2008 October 20 Archive at The Core Knowledge Blog

Archive for October 20th, 2008

Us Are Not Amused

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 20, 2008 in Humor. 0 Comments

As a Mets fan, I don’t need a lot of encouragement to root against the Phillies in this week’s World Series. But if I did, the ravings of “Mike from Delaware” might do the trick. On a sports radio call-in show last week, the overheated Phillies fan coined an unfortunate and ungrammatical catchphrase that has quickly caught fire. “Boston did it. The White Sox did it. Why can’t us? Why can’t us?”

Already, there’s a brisk business in “Why Can’t Us?” t-shirts, with the proceeds going to charity (May I humbly suggest Literacy Volunteers?) Us send our sympathies to Philadelphia teachers who will have to abide this for the next week or so.

“You Live In A Different World”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 20, 2008 in Education Practice. 1 Comment

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has little patience for those opposed to the controversial practice of paying inner city children for good grades in school.

“There are a lot of poor kids. Some of them have nothing. Some don’t even have parents.They’re lucky to get Christmas gifts. They’re lucky they get a hug once in a while. They get it at school. They’re lucky they have ever a dollar or any coins in their pocket,” he said.

“You live in a different world. You don’t see children like this. That reward is really exciting for them. They’ve never ever had anyone. They’ve never seen a $10 or $20 bill. What they’re really trying to express to them is, `You’re doing well and, the better off you do commensurate with your education, your salary goes up. If you drop out of school, your salary will never [go up]. It’s just an idea of celebrating their academic performance and hard work.”

Over a quarter million privately raised dollars were distributed to 1,650 Chicago kids last week in the City’s ”Green for Grades” program, prompting Daley’s comments.

Suburban Schools Run Afoul of NCLB

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 20, 2008 in accountability. 2 Comments

It’s been easy to shrug one’s shoulders and say that schools in trouble under NCLB deserve to be in trouble. But when schools in well-regarded districts like Arlington, Virginia’s start finding themsleves in trouble, eyebrows will surely be raised. The Washington Post reports the Hoffman-Boston Elementary School, where black students missed benchmarks this year, has become the first school in Northern Virginia forced to restructure because of lagging tests scores.

What’s challenging is they are under a microscope, but they aren’t terribly different than other schools,” Mark Johnston, assistant superintendent of instruction in Arlington, said of the small school near the Pentagon. “I think there are reasons why schools don’t make targets, and it’s easy when those reasons are clear and evident. It’s not easy when they’re not.”

Expect to see more schools in unexpected places run into trouble. “It’s not just going to be a problem of the inner city. It’s going to be a problem of many school districts,” Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, tells the Post. “This will come as a surprise to a number of school officials and to the public.”

Grammar Makes a Comeback

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 20, 2008 in Curriculum. 4 Comments

The government has released a draft curriculum that unequivocally calls for the explicit teaching of the basic structures of the English language. Grammar will return to the classroom along with punctuation, spelling, pronunciation, and phonics, for all students from the first years of school.

Oops, I left out a key word. The Australian government. The draft curriculum also retains the teaching of critical literacy, ”a model analysing gender, race and class in literature to expose inherent prejudices and agendas,” The Australian reports. The critical literacy component had been hotly debated.

The draft addresses the debates, saying the “explicit teaching of decoding, spelling and other aspects of the basic codes of written English will be an important and routine aspect” of the curriculum. The draft says critical literacy is the analysis of texts in terms of “their potential philosophical, political or ideological assumptions and content”.

The principal author of the curriculum notes that critical literacy “should not occupy a big part of the curriculum, but it had a role in enabling students to protect themselves against propaganda and being manipulated.”