Teaching in the News
School Wins Md. Honors for Turning English-Learners Into Top Achievers
"Highland Elementary School in Montgomery County, which won a coveted Blue Ribbon yesterday from the Maryland State Department of Education, stands out among public schools in the Maryland suburbs for two reasons. It ranks first among those schools in the number of economically disadvantaged students who perform at advanced levels on statewide tests, a measure of its accomplishments. And it ranks second in percentage of students who have limited English proficiency, a measure of its challenges."
Annals of Education: Most Likely to Succeed
How do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job? by Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker Magazine, December 15, 2008.
"There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they'll do once they're hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of fields have begun to wrestle with this problem, but none with such profound social consequences as the profession of teaching."
No investment more strategic than public education
If financial companies get a federal bailout, then public education should get one too, Miami-Dade Schools chief Alberto Carvalho told The Miami Herald. The most commonly heard solution out of Washington these days is a bailout where the federal government intervenes to safeguard key industries, and in the process, the quality of American life, he said. If that's the rationale, then I cannot think of a more strategic investment than safeguarding the quality of public education. Florida ranks in the bottom quarter nationally in terms of spending per student, and Carvalho says he has already cut so much from his already-lean budget that he cant cut much more. An education bailout is unlikely, however, according to Miami-area Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R), since Congress is not in favor of any other bailouts. She added that this does not diminish the seriousness of the Miami-Dade districts financial situation. Still, some feel Carvalhos analogy doesnt hold: If the Florida school system goes down the drain, it will make no difference to the U.S. economy. If we have AIG or Citicorp fail, then we have a systemic failure in our financial system. Everybody goes down, according to Michael Connolly, an economics professor at the University of Miami. Read more.
The president-elect faces delicate dance over education
Among the many challenges President-elect Obama will face once he takes office, one of the toughest will be making good on his education campaign promises, The Washington Post writes. On his campaign website, Mr. Obama promised to "improve [No Child Left Behinds] accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them." A prominent campaign proposal of his was merit-pay programs designed with input from teachers. Giving other pressing education concerns, how much can he accomplish? He inherits an education agency and a law that brought unprecedented federal influence into classrooms with a massive expansion of testing. The law, NCLB, is due for reauthorization, but the bipartisan consensus in Congress that fostered it has fragmented, and it is unpopular with unions and school districts, who find it over-prescriptive. Michael J. Petrilli, an associate assistant deputy secretary in the Education Department from 2001 to 2005, characterizes the steps Mr. Obama must take as a delicate dance: "The big challenge for President-elect Obama is he's going to have to appease the reformers, but also the teacher's unions. They are all going to be watching for signs that he's with them." Read more.
According to virtually every report and study focusing on the achievement gap between Black and White students, Black students are under-performing in school settings compared to their White counterparts. Of the more than 16,000 school districts in the U.S., few (if any) can report that no achievement gap exists, that the achievement gap is marginal, or that the gap has been narrowed or closed.
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