Closing the Achievement Gap: Teaching Content
Michael Goldstein, the founder of Match Charter Public School in Boston weighs in with the last word on the Louisiana rerouting scandal:
In other news, the Red Sox reported today that they were re-routing 3 victories from the Dodgers back to Boston. “Those Dodger wins were generated by Manny Ramirez,” said team president Larry Lucchino. “If Mannywood hadn’t demanded a trade from Boston, those wins would have been ours.” This development belatedly makes Boston the AL East Division Winner.
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This is a bit of a stunner that amazingly has gone unnoticed until A-Rus picked up on it: The Gates and Broad Foundations are reportedly winding down their support for Ed in ‘08 well short of the promised $60 million. The Puget Sound Business Journal reported last Friday — and no one else seems to have followed up — that Gates and Broad have stopped contributing to the campaign after putting in a total of about $24 million.
The foundations say the campaign has made education an important issue, and there is no need to spend more. A program officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said the Seattle-based foundation believes it has accomplished the goal of making education a topic for candidates, after contributing $16.4 million, and is not likely to spend more on the effort between now and Election Day.
“If we spend less than the maximum, it is because it is a reflection of the strategies we are executing,” said Marie Groark, senior program officer with the Gates Foundation. She acknowledged that it’s a tough environment for the issue to gain traction. “We are aware that there are significant competing priorities on the agenda,” she said.
“I think it is clear that we have embedded into the mindset of the campaign that the crisis of our schools is an essential part of the domestic policy program,” Marc Lampkin, executive director of Strong American Schools tells the paper.
Glad it’s clear to Lampkin. That’s one down. Eduflack writes a passionate eulogy for Ed in ‘08 here.
“Officer Krupke, you’re really a square;
This boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care!
It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He’s psychologic’ly disturbed!”
From the mother country, comes word that teenage thugs could be suffering from a mental illness caused by a hormonal imbalance. A Cambridge University study of boys aged between 14 and 18 found a link between levels of the stress hormone cortisol and anti-social behaviour, London’s Daily Mail reports.
Cortisol is produced in higher amounts at times of stress and is thought to cause more cautious behaviour, helping people to keep a lid on their temper and any violent impulses. But in delinquent youths levels of the hormone tend not to rise when they are put in a high pressure or aggressive environment, the 18-month study found. Its findings point to the possibility of drugs being used in the future to control teenagers’ behaviour.
And while we’re poking around in the chemistry lab that is our body, here’s something else to ponder: another report out of Britain today raises the issue of whether there’s a genetic component to poor reading ability.
The St. Petersburg Times examined serious incidents of teacher misconduct in their area since 2000 and discovered that such teachers appear more likely to have been working in high-poverty schools.
Four teacher quality experts contacted by the Times said they knew of no studies that looked at the distribution of teacher misconduct. But none was surprised by the results, given a growing body of research that suggests a trend rarely reported or discussed at the district level: the likelihood that high-poverty schools have more inexperienced or subpar teachers or both. Some of the experts speculated the same factors might be in play in this case, including a steady stream of veterans leaving high-poverty schools and a phenomenon called “passing the trash,” where problem teachers are quietly moved from one school to another instead of being fired.
Last year, after a 50-state review, the Associated Press reported finding more than 2,500 cases of teacher sexual misconduct in the past five years. The paper notes the investigation did not look at school demographics.
“From liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to conservatives like George H.W. Bush and John McCain, our political landscape is full of people who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk,” notes the WorldWide Education Blog. “They oversee budgets, funding, and legislation, but they don’t deem public schools suitable for their own children…just yours.”
Earl Butz, the Nixon-Ford era cabinet member remembered mostly for his mouth, famously got himself in hot water with his quip about the Pope’s stance on contraception, “He no play-a da game. He no make-a da rules.” I’ll just say it might inspire more confidence if more of our top elected officials played the game. Or had the courage of their convictions.
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