call myself teacher.

The Critical Distinction Between Science and Religion
By Richard P. Sloan
Publication Date: November 02, 2006
Quick Summary: This article makes interesting points about attempts to quantify human experience. What happens, for example when you try to measure a sunbeam with a ruler, reducing it to what which can be quantified? What happens when you try to measure a child's reading experience with DIBELS?

America 101
By Bill Moyers
Publication Date: November 01, 2006
Quick Summary: October 27, 2006

Bill Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and a veteran journalist. He delivered these remarks in San Diego on October 27 to the Council of Great City Schools , an organization of the nation?s largest urban public school systems.

He observes that teachers now are expected to staff the permanent emergency rooms of our country?s dysfunctional social order. They are expected to compensate for what families, communities, and culture fail to do.

Joel Klein's Iron Curtain
By Norman Scott
Publication Date: October 27, 2006
Quick Summary: Here is a powerful description of what happens when school policy becomes monlithic. Norm is talking about New York City, but what he describes will resonante with hundreds of thousands of teachers. Teaching has become a career in which the usurpation of any vestige of autonomy can make a grown man who knows how to teach cry. The parallels with Soviet domination of Eastern Europe are striking.

When will teachers have a revolution?

A shorter version of this column appeared in The Wave on October 20, 2006.

The full version is available on Norm's blog .

Please stop by and leave a comment.

A Plea to All Journalists
By Doug McGill
Publication Date: October 26, 2006
Quick Summary: This essay comes from: Local Man (a blog) by Doug McGill .

The Opposite of Wonderland
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: October 26, 2006
Quick Summary: ...as the speech ends and the words echoed: ?Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we?re free at last?? my daughter says she felt her heart pounding, racing!

Classroom Assessment: A Brave New World
By Dr. Douglas D. Christensen, Nebraska Commissioner of Education
Publication Date: October 24, 2006
Quick Summary: NOTE: This presentation was the Opening Keynote at the 2006 Leadership for Classroom Assessment Conference

Ohanian Comment: Although I disagree with the Standardisto assertion that teachers must always start with the ends, there is plenty here I do agree with. As Christensen observes, Regardless of NCLB as law, Washington does not know best. Lincoln does not know best. We are a lot closer to the action than the folks in Washington, DC.

We need to find ways to break down this hierarchical system because it is not going to get us where we want to go. We need a system where although there are different jobs to be done, the players come together collegially and as equals. Everyone comes to the table with something to contribute.

Improving College Aid
...and another perspective
By Washington Post Editorial/ with Comments from Annie
Publication Date: October 19, 2006
Quick Summary: Maybe there are Post readers willing to buy this load but it smells like rotten fish to me.

Notes From Sarah: Just Thinking at the End of a Long Day
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: October 08, 2006
Quick Summary: Sarah's notes touch so many chords in my own teaching memories. As we saw with our last visit to Sarah's classroom, she has a big, generous heart. And here she gives us a glimpse of one of the greatest pedagogical principles: What is given is returned.

Shop Class as Soulcraft
By Matthew B. Crawford
Publication Date: October 05, 2006
Quick Summary: Yes, the Wall Street Journal has pointed out the monetary benefits that accrue to those equipped for skilled manual work, but Matthew Crawford makes a strong case for the psychic benefits.

This essay is from The New Atlantis, a Journal of Technology and Society, Number 13, Summer 2006, pp. 7-24.

Another essay by Crawford, Science Education and Liberal Education, asks educators to consider why students should study science and takes a best-selling high school physics textbook to task for its pathetic answers.

Beyond No Child Left Behind
By Thomas Sobol
Publication Date: September 26, 2006
Quick Summary: from The Forum for Education and Democracy, Sept. 26, 2006

A loosely organized cadre of currently serving and recently retired school superintendents, called ?Public Schools for Tomorrow,? have been discussing issues beyond NCLB throughout the past year. Believing that superintendents with a life-long commitment to educating all children can bring a unique perspective to the dialogue, here are six of the issues they have identified.

Therapy That Keeps On the Sunny Side of Life: Rising Number of Therapists Focus on the Positive
By Elizabeth Bernstein
Publication Date: September 26, 2006
Quick Summary: from Wall Street Journal, Sept. 26, 2006

A small but increasing number of therapists are employing an emerging discipline known as "positive psychology." The treatment focuses primarily on the affirmative aspects of a patient's life with the goal of helping them feel more optimistic and fulfilled. What if we had a department in government that trained teachers to accentuate the positive?

Unstrung
By Jim Holt
Publication Date: September 26, 2006
Quick Summary: In string theory, beauty is truth, truth beauty. Is that really all we need to know?

For more than a generation, physicists have been chasing a will-o?-the-wisp called string theory. The beginning of this chase marked the end of what had been three-quarters of a century of progress. Dozens of string-theory conferences have been held, hundreds of new Ph.D.s have been minted, and thousands of papers have been written. Yet, for all this activity, not a single new testable prediction has been made, not a single theoretical puzzle has been solved. In fact, there is no theory so far?just a set of hunches and calculations suggesting that a theory might exist. And, even if it does, this theory will come in such a bewildering number of versions that it will be of no practical use: a Theory of Nothing. Yet the physics establishment promotes string theory with irrational fervor, ruthlessly weeding dissenting physicists from the profession. Meanwhile, physics is stuck in a paradigm doomed to barrenness.

Now read this passage again, substituting "Reading First panel of experts" and "scientific reading" for "physicists" and "string theory."

from The New Yorker Oct. 2, 2006

12 Traps That Keep Progressives From Winning
By George Lakoff
Publication Date: September 26, 2006
Quick Summary: Progressives need to start talking about values and avoid the common pitfalls that cause us to lose voters' hearts and minds.

from AlterNet, Sept. 26, 2006

A Good Day
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: September 25, 2006
Quick Summary:
When one runs a website that purports to be people-centered, then people write, asking for some attention to be centered on them. And there is an obligation to respond. I have changed all the names in this account, not even letting you know in which state this 18-year-old lives.

The Ballad of Big Mike
By Michael Lewis
Publication Date: September 21, 2006
Quick Summary: It is very hard to know how to characterize this story. I'll just say that Michael Lewis knows how to tell a story. And this one will leave you breathless.

from New York Times Magazine Sept. 24, 2006

Too Serious
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: September 21, 2006
Quick Summary: Book Review: Serious Farm by Tim Egan
Houghton Mifflin
pb 2006

Education: Class Dismissed
By Hara Estroff Marano
Publication Date: September 21, 2006
Quick Summary: This article appeared in Psychology Today May/June 2006. Compare this view with the Sandy Kress observation when speaking at the EduState Summit in 2004: "...for those of you who are intimidated or threated by No Child Left Behind, the world is actually going to become worse as we go along. I mean to say, 'more demanding.' And it will look back at No Child Left Behind as kind of just an initial foot in the water, if you will, to the world we're about to enter."

Sandy Kress is Presidential advisor and chief architect of No Child Left Behind.

Hara Estroff Marsano is the author of Why Doesn't Anybody Like Me?": A Guide to Raising Socially Confident Kids.

Who would you rather sit next to at dinner if you wanted some advice on your children's happiness?

Fascism Anyone?
The 14 characteristics of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Publication Date: September 07, 2006
Quick Summary: Slightly off topic, but is it really?

Learning How to Break Rules
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: September 06, 2006
Quick Summary: Here's a review of a book that should be read aloud at every faculty meeting in the land. And at school board meetings. And in Congress.

Running Fast
By Sarah Puglisi
Publication Date: September 02, 2006
Quick Summary: This beginning-of-a-new-school-year account by a first grade teacher is at once harrowing and magnificent. Mostly it's wonderful to know there are still TEACHERS out there doing what teachers do best, ignoring the scripts, responding masterfully to the needs of the moment, and caring deeply for children.

Yes, Sarah is Sylvia's mother. What a combination!

A Wordinista Strikes Back
By Sylvia Puglisi
Publication Date: August 31, 2006
Quick Summary: After reading an article in the Los Angeles Times describing a recent Donald Rumsefeld observation about Fascists, this high schooler realized he described her (those with opposition belief around this war).

Reclaiming The Issues: Islamic Or Republican Fascism?
By Thom Hartmann
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
Quick Summary: You may not want to read this. You may think, as I did for many years as a classroom teacher, that you aren't political, that you only want to be with children and help them do their best. You must read this to understand what forces are preventing you from doing this.

Buy Thom Hartmann's books. Donate to Common Dreams.

Saturday, an Excerpt
By Ian McEwan
Publication Date: August 26, 2006
Quick Summary: I listen to books while making my daily trek to the post office two miles away. Often they are good enough that I end up buying the book so I can mull over passages. This is what happened to Ian McEwan's Saturday, described as a cerebral novel about an ominous day seen through the eyes of Henry Perowne, a reflective neurosurgeon. I don't know about cerebral or ominous. I say it's a very good listen and a very good read. As McEwan remarks, ?When anything can happen, everything matters.? Lines like that resonate with me. That's what's important about the classroom: everything matters.

This is not a book about education except in the grand sense that life's fragility is about education. In the passage below, the hero is thinking about how very different his two chldren are. It got to me thinking about the craziness of schools insisting that One Size Must Fit All. Or else.

Firewalling
By Sylvia Puglisi
Publication Date: August 24, 2006
Quick Summary: Sylvia is a high school student, starting her senior year next week.

And speaking of firewalling, I've just learned that kingpins in the Aldine ISD in Houston have officially denied teachers access to my website. Now what are they afraid of?

And just what on earth are the California folk thinking of--to deny high schoolers access to all the sites Sylvia describes (so wonderfully) in this essay? As Sylvia asks, Why on earth do schools have computers at all if they're going to so severely limit their use?

Does Sylvia sound like she needs protection from information on the Web? I don't think so. Her savvy and her indignation, expressed with such humor and such style, is great to behold.

My Ideal School Wouldn't Be A School
Teachers College Record, Sept 1970
By Patty Wirth
Publication Date: January 25, 2007
Quick Summary: Update: On Jan. 25, 2007 I received this note:

Hello
My name is Jim Motto and I feel that I can speak to some of your questions concerning Patty Wirth. She did work for E. Jones and she was an instrudtor of Performance based training,and she did the thing in Benton Park w/ the trees. As for the rest of her education,she ended up w/ a Masters degree in Psychology. She has kept up her interest in Education. A part of her work includes grant proposals for A university and a community college. She is the kind of person who continues to educate herself through voracious reading, a weekly writing class and an occasional class from the local university. Of late, she has been doing a considerable amount of volunteer work. She now works freelance from her home as a writer, and she lives with three cats and myself.

Yours,
Jim Motto

Ohanian Comment: I am working on a paper about what students of all ages like and don't like about school. I want to know about what kind of school they'd design. Patty Wirth's 26-year-old essay seems like a good place to start.

Patty Wirth was 13 years old when she wrote this essay. She resents being more and more controlled. Ohmygod, think about our government-directed schools these days.

I don't want to be controlled. I can
feel myself being squashed. Very few
of my teachers ever seem to say
anything spontaneously. The ground
we will cover has already been
mapped out.

Now things are mapped out by committees appointed by the White House.

Where is Patty now? Impossible to say. Doing a Google search on Patty Wirth produces some possibilities (though we must remember that her name may no longer be Wirth:

The Rocking Z Ranch, surrounded by the splendour of the Rocky Mountains, and Patty Worth invites guest to enjoy the stunning scenery while learning new riding skills and enjoying the relaxed Montana way of life.

Waubonsee Community College (Sugar Grove, Illinois): Birth Care Staffing Specialists, Inc. Nursing Scholarship
This new scholarship was established by owner Patty Wirth, who is a labor and delivery room nurse with more than 25 years of experience. It is awarded to a returning student who has completed the first year of WCC?s nursing program and is 30 years of age or younger.

Wirth, Patricia: Greenhouse/Gardener, Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual contributors: Chip and Patty Wirth: MAISON FORTUN? ORPHANAGE, HINCHE, HAITI

Patty Wirth, Director, Branch Staff Training and Development, Edward Jones: Making Sense of Investing

Patty Wirth of St. Louis, instructor of Performance Based Training, Standards Of Practice Manual For Community Health Workers And Community Health Occupations

Patty Wirth, Owner, The Funnel House, Long Beach, CA: Offering homemade cookies, funnel cakes, lemonade and coffee. Come create your own ice cream sandwich or funnel cake sundae!

Patty Wirth: The Benton Park Association (St. Louis) successfully executed its Project Blitz with the complete clean-up of trash and debris and the planting of 20 saplings.

Patty Wirth: Kitchen, Slinger Elementary School Staff (Wisconsin)

Patty Wirth: Florida real estate

This is undoubtedly a foolish endeavor, but maybe it's useful for us to examine our values, our prejudices, and our hopes about what education can and should do as we consider what Patty might be doing today.

Attitudes can help clean school restrooms
August 2006
By Tom Keating and Jim Fazzone
Publication Date: August 18, 2006
Quick Summary: You can tell a lot about a school's attention to students by checking out the restrooms, and Tom Keating has a plan for changing attitudes and behaviors. Senior Editor Jim Fazzone introduces Tom's article.

Robert Tomsho described Keating's work a few years ago in The Wall Street Journal.

You will find several articles about Keating's work on this website, because I think the work is important.

Rotten Ralph Lives
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: August 14, 2006
Quick Summary: Rotten Ralph turns 30. Maybe there is hope for the world.

Janice's Lesson
By Steve Orel, The World of Opportunity
Publication Date: August 03, 2006
Quick Summary: Steve's wife Glenda Jo says: Steve wanted to share with you a story he wrote based upon a conversation he had one of his students, he refers to as Janice for the story. It is entitled, "Janice's Lesson." I really encourage all of you to read this story and would welcome any comments for discussion for Steve to read. I met "Janice" today at the WOO and she said the story was "right on target" and she would keep it for the rest of her life.

Glenda Jo and their son Justin welcome words of encouragement. Hit the "Write to Susan" button on the left side of the screen and they will get your comments.

Educating to Narrow the Engineer Gap: Where rules are broken in the pursuit of learning
By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Publication Date: August 02, 2006
Quick Summary: August 2, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot articulates what the Standardistos deny, that children learn by messing around and making discoveries. They learn it in language, in math, and in science. When you try to shortcut this reality with scripts, you damage children. Learning is about breaking rules, not memorizing them.

Educating to Narrow the Engineer Gap
By Dennis M. Bartels
Publication Date: August 02, 2006
Quick Summary: August 2, 2006

San Francisco Chronicle



Here's a thoughtful and smart approach to helping students and their teachers develop technical competence. Even if he does resort to terms like the global playing field.

The News Release I Couldn?t Find
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: July 28, 2006
Quick Summary: Imagine this?

What Oskar Hadn't heard of
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: July 20, 2006
Quick Summary: Jonathan Safran's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close raises an interesting thought exercise and an important pedagogical question.

Higher test scores come at a high price to education
By John Monahan
Publication Date: July 14, 2006
Quick Summary: This is an honest, informed, and important essay from a teacher who is brave enough, and who cares enough, to speak out about what is happening.

I hope his voice encourages many more to come forward.

This is powerful courage and conviction.

Annie

Instructions for Use
By anonymous
Publication Date: July 10, 2006
Quick Summary: Source unknown but let it be an inspiration to a compilation of schoolhouse directions.

In a Professional Learning Community, Don't Touch the Children
By Jo Scott-Coe
Publication Date: July 10, 2006
Quick Summary: NOTE: After teaching English for eleven years at her former suburban public high school, Jo Scott-Coe works now in voluntary exile, attempting a practice of recovery and creative witness--through writing, mentoring and art. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as ONTHEBUS, The Chariton Review, Nerve Cowboy, Pearl, Chiron Review, Rattle, Spillway, KB Journal and The Los Angeles Times. A freelance writer and independent scholar-researcher, Scott-Coe works as lecturer in Creative Writing and Composition at UC Riverside and Riverside Community College, respectively. She also teaches workshops from home. Her memoir in essays, Teaching at Point Blank, is currently in search of a publisher.

On Jonathan Kozol's Manifesto
By Rich Gibson
Publication Date: July 08, 2006
Quick Summary: This is not easy reading. It is a tough message. It is also essential. These are tough times, and it is long past time for us to take on deeper issues.

Read this.

Then read it again.

The piece has provoked a lot of comments, mostly positive. Here is one:

Harold Berlak Comments:

The jury is out You've got to be more than a little bit wary of a movement that is built around a cultural icon largely composed of (genuinely) liberal or progressive (mostly white) democrats who like Kozol support desegregation, civil rights and liberties. but do not make connections between what going on in schools (and universities) to the obscene concentration of wealth and power in the US, and increasing domination of the political process and social policy generally by corporate capital.

Enter coalition with eyes wide open. For all who are concerned about testing abuse on children and teachers, and returning some sanity to nationlal and state educational policies. we must put aside important differences if we want to curb the worst abuses in NCLB (and state assessment policies). For example. The feds are in the process of attacking the Nebraska model --which has its problems but relatively speaking is a breath of fresh air. Supporting federal legislation that would affirm Nebraska (and other states) departure from the NCLB straightjacket is a battle that probably could be won. (CDE and CA State Board could no longer hold to excuse that they are only following federal mandates)

Have we forgotten civic education?
Two centuries after Jefferson, social studies are lacking at public schools.
By Marshall Croddy
Publication Date: July 06, 2006
Quick Summary: Each new generation must be enlightened by the principles of liberty and prepared to fight for the rights that had been won.

And Are They Happy?
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: July 07, 2006
Quick Summary: This reflection was provoked by a short item in The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 30, 2006), in which David Glenn notes that Economists at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor have created what might become the first large-scale, long-term index of American happiness.

Representing the Proposition that "Poverty Is Not an Excuse"
By Steve Orel, The World of Opportunity
Publication Date: June 24, 2006
Quick Summary: Those who blithely intone "No excuses" never come up against the grinding poverty that so many students face every day. Thank you to Steve Orel for providing us a reminder of reality.

The Not Welcome Mat On Our School Doorstep
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: June 22, 2006
Quick Summary: I have to step outside of my usual line of comments occasionally and write from the mind of my very own spirit.

Walt Disney Stalks Your Child:
By Mark Morford
Publication Date: June 16, 2006
Quick Summary: Mark Morford is a screechingly funny San Francisco Chronicle online columnist whose humor always makes a deeper point: technology has stomped on in and has taken childhood by the throat and is right now handing a cell phone to every child over 5 years old, telling them it's absolutely mandatory that they be able to call Mom or Dad or the police at a moment's notice...

June 16, 2006

Executive Pay in the U.S. : CEOs still take the money and run
By Jack Rasmus
Publication Date: June 15, 2006
Quick Summary: We all need to understand economic realities, and this article helps. For starters, focusing on CEO salaries, outlandish as they are, misses the real point.

Want to learn? Get outside of your comfort zone
By Jerry McGovern
Publication Date: June 12, 2006
Quick Summary: This is worth reading for what Sam had for breakfast (and who gave it to him), and there's more. When you think about it, too many people making the rules in education and determined that nobody move outside the official comfort zones.

Stephen Colbert's Address to the Graduates
By Stephen Colbert
Publication Date: June 10, 2006
Quick Summary: The following is the full transcript of Stephen Colbert's June 3, 2006, Commencement Address at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

from Alter Net.

Return of a Golden Oldie: Bedfellows Issue Yet Another Manifesto
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: June 08, 2006
Quick Summary: After advising a reporter to put "Eli Broad" into a search on my site, I did the same thing. And I decided to reprise this article, from May 22, 2003. It got not a whit of reaction then. I hope people will read it now. The contest is still open.

Voices of Dissent 4: Interview With Gloria Pipkin
By Gloria Pipkin, interviewed by Peter Campbell
Publication Date: June 07, 2006
Quick Summary: To hear this interview, go to
http://transformeducation.blogspot.com/2006/05/voices-of-dissent-4-interview-with.html

Book Review: Reading Fads: Why Tom Friedman Does Not Compute
By Gary Stager
Publication Date: June 01, 2006
Quick Summary: Amen. I want to vomit every time I hear Tom Friedman pontificate smugly on education--or on the global economy.

Why Supe Selection Is Like Judging a Dog Show
By Bob Sipchen
Publication Date: May 29, 2006
Quick Summary: The columnist concludes that the Los Angeles district "at this moment is a bigger beast than the toughest education careerist from, say, Boston or Philly, could tackle with success." But that doesn't mean he advocates asking Eli Broad for advice.

Agitation: The Essence of Democracy
By Jim Hightower
Publication Date: May 22, 2006
Quick Summary: You can hear Jim deliver this speech by buying a disc, cassette, or download from Alternative Radio, an outfit that definitely deserves to be supported.

Read this/listen to this and ask yourself, "Why/how have we become so inert?"

Why Can?t Schools Be Like Businesses?
By Larry Cuban
Publication Date: May 16, 2006
Quick Summary: from The School Administrator, AASA
February 2006

Larry Cuban observes that the strong belief that schools and businesses are alike has remained fixed in the minds of most corporate and civic leaders, parents and educators. And both institutions are seriously entangled with one another. And he explores the important differences. For starters, deceit and fraud are easier to cover up in the private sector.

Scholarship Package Is $7,000 a Year And Subsidized Kilts
By Paul Glader
Publication Date: May 11, 2006
Quick Summary: With all the blarney about getting an education for a job for the Global Economy, I love the very idea of a major in bagpipes. In the program's 16-year history, only six students have pursued the major. Three didn't complete the program.

from The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2006

A Young Work in Progress Shattered on a Road in Iraq
By Samuel G. Freedman
Publication Date: May 10, 2006
Quick Summary: This is hard to read, and I thank Samuel G. Freedman for writing it. It would seem to trivialize it to put it in "Outrage of the Day." The outrage and the grief is far greater.

from The New York Times, May 10, 2006

An Open Letter to the Class of 2006
By Coach Moore
Publication Date: May 08, 2006
Quick Summary: A Florida educator reflects on the mean streets his students live in and challenges them to defy the expectations many people have of them.

"What kind of person enrolls a 2 yr old in a music class?" A Parent Responds
By Donna Metler
Publication Date: May 04, 2006
Quick Summary: In response to the question posed in an article about classes for very young children, a parent points out some of the benefits.

The Management Myth
By Matthew Stewart
Publication Date: June 06, 2006
Quick Summary: Ohanian Comment: This is an elegant, laugh-out-loud essay. Think DIBELS while you're reading about loading-pig-iron-onto-railway-cars theory. Here's Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific method in a nutshell: Think harder! Work smarter! Buy a stopwatch!

Could DIBELS exist without a stopwatch?

The author observes, Taylorism, like much of management theory to come, is at its core a collection of quasi-religious dicta on the virtue of being good at what you do, ensconced in a protective bubble of parables (otherwise known as case studies).

Reading First, anyone?

Taylor, if mentioned at all these days is just seen as a weird man with a stopwatch. How many kindergartners will have their academic careers held hostage by a stopwatch before people acknowledge how weird and damaging DIBELS is?

From The Atlantic Monthly, June 2006

The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200606/stewart-business

Tales from the Competitive Marketplace Once Called Schools
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: April 27, 2006
Quick Summary: The competitive frenzy begins in a child's most tender years.

Beyond Newark's School Yard
By Jean Anyon and Alan Sadovnik
Publication Date: April 23, 2006
Quick Summary: from The New York Times. April 23, 2006.

How refreshing to see the Times op-ed feature the notion that improving family wages increases student test scores. Quite a contrast to their ugly and ill-informed editorials.

What Scientist Shortage?
By Daniel S. Greenberg
Publication Date: April 20, 2006
Quick Summary: Obscured by the alarmist rhetoric are the repeated false alarms, erroneous forecasts and gluts of unemployed scientists -- rather than shortages -- that have been the reality in the scientific marketplace for decades.

Horrible Exams
Homework assignment, English 9
By Hallie Grace Garrison
Publication Date: April 20, 2006
Quick Summary: One child's response to her homework assignment.

New Education Jobs for the Global Economy
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: April 19, 2006
Quick Summary: This first appeared in Substance, April 2006 Subscribe! Send $16 to Substance 5132 W. Berteau Chicago, IL 60641

Schools aren't factories
Micromanaging teachers, fixating on test results won't equal success.
By Randi Weingarten
Publication Date: April 13, 2006
Quick Summary: Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers writes:"The mayor and chancellor must abandon their one-size-fits-all, top-down management style that treats teachers like assembly-line workers and children like widgets."

Peter Campbell reviews "Oprah's Special Report: American Schools in Crisis" (Part 1):
By Peter Campbell
Publication Date: April 13, 2006
Quick Summary: The most telling aspect of the show was Oprah's repeated emphasis on
raising expectations for poor children.

Spellings Declares, "We've Waited Long Enough"
By Jim Horn
Publication Date: April 12, 2006
Quick Summary: During a rare break between CBN fund-raising segments, Sec. Spellings took a few moments out of her busy schedule of threats, castigation, and ultimatums to sit down and chat with Mrs. Charbonneau--and to throw this big chunk of red meat to the basest of the base.

Apologies to Sandra Cisneros
How ETS' computer-based writing assessment misses the mark
By Maja Wilson
Publication Date: April 07, 2006
Quick Summary: This article is from Rethinking Schools, Spring 2006. The original essay in Rethinking Schools includes Sandra Cisneros's (unadulterated) narrative "My Name."

Rethinking Schools has a long tradition of supporting teachers as professionals. Subscribe!
Send $17.95 to
Rethinking Schools
1001 East Keefe Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53212

My Billy
By Paul Rudnick
Publication Date: March 29, 2006
Quick Summary: This appears in the April 3, 2006 issue of The New Yorker.

A Poverty of the Mind
By Orlando Patterson
Publication Date: March 26, 2006
Quick Summary: A deep-seated dogma that has prevailed in social science and policy circles since the mid-1960's: the rejection of any explanation that invokes a group's cultural attributes ? its distinctive attitudes, values and predispositions, and the resulting behavior of its members ? and the relentless preference for relying on structural factors like low incomes, joblessness, poor schools and bad housing.

Mediocrity: Deplorable, Yes. Until We Consider the Alternative
By Rona Wilensky
Publication Date: March 22, 2006
Quick Summary: Siu-Runyan's Comments: Wilensky, principal of New Vista High School in Boulder, Colorado questions standards and the relentless testing that does nothing to improve learning. This thoughtful piece discusses the correlation between privilege and achievement. New Vista High School is one place where students are engaged in what they learn. I know, I have a close relationship with a student who is a student at this high school and will graduate this Spring.

All Hail the SAT Snafu!
By Dalton Conley
Publication Date: March 22, 2006
Quick Summary: The writer, who is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at New York University and Director of NYU's Center for Advanced Social Science Research, says the latest scoring screw-up offers a golden opportunity to find out just how predictive -- or biased -- the controversial test really is.

In Defense Of Big Schools
By Samuel Freedman, Jessica Siegel, and the Gotham Gazette
Publication Date: March 16, 2006
Quick Summary: from Gotham Gazette,

Here's a fine, thoughtful discussion about education policy and practice in New York City.

The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: March 09, 2006
Quick Summary: Of course this story will pull at your heartstrings. I hope it also resonates with the plight of young people. They get only one time for their childhood, and they, too, deserve to be treated with dignity. As this cab driver tries to treat old people the way he'd want his mother treated, we must do the same for children, not standing silent in the face of outrages we would not allow be done to our own children.

Two Views on What We Should Say About Testing
By Monty Neill and George Schmidt
Publication Date: March 06, 2006
Quick Summary: George Schmidt's critical analysis of the FairTest position as stated in Monty Neill's letter is essential to our struggles. He is not attacking FairTest but pushing them to deepen the argument. His analysis challenges all of us to think carefully about these issues.

Principles of School Reform
By Dave Stratman, New Democracy
Publication Date: March 06, 2006
Quick Summary: This document was prepared for the Minnesota Education Association, March 1986.

Dave Stratman recognized the threat of the Business Roundtable long before most of us even knew the organization existed.

Review: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: March 07, 2006
Quick Summary: Yes, this book was written for children, but as with any good book, it's for adults too.

Recapturing the Kindergarten for 5-Year-Olds
By Harriet A. Egertson
Publication Date: March 01, 2006
Quick Summary: This piece was published in Education Week, May 20, 1987. Look at how current the concerns are. This piece speaks to issues that we should all care about right now. Young children need our protection.
Those advocating developmentally appropriate kindergartens are not suggesting settings that do not challenge the precocious. In fact, a learning environment organized around concrete, open-ended materials has a far better chance of stimulating the "ready" than does the paper wasteland of many kindergartens.

Kindergarten teachers should nail this essay on their classroom doors.

Thank you, Harriest A. Egertson.

Privatization or social control?
By Dave Stratman, New Democracy
Publication Date: February 23, 2006
Quick Summary: Comment from Annie: In this essay, the system of public education was ?designed to legitimize and reinforce the inequalities of capitalist society? and suffers as ?as US society becomes more dramatically unequal and less democratic.?

What Does "Privatization of Public Schools" Mean?
By Craig Gordon
Publication Date: February 23, 2006
Quick Summary: Comment from Annie: The issue of whether the corporate agenda is really about privatization is discussed on the ARN list serve. In this essay, in a ?Results Based? system, the public school is supported by private money. Public schools following a ?business model,? have ?corporate executives? who ?hold the district accountable to fulfill the plan? and function to ?attain goals set by these private funders.??So the schools remain ?public,? or do they?

Letter (unpublished) to the San Diego Union Tribune
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: February 23, 2006
Quick Summary: There is nothing more powerful than an informed parent. Our community of education professionals continues to miss the benefits available from seeking partnership with parents like Anne E. Levin Garrison.

Beyond Statehood: The Vermont Sovereignty Declaration
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: February 23, 2006
Quick Summary: I am a member of the Second Vermont Republic. I believe that the Green Mountain Manifesto might provide a starting place for thinking about how we are going to take back our public schools.

I am currently working on a document to add a Vermont-specific education component to the manifesto below. Though Vermont-specific it will be applicable to any state that accepts Reading First funds.

The Impact of High Stakes Testing
By Kathy Emery
Publication Date: February 20, 2006
Quick Summary: Kathy Emery is my co-author on Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? She explains why critics of high stakes testing are so easily painted into a corner.

Book Review: A Different View of Urban Schools: Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory, and Unexplored Realities
By Henry Hitz
Publication Date: February 20, 2006
Quick Summary: Henry Hitz is the Coordinator of Oakland Parents Together, a grassroots organization of public school parents.

When a Teacher Speaks Out
By Anne E. Levin Garrison
Publication Date: February 04, 2006
Quick Summary: A concerned and savvy parent worries about that there is absolutely no room for the teacher's perspective or opinion in matters of curriculum and other school policy. And worse, teachers are being asked to sacrifice their own ethics in front of students whose respect they also sacrifice.

The Party of Davos
The Party of Davos
By Jeff Faux
Publication Date: February 01, 2006
Quick Summary: Although this important article isn't directly about education, it certainly explains a lot about what's happening in public schools. We touched on the horrors of APEC in Why Is Corporate America Bashingt Our Public Schools but did not tie it to NAFTA. We ran out of room.

This NAFTA explanation is something people can understand, even though it means progressive educators will have to stop wasting their time trying to prove Harold McGraw is a crook. He doesn't need to be. His company will do just fine even when a family friend isn't in the White House. The crooks, as Greg Toppo, revealed are the petty functionaries.

So are we going to wait for a "traitor to his class," a "good Democrat" to appear? Or are we going to organize for grass roots revolution?

Fixing School Isn?t Everything
By David Berliner
Publication Date: January 31, 2006
Quick Summary: This condensed version of Berliner's influential article in the August 2005 Teachers College Record appeared in NEA Today, February 2006. Berliner sends a message that needs to be hammered home again and again: Poverty is the 600-pound gorilla in the classroom. And we need to face that gorilla.

Shall We Dance? (The Privatization of Education)
By Heather-Jane Robertson
Publication Date: January 18, 2006
Quick Summary: If you want to know why our public schools are under attack, then read this article. Heather-jane Robertson is employed by the Canadian Federation of Teachers. Where is the similar in-depth analysis from our own teacher unions?

Here is more information on APEC.

And more.

Books Worth Remembering
By Susan Ohanian
Publication Date: December 12, 2005
Quick Summary: While searching for something else on the Net, I stumbled into this article. Education Week asked me to come up with a list of books every teacher should read. This is it. Nearly ten years later, I stand by the list.

A sidebar that got dropped was a lot of fun. I wrote my favorite authors, asking them what books they'd like to see teachers read, and so there were mini-lists by Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, and so on. Jim Herndon was traveling at the time and he'd ask people he encountered--sending me postcards with their recommendations.

Please be sure to read the footnote. It explains why this is the last commentary I have written for Education Week.

from Education Week
September 11, 1996

National Security Requires Corporate Welfare?
By Prof. Jim Horn
Publication Date: November 28, 2005
Quick Summary: This comes from
Jim Horn's blog Jim explains another of the manufactured crises of our time. Don't miss it.

Corporate greed advanced by school ratings
By Don Perl
Publication Date: November 27, 2005
Quick Summary: This op-ed appeared in the Greeley Tribune November 27, 2005. As an elementary teacher in Greeley, Don refused to give the state test. Along with a few other resisters he founded the Coalition for Better Education. Membership in this group now nears 400. They are accomplishing great deeds, such as getting test opt out signs placed on bus stop benches. Not the least of their accomplishments is getting pieces like this into local papers.

Use Don's piece as inspiration and information to go foth and do lockwise. We must get out there and invoke "we the people."

The List
By Gerald Bracey
Publication Date: November 24, 2005
Quick Summary: I've put up Gerald Bracey's list of human qualities we value most and which are very difficult to assess before. It's time for a reminder. Reading this aloud when people talk about education can't happen often enough.

Warning flags are flying over America?s public schools.
By Paul A. Moore
Publication Date: November 22, 2005
Quick Summary: Since graduating from the University of Florida in 1982 Paul has taught social studies at Carol City High School in Miami. He coached the girls' basketball team at the same school for 17 seasons, retiring from coaching when he was elected to the Executive Board of the United Teachers of Dade (AFL-CIO, AFT-NEA) as one of three Vice Presidents for High Schools. He is an active member of the Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform (FCAR).

Charter School Performance Versus Charter School Accountability
By Gerald Bracey
Publication Date: November 17, 2005
Quick Summary: Short and sweet, Bracey provides a definitive message: Charter school performance has in most states not lived up to billing. And he provides fascinating discussion of why achievement is no longer the chief concern.

Is There Life After Rankings?
By Colin Diver
Publication Date: November 05, 2005
Quick Summary: A report card from one college president, whose school now shuns the U.S. News ranking system?and has not only survived but thrived. Anyone who cares about public schools should take this role model to heart.

Standardized students: The Problems with Writing for Tests Instead of People
By Bronwyn T. Williams
Publication Date: November 02, 2005
Quick Summary: The author raises interesting questions about training students to game the system, and his remarks about computer-graded tests raise a fascinating/disturbing/important question: Who's the audience? What is the point of writing for a computer? One can easily extend this and ask, What is the point of going to school at all when your teacher has become nothing more than a delivery agent for a standardized curriculum designed to game the system?

Don't test well in school? Don't I know it!
By Beverly Beckham
Publication Date: September 30, 2005
Quick Summary: This commentary appeared in the MCAS-loving Boston Globe, September 29, 2005. Thank you, Beverly Beckham, for pointing out that One voice, one test, one label can destroy a child.

Thank you for pointing out that We are measuring the wrong things in our children.

A sign of our times: Underneath this article online is an ad promising Reading Worksheets Here
Grade 1-3 reading worksheets guaranteed improved reading skills.

Top Ten New School Rules
By Common Good
Publication Date: September 09, 2005
Quick Summary:
You can describe this annotation as How to ruin a joke in 150 words or less. I apologize for over-analyzing humor but this clever, often-funny piece does seem to beg for a few notes. The Common Good, founded by Philip K. Howard, the author of he Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America and several "son of" sequels, speaks against legalistic shenanigans that enrage many of us. Publishers Weekly hit the nail on the head when they called Howard's collection of anecdotes about lawsuits out of control "powerful but myopic."

Myopic is a good way to describe Common Good's characterizations below. We may chuckle but that chuckle is accompanied by a "Yes, but..." dash of reality. Take a look at this part of the Common Good Mission Statement: Teachers cannot maintain order in their classrooms, or even put an arm around a crying child. It doesn't have to be this way.

Who are they talking about when they say teachers? Which ones can't keep order? What kind of order are they talking about here?

Think about the civil rights/social justice/education equity perspectives of members of the Common Good Advisory Board as you chuckle over the absurdities below.

Common Good Advisory Board

Hon. Howard H. Baker, Jr., former U.S. Senator and Ambassador to Japan

Griffin B. Bell, Partner, King & Spalding; former U.S. Attorney General and Circuit Court Judge for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

Hon. Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator and National Basketball Association player

William R. Brody, President, Johns Hopkins University

Christopher DeMuth, President, American Enterprise Institute

Alain C. Enthoven, Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus, Stanford University

Dr. Thomas F. Frist, Jr., Chairman, The Frist Foundation

Hon. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Eric Holder, former Deputy U.S. Attorney General

Frank W. Hunger, former U.S. Assistant Attorney General

Robert D. Joffe, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore

Robert A. Kagan, Professor of Political Science and Law, University of California, Berkeley

Harry P. Kamen, retired Chairman and CEO, MetLife

Hon. Tom Kean, Co-Chair, President, Drew University, and former Governor of New Jersey

Steven Kelman, Albert J. Weatherhead III and Richard W. Weatherhead Professor of Public Management, Harvard University

Charles Kolb, President, Committee for Economic Development

Shelly Lazarus, CEO, Ogilvy & Mather, and Chair, Board of Trustees, Smith College

Robert E. Litan, Co-Director, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies

Dr. Paul A. Marks, President Emeritus, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Hon. George McGovern, former U.S. Senator and Ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization

Lawrence J. Mone, President, The Manhattan Institute

Jeffrey O'Connell, Samuel H. McCoy II Professor of Law, University of Virginia

Margaret O'Kane, President, National Committee for Quality Assurance

Dr. Herbert Pardes, President and CEO, New York-Presbyterian Hospital

Hon. Peter G. Peterson, Chairman, The Blackstone Group and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Stephen Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History, Northwestern University Law School

Diane Ravitch, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, and Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution

George Rupp, former President, Columbia University; President and CEO, International Rescue Committee

John Silber, President Emeritus, Boston University

Hon. Alan K. Simpson, former U.S. Senator

Shelby Steele, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution

Hon. Richard Thornburgh, former U.S. Attorney General and Governor of Pennsylvania

Deborah Wadsworth, Senior Advisor and Board Member, Public Agenda

John C. Whitehead, Chairman, Lower Manhattan Development Corp and former Deputy Secretary of State

Common Good mourns the death of two Advisory Board Members in 2003. Andrew Heiskell, former chairman of Time Inc. and a civic leader, died on July 6 at the age of 87. The Hon. Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator and founder of the Public Policy Institute at the Southern Illinois University, died on December 9 at age 75.



http://cgood.org/schools-newscommentary-inthenews-253.html

About the State of the State of Education
By Michael F. Shaughnessy: An Interview with Gerald Bracey
Publication Date: September 06, 2005
Quick Summary: This interview appeared on http://www.educationnews.org Sept. 6, 2005, and is used with permission.

An Interview with Gerald Bracey:
Monday, September 5, 2005
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico 88130

Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, Ypsilanti, Michigan. His most recent book is Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U. S.: Second Edition (Heinemann, September 2004).

Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's eduational apartheid
By Jonathan Kozol
Publication Date: August 30, 2005
Quick Summary: This article, appearing in the September 2005 Harpe