The So-Called Achievement Gap is Closing - Fast

It's true. You don't need No Child Left Behind laws, extensive testing schemes, or US Department of Education payoffs to see this is true. A simple article in the New York Times explains it all, Iraq War Brings Drop in Black Enlistees by Sarah Abruzzese.

The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army’s total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period. There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services.

The commander of the Army’s recruitment efforts, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, himself a black graduate of West Point, said there were several reasons for the change, including a healthy job market competing for youths but also African-Americans’ disapproval of the war. General Bostick said parents and educators who had recommended the military in the past might be less inclined to do so today.

In a recent CBS News telephone poll, 83 percent of the blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll numbers show up in the daily hardships of recruiters trained by Sgt. First Class Abdul-Malik Muhammad, based in Birmingham, Ala. “With blacks, there is not really a great support for the war,” Sergeant Muhammad said, recalling one prospective recruit who was told by his parents that they would sever all ties with him if he enlisted.

There were few such warnings half a century ago, when, as a trailblazer in equal opportunity employment, the military offered a chance for education and training. “You could go right off the street and into the military and make something of yourself,” said Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

One vocal opponent of the war, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said, “I still think that in many ways the armed forces is unfortunately one of the few viable options for young people growing up in inner cities who may lack resources for college and have few other opportunities for upward mobility.”

But for others, times have changed. Joining up is not even part of the discussion for high school students who attend Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, said the Rev. Dana Ashton, who works with young people. Students within her congregation go to college.

The Department of Education's Student Loan Connection

I'm catching up on a backlog of bookmarks I pick up off the various newsfeeds. A few months go, the Washington Post reported on the revolving door between private sector loan officials and the US Department of Education. Is it any wonder the sending a student to college is like offering them up to indentured servitude for life?

From: Warnings On Student Lenders Unheeded, Bush Aides Derailed New Rules in 2001 by Amit R. Paley, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, May 1, 2007

"The Department of Education has been run as a wholly owned subsidiary of the loan industry under this administration," said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime advocate for industry reform at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "They are running the federal loan program for the profit of their friends and not for the benefit of students and taxpayers."

Chad Colby, a department spokesman, said he was not aware of the 2001 proposal but noted that a task force was created last week to consider new rules. The department also defended its hiring of loan industry veterans, saying their expertise was invaluable, and pointed to a 2005 decision by the Government Accountability Office to remove federal student financial aid from a list of "high-risk" programs.

"The U.S. Department of Education takes its role as steward of federal financial aid very seriously," Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who took office in 2005, said in a statement last week.

No one has been charged with any crime in the investigations led by the New York state attorney general's office and other agencies, but in recent weeks there have been a series of revelations about conflicts of interest and financial links among universities, lenders and government officials. Some Bush administration appointees have said they were unaware of the extent of these controversial practices.

But the 2001 policy draft shows that Education Department officials knew of the issue and that at least some saw a need to act. In addition, some industry executives had sought guidelines on what would qualify as prohibited payments, or "inducements," from lenders to financial aid directors, according to current and former department officials. Several of them spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"We have been asked to provide guidance on whether certain practices of [private] lenders and guaranty agencies are considered to be prohibited inducements," according to the 2001 draft obtained by The Washington Post. "We are particularly concerned with allegations that some lenders and guaranty agencies have attempted to hide or disguise an impermissible offer."

Such allegations began to draw increasing attention from the department as early as 1999, according to officials.

Although investigators have found several cases in which lenders made payments to schools that steered business their way, it has not been established that those practices violate federal prohibitions on quid pro quo arrangements. The 2001 proposal addressed that challenge by saying the department would presume that a violation has occurred if a lender offers "something of value" to a school at which it has at least 20 percent of the school's loan volume.

The draft policy, known as "subregulatory guidance," was outlined in a letter by John Reeves, a Clinton-era appointee who served as general manager in a unit of the Office of Federal Student Aid and stayed on for part of the Bush administration. The office's chief operating officer, Greg Woods, another Clinton-era appointee, briefed industry groups on the proposal, according to two people who met with him. But Bush appointees quashed the rules.

"We were like, 'No, we're not going to drop a bomb on the lending community with these wacko ideas,' " said Jeffrey R. Andrade, a senior Education Department official at the time who now works for a loan company.

Reeves declined to be interviewed yesterday; Woods died after leaving the government.

Not everyone agrees that the rules would have had a significant impact.

"People who wanted to work around the rules would have found loopholes, unfortunately," said John Dean, special counsel to the Consumer Bankers Association, which represents lenders and took no position on the proposal.

But Andrade, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Postsecondary Education, said the 2001 proposal was "very draconian," so much so that half the schools in the country would have been found in violation of the policy. The department decided to encourage the financial aid community to draft its own voluntary standards, an effort that ultimately collapsed.

It wasn't long before the department's inspector general issued the first of several reports criticizing a lack of oversight from the agency's Office of Federal Student Aid. A 2003 report to Sally L. Stroup, then assistant secretary for postsecondary education and a former lending agency executive, said the office "has never performed reviews of lenders for the specific purpose of reviewing compliance" with federal anti-inducement rules.

Mapping EO from Google

View Larger Map

Tim Page Remembers Ashford and a Sixties Education

In a warm, funny, and beautifully written reexamination of childhood, Tim Page, an nationally recognized music and culture critic, talks about growing up with Asperger's syndrome. Read Personal History: Parallel Play for the sheer joy of it. Here's a tasty snip;

The class work, hardly less humiliating, was at least more private. If I wasn’t deeply interested in a subject, I couldn’t concentrate on it at all—those dreadful algebra classes, those Bunsen burners, the mystifying and now deservedly extinct slide rule! Late in each semester, when it became obvious to me that I had no idea what I was supposed to have learned, I’d attend some makeup classes and try desperately to pay attention. As the teacher rattled on, I would grind my teeth, twirl the tops of my socks around my index finger—once I poked myself repeatedly through my pocket with a pin—anything to keep my mind engaged. But it was impossible: a leaf would fall outside the open window, or I’d notice the pattern of the veins on a girl’s hand, or a shout from the playground would trigger a set of irresistible associations that carried me back to another day.

And then the dream was ruptured by the sound of a bell; the class was irrevocably over, and I knew no more about quadratic equations or beryllium than I did an hour before. Failure was now assured, and the countdown began to the Dies Irae, when my report card would land me in trouble again, for my father was incredulous that a boy who blithely recited the names and dates of the United States’ Presidents and their wives couldn’t manage to pass elementary math and science. I grew enormously fond of my father in later life, but he terrified me then. He lived until 2005, long enough to recognize, through my diagnosis, some of the problems that had vexed him throughout his own career and, better yet, to know and delight in my three children, to whom he showed a serene gentleness.

My grades, always disastrous, only worsened as I grew older and more was expected of me. Nevertheless, by the age of twelve I was able to storm through idiosyncratic renditions of most of the easier Chopin pieces and of the simpler passages in his larger works. That was also the year that I finished my first novel—fifty pages of it, filled with a narrative invention that I’ve never been able to recapture. The manuscript was lost long ago, but I do recall that I killed off my central character, a cat, by having him eat “badly prepared fish.” I am still in possession of a school report on “Making a Living in the Amazon,” which we had been required to work on for a week. My contribution read, in its entirety, “In the dense, rainy, rain forest, it is hard to make a living. One way is fishing in the river that is from a mile wide to a 100 miles wide. Brazil nut collecting is another way. You can gather manioc. You are very limited as to what to do for a living in the Amazon rain forest.”

By way of comparison, here is the beginning of a twenty-five-hundred-word story that I wrote the same month, typing it on my father’s gray oversized IBM electric in a single evening:

Nobody knew why the rain had not stopped. The weather report had said four in ten for light showers in the early morning. But here it was: 5 o’clock. And it was pouring.

There was nothing to stop Lady Lieg from leaving the library. She had all the equipment, a fold-up umbrella, galoshes, etcetera and so on. But there was this book on Alla Nazimova that just begged to be taken. How could she resist it?

How indeed? In no way am I making a case that I possessed any innate talent for fiction (although it took a certain prescience to hypothesize a biography of Nazimova some thirty years before Gavin Lambert’s volume was published). But, amid the usual obfuscating data, there are flashes of verisimilitude and understanding, all of which was new to me. By then, I had discovered Maugham, and Hemingway, and Camus, and had begun to trace in literature some emotional pathways that would fulfill me infinitely more than the road map of a Connecticut town.

Oddly, the book that helped pull me into the human race was Emily Post’s “Etiquette,” which I had picked up in a moment of early-teen hippie scorn, fully intending to mock what I was sure would be an “uncool” justification of bourgeois rules and regulations. Instead, the book offered clearly stated reasons for courtesy, gentility, and scrupulousness—reasons that I could respect, understand, and implement. It suggested ways to inaugurate conversations without launching into a lecture, reminded me of the importance of listening as well as speaking, and convinced me that manners, properly understood, existed to make other people feel comfortable, rather than (as I had suspected) to demonstrate the practitioner’s social superiority. I revelled in Post’s guidance and absorbed her lessons. And, typically, I took them too far: even today, I would never dream of addressing a teen-age busboy in a small-town diner as anything other than “sir.”

The Jena Six; Time to Wake Up

Education, Democrat, and Black Myths

Janks Morton was interviewed on C-Span's Q & A program this evening. He is a documentary filmmaker responsible for "What Black Men Think". He explodes the imprinted hubris that saturates and stifles the American dialog about black culture and racial progress.

For example he randomly asks groups of black teens, "Are there are more blacks in college or jail?" Almost to a person they respond with the politically imprinted answer, "In jail." Of course the answer is wrong and he offers the real numbers but the response he received is what Stephen Colbert refers to as "truthiness". Most people believe there are more black men in jail than in college.

This documentary is far richer than I can describe here and deserves serious consideration by anyone interested in changing the game because it shatters the knee-jerk stupidity of how Americans perceive black men. But his contribution is more important than even that. Morton demonstrates that a greater truth is possible to discover.

I also watched the Democratic Presidential debate and could not help but be disappointed with the volume of knee-jerk platitudes expressed on too many issues. On education - what to do with NCLB - only Bill Richardson had the courage to give the best answer - "SCRAP IT!". Far too many candidates pledged to "reform NCLB" which is Washington weasel words for BUSINESS AS USUAL. That is unacceptable.

Democrats can no longer bloviate the platitudes of the past. Only Clinton was thinking out of the democratic playbook thimble. She said, "We can't continue to run schools like we did when I was in school. Things have changed. We need to bring technology and innovation to the classroom."

YES. THANK YOU GOD! At least two candidates get it or at least some of it.

Teachers are not, by and large, underpaid. That is bullshit.

Smaller class sizes are not necessarily better than larger class sizes except in very specific contexts.

More spending is not the answer to better education.

Schools cannot fail and teachers in poor schools are not inferior teachers. Teachers and their competence is not the problem.

The system either needs to be overhauled top to bottom -OR- we need to end public school education in favor of something else. The system is the problem - not the kids, not the parents, not the teachers, not the pay.

END NCLB NOW!

| Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Grading the Newshour on NCLB Reporting

This week the PBS Newshour aired three segments on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) by John Merrow. I was put off by the first two segments - School Districts Find Loopholes in No Child Left Behind and Failing San Diego Schools Work to Meet Standards. I was ready to really rip the series.

What I didn't like about the first two segments was that NCLB was being compared to a track and field event and that the metrics of NCLB were being ambiguously implemented and that a true metric is constant and consistent. The first two segments never questioned the validity of NCLB in the first place.

Merrow debated whether or not states were cheating on NCLB metrics, or not counting students thanks to loopholes, and to fix or not fix NCLB.

For those of us who see NCLB as a fool's errand in the first place none of these arguments matter. There is no such thing as a failing school unless the law invents such a thing. Nonsensical metric comparisons of cosmically co-incidental groups of students from one test cycle to the next is equally absurd - to cheat at it is a surrealistic thing to do.

And how does one fix a law that is as loony a domestic endeavor as expecting a military solution to create democracy in the Middle East. What do these people plan to do - put a smiley face on the child abuse that NCLB is?

The third segment featuring America's best teachers saved Merrow from a scornful review. In this segment, we hear the voices of our brightest minds telling America that NCLB is a scandalous and pernicious cancer to our educational system. While there remains a pollyanna segment of the teaching population who want to "fix it", it is clear that it is Spellings and the Department of Education who are using NCLB as a "hawkish" partisan blunt instrument to do for America's schools what the Bush administration has done for New Orleans, the National Guard, and our infrastructure - destroy it!

Fixing symptoms will not cure the system. Turning every kid into a uniforn square is not who we are. We need a return to American educational values - children and learning first and a celebration of every child's uniqueness.

END NCLB NOW!

| Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Physics, Math, Science Videos

I owe reddit a hat tip on this one; JEE TV. This site bubbled up with wonderful videos done by teachers for science classes. Each video is a tutorial or demonstration of a math or scientific principle.

Very nice stuff.

Here's the linky.

Jill Bolte Taylor, Art, and the Right Hemisphere

As art emerges as one of the most necessary of curriculum subjects, schools are dropping art courses to finance the NCLB bunko scheme.

Inkling magazine interviewed Jill Bolte Taylor who knows a lot about thinking with the right side of the brain.

When I lost my left hemisphere I lost all of the normal “in the box” thinking. When we think about shifts in the brain it is inadequate to focus on the loss because with every loss there is a gain. As a society we do not focus on what someone has gained in the absence of something they have lost. When I lost the ability to define, organize and categorize information, I gained the ability to be intuitive and creative. In the absence of the left mind and its dominating inhibition, I gained a completely uninhibited right mind which processes information in a completely unique way when compared to the left mind.

East and West

A few months ago Le Figaro (via the Economist) reported how Chinese language teachers from China were being prepped for French students.

The French newspaper, Le Figaro, reports this morning how three French cities are either using or preparing to use a "survival kit" for Chinese language teachers, most of whom are Chinese-born or Chinese nationals, and who are "going through Hell" as they struggle to keep order, to quote one education boss from the city of Rennes. Numbers of French pupils applying to study Chinese rose by 30% this year, and nationally 20,000 teenagers will be embarking on their first steps with putonghua this autumn.

Top piece of advice in the survival kits? Guidance on how European adolescents differ from those in Asia. "Your class will be filled with pupils of differing ability: appearing to be the best will be a source of shame to them, and they think exploring how far they can push an adult is funny," the French guide suggests.

Lute Advocates Return of Military Draft

Whenever the politicians want to bury a story, they bury it on Friday.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

For young people who have been taking their options for granted, this should be a wake-up call.

Missing Children Screensaver

Here's great idea being reported by CNN.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has launched a 21st century take on milk carton advertising: a downloadable computer screensaver that flips through photographs of missing kids.

Developed in partnership with a private software company, Global Software Applications, the rotating screens display a missing child's picture and profile, tailored according to the region of the United States where the computer user is located.

Ron Koning, Global Software's vice president, hopes the screensaver will be used everywhere from police stations to office buildings and "any area with high traffic," he said. "Where it will catch the most eyes."

The company provides public access Internet kiosks, and has been working with NCMEC to display photos on its own machines in hotels, resorts, and Internet cafes since 2005.

Get it here.

Alternatives to Military Service

At Tuesday's Board of Education meeting, we passed an update of the language for the school policy regarding the release of student information to military recruiters.

I questioned whether or not this language should have also applied to civic service alternatives like Peace Corp, Americorp, or whatever programs may fall out from the presidential debate rhetoric. Many candidates favor civic service alternatives to the military options.

Surprisingly, Bruce Silva mentioned that he had never received a request from any civic service alternative program to recruit high school graduates. What a shame.

It seems to me that our Congressmen should insist that student records submitted to any one agency be submitted to all so that the student has a balanced look at what options life has to offer in serving one's country.

Poison Pill Cultures and Diversity's Wake

In the past few months the evidence is mounting that unbridled immigration and the infusion of what I will call

poison pill cultures

is in the process of irreparably harming Western culture and democracies.

First, let's define what a poison pill culture is. By citing a poison pill culture, I refer to members of a given community who refuse to accept, acknowledge, or constructively participate in the cultural mainstream that they have embedded themselves into. In some cases, these groups multiply their numbers and political power by leveraging the free speech, security, goodwill of a given community to their advantage while undermining that very community to harm it.

The most recent evidence of the phenomenon can be measured in Britain. In an article called, "4,000 PEOPLE A WEEK TRYING TO LEAVE UK" by Michael Knapp, Home Affairs Editor of the Daily Mail, a dangerous phenomenon is brewing.

The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. Ten years ago the figure was just 300 a week.

Why?

“They’re saying ‘I can’t put my children into the right school, but if I move abroad I can’. Most people are very patriotic and don’t want to leave. They’re almost terrified about it. But they say they just have to.

“It’s a shame people at the top don’t recognize they’re not doing enough to retain highly skilled workers in this country. A lot of them are quite young, and they’re not idle. They just can’t see a future for themselves in this country. They want to get married and settle down and buy homes, but they can’t see it happening here.

“And time and time again they are saying to us they don’t want to be seen as racist because they are quitting because of immigration. We tell them of course they’re not.”

Sound familiar? There's more.

A few weeks ago, Bill Moyers Journal interviewed Bruce Bawer on the battle of fundamentalist extremes.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think Europe is committing cultural suicide?

BRUCE BAWER: At the moment it's hard to deny that it is, yeah.

BILL MOYERS By refusing to do what?

BRUCE BAWER: By refusing to embrace and stand up for their own democratic values.

BILL MOYERS: You describe so well the values of democracy, pluralism, tolerance and sexual equality that took root in modern Europe. Why aren't they powerful enough to absorb and assimilate and mitigate these tribal customs?

BRUCE BAWER:I think that for one, I think that European leaders in many cases have lost confidence in the values of their own society. They've placed multi-culturism above democracy and freedom.

BILL MOYERS What do you mean by multi-culturism?

BRUCE BAWER:I mean an attitude that all cultures are equal, or value systems are equal — that we should respect other value systems and not judge them by our own value system. Now if you're talking about a value system that is patriarchal and undemocratic and hostile to human rights, then you've got a problem.

I do not believe this is bigotry or racism at work per se. What is becoming increasingly clear is that geography has played an important part in shaping cultural differences and the reality principle that maintained the balance was [and is] unified geographies - nations, states, neighborhoods where mutual understandings are exercised casually.

However, with the advent of globalization and the weakening of national allegiances we are witnessing the unwelcome or unwitting infusion of hostile cultures into the spaces of benign or unsuspecting cultures. And the result is no melting pot of happy endings.

A comprehensive and profoundly disturbing study is reported by Michael Jonas in the Boston Globe, "The downside of diversity - A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?"

Putnam is the nation's premier guru of civic engagement. After studying civic life in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, Putnam turned his attention to the US, publishing an influential journal article on civic engagement in 1995 that he expanded five years later into the best-selling "Bowling Alone." The book sounded a national wake-up call on what Putnam called a sharp drop in civic connections among Americans. It won him audiences with presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and made him one of the country's best known social scientists.

Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote.

The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.

This article is worth reading whole.

The diversity debate is getting hotter and our public schools are the front lines of many of the battles. Cultural and political suicide is not an option.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Art as an Educational Battlefield

Two Arts education researchers are revisiting some conclusions that have been obfuscated since the study was released in 2000. In a New York Times article called "Book Tackles Old Debate: Role of Art in Schools" the article summarizes the work of Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland of Project Zero.

“When kids take a lot of art, they don’t improve in their core subject areas,” she said in an interview. “We simply found no evidence of that.”

When students who take art also generally do well in school, Ms. Winner and her co- researchers say, this may be because academically strong schools tend to have strong arts programs, or because families who value academic achievement also value achievement in the arts.

“You cannot conclude that because they’re taking art, they’re doing well in school,” Ms. Winner said. “There’s just no way to conclude anything about causality.”

In campaigning for keeping arts education, some educators say, advocates need to form more realistic arguments.

“Not everything has a practical utility, but maybe it’s experientially valuable,” said Elliot Eisner, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University. “Learning through the arts promotes the idea that there is more than one solution to a problem, or more than one answer to a question.”

Edward Pauly, the director of research and evaluation at the Wallace Foundation, which finances arts education, said that the arts can promote experiences of empathy and tolerance. “There is no substitute for listening to jazz, seeing ‘Death of a Salesman’ performed, reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ seeing the Vietnam War Memorial,” he said. “Those powerful experiences only come about through the arts.”

Still, such reasoning may not be sufficient to keep arts education alive in public schools. “That’s not the kind of argument that gets a lot of traction in a high-stakes testing environment,” said Douglas J. Dempster, dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas, Austin.

In a time when President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy emphasizes test results, the arts do not easily lend themselves to quantifiable measurements.

Art classes are often the first thing to be jettisoned from a crowded curriculum. As a result, Ms. Winner said, it is understandable that some arts advocates hew to the academic argument to keep the arts in the curriculum. “The arts are totally threatened in our schools,” she said. “Arts advocates don’t even think about whether they’re accurate — they latch onto these claims.”

“I am an arts advocate,” she added. “I just want to make plausible arguments for the arts.”

In other words, these authors fall into an education as business trap that is self-reinforcing within the system.

How are they jumping to wrong conclusions? Easy. By comparing art to the standardized curriculum they are bound by expectations and comparisons that no longer make sense in an information society operating a warp speed.

Art is no longer a silly nice to have offering. In fact, Daniel H. Pink argues in A Whole New Mind that a Master of Fine Arts degree is this generations equivalent of an MBA.

For nearly a century, western society in general, and American society in particular, has been dominated by a form of thinking and an approach to life that is narrowly reductive and deeply analytical. Ours has been the age of the “knowledge worker,” the well-educated manipulator of information and deployer of expertise. But that is changing. Thanks to an array of forces—material abundance that is deepening our nonmaterial yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work overseas, and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether—we are entering a new age. It is an age animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life—one that prizes aptitudes that I call “high concept” and “high touch.” High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new. High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

As it happens, there’s a convenient metaphor that encapsulates the change I’m describing—and it’s right inside your head. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is sequential, textual, and analytical. The right hemisphere is simultaneous, contextual, and synthetic. Of course, we enlist both halves of our brains for even the simplest tasks. And the respective traits of the two hemispheres have often been caricatured well beyond what the science actually reveals. But the legitimate scientific differences between the two hemispheres of the brain do yield a powerful metaphor for interpreting our present and guiding our future. Today, the defining skills of the previous era—the metaphorically “left brain” capabilities that powered the Information Age—are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous—the metaphorically “right brain” qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning—increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders. For individuals, families, and organizations, professional success and personal fulfillment now require a whole new mind. ”

Connecticut public schools have got to stop being the new Alabama of educational obstinacy and begin reinventing how our students are taught.

That starts with Arts as the new central paradigm for curriculum design.

The History of Political Plunder

Where NCL fits in the topology of bamboozles the American public have empowered.

The NCLB plan followed the playbook that a power and money hungry segment of the Republican party had used successfully in previous campaigns. In the eighties, under Reagan/Bush FDIC savings accounts were undermined by overloading the FDIC system. In those days people of every economic stripe were encouraged to save and were rewarded with a 5-5.5% interest rate on savings. Neil Bush and the Silverado scandal ended the era of individual saving in America. Today, few families save more than they spend.

In the early nineties, the same power brokers undermined Hillary Clinton's campaign to reorganize the health and insurance landscape. High rollers in the medical profession sold their souls to private insurance schemes that today have made paupers out of patients and line assembly technicians out of doctors.

About the time of the 2000 election, the same techniques were used to subvert the need for inexpensive prescription drugs. This time the elderly were targeted to participate in a government-sponsored pyramid scheme that allowed geriatric prescriptions to set an inflated market value that would be subsidized with tax dollars. The drug companies and power brokers would be allowed to loot at will under the guise of a prescription drug plan. Meanwhile, the general public who didn't work for the government (49% of the population) were fleeced because no free market mechanism exists to encourage lower drug prices. More poor families with children, more stressed economic conditions for working folk, and an evaporating medical insurance pool. Nor were the elderly well-served. Bilked into believing the rest of society would pay for their free ride, many were soon shocked into the submission of realizing they themselves were plankton for the drug money sharks greasing the wheels of the Bush administration.

And the most massive shift of tax payer money into private coffers ever, the manufactured Iraq war. By now over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money has been displaced into war-bucks slush funds that grease the political wheels to keep sending billions. The rich can never be rich enough while there are dollars on the table to be had for the taking. The life of loss and limb is no more significant to these people than the plight of families without health coverage, affordable prescriptions, or savings washed away. Pennies for society, billions for military interests whose private armies swell overseas and even at home - democracy itself has become a question rather than an answer.

This history of bait and switch economics brings us to NCLB. By all accounting a small potatoes swindle. The velvet glove of promising to finance shady faith-based education programs using tax-payer money quieted the wheels that money would grease. The teacher's union heads were easily bought off with the idea that the curriculum would be fixed so that teachers would have little more than train kids like dogs - "Sit, Jonny. Now, read Gambler Bill's Book of Bushy Virtues. That's a good boy. Now take this test and goodbye forever. Next!" The money sink tying all together were the testing companies - largely arms of large publishing houses would would reinforce these empty educational platitudes through their own monopoly of media outlets.

But with NCLB, a funny thing happened on the way to continuous plunder. Kids aren't being served. Great teachers were drummed out of the business for not treating kids like parrots. Our corporations are in crisis because graduates can memorize but are paralyzed if they have to think.

NCLB may be the first and only such bunko scheme that is reversible. Taxpayers need not shed a tear for "the little children" though tears are worth shedding. NCLB is an unnecessary and deleterious government program that needs to be ended now.

If You're Going to Twitter, Do It in Public

There's a website called Twitter that is doing something very wacky and creative. It asks people what they're doing right now and then just streams out the results and it is fascinating in a very strange way.

As I was poking around on their site I noticed that communities could twitter as well. Here a fire department logs what it's doing, uh, right now. Now I happen to think that's pretty cool.

Imagine a school twittering throughout the day and sending their twitters to an rss feed that is updating a portal on their website? That would be very interesting to see snapshots of activity in the whole school over a period of time.

But wait a minute. Could teachers also create a class twitter? I mean with students offering ideas during a class about what's being learned? My head hurts thinking how cool a virtual gestalt session in an interesting classroom might get.

I better stop now. I'm feeling a twitter coming on.

Social Networks of Care

I have just discovered a service called Caring Bridge. This is a free website provider that offers websites to those who have fallen ill or are in dire circumstances.

It allows these individuals to share progress reports with friends, family, and outsiders. A very nice idea.

Certainly, students who are suffering from one calamity or another should be encouraged to take advantage advantage of opportunities like this to maintain contact with both close friends and concerned classmates.

Back To School Shopping for Computers

It's that time of year again and this summer I'm recommending that parents, teachers, and schools give the Linux Ubuntu operating systems serious consideration.

For the past six months or so I have been eating my own dog food so to speak and I am so pleased and impressed with Ubuntu that I believe it makes the most sense as a student operating system for a number of reasons. I know from using it myself that Ubuntu is the real deal - a desktop Linux as good and better than the competition.

Dell now sells Ubuntu machines preinstalled. Walmart offers Linspire another fine distribution and other vendors are following suit.

Second, Open Office is both free and just as powerful and easily learned as any other Office suite on the market. Schools use the argument that commercial packages only cost the school $40 per seat but what they forget is that these packages cost parents $100s of dollars at home. This cost affects teachers as well. For families under finacial constraints this is a back-breaking expense.

I have found Ubuntu's Desktop better than commercial products and the number of free applications is astounding. Kids can freely experiment in art, science, math, and just about anything one can imagine without regard to cost.

And wise parents will invest in a $400 range laptop for high school students. The portability is well worth the money and the quality of these machines is more than adequate IMO.

And don't forget an inexpensive copy of "The Ubuntu Book" - an indispensible manual telling users how it all works.

Holding NCLB Accountable

No Child Left Behind started on a fraudulent premise, was funded like a miracle cure and is only now being exposed for the human disaster it has always been.

In Bush's No Child Left Behind Law Leaves Certain Children Behind from Educational-Portal, a Chicago study scratches the surface.

Students who are considered to be on 'middle ground' had significant test score gains, but those who were in the top ten percent saw no change. The bottom 20 percent of students, on the other hand, actually lost ground in most cases. In fact, these students did better in 1998 before the 'No Child Left Behind Act' was passed.

Economist Derek A. Neal, who co-authored the study, concluded that teachers in the area surveyed are being forced to practice 'education triage' and focus their attention on children who are in the middle, thus passing over those at the top or those deemed to have little chance of improvement.

Not another taxpayer dollar needs to go into this mandate. It is as poisonous to children as the tsunami of lies Washington politicians shower Americans with every day.

Let's make sure NCLB is allowed to expire for good. Let your political party know you've had enough.

Dems Get B+ on NCLB Answers

Tonight's Democratic Presidential candidate's debate was revolutionary for the use of arty and clever YouTube video questions. National politics will never, ever be the same.

One video question asked about whether to scrap or attempt reforming No Child Left Behind. Biden, a friend of Ted Kennedy, said scrap it as did other candidates. Of course this is the correct answer but it is also a no-brainer.

B+.

Let's just let it expire quietly.

Writing a Screenplay

Many English teachers are using automated screenplay writing applications as a part of their writing curriculum. This site, How To Write A Screenplay, offers online tutorials as to how to create your own.

This site, screenwriting.com, is a comprehensive inventory of software and resources worth your evaluation.

-Gasp- Learning Counts Somewhere!

In my queue of unfinished business is a Psychology Today article that talks about schools whose graduates are better prepared for their future than NCLB saddled public school graduates are. Kids aren't considered ADD and they have a lot to say about their education.

From Education: Class Dismissed
It's every modern parent's worst nightmare—a school where kids can play all day. But no one takes the easy way out, and graduates seem to have a head start on the information age. Welcome to Sudbury Valley by:Hara Estroff Marano

So ingrained is the belief that kids learn only when confined to their seats and explicitly taught that most adults overlook obvious evidence to the contrary—the young struggle persistently against even their own clumsiness to master such formidable tasks as crawling, walking and talking on their own. "Learning and teaching have nothing to do with each other," declares Dan Greenberg, who, with his wife Hanna, is a founder of Sudbury Valley. In traditional schools, he says, teaching is driven by coercion, which breeds resistance. "Learning is driven internally by curiosity. Teaching can be effective only if the person you're teaching has sought you out to teach her." A physicist by training, Greenberg abandoned an Ivy League tenure track career in academia to start SVS.

Outsiders commonly choke upon hearing that no one even teaches reading. Sometimes insiders get a bit antsy, too. When Ben was in the second or third grade, anxiety temporarily overtook his well-read father, who offered the boy a dime for every 15 minutes he'd spend reading at home. Ben accepted the bribe long enough to prove he could do it.

But true to the Sudbury spirit, his reading proficiency took a huge leap forward only after he began playing with airplanes and then an electronic flight simulator—because that led him to read the flight manual. And that led to discovery of flight simulator communities on the Internet, which led to mock airplane battles, which led to communicating with squadron leaders, which led to spelling and writing, which ultimately got Ben into Swarthmore, where he is now finishing his freshman year.


Journey from Smoking Rock

Given the lack of formal demands, Sudbury attracts its share of sullen and shy teens short on motivation. Stephanie was sinking in her SAT-pressured public high school when she decamped in junior year for Sudbury (her friends derisively called it "day care") for "the sole purpose of avoiding college." For several months, she puffed and sunned her days away on Smoking Rock. In time, she drifted over to the music barn. There she picked up a flute again and began playing purely for pleasure. Two years later she selected a college specifically for its new arts center.

Jessica was severely depressed in her community's high school. Numerous friends "shared my indifference, but they were content with their apathy. I was tortured by it." Her parents agreed to a change, but adapting to Sudbury was difficult. Jessica was shy. She brooded. She sat at the edge of the sewing room, pretty much the crossroads of the school, a large space on the first floor of the mansion where there's always animated debate or a raucous card game around a huge table. For a long time she just listened. Eventually she began contributing to political arguments, discussions of personal beliefs "and philosophies of education and just about everything else." Conversation and debate, she insists, were the source of her education.

Current educational theory corroborates her assertion. Increasingly across all the sciences, there is an awareness of social capital. Researchers in a variety of disciplines believe that human interaction is critical for learning and the best learning comes about as a result of social participation. Relationships provide both the deep motivation and context for acquiring information; people are driven by the desire to understand the perspective of others. Studies have shown that peer engagement, for example, clicks on both intellectual engagement and learning persistence amongst students.

Got Milk? How About a Comfortable MetroNorth Train Ride?

I had a nice conversation with Bryan Hurlburt - 53rd District - CT, this evening concerning the price of milk. The price of a gallon of milk has increased $.50 in the past few weeks.

We need to ensure that school lunches continue to supply inexpensive milk to students even if it requires emergency legislation. Kids need milk to grow. Period.

And while I was at it, we talked about ways to get more FFA funding emphasizing dairy expansion, cultivating highway roadsides for hay production, and leveraging open space initiatives in such a way as to broaden dairy farms.

Oh, and I gave him an earful about the atrocious state of MetroNorth service along the shoreline and central Connecticut. The MetroNorth system is run like a third world monopoly that has no accountability to consumers. Enough. Get some decent passenger cars for chrissake - they've been paid for by the consumers. The condition of passenger trains in Connecticut are an embarrassment to railroading.

Train service has got to improve to accommodate an aging population and a growing country. Wake up.

CT has got to be part of the solution. Bryan can be reached at;


Bryan P. Hurlburt
State Representative, 53rd District
Ashford, Tolland, & Willington
http://www.cga.ct.gov/hdo/053/
bryan.hurlburt@cga.ct.gov

At the Capitol:
Legislative Office Building, Room 4100
Hartford, CT 06106-1591
860.240.8585
1.800.842.8267

In the District:
268 Hartford Turnpike
Tolland, CT 06084
860.454.8002

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2007 (NCLB)

Just vote NO! The rancid politics of the Bush administration need to stop somewhere and now is the time. There is nothing worthwhile in any of this federal legislation that would not occur without it.

Generally speaking, schools and teachers are conscientious and do the right things based on their circumstances. America has no use for old-fashioned, Soviet-style, centralized education. We have no use for brain-washing our kids or disempowering our communities.

Dismantling the federal Department of Education is job #1. Stop funding it and start dismantling it.

Spellings is a disgrace to the education profession and has acted as little more than a sock puppet for Bush and his cronies.

Vote NO and put some mustard on it!

Education Bloggers Social Network

I just discovered EduBloggerWorld, a social networking site for bloggers whose special interest is education.

It looks like a winning strategy - School 2.0 collaboration in the making.

Mr Rodgers, Rest In Controversy

I happen to love the work that the PBS series, Mr. Rodgers pioneered for children. Today, posthumously and surprisingly, he is being attacked for making children feel good about themselves (special).

From, Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled by Jeff Zaslow, WSJ.

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

Now Mr. Rogers, like Dr. Spock before him, has been targeted for re-evaluation. And he's not the only one. As educators and researchers struggle to define the new parameters of parenting, circa 2007, some are revisiting the language of child ego-boosting. What are the downsides of telling kids they're special? Is it a mistake to have children call us by our first names? When we focus all conversations on our children's lives, are we denying them the insights found when adults talk about adult things?

Some are calling for a recalibration of the mind-sets and catch-phrases that have taken hold in recent decades. Among the expressions now being challenged:

"You're special." On the Yahoo Answers Web site, a discussion thread about Mr. Rogers begins with this posting: "Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. ... Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice."

Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can't be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting."

Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.

By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard," says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: "The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you want to be special, you'll have to prove it."

"They're just children." When kids are rude, self-absorbed or disrespectful, some parents allow or endure it by saying, "Well, they're just children." The phrase is a worthy one when it's applied to a teachable moment, such as telling kids not to stick their fingers in electrical sockets. But as an excuse or as justification for unacceptable behavior, "They're just children" is just misguided.

"Call me Cindy." Is it appropriate to place kids on the same level as adults, with all of us calling each other by our first names? On one hand, the familiarity can mark a loving closeness between child and adult. But on the other hand, when a child calls an adult Mr. or Ms., it helps him recognize that status is earned by age and experience. It's also a reminder to respect your elders.

I don't subscribe to a word of this. America is precisely the place to become special. A lot of us like it that way.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Every high school English class should be reading this novel at some point of their schooling. Today, it is a more important novel than 1984 or Brave New World and it is a more literate piece than many of the classics still being recycled through the current English curriculum.

This book is a masterpiece. The story of a man and a boy describing their journey in a post-apocalyptic world describes no cause, no nation, and promotes no agenda. Readers will have to think about the consequences of destroying civilization.

It is readable by just about anyone who can read rudimentary English. McCarthy is a genius in composing vignettes that are breathtakingly straightforward, expressive, and visionary.

The suspense of the story is gripping and this is the first book that I've read in a long time that has made me want to drop everything else to read more.

Teachers who want to kick start a real conversation about life, responsibility, and survival should seriously put this book on the must-read list.

School Bus Emissions Victory

A few days ago, Susan Eastwood - an incredibly effective and hard-working advocate for school bus emissions reduction - passed along the good word from Sarah Uhl of Cleanwater.org.

The House of Representatives just voted to approve the budget
implementers that put the state budget into effect, following an
overwhelming Senate vote last week. The good news- $10 million for
school bus retrofits is included, with funding spread out over 2
years! The budget now goes to the governor who is expected to sign it.
The funding will cover the full cost of purchasing and installing
pollution control devices for the approximately 3,400 school buses in
the state that are able to be retrofit. This victory is the reward
for years of effort by all of you and without your time and
persistence this wouldn't have happened.
Representative Denise Merrill, co-chair of the Legislature's
Appropriations Committee, should be commended for her work to secure
this funding. Representative Merrill said "I am very pleased that
during the budget negotiations we were able to retain the $10 million
dollars needed to retrofit the state's school buses in order to
protect our children from harmful diesel emissions."
Next steps: Writing positive letters to the editor on this to local
papers, thanking key legislators who made this victory happen,
Future steps: Work with DEP to ensure the program is implemented in a
timely way, and watchdogging the school bus law at the capitol next
year to ensure that the program funds are not reduced and are
adequate to meet the program's goals.
We're also kicking off local campaigns to ensure transit buses are
retrofit in Milford, SE CT, Norwich, Middletown and other areas.

Thanks!
Sarah Uhl
Roger Smith
and the CT Alliance Against Diesel Pollution


**************************
Sarah Uhl
Diesel Consultant
Clean Water Action
645 Farmington Ave, Third Floor
Hartford, CT 06105
(p) 860-232-6232 (f) 860-232-6334
suhl@cleanwater.org
www.cleanwateraction.org/ct

Everyone who works so hard on these goals is to be congratulated. Susan has been a tireless advocate for this cause - GO Susan!

Aside from that, in even the smallest of CT towns, the acts of our citizens continue to enhance the lives of the entire state and maybe the nation. The state legislature would be wise to lend an ear to these voices more often. Our big cities have plenty of needs and they often control the legislative agenda. But the solutions to our state problems are found in the broader depth of the population, much of it living in the countryside.

Our kids will be soon healthier and breathing with fewer cases of asthma thanks to this appropriation. I call that a good thing.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Teachers Teaching Teachers

I recently cane across a website that offers teaching assistance to teachers by other teachers. The content is wonderful.

For example, how teaching blogging supplements English class.

Or, youth radio that connects students from around the world with each other.

I'm adding this link to the list of highly recommended sites that already are listed to the left.

The Red & Black Ball

I just received the EO Smith Foundation's newsletter. It details the thousands of dollars that were privately donated to support EO Smith educational endeavors. This is a wonderful and worthwhile organization that can be reached at:

eosmithfoundation@eosmith.org

or

E O Smith Foundation

P O Box 39

Storrs, CT 06268-0039

Chairman Francis X. Archambault, Jr. has announced that their annual fundraiser, The Red and Black Ball, is scheduled for Sept. 22, 2007 at the Rome Commons Ballroom.

The first such event was a great success. Your continued support is celebrated there.

Add This to Your Summer Reading List

I am highly recommending Daniel H. Pink's "A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age To The Conceptual Age". I am half-way through this book and while I have some reservations about the book, this is unquestionably a compelling and critical book for policy-makers, Board of Education members, parents,and especially teachers.

I will revisit this book shortly.

Why the RIAA is Killing the Music Industry

See what you think of these tactics being used against children in the RIAA's crusade against music copying by kids. The story is called RIAA tried to shake down 10-year-old daughter, suit claims

An unemployed single mom with health problems has renewed her legal challenge of the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) with unseemly new details. They include accusations that the cartel's goons tried to contact the woman's 10-year-old daughter at school by impersonating the girl's grandmother on the phone.

RIAA agents pursuing bogus copyright violations also called the apartment of Tanya Andersen looking for her daughter Kylee and demanded they take the girl's deposition, according to a complaint filed last week in federal court in Portland, Oregon.

Later, during settlement discussions, the RIAA told Andersen she had to abandon all legal rights she may have in a countersuit or the association would once again demand to "interrogate and confront her little girl at the offices of the RIAA lawyers," according to the suit.

"Defendants' lawyer threatened persecution of Kylee in an effort to force Ms. Andersen to abandon her counterclaims against the defendant record companies," Andersen's complaint claims. "Their demand for face-to-face confrontation with Ms. Andersen's then 10 year-old child in a deposition at the offices of RIAA lawyers were also intended to coerce and threaten her."

First Amendment Shredded by the -cough- "Supreme" Court

Jesus, what a disaster this country is becoming. Today, the president was asked to ban the use of torture by high school scholars visiting the White House [Scholars urge Bush to ban use of torture]. So Bush did what comes naturally, he lied to them.

"The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights," deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

The other possibility that exists is that Bush pretended to read the letter, didn't understand a word of it, and just let somebody else lie for him.

The man is an embarrassment to the human race but I'm tired of even dealing with another Bush rant.

More significantly, these scholars were unaware that the Supreme Court decided that students have no first amendment guarantees. In the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, the Court in all its witless wisdom decided that school officials can make up any damned excuse they want to shut up students under the pretense that the speech is interfering with the school's "mission".

So the message that protests torture delivered by high school students may never be allowed again. And its too bad because nobody else in this country has the guts to tell our leaders what is morally reprehensible about their policies.

But this is also one of our first whiffs of this new Supreme Court. Man are we in trouble. At a time when this country desperately needs vision and clarity, a hand-picked bunch of judicial jokers is playing havoc with the Constitution.

Soon these students may be serving in Afghanistan protecting the poppy farmers there to process and deliver the world's finest heroin to Western markets. Some will die. But thank Bush for protecting us from their right to satirize a society that punishes thought and rewards criminal politicians. After all, its not real drugs, gangsters, or criminal government enterprises that threaten us, it is high school newspaper editorials.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

The Darfur Project; An EO Smith Success Story that is Great!

Saturday's Courant ran a back story on an event that EO Smith seniors sponsored a few weeks ago. Entitled Service Project Was Smith Grad's Salvation By Melissa Bruen, it tells the story of how the event came to be.

[Anthony Brashier's] English class, taught by Nicole "Waz" Waicunas, had been studying the Holocaust in February when Brashier spoke up and asked what they, as a class, were going to do about the genocide in Darfur. With the permission of the principal, Waicunas threw out the syllabus and allowed her students to drive the direction of the class.

Brashier became one of the leaders on the project and began attending school every day. He and some of his classmates worked on planning events, such as the festival, to raise awareness about Darfur. For two months, they worked most days from when school let out until 5 or 6 p.m.

"I told Anthony again, as I try to remind all my students, that he was a star, that he had a special mission to accomplish in this world that was entrusted to no one but him," Pivarnik said. "Weeks before graduation, Anthony took the lead and ignited the senior class to respond to the devastation and genocide in Darfur."

Brashier said the senior class raised $15,000 to send to Darfur.

Over the course of the last year, "I learned anyone has the opportunity to pull themselves up," Brashier said. "Any kid or adult - I am an adult, and I have been for a while - I recommend to find something that drives you. It doesn't have to be organizing an event, or doing something lofty, but do something that inspired you."

What I love about this story is that Anthony Brashier was a student at risk of dropping out and the school did something extraordinary.

Last fall, Anthony Brashier was starting his senior year at E.O. Smith High School, but graduation and the future were the last of his concerns.

His home life was unstable and becoming too overwhelming to deal with, so Brashier, 18, said he began skipping school a lot.

"I didn't think it was possible to graduate, given my family situation," Brashier said. "I was going to go the whole GED route."

But his passion for helping others and the constant push from guidance counselor Barbara Pivarnik motivated him to turn his life around and lead his class and the school in raising money for the crisis in Darfur. He graduated alongside his classmates Tuesday night.

What the article fails to mention is that the event attracted Joe Courtney and Peter Tork to attend.

As a school board member I am never more proud of EO Smith than when it sheds the NCLB bullshit agenda and does what schools are supposed to do. Bruce Silva, Lou Deloreto, Barbara Pavarnik, Nicole "Waz" Waicunas, the senior class and everyone else pulling this together deserve State recognition for giving a damn and making it count.

Why Honest, Independent Boards of Education Matter

In my forty years of political awareness I have never read a more bizarre or shocking story about the administration of schools. It is indescribable.

From An "F" for Effort by Sarah Fenske, New Times, Phoenix:

Only in Arizona, kids.

For decades, school districts like Maricopa County's have been virtual dictatorships. Superintendents like Dowling are elected, often with little opposition, and then answer to no one: They're literally a one-person governing board. That's the way the law is written, and past legislative efforts to change it have failed. No wonder Dowling thought she could get away with hiring virtually her entire family — and, more importantly, running the district into the ground, even while smiling big for the cameras.

So State Representative Mark Anderson, a Mesa Republican, introduced a bill earlier this year to mandate that school boards, whether elected or appointed, be set up to oversee county superintendents. Great idea, except Dowling managed to squash it. The word at the Capitol is that Dowling practically camped out in the hallways for six weeks, campaigning against the bill. (I can confirm that she's also enlisted her own registered lobbyist and several district employees to blitz state lawmakers with e-mailed objections.)

Apparently, it wasn't enough that she screwed up the county school district, thereby dooming thousands of kids to lousy educations. Dowling has the chutzpah to lobby the state from preventing similar mismanagement in the future.

You have to wonder: Why is anyone giving this woman the time of day?

It's been clear for some time that Sandra Dowling had absolutely no business running a school district — much less doing it without accountability for 17 years. Look at her track record: a big budget deficit, a history of horrific test scores, and enough evidence of personal corruption to get her indicted.

But don't take my word for it. Read the report from the experts brought in to run the schools after Dowling's indictment. That three-person board of receivers, appointed by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Fields earlier this year, has the unenviable task of straightening out the district's finances and getting education on track. (Click to view their February and May reports.)

Nancy Haas, an education professor at Arizona State University, has been on the receiving board since November. More than 10 years ago, Haas spent her sabbatical at one of Dowling's schools. She witnessed enough problems to become one of the district's few outspoken critics during Dowling's pre-indictment heyday.

But even Haas is getting an education these days.

"I had knowledge at the high level of critical issues that were working against providing good educational services to the students," she says. She still wasn't prepared for the rat's nest that she and her fellow receivers have found: "Even I am surprised at how bad it is."

Considering John McCain's presidential bid, one can't help but wonder how this could be going on under his nose without comment.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

The Disgraceful Saga of 'Zero Tolerance' Policies

After twenty years or more of the terror of 'zero tolerance' laws and societal policies, some humanity and intelligence is running these ridiculous and disdainful things out of town after town.

The reason is simple, zero tolerance has left a legacy of broken lives, scorched public trust, and destitute justice in its mindless rampage through America. Judges were not trusted to exercise good judgment and enforcement officials were required to press on with even the most bogus of criminal claims.

The American courtroom more resembles a horror show 'red room' than a house of justice.

Read Has 'zero tolerance' in schools gone too far?
Some states' lawmakers move in that direction on violence, drugs policies and thank god the country is waking up.

Lawmakers in several states say the strict policies in schools have resulted in many punishments that lack common sense, and are seeking to loosen the restrictions.

"A machete is not the same as a butter knife. A water gun is not the same as a gun loaded with bullets," said Rhode Island state Sen. Daniel Issa, a former school board member who worries that no-tolerance rules are applied blindly and too rigidly.

Issa sponsored a bill requiring school districts to decide punishments for alcohol, drug and non-firearm weapon violations on a case-by-case basis after weighing the circumstances. It passed the Senate and House and now heads for the governor's desk.

Some have long been aware of the problems of zero tolerance. For the last decade, Mississippi has allowed local school districts to reduce previously mandatory one-year expulsions for violence, weapons and drug offenses.

More recently, Texas lawmakers have also moved to tone down their state's zero-tolerance rules. Utah altered its zero-tolerance policy on drugs so asthmatic students can carry inhalers. The American Bar Association has recommended ending zero-tolerance policies, while the American Psychological Association wants the most draconian codes changed.

"It may be a bit of self-correction that you're beginning to see where the pendulum is coming back," said Kathy Christie, vice president of a research clearinghouse for Education Commission of the States in Denver.

Right-brainers, Censorship, and Education' s Contribution to National Health

A Dice discussion board entry is being censored and has alerted me to what looks to be an important new book about teaching in western countries. It appears that the thread is being attacked because the book discusses foreign interests who are objecting to calling attention to them as bigotry.

As long as we live in an open society, my preference is to air the subject matter and let citizens make up their own minds.

The thread, Right Brainers Will Rule The Future, is attributed to an anonymous writer and this is the entry whose responses are being deleted;

Or so says Daniel H. Pink in "A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age To The Conceptual Age". It discusses the three forces which are changing America as the three As. They are abundance, automation, and Asia. He purposes that thinking with our left side of our brain is not enough anymore and we also need to give a new more important focus to our right hemisphere. He says this will bring on a new age in America called the Conceptual Age. Six principles will help us in this direction. They are design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. He provides a chapter on each and how to improve them. Really informative, helpful, and interesting book.

This looks like a great summer read for all teachers and administrators involved in curriculum development. I plan on reading the book and providing some follow-up but in the meanwhile, let Dice know that in the free world censorship is bigotry against ideas and open discussion.

Until there is no United States, freedom of speech trumps the abuse of blunt instruments of political correctness. Preserve our right to be offended!

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Unknown Artist: Strangest Space Pop Band Ever!

Johnny Depp appears on a Japanese television show that features a number of young Japanese children (who will absolutely astonish you). Fun and interesting.

Rap Comic Taylor Mali on What Teachers Make

You'll enjoy this - short and to the point:

Are Learning Disability Students Being Discriminated Against in Car Insurance Rates?

It is the time of year when grades come out and students who meet certain grade point criteria can get a break on their car insurance premiums.

The trouble is that students with learning disabilities can often fall short of that criteria. In many cases they work as hard if not harder than the unblemished academics.

Students earning credit under IEP programs should get reviewed by the IEP team to be awarded a merit designation for preferred car insurance rates. Academic grades do not tell the whole story.

A By-product of the Julie Amero Case

The group of experts who pooled their talents in a volunteer effort to aid the defense of Julie Amero have set up a website that hopes to address the myriad issues that afflict teachers, parents, schools, business, and others who get trapped in the legal system.

The Julie Group will identify worthy cases of injustice and see where they go. We do not expect to always be right but we do hope to shed some light on the subject no matter what the conclusion.

Education will be a big subject. Preventative computing practices that minimize exposure to inappropriate content will be endorsed. Educational materials for use in schools will be examined and recommended.

Lawyers looking to offer pro bono services might drop in to see what we're up to and recommending as worthy causes.

Police and enforcement agencies will find the Julie Group receptive to offering independent second opinions of cyber-crime cases.

The new home for computer forensic discussions are The Julie Group or http://thejuliegroup.blogspot.com

Tho not always identified the Julie Group includes the planet's finest computer forensic practitioners and generalists as well as key journalists and enforcement observers.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Teach the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a Lesson

Isn't it about time that The Monkees get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

A lot of fans think so. If you want to sign a petition to teach the Hall a lesson then by all means sign here.

And because Peter is playing the area soon, check out his website - fascinating stuff.

In fact he offers a few free MP3s here.

But let me up the ante a bit. Not only should the Monkees be inducted to the Hall of Fame but they should drive there in the Monkee-mobile! Oh, yeah. Change the oil and let's take that baby for a spin!

New, Free and Recommended Security Software

I'm updating my recommendations for parents, schools, and teachers based on a new report from A-V Comparatives. Their evaluation of anti-virus software unveils two virtually unknown market players; ESet and Avira.

Avira offers a free anti-virus package that blows away many commercial and older free products.

ESet offers free one-shot anti-virus removers and a strong anti-virus commercial offering for schools. Again, a product that is way ahead of the pack.

Finally, with the disclaimer that Alex Eckelberry is a personal friend of mine, I am adding Counter Spy to my recommended security suite for parents, students, and teachers.

Don't take my word for it if you think I'm selling something. I make not a penny and I believe this will secure your computer better than just about any other affordable suite of software.

My links are on the left and the updates are worth doing now.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

The Julie Group

I have never in my life been associated with a stranger brew of people. Men, women,young, old, liberals, conservatives, law enforcement, lawyers, teachers, journalists, skeptics, experts, writers, and by-standers. And, of course blog readers.

The people who worked so hard as volunteers were told repeatedly that Julie Amero was convicted and that there was no chance this conviction would be abandoned. None. It doesn't happen hardly ever at all.

Jurors swore she was guilty in written comments. The police expert claimed secret knowledge and promised block-buster revelations (we're still waiting). The story was so bizarre and had so many impossible co-incidences that many thought it was written by Lewis Carroll.

I stopped blogging so that the defense team could do their jobs. And people would come up to me as if to take mt temperature and wonder if the fever had worn off and would say, "Too bad about that teacher." They'd shake their head and realize I hadn't given up. They would shift their eyes away to discreetly lament to themselves that I must be a lost cause.

The Julie Group changed the world.

Collaborative investigative journalism worked. Collaborative judicial intervention worked. Tolerant, speculative discussion threads came and went and the ones bearing merit were not diminished because lesser ideas were vetted.

The Julie Group changed the world.

Injustice as usual was replaced by justice for a change. The cockroaches are fleeing. The system smells better.

The Julie Group changed the world.

Here's what Walt Le Baron, EdD said so well just yesterday in addressing the volunteer community:

I was sort of on the side of this group, but I am just as excited as all of you that Julie has been in effect exonerated.

I can only imagine that the time and effort was considerable that you computer experts put into correcting the false testimony of Lounsbury and for setting forth the correct interpretations for this case.

You deserve the appreciation of all teachers and educators in the United States, possibly other countries as well. It is comforting to know that despite the present efforts of the federal government to destroy our liberties, there are still gallant citizens who will rise to the fore when justice demands their help. I hope your efforts are recognized by both educational and computer organizations concerned with professionalism in these fields. Meanwhile, my personal thank you for helping the cause of electronic education as well as saving Julie.

This is reprinted to make sure everyone out there gets congratulated. I think Walter speaks for everyone involved - we're all glad the others showed up.

And let me remind everyone that Julie and Wes still need contributions to their defense fund. They are a long way from being made whole. See my link in the left column to their donation site.

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

American Redemption: Julie Amero

I grew up during an age of American legal giants. William O. Douglas, Ramsey Clark, Abe Ribicoff, John Dempsey, and a crowd of others. America, Connecticut, and the world would routinely witness the birth and rebirth of the American Dream as it pertained to justice. The little guy in America often got a fair shake.

All those so-called "activist" judges created a judicial system that was the envy of the world and is now a historic high-water mark that we can only dream of ever achieving again.

You see it takes vision, courage, and compassion for justice to flourish and these days, under the dismal and perverse direction of the Bush administration, nothing resembling justice dare expose itself. To this degree my understanding of justice is far different from what an American High School student might today expect to believe.

The rule of law must sound like a myth to today's student. There are no innocent defendants and turning in your neighbor, fellow teacher, or your parents is a national blood sport. And truth is just a word invented by scientists who can't prove a thing.

But today, a crack in the guilty-no-matter-what-machine appeared. Not a tiny crack. Today a marching band of international goodwill bulldozed across the landscape and did something extremely rare in American justice. Today, Julie Amero, falsely convicted of endangering the morals of minors, was granted a new trial because the first one was found wanting of truth, justice, and the American way.

Yes indeed folks, the American secret weapon for world domination was dusted off and taken for a test drive. It's a muscle car like its always been.

You're more likely to see cockroaches sunbathing than find someone who believes Julie Amero was a criminal today. Julie looked stunning from the Courant pictures taken at the courthouse today. And the smiles of relief exposed an obvious innocence that can't be manufactured by all the computer experts in this world.

Teachers in America can no longer fear being labeled a hypocrite for teaching that, in America, justice triumphs. It can and it does. No the system does not necessarily "work". In Connecticut, the system more resembles judicial racketeering than justice.

But today an indifferent, hubrionic system met its match. Citizens like you and me and our neighbors had enough of this bald injustice and refused to take it anymore. The system was cracked by goodwill, intelligence, and, most surprising of all, a resurrection of journalism that pundits like Steven Colbert ridiculed as being dead - intrepid, persistent, and unwavering journalism (Rick Green and Lindsey Beyerstein come to mind). And the judge hated it - accused bloggers of attempting "undue influence" on the court.

No, the system didn't work at all because it actually performed the task it was always supposed to perform - blind, impartial, compassionate justice. It surprised the hell out of everyone and, Julie's lawyer, William Dow III, deserves kudos for getting the thing running properly.

This is a happy day for all of us who blogged, investigated, and championed Julie Amero and Wes Volle's cause.

May today represent a return to blossom of the American judiciary. Lord knows it's long overdue. Today's ruling is what American justice should look like. Let's be sure it's not a shooting star.

There's a ton of great material out today on Julie.

As they used to say in the newspaper business, READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Digg It! | Add to Del.icio.us | Add to Technorati

Peter Tork Coming to Ashford June 28, 2007

Last year, I got an astonishing response to my humble review of Peter Tork playing for the Joshua Land Trust. Read them here and here.

Unless you've been living in a cave, you'll know Peter Tork as a former Monkee. Last year he took the stage alone and was fantastic. This year he's bringing his band, Blue Suede Shoes (Richard Mikuls, John Palmer and Arnold Jacks) with him and, as proud owner of a Blue Suede Shoes CD, I am betting they knock your socks off.

The concert on Thursday, June 28, 2007 benefits Joshua's Trust again and the tickets can be purchased AT THIS LINK using THIS FORM.

The photo shown here, is linked from Joshua's Trust's website in good faith and fair use to promote this worthwhile event. If you can't make the concert, please consider making a donation directly to them.

BTW: This was a sellout last year. It is a small hall, intimate, and a great atmosphere, and Peter is loose, funny, and throws away some very interesting insights into his career. If you missed seeing great talent in smaller venues back in the day, you'll regret not coping a ticket for this.

Introducing Gapminder

Gapminder, recently purchased by Google is a rich set of visual, dynamic, statistical analysis tools that are available freely to anyone - most specifically educators.

Anyone interested in global trends of population, education, wealth and so on are covered beautifully and certainly deserve the attention of all social scientists, historians, and policy wonk-abees.