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Chicago Teachers’ Strike: What Do We Want? Better Management Gurus Might Help

September 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Chicago Teachers Union Strike

The Chicago teachers’ strike, which is now entering its second week, represents more than a simple dispute about pay and benefits, as many observers have noted. It’s more like a gauntlet thrown down against the entire education reform agenda—the broad centrist policy movement that seeks to bring merit pay, metrics, pink slips for underperformance, and other business school concepts to the American schoolhouse. Indeed, one of the main sticking points in the dispute is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s desire to tie a substantial part of teachers’ professional evaluations—as much as 40 ... Read More

More like this: Education
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Do Principals Know Good Teaching When They See It?

September 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s happened hundreds of times. An audience of principals, superintendents and instructional coaches is shown a short videotape of a classroom lesson and asked to score it from 1 to 5. It would seem straightforward: The teacher is good, bad or somewhere in-between. But invariably, the scores come in all over the map, with high and low in fairly equal numbers. Having toured the United States with those videotapes, two leaders of the University of Washington’s Center for Educational Leadership conclude that most school leaders can’t identify or explain what constitutes good teaching, ... Read More

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‘American Teacher’ Argues for Increasing Salaries

September 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Think teaching is a highly respected profession? Think again. A recent ranking of the top 200 jobs in America, based on such criteria as income, physical demands and stress, had public school teaching at a dismal 100 — and nearly 10 spots below teacher's aide. "Our society doesn't value the teaching profession as it should," says Ninive Calegari, one of the producers of American Teacher, a documentary film opening around the country beginning at the end of this month. "We tolerate incredible turnover and bad salaries. People think the job is easy because good teachers make it look ... Read More

More like this: Education, Moving Pictures
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Stop Griping About Standardized Tests

August 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

It's fashionable today to hear educational policymakers say something like this: "I'm not opposed to standardized testing. I'm just opposed to the way in which standardized tests are being used." That pronouncement is typically followed with a litany of grousing about standardized tests. At a "Save Our Schools March" held in July in Washington, D.C., the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, a bevy of educational heavyweights and even one Hollywood star lambasted the No Child Left Behind law, focusing largely on its testing requirements. Here are four gripes ... Read More

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Teaching Religious Literacy in California’s Bible Belt

August 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A fourth "R" has been added to the core curriculum in the Modesto, Calif., public schools: Religion. In September 2000 — one year before the 9/11 attacks — this Central California community instituted a requirement that all ninth-graders complete a nine-week survey course on the world's religions. It is believed to be the first school system in the U.S. to make religious literacy mandatory for graduation. University of Virginia sociologist Emile Lester writes about this experiment in the journal Politics and Religion and in his new book Teaching about Religions, published by the University ... Read More

More like this: Education, September-October 2011
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Are Professors Picking the Public’s Pockets?

August 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

From his arrival in the U.S. some 25 years ago, Tatsuya Suda deftly cut a path to the upper echelons of academic computer research. Fresh from prestigious Kyoto University, he steadily rose to become a tenured professor at the University of California, Irvine, earning a reputation for dynamic theories in computer networking at the dawn of the cell-phone age. He even wed Grammy-winning singer Rita Coolidge. But along this intellectual course, studded with access to valuable discoveries—Suda was one of the first nanotechnology researchers to explore the idea of using biological molecules ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Bridging the Budget Gap With Stolen Lunch Money

August 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
School Budget Cuts Graphic From AASA Survey

As the United States attempts to regain footing in its most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression, locally funded schools are left to shoulder the burden. Spending cuts are enacted to diminish the budget gap, while resources to core services, like education, slow to a trickle. The American Association of School Administrators published data from a recent survey detailing how K-12 school administrators across the country made cuts to their schools' programs. Click the image below to view the info graphic that appears in the September-October 2011 issue of Miller-McCune. It ... Read More

More like this: Education, Graphic Art, September-October 2011
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Bad Teachers Improving With Help From Peers

August 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

One afternoon last May, a veteran teacher in California's William S. Hart Union High School District looked back over what had been a rough year. The previous spring, she'd been headed for a bad evaluation, so she volunteered for the district's Peer Assistance and Review program. She was told she would receive up to two years of coaching — and if she didn't improve, she would be fired. "When you've been teaching for 20 years, there's a bit of a shame factor," the teacher said, asking to remain anonymous. "I take it personally. You get the feeling they're after you." But it was true, ... Read More

More like this: Education, September-October 2011
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Teacher Collaboration Gives Schools Better Results

August 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Five years ago, Sparks Middle School hit bottom. Its test scores were some of the worst in the district. A chain-link fence was locked after hours to prevent gangs from tagging the open-air hallways. Between classes, members of rival tagging crews would fight. Word came down to the La Puente, Calif., school from the Los Angeles County Office of Education: We may shut you down if you don't come up with a plan. Sparks embarked on a makeover. Sherri Franson, the school's new principal, took down the chain-link fence because she thought it made the school look like a jail. She lengthened the ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, Education, September-October 2011
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What Would Diane Ravitch Say?

August 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In their embrace of testing, Sparks Middle School, Aspire Antonio Maria Lugo Academy and Wilmington Middle School reflect the data-driven approach to education that has dominated American schools since the No Child Left Behind Act was approved in 2001. These schools swear by their system, but it's a trend that many reformers decry, among them Diane Ravitch, the former assistant U.S. secretary of education. Ravitch, who initially supported No Child, now says the mandate for standardized testing is "part of the sickness of American education." She chronicled her change of heart in The Death ... Read More

More like this: Education, September-October 2011
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