Education Week 3/2/2011 Reflection

There are times when I read articles like In War of Words, Reform is A Potent Weapon, that I just want to say things like "duh" and "no kidding Sherlock."  Of course people are always going to use rhetoric to try and claim the moral high ground.  That is the whole point of rhetoric!  Using the right words to belittle or make your political opponent look bad or like they don't really care is how people win and lose elections.  It goes a lot farther than that.  Two weeks ago the Pittsburgh Steelers runningback Rashard Mendenhall made kind of controversial claims about the death of Osama Bin Laden.  Regardless of what he might have meant to say, people didn't take too kindly to his words because they implied that he wasn't happy about Bin Laden being killed and seemingly questioned America's War on Terror.  The fallout of his Twitter comments were pretty far reaching.  The Pittsburgh Steelers organization issued a statement about his comments pretty much saying that they disagreed with their running back.  Champion Sports, a pretty big sports supplier, severed their relationship with Mendenhall so that he is no longer representing their company.  This guy lost out on probably hundreds of thousands of dollars because the rhetoric he used indicated that it was wrong that so many people were celebrating the death of an (albeit very evil) man.  It just goes to show you that words are very powerful, and that they definitely do affect people more than most realize.  That is why it is not at all surprising that people in government use the words they do.  They know exactly what they are saying.  When the whole "groupthink" issue starts to come into play, more people begin to realize the power that certain buzzwords have and they want to use them for their own purposes.  Look at this article.  These proponents of reform are trying to sway people to their side.  How are they doing that?  By insinuating that people who are not on their side have no interest in "putting students first," they are hoping the public will latch onto that and say "why on earth would I want to vote for so and so when they don't want to put my child first.  They are only protecting their own interests!"  Mr. Freeman touches on this issue at the end of the article.  It doesn't matter that he wants to improve education.  The fact that he doesn't approve of increased support for Charter Schools is grounds for claiming that he doesn't want to improve education because that is what the rhetoric has trained us to believe.

Education Week 2/23/2011 Reflection

House GOP Presses for Deep Cuts in Education:  Ok these are the articles that have me extremely frustrated with our government and particularly with the Republican party.  Yes, at this point I am aware that the government avoided a shutdown for the first time in ten years (no we should not applaud them for agreeing to do their jobs when that should just be common sense...) but this is simply ridiculous!  Cutting almost 16% of the Department of Educations discretionary funding which would totally remove programs such as Pell Grants?!  Honestly what kind of a move is that?  We don't spend enough money on education in this country as it is and they want to cut their current budget by that much?  God forbid that we get out of the two or three wars that we have going on in the Middle East and devote some of those BILLIONS of dollars that we are investing in those wars to education and other focuses.  No I'm not advocating that we totally pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and do nothing to help stabilize the region.  I am advocating that we do a better job of pulling out of the area and redistributing a percentage of those funds that we would be using there on education.  The Republican Harold Rogers from Kentucky is kidding himself when he says that the cuts are shared commitment and sacrifice.  What a bunch of baloney!  A shared commitment to sacrifice would be reducing the tax loopholes for big business.  As a whole, our country, its general population and our government, do a really terrible job of living within its means.  What does that mean exactly?  Look at the credit card debt that so many Americans are in.  Look at the budget deficit that our government runs every single year, year after year, until we have a 9 trillion dollar debt.  Are we ever going to pay that money off?  I seriously doubt it.  All we are doing are selling the future generations short by making these cuts.  Back to wanting to get rid of Pell grants, why on earth would they want to get rid of those?  I thought they wanted more people with low incomes to be able to go to college?  If anything getting rid of them would make sure that few low income and minority students actually go to college.  Also wanting to get rid of 100 million dollars in technology grants seems stupid considering the goals of our country are focused around getting our education in technology and the sciences back on par with the other nations around the world that are currently kicking our butts in those areas.  All of the cuts proposed indicate one thing to me: our government is one that is penny-wise but dollar-foolish.  A commenter on the site, Cathy Winters, had this to say: "Do the leaders of this country have any semblance of reality?"  Good question Cathy, good question.

Education Week 2/9/11 Reflection

College for All Confronted:  In general, I have to think that many of the readers of this article and of the "college for all" initiative are taking the term college much too literally.  I completely agree with Michael Cohen when he says that it isnt just going to be a 4 year University that they are trying to get students to go to but any kind of post-high school education.  I was really impressed with the statistic (however, I have to say that I have absolutely NO idea as to how they came up with it; I would be very interested to know as to how they figured it out) that half of the new jobs are going to be ones that require associate degrees or vocational training.  This further emphasizes the increasing need for more and more high school graduates to continue with their education.
Another alternative to continuing their education past high school, and the article touched on this, is that high school could do a better job of preparing students for life in the technical fields.  I for one side on the air of hesitation for exactly the reasons outlined by Kati Hayock, the president of Education Trust.  I have done a project on tracking before in one of my education classes I took in undergrad and have personally been tracked myself (even though I was the receiver of many of the benefits of a tracking system) and just like she says, more minorities and more lower income students inevitably get funneled towards the lesser of the tracks.  This means that we are selling our kids short and they are not realizing their full potential.
I'm not sure if it is entirely possible to make it so that the minorities and the lower income students are not funneled towards tracks.  I think that the suggestion/model school in which students take all of the same core classes but choose a certain kind of field or focus for their electives is a great idea.  Say for instance that a kid did all of the electricity courses in addition to all of his normal core classes.  Sure that kid is probably in all likelihood going to heads towards becoming an electrician but that isn't a "for sure" thing.  What is to stop that kid from going to a "traditional" four year college or university?  Won't they see that he had that electrician kind of focus and disregard him? NO!  If anything that makes him/her a much more intriguing prospect for the school and will add to the diversity of that class significantly with the unique skillset and opinions that he/she brings to the classroom.  The focus fields of these "tracks" still need to be wide enough that a kid will still be fully prepared to do anything else should he/she decide that whatever track they are in is not what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

Education Week 2/2/2011

 Education Innovation:  Tougher than It Looks.  This article hits the nail on the head of one of the largest problems in our society, which is everyone is trying to get more money.  Normally that wouldn't be a problem.  I grew up as a republican and entrepreneurship is one of the major tenants of that political party.  However, the issue here is that no one is willing to invest the money in programs that could potentially really help the schools in this country.  It is the very same issue that we are facing in our government today.  So many of the brightest and greatest thinkers have absolutely no business or desire going into politics because of exactly that: there is no business going into it.  The president of the United States of America makes something like 110,000 dollars a year.  Mind you this is a pretty penny for pretty much all of us normal folks. The only "problem" is that the truly innovative people like Bill Gates and others like him who are able to build and develop and fund programs make millions and millions of dollars doing what they do now rather than go into government.  This article points out the same issue: for profit organizations don't want to wait for a most likely mediocre return on the investment that they would get by going into the research field of education.  They most likely realize that even if they waited 10-15 years to get a return on their investment, they would probably only break even, because if they were lucky enough that enough school districts had purchased their programs or whatever they are selling, more research would come out that would render theirs in second place.  What then?  Start over from scratch?  It isn't like the computer business where you can just get out there and do more research and development to get the newest, faster processor and beat out the competition that way.  There is so much prior knowledge to build off of there that you have a legitimate starting point.  I'm willing to bet that there isn't nearly the same kind of thing with the development of teaching strategies because of the issues this article described.  There is no real way to win.  Even if they demonstrate in a small subject area that something works, it won't work for everyone.  Even then if it has been found to be successful in that setting, there is the very distinct possibility that when it is sent out into the real world, some teachers won't use it because it isn't technically practical.  Why would someone buy it?  Exactly, they wouldn't.  So why would others work on developing it.  Obviously the answer here is that educators don't teach for the money otherwise they wouldn't be a teacher.  The issue is that the rest of the world runs on this notion.

No I'm not arguing for the redistribution of wealth.  Just trying to put my voice out there that there is a very obvious reason why we have the issues described in the article.

Education Week 1/126/2011 Reflection

"'No Pass, No Drive' Laws Popular, Not Proven" is one of those articles that I feel like I need to listen to the Alfie Cone cd from last semester again before reading.  I find myself very conflicted because I still don't have a very good idea of how many and what kind of rewards and punishments I want/need (need is a very relative term) to use in my classroom.  There is a comment on the article that criticizes one of the people listed in the article who doesn't think its a good program, saying that getting kids into the building is better than not having them in the building at all.  After reading the comment, I largely agreed with the person who made it.  But then again, there are days where I come to school and I don't feel like I learn very much of anything.  There are definitely times where I question whether I should be in the program or not, and then I think to myself about the multiple thousands of dollars a year raise I get for having a Master's in the Arts of Teaching and I'm able to make it through class knowing that I am certainly in there for at LEAST one reason.  One could argue that I shouldn't go to class at all and forget about getting a Masters degree if that is the reason I am doing it.  Obviously I am doing it for a lot of reasons.  In the same way, I honestly don't think that the kids who are affected by these law are not going to school solely for the purpose of getting and keeping their licenses.  There are a lot of reasons to go to school.  School is where a lot of their friends are etc etc etc.  The same person who didn't think that the program is a good idea said that there were other things that he would rather the district be doing instead.  My question to him is, why cant we do this program and do more of his ideas? Does this program really hurt?  Again, you'd have to refer back to the Alfie cd from last semester before you can answer with an informed decision.

Quick hit:  I have a question for the atheist father of the girl in Illinois who doesn't want a "moment of silence" in school.  Is it the fact that it probably is specifically for prayer and that they are trying to use the moment of silence to give people the opportunity to pray to start the day?  From my perspective, a moment of silence is perfectly fine with me.  But then again, I'm a Christian person.  The atheist guy probably doesn't like this veiled attempt at keeping prayer in schools.

Education Week 1/19/2011 Reflection

To start, the "Teacher-led school innovates with student regrouping" felt like a very disjointed article that was trying to do too much at once.  This could have easily been two separate articles.  The school being teacher-led is not surprising considering the economic climate that our country is currently in.  It comes as no surprise to me that schools are trying to cut down on the costs of running operations by having fewer people perform more duties.  However, it kind of makes me think that the schools are ignoring the students that those teachers have to teach.  The article mentioned that the new teacher/administrators have a lot of extra work to do on top of their teaching.  It also mentions that the teachers have to take on a lot more students because of the class schedule system that they have put in place.  In addition, what about those teachers who are interested in coaching students in sports.  In addition to more administrative duties, more students, more meetings, how on earth would they be able to take all of that on?  To me, it simply seems like they are trying to have the teachers take too much responsibility.  Don't they have enough to do as it is?  Yeah, money is probably tight, and more creative ways of getting the job done are necessary, but this doesn't seem like a viable long term option.  I imagine that those teacher/administrators are going to get burned out at a much faster pace than they would if they were simply teaching.
It's funny because my first thought reading about the new scheduling system that the school put in place was "this sounds an awful lot like tracking" so I am very glad they at least addressed tracking in the article.  One of the main things that people knock tracking for is the fact that students cannot readily get out of the track that they have been "assigned."  This system seems to alleviate concerns that a child would get stuck in a single track, but it develops a whole new case of problems.  The biggest one that comes to mind is attendance.  How are teachers supposed to keep track of who is in their classrooms when there are kids coming and going on a monthly, weekly and even daily basis.  It also seems like that would generate a whole lot of paper waste to confirm that such and such student is in this class this week and this class another week.  It also brings to mind the issue of how their credits are measured and how many they should receive for doing such an amount in one aspect of a course and a different amount for another aspect.  I don't necessarily think this is a terrible idea, but it just seems like, based on the limited amount of information provided by this article, that this system places a huge burden on teachers.  I would hope that the students show a marked improvement, because, otherwise this system is probably not worth it.

Quality Counts: Education Week 1/13/2011 Reflection

Definitely the most interesting portion of the article was the state report card.  My main focuses were Washington state and Oregon, because Washington is where I'm from and would like to teach (Oregon obviously because it's where we are learning and getting certified).  How is it that we are only getting a C- here in Oregon.  I do not see how strongly each of these portions are weighted but I thought it was interesting that the college readiness of Oregon was at 50%, which is absolutely awful!  Are we not preparing students here in Oregon for college very well.  Do we have any idea what is causing that?  Is it possible that it is directly related to the we got an F (a 58.8) on accountability for quality?  What this says to me is that students are falling through the cracks and teachers are simply passing them so that they don't look bad for having to fail students.  I've seen it happen that ninth grade students have third grade reading levels.  How on earth does that happen?  It's ridiculous!  What does it mean that our spending is at 59.9%?  Do we waste money?  I would like to see something that says why Oregon got that F.  There isn't a single state that got an A on this list.  Not even the very best of the states (which appears to be Maryland...who knew?) got an A.  Either we are grading on a very hard curve, which means that Maryland is full of absolutely awesome teachers, or we all kind of suck.  As a student, I'm not happy with a C.  Most of the time, I'm not even happy with a B.  I don't get the impression that very many states are happy with their C's.  When I look at a map like this, my first thought is how do we even get started at fixing and/or improving the situation?  It's such a daunting task.  My first step would be to look at everything that Maryland and a few other states at the top of the list are doing and start doing exactly what they are doing... Another thing to notice the West Coast is subpar compared to the east coast.  Do we not do things as well over here?  Do we not get the same amount of money?  Pretty much anything East of the Appalachians has a good chance of having a B grade.  Perhaps there is an East Coast bias in the grading of education just like there is in College Football...except on this map the Atlantic Coast Conference dominates pretty much every single conference...(laughable in college football)