Education

Sharon Otterman’s recent NY Times article (“Tests for Pupils, But the Grades Go to Teachers”) mentions that New York City’s new teacher assessments will be task-oriented. The New York State English tests have had such tasks for years. They’re very fudge-able. These tasks are graded on a “rubric” which is subjective. Every year when I attended training for test graders different people would score the practice tests differently. And every year someone from the district office would invariably say, “Please give the children the benefit of the doubt.” In other words, please cheat.

On June 19th, 1987 in the Case of Edwards vs. Aguillard, the United States Supreme Court decided that “…Louisiana's "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction" Act…is facially invalid…as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

Social Studies lessons frequently include two things, studies of primary sources and the comparing/contrasting of documents or other artifacts.

Below are the links to two primary sources (video clips) posted on You Tube. The first is a recent interview with Donald Trump, casting doubt on President Obama’s citizenship. While Mr. Trump was making this speech, President Obama was quietly planning the raid on a Pakistani compound that would end the life of master terrorist Osama Bin Laden. The second primary source (clip) is President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death.

Remember the movie “Anne of a Thousand Days”? Anne Boleyn lost her crown and her head in less than three years. New York City Schools Chancellor Cathie Black lost her political head after ninety-five days. That must be some kind of record. Today’s New York Times describes her shocking incompetence on the job. But incompetence isn’t the real problem here.

It’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s contempt for the public.

The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that:

Lack of sufficient sleep--a rampant problem among teens--appears to put adolescents at risk for cognitive and emotional difficulties, poor school performance, accidents and psychopathology.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/sleepteen.aspx

Simply put: If our schools are to keep pace with the rest of the world, if our kids are to grow up intellectually and economically successful, we must change school start times around the country.

Here’s one of President Obama’s goals for the reauthorization of NCLB:

Recognize and reward schools that increase student achievement and close achievement gaps —and recognize and reward districts and states that turn around their lowest-performing schools.

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/faq/accountability.pdf

Translation: Let’s have lots more test prep. Here’s a possible argument in favor of such an approach: Why NOT have more test prep? If it leads to higher scores then that means children are reading better. Right?

I've been asked: How can we support foreign language instruction in this country when so many children do poorly in English? The answer: We start too late. Literacy acquisition begins very early: long before the school years. By the time they enter kindergarten children are already on the right track or they're flailing. The biggest predictor of failure? Poverty. Economically disadvantaged children are surrounded by adults who have not had the benefit of a college education. A child who doesn't hear enriched vocabularies enters school with a deficit.