April 30, 2008

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The Question on Everyone’s Lips

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by The Drama Club @ 1:30 pm

[Editor's Note: The Drama Club is a pseudonym for a first-year high school teacher in the Bronx.]

‘Tis the season in teaching that brings the same question to everyone’s lips: “So are you coming back next year?”

Am I coming back next year……?

Hmm, good question. My response for about two solid months now has been, “I’m on the fence.” The fence is getting higher. Whichever way I land, I hope it’s on my feet or else it’s gonna hurt. (more…)

April 29, 2008

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Not a match: class size spending and class size

Filed under: Education by Maisie @ 6:16 pm

The UFT published a report on class size yesterday with some remarkable findings.

1) Of 390 New York City elementary and middle schools that received targeted state class size reduction funds this year nearly half (48.5%) did not lower class sizes. In fact, class sizes actually increased at 33.8 percent of those schools. (more…)

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A New Governance Law: Should We Re-Create School Boards? What Should Be Their Powers? Can We Create Communities of Schools Within Neighborhoods?

Filed under: Education by Peter Goodman @ 10:33 am

[Editor’s note: Peter Goodman blogs at Ed in the Apple, where this post originally appeared.]

MBA students at Stanford and Wharton and doctoral candidates at Columbia and Harvard will be speculating for years to come on the immense failure of the Bloomberg/Klein years?

Why was a mayor who is such a superb manager such a failure in managing the DOE?

How could a chancellor who was so dependent on consultants ignore the wealth of knowledge on effective schools? (more…)

April 24, 2008

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Is Offensive Hyperbole For The Goose, Offensive Hyperbole For The Gander?

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 5:29 pm

Recently, Gerry Bracey published a piece at the Huffington Post which compared the authors and supporters of No Child Left Behind to the Nazis at Nuremburg.

There was understandable outrage, from Alexander Russo at This Week in Education and from Kevin Carey at The Quick and The Ed. (more…)

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Parent Coordinators

Filed under: Education by Ron Isaac @ 2:25 pm

One of the DOE’s favorite words is “reform.” They use it with indiscriminate self-congratulation to tout the good, bad, and ugly changes they have tried to dictate or actually imposed in recent years. Their creation of “parent coordinators” certainly sounded like a great idea at the time. They said “For years we have viewed schools as walled fortresses keeping the community out and the children in. Parent coordinators are the ones we are counting on to break open the walls of those fortresses.” (more…)

April 23, 2008

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Spellings’ Cure Is Worse Than The Disease

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 4:43 pm

Bush’s Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling, has just announced that she will unilaterally make changes to No Child Left Behind through executive regulation. According to the New York Times, the most important change would requiring states to adopt one national formula for calculating high school graduation rates, rather than allowing each state to use its own formula. (more…)

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Girl, Let It Go

Filed under: Education New Teacher Diaries by No-sleep-till-Brooklyn @ 2:36 pm

[Editor’s note: No-sleep-till-Brooklyn is the pseudonym for a second-year kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn.]

How do teachers leave school and immediately leave behind all the agony and pain they endure throughout the day? I’ve never EVER been one of those lucky teachers. Today was especially rough. I came home this afternoon with clenched fists and a burning desire to lock myself in my apartment and never come out . . . ever. How could I forget Meri’s screeching temper tantrum? Let go of my anger when Shaniya stuck her tongue out at me? Accept that Jason will do cartwheels across my rug when he feels like it? (more…)

April 22, 2008

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Edwize One Of The Top Education Blogs

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 6:46 pm

Edwize was named one of the top education blogs by Washington Post education columnist Jay Matthews and teacher blogger extraordinaire Ken Bernstein [aka TeacherKen]. Aw schucks.

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Weingarten: “Halt Assault On Teacher Tenure”

Filed under: Education Teaching by Leo Casey @ 10:53 am

On the subject of tenure, Randi Weingarten has published an Op-Ed in the Daily News, “Halt Assault on Teacher Tenure.”

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Tenure: What It Is And What It Is Not

Filed under: Education Events by Leo Casey @ 10:49 am

The recent controversy surrounding the recent legislation on tenure criteria was made possible, in significant measure, by a lack of awareness outside of education on what tenure actually is.

Tenure is nothing more than due process. (more…)

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