Tonight you must not forget to set your clock ahead 1 hour for Daylight Savings Time!!
Blame this guy:
 |
| Benjamin Franklin |
3/12/11
Tonight's The Night (To Spring Forward)--Updated
Tonight you must not forget to set your clock ahead 1 hour for Daylight Savings Time!!
Blame this guy:
students?first, Come To The Mirror
I have created a mirror of MichellRheeFirst because Michelle Rhee has started moderating and deleting comments.
I will post each of her blog posts at the new site and allow people to comment unfettered.
3/10/11
Bill Gates Buys Public Education For $335 Million
The plan [Gates Proposal] includes campaigns to reach out to parents, teachers, students, business and civic and religious leaders, and to build “strong ties to local journalists, opinion elites, and local/state policymakers and their staffs.” The plan explains how the organization will ensure “frequent placement ... in local media coverage of issues related to teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers” in accordance with the Gates approach....
The proposal calls for supporting local groups that promote the value-added evaluation systems, and who even get involved in unions so they can demand this approach in collective bargaining for teachers contracts.
But in a section entitled “Risks,” the proposal says that one big risk “is that Teaching First will be characterized as a tool of the Foundation.” To avoid that, it says, “Teaching First will need to be very careful about the national partners it brings into the work” and should “maintain a low public profile” and “ensure publicity and credit accrue to local partners whenever possible.”
Chris Williams, a spokesman for the foundation, said the new organization is an advocacy, not a lobbying group.
“We believe advocacy is an important part of the work that we support,” he said. “Much of the work that we are funding requires that there be movement in political and public will on issues .... not just in education but in global health.... We fund advocacy organizations all the time.”
Valerie Strauss
Arne Duncan: Trickster, Spinner, Manipulator
Beware of Arne Duncan’s Tricks
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/beware_of_arne_duncans_tricks_20110309/
Posted on Mar 9, 2011
By Moshe Adler
The statistical evidence is that smaller class size means better education, but smaller class size also means higher taxes. So Education Secretary Arne Duncan chose trickery to divert parents from the clear road.
At a recent meeting of governors in Washington he suggested that they pay bonuses to the best teachers if they agree to increase their class size. Duncan would prefer to put his own school-age children in a classroom with 28 students led by a “fantastic teacher” rather than in one with 23 and a “mediocre” teacher, he said.
But what parent wouldn’t? If large class size becomes the sign of a good teacher, no doubt all parents will insist that their child be placed in the largest class that a school has to offer. Unable to fit all students in just one class, however, principals will declare all teachers fantastic and assign large classes to all.
And the beauty of it is that the demand for large classes will come from the parents themselves. Clever, huh?
(For a discussion of the statistical evidence, go to the chapter “You Can’t Throw Money at Education” in my book, “Economics for the Rest of Us” pp. 97-106.)
Moshe Adler teaches economics at Columbia University and at the Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College.
David Broder, R.I.P.
David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes.WP
3/7/11
60 Minutes: Hard Times Generation; Homeless Kids
It's absolutely heartbreaking to see these kids suffering at the hands of a society that cares more about celebrity than each other.
If you had any doubts that poverty causes kids more harm than schools, just watch this.
If you had any doubts that poverty causes kids more harm than schools, just watch this.
