Schools_and_Tech_27_Waiting_for_Superman.mp3

Listen on Posterous

Schools and Tech Podcast Episode #27
  
News of the Week:

1) Cal State Bans Students from Using Online Note-Selling Service  
Indeed, the provision of the state education code does some raise questions about intellectual property and the ownership of ideas and course content. If the students don't own their class-notes - or at least, cannot sell them commercially - who does? The professor? The university? The state?

2) UK: Every email and website to be stored - UK Telegraph
Every email, phone call and website visit is to be recorded and stored after the Coalition Government revived controversial Big Brother snooping plans.

3) Court: No Teacher Speech Rights on Curriculum, from Education Week  -
Teachers have no First Amendment free-speech protection for curricular decisions they make in the classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.
"Only the school board has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in the classroom, legitimately giving it a say over what teachers may (or may not) teach in the classroom," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, said in its opinion.

4) Some snowed-in Ohio students to learn online from The Washington Post -

Way to ruin snow days, Ohio.


Main Topic:  

Waiting for Superman, Our Take with Special Guest, Lucy Gray an education consultant in Chicago.

What Superman Got Wrong Point By Point - The Washington Post - The Answer Sheet - by Rick Ayers - CT
The amped-up rhetoric of crisis and failure everywhere is being used to promote business-model reforms that are destabilizing even in successful schools and districts. A panel at NBC’s Education Nation Summit, taking place in New York today and tomorrow, was originally titled "Does Education Need a Katrina?" Such disgraceful rhetoric undermines reasonable debate.

NYT Opinion Page on Waiting for Superman & The Education Debate - from Saturday 10/2

New York Review of Books piece on Waiting for Superman

What I Learned from NBC’s Education Summit - by Brian Jones - CT
On the same thread - Here we have a message honed to perfection... for the wealthy: the unions are the problem; the teachers need to be cheaper; give me money now for a few beautiful schools that can help break the unions and open up the education market; but don't worry, we don't want too much; we certainly don't want what your children have.
That's what I learned from NBC's Education Nation Summit. Beware CEOs who say teachers are the problem. And beware CEO solutions. You might find yourself in a room without windows.
(CT’s markup page)  http://markup.io/v/qe0sgyt1c0kn

Waiting for Superman: Don't look for easy answers the film implies, panel of educators says - Stanford Report - TAT
Education spending in America has more than doubled in the last four decades – yet math and reading scores have flat-lined.
What's the remedy? A panel of educators at Stanford cautioned against the quick policy cures implied in the explosive Waiting for Superman.

Grading School Choice - NYT Op Ed piece reminding us all of the dangers of overpromising (a la Waiting for Superman) - CT
Overpromising leads inevitably to disappointment. When it comes to raising test scores, the grail of most reformers, school choice’s record is still ambiguous. For every charter school success story like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the KIPP network — both touted in Guggenheim’s documentary — there’s a charter school where scores are worse than the public school status quo. The same is true for vouchers and merit pay: the jury is still out on whether either policy consistently raises academic performance.
This doesn’t mean that school choice doesn’t work, Hess argues. It just means that the benefits are often more modest and incremental than many reformers want to think.


Tim's Tech Tidbit:  Hands Off! and Little Snitch - How to know when your machine is “calling home” to someone else!

Endorsements:

| Leave a comment  »