Check out this video of teachers learning a dance as part of their professional development for math. I don’t know if this a good method of teaching kids or not, but it sure looks dumb. I also learned from the post that South Carolina has a 50% graduation rate. Yuk. (thanks to Amy P)
New research on dual career academic families. The authors have suggestions for universities on how to improve the quality of life for dual-career academics. And the deans immediately toss this report in a circular file as the line of desperate applicants forms outside their office.
Kaus has been writing about the growing anti-teachers’ union rhetoric by prominent Democrats, including Corey Booker. (thanks to Allison and Amy P)
The right has been railing against universal pre-K. I’ll respond soon.
Apt. 11d 
Pre-K seems to produce added value for children from poor and/or neglectful homes, but for other children it’s just free babysitting. (For which I happily signed my oldest up when we were in DC.) Also, given the way that pre-K gains evaporate during early elementary school, maybe we need to rethink the recently fashionable emphasis on “early childhood education.” Maybe “early childhood education” isn’t the end-all-be-all that we’ve been told it is.
About the dual career thing–I keep hearing how hard the hiring process is from the point of view of the department. There really aren’t that many really smart candidates, and a lot of them are happy where they are.
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Score one for right wing propaganda! Hooray!
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Reading the Kaus piece, either he’s fiegning surprise at what happened or he knows absolutely nothing about what has been going on in Dem policy circles in education for the last 15 years. I hope its the former.
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or he might be feigning surprise, if he can spell.
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Fie on spelling!
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If this has been going on inside the Dem party, then I can only surmise that nothing will change soon as they continue to discuss endlessly their education policy’s pitting of the interests of the teachers union vs. the interests of the students. Or, I can be hopeful that soon the Democrats will join the Republicans in support of meaningful school choice.
I’m doubtful that Obama will throw the teacher unions under the bus; he has too much to lose. OTOH, while the majority of blacks and Hispanics are in support of school choice, it seems Obama can get away with opposing it because they might be less likely to turn away from him and to the Republicans.
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“…he knows absolutely nothing about what has been going on in Dem policy circles in education for the last 15 years.”
If it’s been going on for the past 15 years, why hasn’t there been more progress?
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Here’s a possible explanation, from eduwonk.org’s McCain-advising guest blogger:
“I’ve been around DC politics for a long time and was surprised that Obama chose Joe Biden for his running mate for many reasons, but in the education arena… I thought…umm…maybe since he wasn’t around in the late 90’s (I was!!) he didn’t know that Biden was supportive of voucher legislation for awhile (until the teachers unions got to him). His attitude as seen in his speech below shows how confused the Democrats are about vouchers and school choice. They seem to KNOW what is right and can even articulate it but chicken out when it’s time to DO the right thing about education reform.”
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I never read Kaus, so I’m not sure if he’s feigning or fiegning. I just thought the reference to Corey Booker was interesting. Harry, did you ever read Wilbur Rich’s book about mayors and education? He has a whole chapter about Newark and the problems that reform mayors have had in that town.
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Laura — no, but that’s a good tip, I’ll get hold of it. I’m still annoyed that LA’s mayor didn’t get to take over LAUSD — he had the backing of the union, and it would have been a unique event.
Amy — progress… well, I don’t know. At the Federal level there is so little power over education, especially because whatever power there is, it’s so hard to predict how things will play out. The NEA and the AFT, by the way, are very different unions, and at the local/state level, where the AFT is the main union, much more interesting things can and sometimes do happen. Both unions provide a lot of funds and, just like all other funders, use them to protect their interests.
Vouchers — McCain isn’t seriously talking about vouchers is he? I’m all for them, but they are about as relevant to education policy at the Federal level as they are to Iraq policy. As to choice — the Dems almost all support charters, which are where the action is on choice, and have done for, well, about 15 years.
Neither party is going to do much that is transforming of education, mainly because the center of the crisis concerns poor kids, and both parties mainly represent voters who just aren’t that interested in what’s good for poor kids.
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“Vouchers — McCain isn’t seriously talking about vouchers is he? I’m all for them, but they are about as relevant to education policy at the Federal level as they are to Iraq policy. As to choice — the Dems almost all support charters, which are where the action is on choice, and have done for, well, about 15 years.”
I haven’t heard much about McCain on education. The feds have been involved with vouchers in DC. See for example the following story from the WaPo:
———————-
By Valerie Strauss and Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 9, 2008; Page B01
The groundbreaking federal voucher program that enables nearly 2,000 D.C. children to attend private schools is facing an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled Congress and may well be heading into its final year of operation, according to officials and supporters of the program.
————————
I didn’t read the whole thing (it’s the after school rush here), but the initial paragraph is suggestive, both about the federal and the Democratic role in dealing with vouchers. With regard to charters, there are continual battles over caps on the number of charters in different locations. It’s not true that charters are uncontroversial, although I’m sure you could list a paragraph or two of names of prominent Democrats who like charters.
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McCain says he supports school choice for all who want it , and he specifically mentioned vouchers during the Saddleback Forum.
In all the cases I’ve seen Democrats aim to place severe restrictions on the number of charter schools, which seems to be a pretty good way to keep the unions relatively happy. I think it would be accurate to say that most Dems support “token” charters.
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I finally read the WaPo article, and it gives a list of local players (with Ds beside their names) who were instrumental in creating the DC voucher program.
“Changes in District politics have also compromised the future of the aid program, which awards scholarships of up to $7,500 a year to low-income children for tuition and other fees at participating private schools. Early champions of the initiative — former mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), former D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D) and former D.C. Board of Education president Peggy Cooper Cafritz — have all left office.”
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Neither party is going to do much that is transforming of education, mainly because the center of the crisis concerns poor kids, and both parties mainly represent voters who just aren’t that interested in what’s good for poor kids.
I think the center of the perceived crisis in education concerns poor kids. I don’t think the main crisis in education concerns poor kids–it concerns cost.
A median household with children has an income of $61k (Census figure). The mean cost of public school, per-student is around $9k (from memory). What that means is that a median household can’t pay for itself, educationally–which has very perverse effects in land-use planning.
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