Learning by Heart

DOCUMENTARIES ON TEACHING AND LEARNING: "AMERICAN TEACHER" AND "WAITING FOR SUPERMAN"

2011-10-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

I have not seen "Waiting for Superman" or the newly released Dave Eggers and Matt Damon film called "American Teacher: A Documentary." It breaks my heart to see the continued downward spiral of the American public education. Yet, I do believe that we are approaching a critical time in our nation's history where something's got to give.

Education is about creating positive communities and having high standards. It's about saving as many students as you possibly can and giving a damn in the face of the brutal facts.

How can we continue to be one of the most innovative countries on the planet that dismisses the vast majority of our students and our teachers. Over the next several weeks, I'll explore what our current popular culture and media has to say about teaching and learning. Are we stuck with outmoded ways of how we do education? Can teachers achieve the kind of support from the public that other professions enjoy or have unions and the Republicans and Democrats overly politicized their plight? Over the course of the next several weeks we'll explore these questions and more.

The Pacific garbage patch comes home | Marketplace From American Public Media

2011-09-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if you heard this story the other week on American Public Media's show called "Marketplace." I'm a pretty devoted listener to "Marketplace" and haven't missed an episode (they come daily) in over a year. This one got me thinking, so what are we going to do with all that garbage that's floating around in a big patch as big as the State of Texas. It seems like someone is trying to make money off of it. If this sounds far fetched, it is.

The Pacific garbage patch comes home | Marketplace From American Public Media

Strivers, All--Teaching School from K-12

2010-04-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about educational reform over the years. Although I am a product of public schools and have been a principal/leader in public schools, I don’t pretend to be an expert on all things public or educational. What I do know is that the federal government’s attempt to compare apples to apples with state testing is a good thing. However, state or national tests are not nearly enough. We have nearly twenty-five years of bad governance to begin to dismantle.

What I’d like to see? More reporting on what’s actually being taught in K-12 schools rather than the cases of bullying and harassment that people seem to be enthralled by. I’m not saying that those issues are not important. Indeed, they are critical to maintain healthy and safe schools. Yet, I’d like to see more coverage on innovation and on the development of what makes great teachers great.

I stumbled across a Facebook page for my old K-8 school in Harvey, Illinois: Carl Sandburg Elementary and Junior High Schools. I started at Sandburg in 5th Grade—Mrs. Delaney’s classroom. Even though we were in the midst of some pretty aggressive white flight at that time, those teachers—mostly white women and men—were committed to educating all of the children they had in front of them. I was impressed by their encouragement, support, and no-nonsense way of promoting what they loved and what they had to teach. My sixth grade teacher Mrs. Mullins used her famous “Mullins Bucks” to tempt us all to do better and try harder. Although I am not a firm believer in rewards as motivators—grades or scip systems—I do believe that those candy bars, pencils, and books that we bought in sixth grade had many of us trying harder. On the other hand, Mr. Love, the science teacher and basketball coach, quite literarily kicked us in the ass when we were messing up. I do remember banging hard on the door to get in after one lunch period. Mr. Love opened the door and hauled us in and said, “What and the hell are you doing?” He pulled two of us in the resource room, closed the door, and prominently kicked us in the posteriors. Talk about corporal punishment. I remember being shocked and amazed that he would do something like that. But I never told my folks. I guess I thought I deserved the swift kick for being so obnoxious. By eighth grade, Anne K. Bentley inspired me after I finished with all of my SRA independent reading cards. I could boast that I was reading at a 12th grade level—according to the cards. Indeed, I did love to read. She put me into my own independent reading group, handing me Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “House of the Seven Gables.” I’m not sure if I was the best independent learner, but I felt special and different. I was ready to learn.

So, what does all of this memoir stuff have to do with reforming the educational system of this country? If you put good teachers who can think and reason for themselves in front of the children of other strivers, you get magic. It’s all about fearlessness, trying something new, being aware of the cultural landscape (even as the ground is shifting), and doing a good and credible job. Did I get everything that I needed then? Perhaps not. Yet, I loved those men and women who tried to do their best at Carl Sandburg Elementary and Junior High School. I wish them eternal peace and give them my promise that I’ll try to continue the work that they began.

EDUCATION: FRONT AND CENTER FOR 2010

2009-12-26T00:33:00.000-08:00

If you thought that LEARNING BY HEART took a holiday over the last 12 months, you would be correct. Future blog posts on this site will continue to cover news stories, events, and media analysis dealing with the world of K-16 education.

The news of the last year was dominated by the economy and healthcare. Issues of the day tend to push the business of tomorrow off the front burner. The business of tomorrow should be our children as learners; those who will inherit what we leave them. In baseball this back burner report is typically called the hot stove league, which is where news items are placed to simmer for a while. Consider these news items and analysis the simmering pot of our educational democracy.

Named after Roland Barth's extraordinary book, LEARNING BY HEART, the thoughts written on these pages are mine and mine alone.

Instructions: Please feel free to post comments and commentary about what may be important to you, too. I'll also plug blogs and reports of educational news that may be relevant to this audience. Make suggestions, connections, and introduce yourself to the world or educational ideas.

Lifelong Learning: Financial Matters

2009-04-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

Can you speak mortgage-backed securities?

I've been stretching myself over the last year and a half, learning all that I can about the economy. I did not take Economics in college or high school, so this study is definitely self-directed and personally generated.

Understanding about "toxic assets," "shadow banks," "credit default swaps," and the US Government's "TARP" plan has been pulling me in directions that I could have never imagined more than eighteen months ago. Every night I put on my iPod Classic, drifting off to sleep listening to American Public Media's "Marketplace" with Kai Ryssdal.

What I have learned relates directly to Chaos Theory and how our world is truly interconnected now. When George H.W. Bush described his New World Order, perhaps he meant this world that we are in right now where when a folks in a neighborhood in Las Vegas default on their risky loans, then workers in Finland might find themselves out of a job.

Our world, this brave new world, is so woven together that we must figure it out fast, or get left behind.

What are ways that you are stretching yourself beyond what you know?

Paddy Hirsch--"leaves all of us badly needing a drink."

What We Learned from the Somali Pirates?

2009-04-14T19:51:00.002-07:00

Absolutely nothing...

Can't Stop the Tide: Same Sex Marriages and Gay Vice Squads

2009-04-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

The culture wars dictate that there must be losers.

In the battle over same sex marriages, the losers try to dictate what others must do. In this case, those folks who love each other and who want to solidify lives together. We're not talking civil unions here, we are talking equals before and under God.

I, like most of us who grew up in the Black Church, was taught to fear what I really didn't know. For many of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, growing up in a small town African American community outside of Chicago--Southern Baptist inflected--in the tumultuous 1960s and '70s and being a man in love with another man or a woman who adored another woman was tantamount to existing as a social pariah, or worse. One false move, like a side-long glance at a bar or showing affection for a beloved in the privacy of your own backyard, might mean certain death.

Forty years later what has changed? Not much, really. This past fall the New York City Police Department, posing as gay men, harassed and shut down gay hang-outs.

NOW FOR THE TRIUMPH: On the other hand, Sean Penn, 'a courageous heterosexual American,' brought life and hope to his portrayal of Harvey Milk in "Milk."

So, why all the fuss about same-sex marriage? Back in my youth, the lives of the "losers" could be erased in the blink of an eye because of the people they loved--just like the lives of black people during the early part of the Twentieth Century or Jews in Nazi Germany.

Those of us who moved and escaped the "programming" of those years can claim to be more enlightened, but where are my other heterosexual brothers and sisters who are standing up against the bigotry in our time. The Prop 8s or hate ministers in the Mega-churches?

Humanity dictates that lives are sacred: all lives, all the time. No matter how bleak, no matter how black, no matter...

Today the culture wars rage on Fox News while people are huddling under viaducts with not enough to eat, sleeping in tents year 'round. W-villes. With the race-baiting, gay-hating, loser-rama's on parade, the Anne Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, and anybody that dares to take on the toxic asset that is the Republican Party circa 2009, the flood waters of history are beating against the levees of those who want to deny equality--again. Can you hear me Michael Steele? Even the extreme religious far right is beginning to moderate. They don't want to be on the wrong side of history for eternity. WWJD?

We can no longer tolerate the bigotry of those who wish to stop Humanity's rushing tide. This is not agitprop or an Obamatron talking here. It's hard to respect people who get into office by becoming turtles when the world needs giraffes, especially when all are not considered full members of the human race.

Water's rising. Can't stop, can't stop, can't hold back that rising tide.

The Threshold: College Admissions

2009-04-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

So, the most competitive college admissions season is nearly behind us.

What have we learned?

What has been seen by students (and families) applying this year to college is that there is no way to know for sure how colleges make admissions' decisions or who will get into what schools, or why. Neither grades, nor test scores, or even a great non-academic profile will assure students the ability to get into the more so-called elite schools.

The great counsel that I can still give students and their parents is to follow their passions regardless of the name of a specific school or schools. Don't worry about getting into one of those named brand colleges or universities because you can't predict with any certainty what colleges may want in a particular applicant or in a class that they are trying to build.

The brutal fact is that the more elite schools are only admitting about 5% of those that apply.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell posits that the so-called elite schools like Harvard, Stanford, Brown, etc. would do just as well to have a lottery to get in once students have reached a certain acceptable admissions threshold.

Perhaps schools should stop with this crazy admissions process and go to Gladwell's lottery. In fact, perhaps that's what they should call it "Gladwell's lottery." So, I can hear it now in the halls at Princeton, "We went to a Gladwellian situation." Or, "How did your Gladwell turn out this year? Did you get that squash player you wanted?"

I poke a little fun perhaps, but it is ridiculous how these "elite" colleges are dictating what the less competitive colleges must do in order to be deemed successful.

From enrollment management to endowment creation to student selection, colleges will have to become more transparent. I tell students all the time that there is "a college out there that is just right for you."

I hope they believe it.

WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT--Open Source: Narrowing the Divide between Education, Business, and Community

2009-04-04T01:29:00.000-07:00

© 2009 Jim Whitehurst. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ ).

EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 44, no. 1 (January/February 2009): 70–71.

BY JIM WHITEHURST

Jim Whitehurst is President and CEO of Red Hat.

Comments on this article can be sent to the author at and/or can be posted to the web via the link at the bottom of this page.

Open source is now recognized in institutions of higher education as a viable technology solution that provides superior value at a fraction of the cost of proprietary applications. That's a good thing—but that's not all it can do. Open source can be a transformative force in education. In particular, it can transform computer science curricula. Academic institutions that are consumers of open source need to reverse roles and shift gears to “preach what they practice” and place higher emphasis on integrating open source into the classroom.

Open source is an increasingly important skill set that many of today's computer science graduates are lacking. This is not because students aren't interested in open source, but because very few colleges and universities currently offer open-source classes. In addition to eager students, there are many professors who are very interested in teaching open source in their classrooms and labs.

What Is Open Source?
Open source is a collaborative software-development method that harnesses the power of peer review and transparency of process to develop code that is freely accessible. Open source draws on an ecosystem of thousands of developers and customers all over the world to drive innovation. Traditional software companies provide only binary code and withhold source code, so users can run the software but cannot study, modify, or improve it. In contrast to these proprietary models, open-source software is distributed under nonrestrictive licensing terms that generally include access to the source code.

Why Open Source?
We live in an increasingly global community. Gone are the days when working for a company in an office meant serving a small geographic area from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Today’s graduates will work in a matrix environment where projects cut across organizational and geographic boundaries, requiring cooperation and communication. Open source uses the power of collaboration to provide students with hands-on learning and to equip students with an expanded skill set that is very attractive to businesses.

Open source better prepares students for the business world by exposing them to real-world problems and encouraging learning through the completion of real tasks. Open source amplifies a “hands-on” approach to learning by connecting students to a community of users in an effort to solve problems. Open-source developers don’t rely on textbooks; they rely on the knowledge base of other developers with whom they connect through community forums, building off of one another’s ideas to create a solution that is eventually shared with all. To this extent, open source better prepares students for future job experiences and allows them to complete, while they're still in school, work that's being used by the global open-source community.

Open source also teaches students useful skills that can be applied across other coursework and classes. Students have the opportunity to work with many more code bases in open source than are found in traditional student projects. This strengthens skills in collaboration, project management, and testing and encourages a well-rounded computer science education, making students more marketable in the business world.

It is widely accepted (though the point is impossible to prove) that many of the most gifted programmers in the world participate in open-source projects. Those projects provide a platform for them to display their achievements and for others to learn from them. This learning process happens naturally in open-source projects, but it can be encouraged by colleges and universities. The quality of the student's educational experience will be enhanced by learning from masters of the art.

Thus it is not just higher education institutions and the business community that benefit from open source in the classroom. As students sharpen their skills, they are able to drive increased innovation across open-source communities and projects. Working on open-source projects in school can serve as a gateway for students to continue to contribute after graduation. Projects have a longer shelf life and don't end when the semester ends. Students can continue to contribute long after they finish their coursework, graduate, and move into the working world.

Open source drives innovation faster due to its collaborative nature and community-backed effort. Teaching open source encourages better communication among students and prevents them from working in a vacuum, void of input or teamwork. Classrooms become smaller communities within the larger open-source community. This benefits students by teaching collaboration with classmates, and with others from across the globe, on how to resolve issues such as bug fixes.

Open source also allows students to leverage existing software for their own research purposes, and any code they contribute will find a much larger audience within the community. Students are a welcome addition to open-source projects, since they bring a fresh perspective—one that those already working in the project might miss. Working every day in a project can desensitize people to the pain points of new contributors, a fact that students can effectively point out when they are new to a project. This input allows the open-source project to create a better experience for its current and future contributors.

Who Are the Leaders?
Some pioneers in the academic world are serving as models for success. For example, open source has become a fundamental part of the curriculum in the School of Computer Studies at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada. The school has partnered with open-source projects such as Mozilla and the Fedora Project to expose its students to the growing opportunities that open source presents. Seneca students work within the Fedora Project, a Red Hat-sponsored and community-supported open-source collaboration, while learning open-source development and administration. This proven model was developed at Seneca and will be incorporated into several programs beginning with its Linux/Unix System Administration (LUX) program, an intense one-year graduate certificate.

Other higher education institutions that have distinguished themselves as leaders in the open-source world include Oregon State University (OSU) and North Carolina State University (NCSU). The OSU Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open-source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, the Drupal content management system, and more than fifty other leading open-source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. And right here in my home state, NCSU has created the Center for Open Software Engineering, which performs basic research, education, and outreach to enable software technology gains and to bridge the gap between the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice of commercial software engineering.

Google's Summer of Code (GSoC) program, although not affiliated with any education system, has also been a huge success in introducing students to open source. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open-source projects. It kicked off in 2005 and has historically connected more than 1,500 students with over 130 open-source projects to create millions of lines of code. Most of the students who participate in GSoC are enrolled in college or university computer science and computer engineering programs, but many of those participants have never worked in an open-source project before their experience with GSoC. If Google can achieve these dramatic results with a three-month-long program, imagine the innovation that can take place if academic institutions across the globe bring open source into the classroom.

Government as a Facilitator?
In many parts of the world, governments have been early adopters and heavy users of open-source technologies. Governments also provide significant funding for public higher education institutions. Many governments, having understood from a user perspective the benefits of open-source technologies, play an important role by encouraging their public colleges and universities to create open-source curricula to meet the marketplace demands for well-trained students of open source. From a government funding perspective, the use of open-source technologies will help to reduce college/university IT costs, saving money that can be used to meet more critical needs of students. Governments should also encourage the use of open IT standards, which will lead to more competition in the marketplace, more opportunities for open source, and even greater reductions in IT costs at colleges and universities.

What's Next?
Today’s students live in a world of openness, transparency, and collaboration. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia are students' top websites, all of them populated by user-generated content. Open source is driven by this generation and the values they hold dear. Users can see the code, change it, learn from it, share it. And that’s exactly what we should be teaching on our college and university campuses to give this generation of workers the skills they need to succeed in a global economy.

One of my colleagues from the open-source world, Tim O'Reilly, says it best: “Innovation is no longer about who has the most gifted scientists or best equipped labs. It's about who has the best architecture of participation.” Open source is the most viable means through which a higher education institution can create this “architecture of participation.”

So, let's work together to help our colleges and universities arm students with the knowledge of open source to continue to drive innovation across the industry. If you're a professor, start a dialogue with administration about the importance of open source, and rally your colleagues around that effort. If you're a student, demand that your institution take a closer look at open source. If you're an IT administrator at an academic institution, integrate open-source technologies into IT infrastructures and share your knowledge with professors, students, and other administrators. It will take a collaborative effort, but we can make change happen and cross the chasms between open source, education, and business.

http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume44/OpenSourceNarrowingtheDividebe/163586

The Big Cram for Hunter High School By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ

2009-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Reprinted fromThe New York Times, January 2, 2009

While their friends played video games in pajamas or vacationed in the tropics, a dozen sixth graders spent winter break at Elite Academy in Flushing, Queens, memorizing word roots. Time was ticking as they prepared to face the thing they had talked about, dreamed about and lost sleep over for much of the past year: the Hunter College High School admissions exam, a strenuous three-hour test that weeds out about 90 percent of those who take it.

On Wednesday, the final day of test-prep boot camp before the Jan. 9 exam, there seemed to be nothing more terrifying to these 11-year-olds than the risk of failure.

Some had taken up coffee; others, crossword puzzles and cable news shows to glean vocabulary words. A few of their parents had hired private tutors and imposed strict study hours, and several had paid up to $3,000 for a few months of English and math classes at Elite, a regimen modeled on the cram schools of South Korea, China and Japan.

The five girls and seven boys at Elite on Wednesday seemed to delight in their onerous routine, unwilling or unable to imagine life any other way.

“My friends think it’s wacko to do so much preparation,” said Akira Taniguchi, an aspiring F.B.I. agent who attends the honors program at Junior High School 54 on the Upper West Side. “But now I feel I’m really focused, thanks to this academy, and way more confident than I was when I first came here.”

Patryk Wadolowski, the brown-haired, blue-eyed president of his sixth-grade class at Public School 58, chimed in: “It just prepares us for life. Any obstacle we face we’ll be able to conquer.”

In a classroom decorated with maps and illustrations of vocabulary words (a string of z’s for “dormant,” a serene plateau for “salubrious”), the squad of high-achievers spent 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. dissecting English and math questions. As they progressed from sentence completion to reading comprehension, nearly every question posed by the teacher, Elisabeth Stuveras, elicited a garden of eager hands.

The puzzle of the moment was the word “resentment.” Some students had been stumped by it on the practice test, and Ms. Stuveras asked if anyone could offer a definition.

“Like, you resent having a fight with people?” Patryk hypothesized.

No, that was “regret,” Ms. Stuveras explained. She searched for an example that might ring true for the students.

“Pretend your friends are applying to Hunter,” she said. “There’s a chance that the person who didn’t get in might feel a little resentment they didn’t get in. They are upset the other people got in, with a little jealousy.”

“ ‘Resent’ is a good word to add to your vocabulary,” Ms. Stuveras concluded. The students nodded in understanding, highlighting the word in unison.

At 1:15, they took a break, throwing aside lofty vocabulary to chat around the vending machines about their favorite rappers (Jay-Z and Kanye West) and coming school dances.

When prompted, they took a moment to reflect on why they wanted to get into Hunter. Some said it was an urge to become better students and be surrounded by bright peers; others said they had been told Hunter was a vital steppingstone to elite colleges and a successful career.

“Ever since I was in second grade, I always wanted to go to Hunter,” Patryk said. “I’ve always strived to achieve everything in every test.”

Most of the students came to the five-day winter break program at Elite after attending Saturday prep classes at the academy through the fall. Elite, which opened in 1986, is one of several cram schools in New York that has imported the year-round enrichment programs of the Far East, giving students the chance to forfeit evenings, weekends, summer break and winter vacation for test preparation.

While Elite limits advertising to Asian-language newspapers, about 50 percent of its students are non-Asian. (Asian students still predominate in the city’s top public high schools, including Hunter.)

Many of the students in the winter break program were children of immigrants — from South Korea, Japan, Poland — and most attend city schools. Few things are kept private. Scores on practice tests are posted in the front lobby, and students freely share their homework scores and edit each other’s essays. It is the first time many of them have received letter grades on assignments.

When it was time to hand back essays, Ms. Stuveras announced that four students had earned high-passes. “Ah, yes!” Patryk exclaimed.

Did anyone fail? “Well, yes,” Ms. Stuveras explained. “You guys did pretty well, though; there were a lot of high-fails.”

Joanna Cohen, a student at the School at Columbia University who peppers her sentences with words like “amiable” and “headway” and spits out math formulas faster than the teacher can write on the board, sipped on mint tea at her desk (most of her classmates preferred Pepsi or Mountain Dew). She smiled as she looked at her high score on the practice exam.

After class, she passed around her blue grammar book and asked some classmates to write their phone numbers in the front.

Outside, in the lobby, the students exchanged study tactics and traded recommendations on dictionaries and vocabulary books. (Joanna recommends “Webster’s.”)

A few said they were going to devote their free time to the thesaurus, looking for ways to spruce up ho-hum sentences. (“Our teacher said using high-level vocab will increase your chance of passing,” Akira explained.)

And what if they were not among the fewer than 200 students who gain seats out of a pool of up to 2,000 test-takers?

“I’ll be sad,” said James Lee, a student at Intermediate School 119 in Glendale, Queens, “but there’s still Stuyvesant.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

ROLAND BURRIS: THE POST-CIVIL RIGHTS BLACK MAN BLUES

2009-01-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

Burris is no idiot. In fact, he's crazy like a fox.

Roland Burris is right in line with the other "grabbers" in Chicago and Illinois politics. Burris sees an opportunity and he's going for it. What else would a 71 year old man want from a political career that was the envy of many but also dull, dull, dull.

Roland Burris is acting out a REVENGE OF THE NERDS psychology that will have people talking about him long after this end game has played out. Burris never had that as Illinois Attorney General or as Illinois Comptroller. This is his moment in the national spotlight, his fifteen minutes of fame in DC. It must have burned his hide to see an uppity upstart like Barack Obama become a US Senator and then President-elect of the United States.

Like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights era Black men, Burris sees what was denied him rather than what he effectively laid the groundwork for by being the first African American elected to statewide office.

Burris is through with playing the good Negro and now is going after what is "rightfully" his.

Is he deluded in accepting Blagojevich's offer? Absolutely!

Will he back down now that he has the national spotlight? Hell No!

Get the popcorn ready, Marge. This week is going to be good watching.

BLAGOJEVICH AND BURRIS: WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?

2009-01-02T00:32:00.000-08:00

This past week I tuned into the press conference given by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois when he named Roland Burris to be his choice to fill President-elect Barack Obama's recently vacated U.S. Senate seat.

The scene played out like a comic opera. Blagojevich looked shifty and like the canary who ate the catbird. Yep, that odd.

Even though it seems like everybody except the Pope has asked Blago to re-sign for trying to sell that very same senate seat in question, the Illinois Governor is within his right to appoint a successor to Obama before next Tuesday when the other U.S. Senators are seated--representative Bobby Rush's feeble race politics comments aside.

I have one word: Unbelievable.

I must admit, I miss watching the drama that is Chicago and Illinois politics. This is proving to be a tremendous boon for bystanders, Republicans, and people who love politics as theater. It shows how broken our political system is.

The long and short of it is: Roland Burris should be seated. Not because he is Black. That would be ridiculous, like seating someone because they are white or male or have a pulse (anybody seen Dick Cheney lately?).

Roland Burris should be allowed to take the seat that Governor Rod Balgojevich is appointing him to because Blagojevich is a sitting governor of the state within the fifty United States of America (that would be Illinois) and it is in his US Constitutional rights to be able to appoint a person of his choice to the vacated seat. He has not been convicted or impeached of anything.

Now, I'm no Blago fan nor do I fault Burris' for accepting the nomination from the disgraced governor; however, the rule of law is the most important part of this scenario.

Therefore, it does not matter what the fifty senators want that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid claims will be against any choice of Governor Blagojevich or even what a popular President-elect wants. Actually, it doesn't actually matter what the people or legislature from the State of Illinois wants. The legislature should have moved to impeach Blagojevich before they left for their Christmas Break. Now they must deal with the consequences of their hesitation.

Governor Rod Blagojevich is in his right to appoint and the Illinois Secretary of State, who is against the appointment, must certify Burris's nomination. Ironically, the Secretary of State is also another well-respected African American politician.

It's a brilliant in your face, F**K YOU to the people of Illinois from their governor, but it is legal and perfectly Illinois. It's Chicago politics at its theatrical best. Happy New Year, Land of Lincoln!

So, what are we teaching our children?

The rule of law and process.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2008-12-31T23:54:00.000-08:00

2009, WHAT'S OLD IS STILL NEW AGAIN

How long will the recession last?

2008-12-28T22:24:00.000-08:00

The recession is effecting everyone and everything from the banking and credit industry to auto and manufacturing concerns. The gloom and doom is thick in the streets like one of those fogs in the Central Valley that rear ends semis, jack knifes fifth wheels, and upends mini-vans and cars alike. We're in for quite a dense and protracted foggy economic picture.

This current economic debacle has more to do with the lack of trust in the entire global system and the collapse in confidence that people and institutions are basically good and trustworthy. As a wise man once told me, it's like turbulence in an airplane. Turbulence just is. When you're sitting in your over-priced row 12, seat F and the plane hits a pocket of air that makes it dip and buck as if you're on a cheap carnival ride, most people who have flown don't start swearing at their pilot or flight attendants. They know that it is just turbulence. The bucking dip is neither good nor bad; it just is. That's where we are now. Billions of people around the world are fearing a calamitous airplane ride like people sealed in a financial flying tube. Now the pilot could make it worse by continuing to fly at the same altitude, neither asking for permission to go higher or lower, but staunchly staying the course. Those are our current pilots in Washington, New York, Detroit, Beijing, Mumbai, Islamabad, etc.

Getting back to my question: Just how long will this recession be?

Most experts agree, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's something we know for certain. In fact, most economists now believe that we began our turbulent recession starting in December of 2007, although most of these experts announced this month what the rest of us knew last year. That's some lag time.

What we know for sure is that people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate; some analysts put the jobs lost at a half a million every month.

Also, retailers are just counting their receipts from the holidays. I visited a Northern California Target Store three days before Christmas of 2008 and a Costco the day before that. There was so much inventory on the shelves that you would have thought that we were at the beginning of the shopping season rather than at its end.

This signals that we won't be able to buy our way out of this crisis. When President George W. Bush urged people to "buy and shop" after September 11, 2001, we should have known our own misguided patriotism brought us to this place.

The healing process of a deeply wounded banking system, that has already led to nearly $1 trillion of write-downs, will act as a weight around the neck of any economic recovery in the latter part of 2009. Banks will likely continue the slow process of recapitalization and cleaning up the mountains of toxic assets on their balance sheets for a period longer than just the next few quarters. CNN-Money.com.

We'll be in it for the better part of the next eighteen months before we see the glimpses of some sort of recovery. That's June of 2010. What has to happen is we'll need to restore some trust in the system that has been badly damaged. If anyone did not believe in Chaos Theory, these last eight to twelve years should be proof that it does exist. That goes for global warming, too.

Not only should we be cleaning up toxic assets, we should also have the faith that the whole of our government and economy are out to help us rather than throwing us to the wolves. Unions, business people, government officials, bureaucrats, and NGOs must work together to restore and build our confidence and savings back up. I'm not talking about the halcyon Clinton or Reagan years but to a place that has never existed in American society. We all must come together, red states and blue states, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Blacks and Whites. It's not "Kumbaya" that we should be holding hands and singing but "how can I help you because I can't do this without you."

People must save money and spend realistically rather than create a system (the economy, the environment, schools, etc.) that is leveraged to the hilt. It's not just financial literacy, but financial reality.

The reason why it will take 18 months to get ourselves out of this mess is because we need to have the courage to save and save ourselves rather than just spend ourselves silly--downsize rather than super-size--making sure that the courage of our convictions leads to a better and more hopeful world.

It's not just Barack Obama that believes in hope. We all must be a part of this solution. This IS our time.

Now comes gravity and our own brand new reality.

INTO THE WILD: AT THE EDGE OF THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS

2008-12-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

What's the most revealing movie of the past two years? It's not about high flying special effects, Brad Pit getting old, or Sean Penn playing a gay rights hero. It's not any of these, however, Penn is a part of what I found affecting about movies over the last two years. One movie in particular I dug, which represents the Thoreauvian dystopia that is America now. Into the Wild is Penn's take on John Krakauer's non-fiction book recounting the tale of Christopher McCandless. McCandless leaves his comfortable life and heads off to find himself in the wilds of Alaska. Just like Thoreau did around Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days, McCandless discovers the essence of an uniquely American philosophy: one's self versus community.

The trailer from "Into the Wild" reveals this most distinct of national traits--Horatio Alger, Abraham Lincoln, George Bailey, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, et. al. The American mythos is about humble beginnings, big visions, and open hearts. It's about crackpots and loopy, devoted followers: Log Cabin Republicans, Reagan Democrats, Mr. Martini, Obama Mamas, etc. Who will be following Christopher McCandless into the wild?

Along with his role in the movie "Milk," Sean Penn creates two memorable characters on the edge of society, much in the same way that Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese did in the '70s and '80s.

Teacher sorry for binding girls in slavery lesson: White teacher taped hands and feet of two black girls to enliven discussion

2008-12-23T22:39:00.000-08:00

From the AP Wire: updated 4:34 p.m. PT, Mon., Dec. 8, 2008

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - A white social studies teacher attempted to enliven a seventh-grade discussion of slavery by binding the hands and feet of two black girls, prompting outrage from one girl's mother and the local chapter of the NAACP.

After the mother complained to Haverstraw Middle School, the superintendent said he was having "conversations with our staff on how to deliver effective lessons."

"If a student was upset, then it was a bad idea," said Superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District in New York City's northern suburbs.

The teacher apologized to the mother who complained and her 13-year-old daughter during a meeting Thursday that also included a representative of the local NAACP. But the mother, Christine Shand of Haverstraw, said Friday she thinks the teacher should be removed from the class.

"I think the teacher should have gotten some discipline," Shand said. "I know if that was me, I would be uncomfortable going back to that class. Why should my daughter have to switch?"

Monahan refused to say what, if any, measures were taken against the teacher, Eileen Bernstein, who was still working on Friday. The school district said she was not available for comment.

"We encourage our teachers to deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways, to go beyond just reading the textbook," the superintendent said. "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset."

On Nov. 18, Bernstein was discussing the conditions under which African captives were taken to America in slave ships. She bound the two students' hands and feet with tape and had them crawl under a desk to simulate the experience, Monahan and Shand said. Monahan said the girls were not the only blacks in the class.

Gabrielle Shand burst into tears at home, her mother said.

"There are other ways to demonstrate slavery," Christine Shand said Friday. "It doesn't matter the color of the kids, it's just not right to tie them up. My daughter is still upset, still embarrassed. She didn't go to school today."

CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE HUMANE SOCIETY

2008-12-22T14:58:00.000-08:00

It's Day III: What's more humane than the National Humane Society. With YouTube's Project for Awesome to reduce the world suck, you can get involved at the local level.

You can view and later donate to your local humane society or animal rescue agency:

CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE LUPUS FOUNDATION

2008-12-21T22:41:00.000-08:00

Day II: It's one of those diseases that gets the spit end of the stick--lupus. Let's wipe it out!

Visit the Lupus Foundation

CHARITIES WE RECOMMEND: THE HEIFER PROJECT

2008-12-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

'Tis the Season: We want to recommend some charities to our readers so that you might share the gift of life and love during this season of giving.

The Heifer Project is number one on our list.

WILL THE REAL SECRETARY OF EDUCATION PLEASE STAND-UP?

2008-12-19T23:04:00.000-08:00

So, what will Arne Duncan do as President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of Education? Like Obama, Duncan has been known to straddle the middle of the road.

George Lucas's Edutopia proclaims::

Arne Duncan has a type of personality that Obama seems to prefer, which is a pragmatist who will bring about change, but he'll do it in a way that will minimize confrontation in conflict," says Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy. "He's brought about change in Chicago, but it hasn't been a head-on clash with the teachers' union. He's done it in a way that they all walk away from the table congratulating each other."

Even though the Progressives have claimed Obama as their own, Obama's true colors are beginning to slowly seep out. In actuality, Obama is as a hard driving pragmatist. I'm not sure what others will say about him, but the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. said, "He's (Obama) a politician and I'm a minister. He is anaswerable to the people while I am answerable to God." Perhaps the real world needs a realist these days. In fact, it would be great to have access to Obama as he shifts and changes into Bill Clinton--with or without the libido--who needs to stay firmly left of center, rather than far left, to get his policies past.

What is the Combination to the Lock: Jack Canfield--The Success Principles

2008-12-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

Lost in the Crowd--By David Brooks

2008-12-16T23:15:00.000-08:00

from the New York Times--December 16, 2008--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16brooks.html

All day long, you are affected by large forces. Genes influence your intelligence and willingness to take risks. Social dynamics unconsciously shape your choices. Instantaneous perceptions set off neural reactions in your head without you even being aware of them.

Over the past few years, scientists have made a series of exciting discoveries about how these deep patterns influence daily life. Nobody has done more to bring these discoveries to public attention than Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell’s important new book, “Outliers,” seems at first glance to be a description of exceptionally talented individuals. But in fact, it’s another book about deep patterns. Exceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.

As Gladwell told Jason Zengerle of New York magazine: “The book’s saying, ‘Great people aren’t so great. Their own greatness is not the salient fact about them. It’s the kind of fortunate mix of opportunities they’ve been given.’ ”

Gladwell’s noncontroversial claim is that some people have more opportunities than other people. Bill Gates was lucky to go to a great private school with its own computer at the dawn of the information revolution. Gladwell’s more interesting claim is that social forces largely explain why some people work harder when presented with those opportunities.

Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness. Many upper-middle-class American kids are raised in an atmosphere of “concerted cultivation,” which inculcates a fanatical devotion to meritocratic striving.

In Gladwell’s account, individual traits play a smaller role in explaining success while social circumstances play a larger one. As he told Zengerle, “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”

As usual, Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought — the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. His book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that people are coldly rational utility-maximizing individuals. It could cause them to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement.

Yet, I can’t help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are getting swept away by the coolness of the new discoveries. They’ve lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.

Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. They were often showered by good fortune, but relied at crucial moments upon achievements of individual will.

Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains.

Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.

It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.

Gladwell’s social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature. It’s also pleasantly egalitarian. The less successful are not less worthy, they’re just less lucky. But it slights the centrality of individual character and individual creativity. And it doesn’t fully explain the genuine greatness of humanity’s outliers. As the classical philosophers understood, examples of individual greatness inspire achievement more reliably than any other form of education. If Gladwell can reduce William Shakespeare to a mere product of social forces, I’ll buy 25 more copies of “Outliers” and give them away in Times Square.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Improving Public Schools Hearing: Arne Duncan Part 1

2008-12-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

Arne Duncan, unvarnished, talking about improving public schools in the City of Chicago, known as the city that works.

Chicago Schools Chief Is Obama’s Education Pick--By SAM DILLON

2008-12-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

December 16, 2008--from the New York Times--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16educ.html?_r=1&hp

Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent known for taking tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations with teachers and their unions, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as secretary of education, Democratic officials said Monday.

Mr. Duncan, a 44-year-old Harvard graduate, has raised achievement in the nation’s third-largest school district and often faced the ticklish challenge of shuttering failing schools and replacing ineffective teachers, usually with improved results.

He represents a compromise choice in the debate that has divided Democrats in recent months over the proper course for public-school policy after the Bush years.

In June, rival nationwide groups of educators circulated competing educational manifestos, with one group espousing a get-tough policy based on pushing teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement, and another arguing that schools alone could not close the racial achievement gap and urging new investments in school-based health clinics and other social programs to help poor students learn.

Mr. Duncan was the only big-city superintendent to sign both manifestos.

He argued that the nation’s schools needed to be held accountable for student progress, but also needed major new investments, new talent and new teacher-training efforts.

In straddling the two camps, Mr. Duncan seemed to reflect Mr. Obama’s own impatience with what he has called “tired educational debates.”

In his last major educational speech of the campaign, Mr. Obama said: “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but no understanding that both sides have good ideas.”

The rival educational camps swamped the Obama transition in recent weeks with recommendations for the post. The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union, pressed for several current and former governors who had made schools a priority in their states.

Many former members of Teach for America, the program that sends elite-college graduates to teach in low-income schools, weighed in on behalf of Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, and Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, both of whom have clashed with the teachers’ unions.

“Obama found the sweet spot with Arne Duncan,” said Susan Traiman, director of educational policy at the Business Roundtable. “Both camps will be O.K. with the pick!”

Mr. Duncan’s acquaintance with Mr. Obama began on the basketball court nearly two decades ago but has flowered since he became the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools in 2001, and Mr. Obama has used him as a frequent sounding board in discussions of education policy.

The two men have visited a number of Chicago schools together. In October 2005, they visited the Dodge Renaissance Academy, a once-failing elementary school that Mr. Duncan closed and reopened, with a new staff, as a working public school and a teacher training academy.

During the visit, Mr. Obama sat down with school staff members in the library for more than an hour and questioned them at length about arcane instructional issues, Mr. Duncan said in an interview.

“I’ve taken lots of political leaders on school visits, and nobody spends the amount of time, asks the depth of questions, or is more engaged and curious than Barack,” Mr. Duncan said in an August interview.

The Obama transition team has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday at the Dodge Renaissance school.

Mr. Duncan’s background includes playing professional basketball in Australia and intermittently tutoring urban youth, but no formal teaching experience. He helped draft Mr. Obama’s extensive education platform, which called for recruiting thousands of new teachers, encouraging local school districts to adopt performance-based teacher pay initiatives, recruiting and training effective principals, and placing new emphasis on science and mathematics education.

The platform also calls for making major federal investments in early childhood education, which Mr. Obama believes is a more effective use of educational dollars than spending them on remedial programs later.

Mr. Duncan has been working for several years to expand the early childhood opportunities in the Chicago Public Schools, increasing enrollment opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds by 1,000 places or more each year. Mr. Duncan has worked closely in that effort with Barbara T. Bowman, the Chicago Public Schools’ chief officer for early childhood education, who is the mother of Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett.

Allan R. Odden, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, heads a project that is studying how school districts recruit, assign and train their principals and teachers. He said Chicago had made considerable progress under Mr. Duncan.

“He’s gotten the job done in Chicago,” Dr. Odden said. “There’s more to be done, but he’s done a great job of reaching out and recruiting and improving the talent of both teachers and principals.”

During Mr. Duncan’s tenure, the Chicago schools, which in the 1970s and 1980s experienced nine teachers’ strikes in 17 years, has had labor stability, and last week, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, praised Mr. Duncan.

As secretary of education, one of Mr. Duncan’s major challenges will be to rebuild the bipartisan consensus that helped President Bush win passage of his No Child Left Behind law in 2001.

An effort to rewrite the law, the most important statement of federal policy toward public schools, collapsed last year in the face of opposition from conservative Republicans angered over the law’s intrusion onto states’ educational prerogatives and Democrats upset with the law’s emphasis on standardized testing.

Mr. Obama has called for a thorough rewrite, but has pledged to defend the accountability provisions in the law that require schools to improve.

Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, said last week that his group would be delighted to see Mr. Klein or Ms. Rhee appointed, but had sent to the transition team a memorandum recommending Mr. Duncan.

“He is the kind of guy who can work with all sorts of people with different viewpoints, and we like his work in Chicago with charter schools,” Mr. Williams said.

Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who as the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee will lead any reauthorization effort, called Mr. Duncan “a good choice for school reform and our schoolchildren.”

“He is an experienced and accomplished leader who is open to new ideas for improving our schools,” Mr. Miller said.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

NO PROCESS, NO PEACE: Michelle Rhee and the DC Public Schools

2008-12-14T19:05:00.000-08:00

One person's name that has been floated as a possible Secretary of Education is Michelle A. Rhee, the Chancellor of the District of Columbia's Public Schools. Take a look at the News Hour's John Merrow's initial report on Rhee and her "gutsy" moves to shake things up in our nation's capital.

Is Rhee a reformer or just foolish? You be the judge.

Why All the Fuss (About the New Secretary of Education)

2008-12-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

As the last article that we posted around the selection of the new secretary of education, Barack Obama's choice in a chief of America's educational system will be hotly scrutinized. Obama is playing his true intentions close to the vest largely to see how the media may play out the possible choices.

You can probably rule out all of the front runners, including Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford University Professor, Arne Duncan, the City of Chicago's school chief, and Joel I. Klein, who is the Chancellor of New York City public schools. Why would these folks not be considered in the running for this much contested role? Since Barack Obama does not like being second guessed or figured out when it comes to education, he and his team of rivals will pick a relative unknown for the seat.

Picking an unknown for the Secretary of Education would indicate that President-elect Obama wants to break away from the expectations that come with this crucial hire. While Senator Ted Kennedy is still alive, Obama would be unlikely to whole-sale dismantle No Child Left Behind. Kennedy was one of the movers and shakers behind the first NCLB law.

Obama is no idiot. He knows that the law is badly damaged. With all of the talk of accountability, the law is not having the intended effects that people wanted, which was to have all students working at grade level within the next four to five years or else risk having nearly all the nation's schools on the dreaded "watch lists," and eventually taken over by the state governments, which would be worse.

Because lawmakers make laws--rather than educate children--the unintended consequences of having so many of the nation's children in failing schools looms large.

This is why the next education czar will have her hands full. Oops! Did I give it away?

Obama will pick an unknown to lead the nation's K-16 schools because that person can wield her power outside of the glaring eye of the critics in and out of the educational reform movement. The person selected will have a great deal to do with little to no money in which to do it, which makes this position like the Wizard of Oz.

Hey, now that's not a bad idea. Perhaps Rod Blagojevich can pull some strings.

Uncertainty on Obama Education Plans--By Sam Dillion

2008-12-14T17:30:00.000-08:00

(from The New York Times, Sunday, December 14, 2008)

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to announce his choice for education secretary, there is mystery not only about the person he will choose, but also about the approach to overhauling the nation’s schools that his selection will reflect.

Despite an 18-month campaign for president and many debates, there remains uncertainty about what Mr. Obama believes is the best way to improve education.

Will he side with those who want to abolish teacher tenure and otherwise curb the power of teachers’ unions? Or with those who want to rewrite the main federal law on elementary and secondary education, the No Child Left Behind Act, and who say the best strategy is to help teachers become more qualified?

The debate has sometimes been nasty.

“People are saying things now that they may regret saying in a couple of months,” said Jack Jennings, a Democrat who is president and chief executive of the Center on Education Policy in Washington. “Unfortunately, they’re all friends of mine, which makes it awkward.”

Some of the toughest criticism has been aimed at the person Mr. Obama appointed to lead his education policy working group, the most important education post of the transition: Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University.

Dr. Darling-Hammond is liked by the teachers’ unions, and partly for that reason has been portrayed as an enemy of school reform by detractors. These have included people who have urged Mr. Obama to appoint Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, or Michelle Rhee, the schools chancellor in Washington, as education secretary. Both of them have clashed with teachers’ unions.

Editorials and opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.

Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, used different terms in discussing the debate.

Dr. Fuller said it pitted “professionalization advocates such as Darling-Hammond,” who believe the policy emphasis should be on raising student achievement by helping teachers improve their instruction, against “efficiency hawks like Klein and Rhee.” The efficiency hawks, he said, emphasize standardized testing, cracking down on poor school management and purging bad teachers.

“It’s tough love without any love,” he said.

Dr. Darling-Hammond has become a controversial figure partly because of her longtime criticism of Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits college graduates to teach for two years in hard-to-staff schools. She says the group loses too many recruits at the end of their two-year commitments, just when they are learning to teach.

Teach for America has no official preference for or opposition to any candidate, said Kevin Huffman, a spokesman for the group.

But an organization called Leadership for Educational Equity, which was founded to help former members of the Teach for America corps become involved in politics, has photographs of Dr. Darling-Hammond, Mr. Obama and Mr. Klein alongside an article on its Web site with the headline, “Education Secretary Fight Could Affect Teach for America’s Mission.”

The article notes that Dr. Darling-Hammond “has long been a vocal critic of Teach For America,” and it urges the group’s alumni to make their views on the candidates known.

Mr. Obama has given no hint of his own leanings.

Arne Duncan, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, may have an edge. Mr. Duncan is a longtime friend of the president-elect and has closed failing schools and improved achievement without alienating the teachers’ union. The superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Michael Bennet, who has enacted a plan to reward effective teachers with higher pay, has also attracted the transition team’s interest.

Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee, as well as former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and several current and former governors, have also been considered, a member of the transition team said. Mr. Powell has said publicly that he is not interested.

One former Teach for America official who has been outspoken is Whitney Tilson, a New York mutual fund manager.

In a recent blog entry, Mr. Tilson said of Dr. Darling-Hammond, “She’s influential, clever and (while she does her best to hide it) an enemy of genuine reform.”

Mr. Tilson is on the board of Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee based in New York.

The group sent the Obama transition team a 43-page memorandum shortly after the election with policy advice and a “wish list” of candidates for secretary that included Mr. Duncan; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; and Jon Schnur, who started a nonprofit group, New Leaders for New Schools, that trains principals for urban schools, said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Mr. Williams said his group also liked Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee. “We’d be thrilled,” he said, “if either one were named secretary.”

The two national teachers unions have also been active. The National Education Association has not formally endorsed anyone but has discussed candidates with the Obama transition team, indicating some candidates who would have the union’s support, said John Wilson, the executive director.

The American Federation of Teachers presented the Obama team with written evaluations of a string of candidates without endorsing any of them, said Randi Weingarten, the union’s president. “We have no candidate in the race,” Ms. Weingarten said.

But last week she publicly praised Mr. Duncan in an interview with The Associated Press. “Arne Duncan,” she said, “actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Who Will He Choose?--By DAVID BROOKS

2008-12-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.

In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.

Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.

Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.

You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.

Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.

Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.

But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.

In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.

The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.

No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.

This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.

Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.

If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

RE-DEFINING SUCCESS: MALCOLM GLADWELL'S NEW BOOK, OUTLIERS

2008-12-08T18:36:00.000-08:00

I just had a great discussion this evening with my friend Emily who is the Head of a school in Vermont. We were talking about the nature of success in our industry, education, and generally what it takes to be successful at anything.

Although I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, I am intrigued by the book's premise about what makes people in different endeavors successful. I have been thinking a great deal about this subject since Barack Obama's election and before, really. The premise, or 10,000 hour rule, certainly applies to Obama. Think about it.

Take a look at the video from the London Economic Forum and let me know in the comment section below whether or not you agree with Gladwell's premise. Also, if you're interested in getting the book, go to your nearest library, book store, or just click on the link to your right to order Outliers from Amazon.com.

Finally, check out the video on the Amazon site where Gladwell also talks briefly about success in terms of cultural differences and expectations.

RESTORING FAITH IN HUMANITY: DOING COMMUNITY SERVICE WORK WITH HABITAT IN NEW ORLEANS AT PoCC

2008-12-05T05:38:00.000-08:00

Dateline: New Orleans, December 5, 2008

A contingent of students (6) and staff members (10) from Bentley School arrived three days ago for the annual People of Color Conference sponsored by the National Association of Independent Schools. Our first day was spent in the Upper Ninth Ward doing community service work together with members from other schools across the nation with Habitat for Humanity.

Enjoy!

GUEST POST: BY LIA

2008-12-01T23:55:00.001-08:00

As an educator, I know how difficult it is to motivate all students in all subjects. I’m glad formal and research-driven incentive programs are being explored in schools across the country.

Alfie Kohn’s states that “getting them hooked on the rewards” undermines the ultimate goal of loving learning for its own sake. However, research has shown that even after rewards have been removed, the positive effects persist. In a Kenya study, “Incentives to Learn” published in January 2008, the removal of rewards did not impact motivation. “Surveys of students in our Kenyan data provide no evidence that program incentives weakened intrinsic motivation to learn or led to gaming or cheating.”

Also, in an evaluation of the Advanced Placement Incentive Program (APIP) conducted by C. Kirabo Jackson of Cornell University, “A Little Now for a Lot Later; A Look at a Texas Advanced Placement Incentive Program” published December 2007 Kirabo reports that AP course enrollment increased for all AP courses even if rewards were only given for certain subjects.

I was inspired to read that Samantha would save the money for college or donate some to charities. What an excellent use of her hard earned money! Perhaps programs should look into uBoost, a performance-based rewards and recognition program for students. Instead of cash (which seems to draw quite a bit of controversy) students earn points which can be redeemed for rewards or donated to charities. uBoost provides students with an easy way to “give back” based on their achievements.

TONI MORRISON DISCUSSES HER NEW BOOK: A MERCY

2008-11-29T19:02:00.000-08:00

Last week at Head-Royce School in Oakland, California, Toni Morrison sat down for an interview with NPR. See part of the interview above.

After the interview and book signing, Morrison allowed a brief meet and greet with a group of African American young men and boys at the Vanguard Conference, the first of its kind in Independent Schools. I was one of the faculty mentors and session leaders for the day.

Since the meet and greet with Morrison was impromptu, meaning most of us didn't know that we we're going to meet the Nobel Laureate that day, we couldn't adequately prep for her visit. One of my colleagues from a San Francisco private high school gamely gave a bit about Morrison's history as we waited for the arrival. After a few halting minutes, I jumped up and attempted to fill in the blanks. I'm happy to say that I'm a Morrison fanatic with a good deal of arcane trivia at my fingertips.

It was surprising to me that less than 1/3 of the boys and young men had ever heard of Toni Morrison, only one of the sixty-five had ever read her work, and only 2/3 admitted to ever reading an African American author in their English classes at all.

Where to begin?

Most of the boys will probably remember their meeting long after the day. Memory is an amazing sleight of hand.

For me, meeting Morrison was like going to my first baseball game with my dad and brother, Michael--circa 1969. I'll never forget the harrowing train and bus rides to Wrigleyville, the long lines stretching blocks to get back on the El, the game in between (a blur), and how Ron Santo clicked his heels following the Cubs' victory over the hated Cardinals.

The boys and young men from grades five to eleven at the Vanguard Conference would remember what the day felt like later when they tell and re-tell their meeting with the Bard from Lorraine, Ohio; they'll remember what they said, what she said, and in an instant, how it was over too soon.

All Kinds of Minds Educator, Mel Levine Accused of Child Molestation

2008-11-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

Say it ain't so, Mel!

---

From The new York Times

November 25, 2008
Accused Pediatrician Is Leaving Institute

By TAMAR LEWIN
Dr. Melvin D. Levine, the famed pediatrician who is facing five lawsuits accusing him of molesting young boys during physical examinations, has resigned from All Kinds of Minds, the North Carolina institute he founded in 1995 to train teachers to help children with learning disabilities.

The co-founder of the institute, Charles Schwab, who provided financing and served as co-chairman with Dr. Levine, resigned in September.

The institute, which has teacher-training contracts with two states and dozens of individual schools, said it would continue its work of spreading Dr. Levine’s views on how children learn.

“All Kinds of Minds was formed to create a venue and legacy for his work so the genius of this man wouldn’t die with the individual,” said Mary-Dean Barringer, chief executive of the institute. “Do I think we’ll make it through without him? I do.”

Both Ms. Barringer and Roch Hillenbrand, the new chairman of the board, emphasized that Dr. Levine had not been involved in the day-to-day operations of the institute and that they had been successful, even in the last month, in finding philanthropic support, including a pledge of $2.25 million over three years from the Oak Foundation.

Dr. Levine could not be reached Monday, but he has denied ever touching a patient sexually. No criminal charges have been filed.

Dr. Levine, a Rhodes Scholar who attended Harvard Medical School, has voluntarily suspended his license to practice and is under investigation by the North Carolina Medical Board.

Carmen Durso, the Boston lawyer representing the five plaintiffs, said that more than 50 other former patients or their parents had contacted him with complaints about Dr. Levine.

Until the accusations, Dr. Levine was the unchallenged guru of learning disabilities — or learning differences, as he prefers to call them. Parents flocked to his lectures and lived by his books.

He was seen as a compassionate advocate for children with troubles, insisting that all students could learn and that the job of an educator was to find the approach that worked best for each child.

He gave dozens of lectures a year, holding audiences rapt for hours as he explained the latest findings of neuroscience and how they applied to teaching. Although the lectures were listed on the All Kinds of Minds Web site, he arranged them and was paid for them through a separate company he owned.

Dr. Levine has occupied an unusual public niche, a combination of Dr. Spock, Dr. Phil and Dr. Doolittle. He became a celebrity after his “Misunderstood Minds” ran on PBS in 2002 and he appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” while living on a farm outside Chapel Hill with hundreds of geese.

Dr. Levine practiced at Children’s Hospital Boston, the pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, until 1985, when he moved to the Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he served as director until he retired in 2006.

Through All Kinds of Minds, Dr. Levine’s teacher training program, Schools Attuned, has reached thousands of schools nationwide.

In New York City, the Department of Education awarded the institute a five-year, $12.5 million contract to train 20,000 teachers. It was awarded without competitive bidding, a department spokeswoman said after the arrangement came to light, because no other organization offered comparable services. The New York contract expired in June.

All Kinds of Minds has continuing contracts with the state education departments in North Carolina and Oklahoma, Ms. Barringer said, but is losing one with South Carolina. Since the accusations against Dr. Levine surfaced last spring, she said, the institute has lost 9 of its 80 contracts with individual schools.

In a prepared statement provided by his lawyer, Alan Schneider, Dr. Levine said he was leaving All Kinds of Minds to devote himself to a new program, Bringing Up Minds, that works directly with parents and clinicians to teach them how to help children succeed in school.

Ms. Barringer said Dr. Levine’s consulting contract with All Kinds of Minds, under which he is paid $150,000 a year, expires in June. The institute also pays about $75,000 a year, she said, as a royalty fee for using Dr. Levine’s intellectual property.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

SCHOOL ME: WHAT'S NEW, WHAT'S HOT

2008-11-27T00:57:00.000-08:00

The following video came from another blog http://sfjukebox.blogspot.com/. Here's what they wrote

Kwaito is a South African brand of house that combines house beats and sweet basslines with (usually) lyrics rapped or sort of chanted.

ALL THE WRONG MOVES: BRIBING KIDS AND SCHOOLS

2008-11-26T16:09:00.000-08:00

The Chancellor of the District of Columbia's school system, Michelle Rhee, has been buying off kids with bribes meant to increase their grades. It will probably be some time before we get a definitive idea about how the program is working, but rewarding kids with money has been a tried and true method in many families in trying to get kids to perform up to and beyond their potential.

America's Progressive educator, Alfie Kohn, would answer vociferously in the negative that giving rewards to students for their performance is a bad idea. Kohn, along with a bundle of other progressives, feels that any kind of reward offers a dis-incentive.

Of course, "incentivizing" the poorest of the poor school districts in the United States may seem like a radical notion that just might work, but will it?

If you look at the money given to states and regions to run their schools, the District of Columbia ranks third in spending in the nation behind New Jersey and New York. DC gets $12,801 per child from the US government to run its schools (see US Census press release below)

Isn't spending well above the national average a kind of incentive for schools and educators? Does all of this bribing work?

Do you agree? How far can this argument be extended? Is there another way to get students and schools learning?

--
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, MONDAY, APRIL 3, 2006

Patricia Buscher
Public Information Office
(301) 763-3030/457-3670 (fax)
(301) 457-1037 (TDD)
e-mail:
CB06-53

National Spending Per Student Rises to $8,287
U.S. public school districts spent an average of $8,287 per student in 2004, up from the previous year’s total of $8,019. In all, public elementary and secondary education received $462.7 billion from federal, state and local sources in 2004, up 5.1 percent from 2003.

Findings from the 2004 Annual Survey of Local Government Finances – School Systems show that New Jersey spent $12,981 per student in 2004 -- the most among states and state equivalents -- the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. Utah, at $5,008, spent the least per student.

New York ($12,930) and the District of Columbia ($12,801) were second and third in spending per student. Vermont ($11,128) and Connecticut ($10,788) rounded out the top five. Along with Utah, Idaho ($6,028), Arizona ($6,036), Oklahoma ($6,176) and Mississippi ($6,237) comprised the lowest five in money spent per student.

The state governments contributed the greatest share of public elementary and secondary school funding at $218.1 billion. In 2004, state governments contributed 47.1 percent of school funding, down from 49.0 percent in 2003. Local sources contributed 43.9 percent at $203.3 billion. The federal government’s share, which came to $41.3 billion in 2004, rose from 8.4 to 8.9 percent.

Other findings:

Public school systems spent $472.3 billion, up 4.1 percent from 2003. Spending on elementary-secondary instruction increased from $236.0 billion in 2003 to $245.2 billion in 2004. About $138.5 billion was spent on services that support elementary-secondary instruction, and $52.3 billion was spent on capital outlay.
Instructional salaries totaled $170.6 billion in 2004, up 2.2 percent from 2003.
The tabulations contain data on revenues, expenditures, debt and assets for all individual public elementary and secondary school systems.
-X-

The data are not subject to sampling error, but are subject to possible measurement error and processing errors.
--

Michelle Rhee: Better to Be a Marathoner

2008-11-25T23:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 23, 2008; B08
By Larry Cuban

In her second year as the District's schools chancellor, Michelle A. Rhee looks like a sprinter. In less than two years, with the full support of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, she has already cut central office administrators, fired principals, closed schools and challenged the teachers union on seniority transfer rights and tenure.

By comparison, Atlanta Superintendent Beverly L. Hall and Austin schools chief Pat Forgione each served a decade and showed strong gains in students' academic achievement. They were long-distance runners. Fixing urban school districts takes marathoners, not sprinters.

Look at Alan Bersin, who ran out of gas as San Diego's superintendent in 2005. Determined to lift student learning rather than preserve school officials' status quo, he reorganized the system and fired administrators. He went after collective bargaining rules that protected seniority rights and incompetent teachers. Union leaders fought him by seeking national and state allies and turning to parents. He exited well before fulfilling his reform agenda.

My point is not that union leaders block reform. In some cities they work closely with superintendents. Nor should superintendents play nice with unions to avoid conflict.

But sprinter superintendents err in jumping on unions too early in their long-distance race for better student achievement. They suffer from ideological myopia. They believe low test scores and achievement gaps between whites and minorities result in large part from knuckle-dragging union leaders defending seniority and tenure rights that protect lousy teachers. Such beliefs reflect a serious misreading of why urban students fail to reach proficiency levels and graduate from high school.

As important as it is to get rid of incompetent teachers, doing so will not turn around the D.C. school system or any other broken district. The failure of urban schools has more to do with turnstile superintendencies, partially implemented standards and other factors that trump the small percentage of teachers who are just putting in time.

This error in thinking has occurred often in districts where impatient superintendents have demonized unions, only to discover that they have stumbled into a war as a result. Once union leaders were convinced that they were fighting for their survival, they converted the battle into an "us vs. them" struggle. When that happens, kiss reform goodbye.

Rhee's ideological push against unions comes much too early in her tenure to improve teaching and learning. Such initiatives fail because they can turn the entire D.C. teaching corps -- including first-rate veteran and mid-career teachers -- against any classroom change. Rhee may deceive herself into believing that teacher whispers about forming another union will split a chapter of the American Federation of Teachers that was founded in 1925. It won't.

"Us vs. them" is not predestined. Boston's Tom Payzant and Carl A. Cohn in Long Beach, Calif., served more than a decade in their districts and received national awards for raising student performance. Neither saw teacher unions as foes to be squashed. They convinced union leaders that it was in teachers' best interests to work with them. Trying to destroy the union will not throw 4,000 teachers behind the mayor and chancellor.

Were the untimely face-off with the D.C. teachers union to spiral into an ugly scrum, angry union leaders and teachers would reach out to allies on the D.C. Council and elsewhere to join against a mayor and chancellor viewed as determined to destroy their organization, much like President Ronald Reagan was with the air traffic controllers union in 1981. Such conflict could possibly end in the mayor dumping his talented chancellor. Another round of high hopes for the D.C. schools would be dashed.

If Rhee knows in her gut that teaching is the heart of good schooling, she needs to think less like a Teach for America sprinter and more like a long-distance runner.

-- Larry Cuban

Palo Alto, Calif.

The writer is a former D.C. Public Schools teacher and was superintendent of schools in Arlington from 1974 to 1981.

Reprinted from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/21/AR2008112103222.html

D.C. Tries Cash as a Motivator In School: Initiative Is Aimed At Middle Grades

2008-11-25T22:25:00.000-08:00

By V. Dion Haynes and Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 22, 2008; A01

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced plans yesterday to boost dismal achievement at half the city's middle schools by offering students an unusual incentive: cash.

For years, school officials have used detention, remedial classes, summer school and suspensions to turn around poorly behaved, underachieving middle school students, with little results. Now they are introducing a program that will pay students up to $100 per month for displaying good behavior.

Beginning in October, 3,000 students at 14 middle schools will be eligible to earn up to 50 points per month and be paid $2 per point for attending class regularly and on time, turning in homework, displaying manners and earning high marks. A maximum of $2.7 million has been set aside for the program, and the money students earn will be deposited every two weeks into bank accounts the system plans to open for them.

The system has 28 middle-grade schools. Rhee will select the schools to participate in the pilot program.

"We believe this is the time for radical intervention," Rhee said at a news conference outside Hardy Middle School in Northwest Washington. "We're very excited about this particular program."

Costs of the incentive will be split almost equally between the school system and Harvard's American Inequity Lab, which studies poverty and race issues. The program, Capital Gains, will be run by Roland G. Fryer Jr., an economics professor with the lab. Fryer also operates a pilot program in New York City public schools.

In justifying the program, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said the city has spent an inordinate amount on a school bureaucracy over the years that has failed students. Instead, he said, why not direct some of the cash to the students.

"If it seems outside of the box, it is," Fenty said.

A cash-incentive program that pays high school students as much as $500 for earning a 3 or more on an Advanced Placement test has been launched in Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky and Virginia.

A study of the program released yesterday by a Cornell University economist said the incentive resulted in higher scores and an increase in the number of students attending college.

Alfie Kohn, an independent researcher whose book, "Punished by Rewards," details the downside of such programs, said incentives "undermine the very thing you're trying to promote by getting them hooked on the rewards."

Rhee said she is targeting sixth- through eighth-graders because some students in the group typically have had intractable behavior and academic problems. She said middle school is a pivotal time because many students are setting the patterns to become high school scholars or dropouts.

District middle-schoolers, often trapped in violent and academically weak campuses, typically flee the system in higher proportions than other groups, school officials said. Thirty-six percent of the city's middle-grade students are proficient in reading, and 33 percent are proficient in math, Rhee said.

The schools need to focus on "how we can ensure that students are engaged, that they are invested in their education," Rhee said. "I think it's incredibly important to make sure students take ownership of their learning."

Parents had mixed reactions to the program. Some said it was an understandable solution to an intractable problem. Others said students should not receive money to go to class. "I just totally disagree with this," said Dionne Davis, whose daughter attends seventh grade at Hardy Middle School. "I think the incentive should come from within, just to want to do well, rather than doing it for a dollar." Her daughter was not so sure.

"I think it's a good idea," said Samantha, 11. "I think middle schoolers should have rewards for getting good grades and stuff on their tests. . . . I would save it for college and maybe give some to charity."

Some school activists expressed shock and anger at the incentive.

"That's pretty pitiful," said Mary Levy, director of the Public Education Reform Project for the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. "It makes me sad to see we've sunk so low that we have to pay kids to show up."

Rhee said that if the incentive program is successful she could expand it to 14 other middle schools and possibly high schools. Parents can choose not to allow children to participate in the program.

Fryer said D.C. school officials will establish criteria for the program and he will track the progress. "The key is innovation, not just sitting around watching the test scores dwindle," he said.

Fryer is working with 62 schools in New York, which provides as much as $500 for fourth- and seventh-graders who perform well on a standardized test.

He said his staff is collecting data to gauge progress. Surveys of students and parents show support for the concept, he said. Results showed that 96 percent of the schools participating in the program reported that they were excited about the money; 91 percent reported an increased focus on exams; and 59 percent reported better classroom performance.

"The kids unquestionably love it. Whether that is translating into higher performance, I can't tell you for a fact" until a report is released in October, said David Cantor, spokesman for the New York Department of Education. The program, funded by private donations, cost $400,000 last year.

A program in Virginia is paying students for passing AP scores at 14 high schools in rural and high-poverty areas across the state.

Students who receive grades of 3 or more receive $100 per test, said Paul Nichols, president of Virginia Advanced Study Strategies. The program also trains AP teachers, subsidizes test costs and provides extra materials to AP classes. It began in spring, but has had an immediate effect on enrollment.

"The numbers of students in these schools that have signed up to take AP classes has more than doubled," Nichols said. "In the small rural schools, it has tripled."

The District's incentive program is in line with Rhee's efforts to break new ground with her approach to urban school reform. She garnered national attention with her contract proposal that offers teachers salaries well above $100,000 in exchange for relinquishing tenure and seniority rights. She is scheduled to speak on an education panel at the Democratic National Convention in Denver next week.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

from Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082103874_2.html?sid=ST2008082103937&s_pos=

GREG MORTENSON: WAGING WAR ON ILLITERACY

2008-11-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

Obama's Possible Candidates for Education Secretary By PAUL BASKEN

2008-11-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

[RE-PRINTED FROM THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION--Wednesday, November 5, 2008]

If history is any guide, Barack Obama will spend several weeks chugging through higher priorities on his presidential to-do list before choosing an education secretary.

And if he follows past trends, Mr. Obama is not likely to choose a secretary on the basis of higher-education policy. His nominee will be the ninth U.S. secretary of education, and nearly all of the previous eight were known more for their backgrounds at the elementary and secondary levels.

Only one had a background focused primarily on higher-education: Lauro F. Cavazos Jr., who had been president of Texas Tech University and dean of the Tufts University School of Medicine. Mr. Cavazos was named education secretary in 1988, the last year of the Reagan administration, and resigned in 1990, under President George Bush.

"There's been a big emphasis, sure, on elementary and secondary," Mr. Cavazos said in an interview. "That's where practically all of them have come from, except for me."

Key Names

Mr. Cavazos is among many observers who don't want to hazard a guess as to whom Mr. Obama might choose as his top education official.

Other education-policy experts suggested some names, although most said they were doing so without any great confidence, given not only the possibility of a surprise nominee, but also the traditional refusal of possible nominees to seriously consider such questions until after the votes have been counted.

The suggested names include campaign advisers, current and former governors and state education officials, policy-research professionals, and people Mr. Obama knows through personal friendships or home-state ties.

They include:

Linda Darling-Hammond, an adviser to Mr. Obama's campaign and an education professor at Stanford University, whose research and teaching has focused on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality, and educational equity. She is co-director of the School Redesign Network, established in 2000 at Stanford University to pursue and promote research that seeks to improve secondary schools.

Arne Duncan, chief executive of the Chicago public-school system, who serves on the Board of Overseers of Harvard College. Mr. Duncan is an adviser and friend of Mr. Obama's, as well as a fellow basketball player. The president-elect has touted Mr. Duncan's success in improving the city's public schools. Mr. Duncan also has helped Mr. Obama expand his appreciation of the potential benefits of charter schools.

James B. Hunt Jr., a former governor of North Carolina who served on the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, formed by the current education secretary, Margaret Spellings. A partner in the Raleigh, N.C., office of the law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, Mr. Hunt focused as governor on early-childhood development and improving the quality of teaching. He also serves as chairman of the board of the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, a part of the University of North Carolina that seeks to improve public education on a national level.

Janet Napolitano, Arizona's governor, who was considered a contender for Mr. Obama's vice-presidential pick. She cannot run for governor again in 2010 because of term limits and may consider a run for Mr. McCain's Senate seat. The daughter of a dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Ms. Napolitano has used her position as governor to emphasize elementary- and secondary-education policy, signing legislation that offered voluntary full-day kindergarten throughout Arizona.

Andrew J. Rotherham, an adviser to Mr. Obama's campaign and a co-founder of Education Sector, an education-policy research group. He is also a member of the Virginia Board of Education, which sets statewide curriculum standards, and served as a White House policy adviser in the Clinton administration.

Jonathan Schnur, chief executive of New Leaders for New Schools, a New York-based organization that uses educational research to train principals of urban public schools. Mr. Schnur was also an education-policy adviser in the Clinton administration.

Other Possibilities

Among the other names that higher-education experts have cited as possibilities are two former West Virginia governors who made education a political priority: W. Gaston Caperton III, president of the College Board, and Robert E. Wise Jr., president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which promotes policies to help middle- and high-school students attend college.

Other Democratic governors mentioned as potential contenders for the job include Kathleen Sebelius, of Kansas, and Timothy M. Kaine, of Virginia, both of whom were seen as possible vice-presidential candidates with Mr. Obama.

Education-policy professionals whose names have come up include Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, a lobbying group that represents schools of education, and Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, a group founded by governors and business leaders to help states raise academic standards at the elementary and secondary level.

Among city school officials cited as possibilities are Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City public schools; Paul G. Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery School District of New Orleans and a former chief executive of the Chicago public schools; and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public-school system.

The list of other local leaders who might receive consideration includes Michael Johnston, director of the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, in Denver, who advised Mr. Obama's campaign and helped found New Leaders for New Schools; and Diane Shust, director of government relations at the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union.

Those whose names were raised as long shots include Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley and a former professor at Harvard Law School, who served as a White House domestic-policy adviser in both the Carter and Clinton administrations.

Another might be Colin L. Powell, the first secretary of state under President Bush who gave Mr. Obama's campaign a high-profile endorsement last month. Mr. Powell is a founder of America's Promise Alliance, a coalition of businesses, educators, and others working to improve the health and well-being of children.

Importance of Higher Education

Even if higher education is not Mr. Obama's top priority when choosing an education secretary, he still might want someone with a higher-education background, said Shirley M. Hufstedler, chosen by President Jimmy Carter as the nation's first education secretary.

The Bush administration has been too focused on testing standards, she said, arguing that a secretary with a professional background in higher education could help focus elementary and secondary schools' curricula on the skills and abilities that matter most in college.

"You need to have somebody who understands how youngsters learn and how teachers teach," said Ms. Hufstedler, who is now a senior counsel at the law firm Morrison & Foerster in Los Angeles. "Not simply teaching to the test, but teaching to the substance of whatever the course may be."

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/11/6631n.htm

WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?:

2008-11-19T22:03:00.000-08:00

Education Today and Tomorrow

IF I WERE SECRETARY OF THE US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

2008-11-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

The work that needs to be done on a policy level is to dismantle No Child Left Behind. The law is unreasonable and purports to have all children on grade level by 2012.

Now, if I designed a test that I knew all of the test takers would fail, I would conclude that the fault is with the test maker, not the test taker.

Students and their teachers cannot possibly achieve the aim that the proponents of of NCLB intended.

In it's place, I would write and support laws that made sure that all students had safe schools to go to, with curricula that inspired them to reach beyond themselves.

I would put the emphasis on achieveable goals for each school, classroom, and student with high expectations for each but no punitive high stakes measures.

I would put the emphasis squarely on teacher quality, with lots of observation and feedback and professional development, but I wouldn't make people fear for their jobs or livelihoods, unless they were truly mediocre or bad.

I would put the emphasis on varying the school day, allowing enough time for sleep, play, and reflection.

I would put the emphasis on creating time to reflect, think, and do. These would be factored into the school day and year. Enough of this frenetic pace, which is like manifest destiny in real time. It's not yoga time that I would look for but a walk in the woods time.

I would put the emphasis on improving consciousness in students ("wake up") rather than media literacy or drug awareness literacy or abstinence literacy. How about just literacy literacy? How about reading a book for reading a book's sake?

Finally, I would put the emphasis on listening to the needs and wants and desires of children, students, teachers, and parents. That is what education is about: Collaboration.

It is simple, it is neo-platonic, and it is what we should be after for our students and the people who love them.

The New Secretary of Education: Colin Powell or Linda Darling-Hammond?

2008-11-17T20:19:00.001-08:00

How important is the Secretary of Education? Some would say, "Not very."

The last two chiefs of education, Ron Page and Margaret Spellings, were noted more for pissing off the teachers' unions rather than for any policies that they authored or advanced.

Of course, these past eight years will be known for its Everest-like failures and monumental divisiveness in education (and just about everything else) rather than promoting the cause of education as a surefire way to advance through the American caste (err...) class system.

Once upon a time the goal of our educational system meant advancing through the various rungs up the ladder one rickety step at a time. It wasn't always easy, but somehow men and women, boys and girls, and children of all ages were better for their tenacity and perseverance. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." (I'm still not quite sure what the heck this means.)

Although with the election of Barack Obama to the highest Office in the land, the thought is that he'll pick a smart guy like him. (Is there any sarcasm in that last statement?)

As a result, women's groups are banding together like never before to stop the egg-headification of the Obama's male inner circle. (Now, is that anti-intellectual or anti-misogyny? Does one trump the other?)

No matter what, the Secretary of Education will have an uphill battle to reform another national system that is nearing collapse. It's less fingers in a dike and more trying to fill up the Grand Canyon with a baby's spoon.

So, who will President-elect Barack Obama pick for his Secretary of Education? One name that has surfaced and been bandied about quite a bit is Colin Powell. Powell's most notable gig was as Secretary of State, which arguably is the most coveted and complicated cabinet level position there is.

Why would Powell want to take flier on this "no win" of a job? One could argue that he'd like to redeem himself for the dabacle of selling the second Iraq War to a nation of people with bumper-stickers that said things like "These Colors Don't Run" or "United We Stand" or "Bomb Them Back into the Stone Age."

Furthermore, why would Powell want to run this massive and dysfunctional do nothing department, a place with people that have been the scourge of teachers, parents, unions, and school administrators alike?

According to many sources, the Secretary of Education will be known as a reformer because she or he will have to put a considerable amount of thought into making the miserable No Child Left Behind (or No Child Left Untested) law work. This will be a very hard task for any rookie cabinet appointee elevated to Washington's power elite. Therefore, a choice like Linda Darling-Hammond, the noted Stanford University professor and educational advisor to candidate Obama, may get short shrift because she just doesn't have the kind of chops in the bureaucratic nightmare that is big time Washington politics.

What are some of the important decisions that the next Secretary of Education will have to make?

More on that next time.

How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure)

2008-11-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

People's performance on intellectual and athletic tasks is shaped by awareness of stereotypes about the groups to which they belong. New research explains why— and how we can break free from the expectations of others

By S. Alexander Haslam, Jessica Salvatore, Thomas Kessler and Stephen D. Reicher

You tried so hard. But you failed. You did not pass the test, you performed poorly in the interview or you missed your project goal at the office. Why? Is it that you were not capable? Or could something more subtle—and worrisome—also be at work?

As it turns out, research shows that such performance failures cannot always be attributed simply to inherent lack of ability or incompetence. Although some have jumped to the highly controversial conclusion that differences in attainment reflect natural differences between groups, the roots of many handicaps actually lie in the stereotypes, or preconceptions, that others hold about the groups to which we belong. For instance, a woman who knows that women as a group are believed to do worse than men in math will, indeed, tend to perform less well on math tests as a result.

The same is true for any member of a group who is aware that his or her group is considered to be inferior to others in a given domain of performance—whether it is one that appears to tap intellectual and academic ability or one that is designed to establish athletic and sporting prowess. Just as women’s performance on spatial and mathematical tasks is created by, and appears to “prove,” the stereotype of their spatial and mathematical inferiority, so, too, the sporting performance of a team of long-failing underdogs will tend to live up (or, in fact, down) to its low expectations.

The social psychological research that has uncovered these effects is an important development of theoretical work initiated in the 1970s that focused on issues of social identity—looking at how people see themselves as members of a particular group and what the implications of this are. More important, however, social identity research examines not only how we both take on (internalize) and live out (externalize) identities that are shared with our peers—other members of our in-group—but also how these things can change. This research helps us to understand the debilitating consequences of sexism, racism, homophobia and the like, as well as to identify ways of addressing the problems they cause so that human talent and potential are not neglected or squandered.

Part of the story here involves recognizing not only that stereotypes can promote failure but that they can also lift a person’s or group’s performance and be tools that promote social progress. Understanding these dynamics—and the processes that underpin them—enables us to think more productively about the conditions that allow ability to be expressed rather than repressed and that foster success rather than failure.

Stereotype Threat
In the past decade such issues have been put on center stage by social psychologists who have been researching the phenomenon of “stereotype threat.” The impressive body of work they have built up demonstrates not only that such underperformance occurs but also that it is especially common for individuals who are aware that their group is considered inferior to others with which it is compared. Pioneering studies conducted at Stanford University by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson are particularly illuminating in this respect.

Steele and Aronson’s classic demonstration of stereotype threat emerged from a series of studies in the mid-1990s in which high-achieving African-American students at Stanford completed questions from the verbal Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) under conditions where they thought either that the test was measuring intelligence or that it was not a test of ability at all. Intriguingly, these participants’ performance was much worse when they were told that the test was a measure of intelligence. This slide, the researchers argued, occurred because “in situations where the stereotype is applicable, one is at risk of confirming it as a self-characterization, both to one’s self and to others who know the stereotype.”

This pattern of findings has been replicated with many different groups on many different dimensions of stereotype content. For example, Sian L. Beilock of the University of Chicago and her colleagues reported in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology that if female students are made aware of the stereotype that men have greater mathematical ability than women do, they tend to perform worse on complex mathematical tasks than they do if they are not alerted to this stereotype. Likewise, elderly people have been found to perform worse on memory tests if they take them after being made aware of stereotypes that associate aging with deteriorating cognitive ability.

In the domain of athletic performance, studies of golf putting have shown that expert golfers tend to leave their putts farther from a target than they would otherwise do if they are exposed to a stereotype that members of their sex are worse at putting than members of the opposite sex. It seems unlikely that Greg Norman choked in the 1996 Masters Tournament, when he blew an early lead and ultimately lost, because he was mindful of this stereotype, but other relevant stereotypes (for instance, that Australians underperform in the Masters—with no one from that country ever having won the tournament) may have interfered with the flow of his game at the critical juncture. Along similar lines, it seems entirely plausible that England’s poor performance on penalty shoot-outs in World Cup soccer matches has something to do with a lack of self-belief associated with a team history of performing poorly in such contests (of seven shoot-outs in major tournaments, the team has won only one).

Understanding Process
What, though, is the “something” that is responsible for the effects of stereotype threat? Recent work has argued that one core factor is enhanced cognitive load. For example, a 2005 study by social psychologists Mara Cadinu, Anne Maass and colleagues at the University of Padua in Italy showed that when women perform mathematical tasks after being exposed to the stereotype that they are worse at math than men, they report entertaining more intrusive negative thoughts about their own mathematical ability. That is, they find themselves thinking things such as “These exercises are too difficult for me” and “I am not good at math.” Likewise, a number of studies have indicated that exposing people to negative stereotypes about groups to which they belong increases their anxiety and stress when performing tasks related to that stereotype.

Evidence from work by Beilock and others also suggests that such anxieties can use up information-processing resources that are required to carry out the tasks at hand. For example, when people perform complex math tasks, this cognitive burden places heavy demands on working memory, using the brain areas that briefly store and manipulate information.

The 2007 article by Beilock and her colleagues attempts to explore and integrate these ideas by delving deeply into the cognitive dynamics of stereotype threat. Working in the domain of women’s performance on mathematical tasks, a series of experiments replicates the standard stereotype threat effect: it shows that the effect is most pronounced on tasks that place demands on phonological resources (such as those requiring verbal reasoning); demonstrates that the presence of stereotype threat increases verbal reports of worry associated with either the task or the stereotype; and suggests that the debilitating consequences of stereotype threat can be avoided if participants learn to perform tasks in such a way that they are mentally undemanding. The last insight is based on evidence that women do not succumb to the effects of stereotype threat if they learn answers to math problems by rote (as one does when learning one’s times tables) so that their production relies only on long-term memory.

On the basis of these studies, the researchers make the case that their work advances our understanding of stereotype threat by revealing what is responsible for its effects (for instance, anxiety-related demands on short-term verbal memory) and then using this understanding to suggest how this impact can be overcome. In this regard, there is no doubt that their work contributes substantially to our understanding of specific cognitive aspects of the phenomenon, and in particular the role that memory processes can play in the dynamics of particular threat-related effects. Yet despite its internal coherence, there are reasons for believing that an exclusively cognitive analysis is limited both theoretically and practically.

Stereotypes That Help
A sense that the theoretical analysis by Beilock and her colleagues is incomplete derives from other research inspired by Steele and Aronson’s original demonstration of the effects of stereotype threat. Exposure to stereotypes, researchers have found, can have welcome as well as unwelcome consequences. That is, under certain circumstances, exposure to stereotypes about one’s group can serve to elevate performance instead of compromising it.

Studies conducted at Harvard University in 1999 by Margaret Shih and her co-investigators provide particularly good demonstrations of this point. The participants in this research were Asian women. In different conditions of the studies they were required to focus on the fact either that they were women (who are stereotypically worse at math than men) or that they were Asian (stereotypically better at math than members of other ethnic groups). As in Beilock and her colleagues’ work, in the former case the women performed worse than they did when no group membership was made salient. Yet in the latter case they did better.

Other studies reveal similar effects, finding that women display superior ability on spatial tests if reminded that they attend a college whose students perform well on such tasks and that golfers putt more accurately if exposed to a stereotype that members of their sex are better at putting than those of the opposite sex. Jeff Stone of the University of Arizona and fellow psychologists also found that when white golfers are told that their golfing performance will be compared with that of black golfers they perform worse if they believe this is a test of “natural athletic ability” (because here the comparison poses a threat), but that they perform better if they believe it to be a test of “sport strategic intelligence” (because this comparison suggests the in-group’s superiority).

A meta-analysis of similar studies published in 2003 by social psychologists Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen, then at Yale University, has shown that if people are exposed to stereotypes about the inferiority of an out-group (those who are not part of the individual’s in-group) in a given domain, then their performance is typically elevated—a phenomenon they refer to as stereotype lift. In this way, just as a sense of in-group inferiority can impair performance, an ideology of superiority can give members of high-status groups a performance boost.

Such elevated performance cannot easily be explained in terms of cognitive load—because it is hard to see how the salience of a positive in-group stereotype (as in “we are good”) could increase the memory resources available to participants (relative to those in control conditions). Ideally, then, a parsimonious explanation of the effects of stereotypes should be capable of accounting for both upward and downward change. It should also be able to explain a host of other effects reported in the research literature—including evidence that such effects are apparent in domains where cognitive capacity is not critical (golf or basketball, say); are diminished if people are exposed to stereotypes about multiple groups; are weaker if one’s in-group is not exposed to generalized hostility (for example, if one is male or white); and vary depending on whether participants are encouraged to focus on promoting positive outcomes or on preventing negative ones.

More important, an explanation of effects arising from stereotype threat also needs to explain why these influences are not as generalized as a cursory reading of Beilock and her colleagues’ work might suggest. Because it is certainly not the case that all members of a given group succumb to the perils of threat.

On the contrary, effects are restricted to individuals who value the domain in question and who have high levels of basic competence (for instance, those who, in the abstract, have less to worry about). To be selected to participate in Beilock and her colleagues’ first study of mathematical performance, for example, women had to perform baseline tasks with greater than 75 percent accuracy, and they had to agree with the statements “I am good at math” and “It is important to me that I am good at math.” Why do these things matter?

Self and Identity
One answer to the preceding question is that, fundamentally, stereotype threat is not so much an issue of cognition per se as one of self and identity. This point has been made by a number of researchers working in the stereotype domain, including Steele and Aronson themselves. Along these lines, in a recent major review of work in this area, they, together with social psychologist Steven Spencer of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, argue that stereotype threat can be understood as a phenomenon that centers on a person’s social identity. That is, stereotype threat (and lift) effects come about because, and to the extent that, people are encouraged to think of themselves in terms of a particular group membership (such as Asian or female; white or male).

As specified by the social identity theory that Henri Tajfel and John Turner developed at the University of Bristol in England, when people define themselves as group members (as “we” rather than “I”), behavior is shaped by the stereotypic norms that define in-group membership in any given context [see “The Psychology of Tyranny,” by S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher; Scientific American Mind, Vol. 16, No. 3; 2005]. Here people are generally motivated to advance the interests of their in-group and to see it positively. They are, for example, more inclined to agree with stereotypes that suggest “we are good” than with those that say “we are bad.” Yet under conditions in which broad consensus exists about an in-group’s low status and in which status appears to be stable and legitimate (that is, uncontestable), members of that group often accept and internalize their group’s inferiority on status-defining dimensions (“We are poor at math …”) and seek to achieve a positive in-group identity in other areas (“… but we are more verbally skilled, more sociable, more musical, and so on”).

Thus, when the content of a salient social identity conflicts with a person’s motivations to do well in a given domain (to be good at math, for instance), he or she will experience identity-related psychological conflict. This conflict tends to interfere with performance in the way that studies of stereotype threat reveal. As the work of Cadinu and others shows, it creates anxiety, self-consciousness and self-doubt. In short, people will tend to perform relatively poorly in situations where they have a conflicted sense of self—wherein their sense of what they are (and want to be) as individuals appears incompatible with what they are seen to be as group members.

On the other hand, if the content of a salient social identity is compatible with a person’s aspirations (perhaps because they suggest superior ability), this circumstance will tend to motivate and energize the individual and thereby improve performance in the manner suggested by demonstrations of stereotype lift. We experience a facility of self and “flow” when what we are and want to be as individuals is fully compatible with what we appear to be as group members.

Overcoming Stereotypes
One final question, though, is whether the phenomenon of stereotype threat (or lift) means that people are destined always to reproduce existing stereotypes and social structures. Are we inevitably condemned to act in ways that reinforce existing stereotypes of superiority and inferiority? Not at all. Indeed, one important lesson to be learned from theorizing about social identity is that when individuals are confronted with obstacles to self-enhancement associated with the apparent inferiority of their in-group, they can deal with these obstacles in multiple ways. These strategic responses do more or less to reproduce the status quo.

The first is to adopt a strategy of “social mobility,” which involves individual-level activities that serve to downplay the impact of the group on the self. In effect, this is the kind of strategy that Beilock and her colleagues recommend when they encourage participants to work hard to learn solutions to problems by rote so they will no longer be handicapped by stereotype threat. The limitation of this solution is that it protects the individual by working around the problem but, in the process, leaves the problem itself unresolved. As two of us (Haslam and Reicher) note in a 2006 article in the Journal of Applied Psychology, such activities thus involve attempting to cope with the stress of threats to self through a strategy of personal avoidance. This approach may be cognitively sophisticated but politically naive.

A second strategy is one of “social creativity,” which invokes different in-group stereotypes that deflect the impact of belonging to a disadvantaged group. Traditionally, researchers and laypeople alike have tended to think of stereotypes as fixed and invariant representations of social groups that are impervious to change. In fact, however, the large body of evidence reviewed in the mid-1990s by Penelope Oakes and her fellow social identity researchers at the Australian National University suggests that stereotypes—of both ourselves and others—are inherently flexible.

For example, the degree to which psychology students think of themselves as “scientific” or “artistic” has been shown to vary considerably depending on whether they compare themselves with drama students or with physical scientists. In comparison with physical scientists they are more inclined to stereotype themselves as artistic, but in comparison with people who work in the theater they are more inclined to stereotype themselves as scientific. Psychology students should experience stereotype threat if they are asked to perform a scientific task when compared with physicists or an artistic task when compared with artists, but they should experience stereotype lift if asked to perform an artistic task when compared with physicists or a scientific task when compared with artists.

Leaders and other agents of change are thus able to promote changes to in-group stereotypes by altering the dimensions of comparison, the comparative frame of reference or the meaning of particular attributes. There is a sense, however, in which these strategies of social creativity still work within a prevailing consensus rather than doing anything directly to change features of the social world that give rise to a group’s stigmatization and disadvantage. In this respect, they can still be seen as strategies of threat denial rather than threat removal.

A third alternative, then, is to advocate group-based opposition to the status quo through a strategy of social competition that involves engaging in active resistance. Here group members work together to challenge the legitimacy of the conditions (and associated stereotypes) that define them as inferior—trying to change the world that oppresses them rather than their reactions to the existing world. They work to counter the stereotypes that are tools of their repression with stereotypes that are tools of emancipation. This strategy was precisely what activists such as Steve Biko and Emmeline Pankhurst achieved through black consciousness and feminism, respectively. They challenged the legitimacy of those comparisons and stereotypes that defined their groups as inferior and replaced them with expressions of group pride. They were (as one supporter said of Pankhurst) “self-dedicated reshaper[s]of the world.” And the more their opponents invoked stereotypes against them, the more they acted collectively to contradict those stereotypes and reveal their claims to legitimacy as a lie.

To quote from the evidence that Biko gave at his trial in South Africa in 1976: “The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.”

Which of these three strategies individuals choose to pursue, social identity theory argues, depends on a range of factors that are structural and political as well as cognitive and psychological. In particular, whether or not people seek to change an unequal world rather than adapting to it depends partly on whether they are exposed to social-change belief systems that engage their imagination and articulate cognitive alternatives to the prevailing orthodoxy. In this respect, the significance of established methods for measuring differences between groups (for example, in various forms of ability) derives from their capacity to limit the potential for people to conceive of such alternatives by presenting data as objective and uncontestable “fact.” That is, they do not so much measure “real” difference as contribute to making measured differences “real.” In this regard, too, the success of leaders of emancipa tory movements typically derives from their capacity to create a sense of shared social identity that centers on challenges to the stereotypes and received forms of understanding that define their group as inferior.

Resistance, of course, is not always successful. Yet it is rarely entirely futile either. Indeed, history teaches us that change is as much a part of social reality as is stability. And when they are in our own hands, stereotypes can be essential to mobilizing the group for success as much as, when in the hands of others, they can be used as forces of restraint and failure.

Thus, the literature on stereotype threat delivers two fundamental lessons. The first is to beware of equating performance and ability, especially when dealing with differences between groups, and to understand the power that the expectations of others has over what we do. The second is to realize that we are not doomed to be victims of oppressive stereotypes but can learn to use stereotypes as tools of our own liberation. In short, who we think we are determines both how we perform and what we are able to become.

From Scientific American

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-stereotyping-yourself-contributes-to-success

INSPIRING EDUCATORS: Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

2008-11-16T21:52:00.000-08:00

Sir Kenneth Robinson puts forth the one idea that will perhaps one day save education. Hint: It's all about creativity.

Savoring the Undertones and Lingering Subtleties of Obama’s Victory Speech ~ By BRENT STAPLES

2008-11-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

[from http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/savoring-the-undertones-and-lingering-subtleties-of-obamas-victory-speech/]

Like many great orations, Barack Obama’s victory speech on Tuesday night was deceptively simple. As powerful as it was to hear, the hidden complexities and import of the president-elect’s words surface only after we re-read the text and think back on the moment.

A confirmed fan of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Obama drew on another flawless speech, the Gettysburg Address (pdf) (“a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from the earth”), while also celebrating both the inherited majesty of the Democratic process and his own achievement — the broad coalition that elected him.

He echoed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ( “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’’) when he praised the electorate for rejecting the rhetoric of fear and for “ put[ting] their hands on the arc of history and bend[ing] it once more toward the hope of a better day.’’

But this remarkable speaker had more on his mind than classical citations. Woven through his address was nothing less than an attempt to broaden the meaning of America’s founding documents - and its living democracy - by expanding the list of the people who come to mind when Americans think of “the Founders.’’

This mission is evident in the opening stanza:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our Founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

By this he meant to include the many men and women — Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King — who have worked and sometimes died in the fight to extend the full rights of citizenship to people (African-American and female) who were initially denied them. He implicitly credited these women’s rights and civil rights giants with working to create a more perfect union.

In other words, he was including the white fathers — but not only them.

The speech recognized Thomas Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution. It leaned heavily on Lincoln, who orchestrated a second founding by reuniting a sundered nation through the Civil War and pointing the country toward the abolition of slavery.

Still, Mr. Obama knows full well that neither Jefferson nor Lincoln ever “dreamed” of an America in which a person of African descent would ascend to the highest office in the land.

Jefferson, like many of his most influential contemporaries, hewed to the idea that black people would be forever set apart from their fellow citizens. Had it been in his power, black slaves would have been trained, set free, and sent to live apart in Africa or the West Indies.

Virginians took this notion seriously. Seven years after Jefferson’s death, for example, the state legislature conducted a special census to determine if free people of color would agree to leave the state and be resettled in Africa. Among the Negroes who declined to go were Jefferson’s long-time slave and lover Sally Hemings and Jefferson’s two Negro sons, Madison and Eston Hemings.

Paradoxically, Sally, Madison and Eston Hemings had more white than black ancestry — and had actually been counted as free white people in a previous census. But like many people of color in that period, they found that membership in the majority was tenuous and easily revoked. Leaving Virginia for Ohio after their mother’s death, Madison and Eston found their rights as citizens increasingly curtailed.

Lincoln, too, believed in colonization. Speaking to a group of black dignitaries in 1862, he argued that blacks and whites could never live together harmoniously and said: “If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.’’ He argued for colonization in a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, which began circulating that same year. But the passage was dropped from the final version after Lincoln failed to find political support for it.

The proclamation was a tactical military document, forged in heat of the Civil War, that was intended to improve the Union’s chance of winning. It ended slavery in the states that were in rebellion, while preserving it the border states that had sided with the Union and other areas that were under Union control. Even so, the final document (pdf) allowed that emancipation was “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution.’’

Slavery was abolished with the ratification of 13th Amendment in 1865. But it took another 100 years — and more work by a subsequent set of Founders — before black Americans and women could fully claim the rights articulated in the founding documents.

That claim had yet to be fully exercised in the summer of 1963, when Dr. King delivered the “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March On Washington.

As Dr. King said at the time:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

Some listeners heard hints of grandiosity in Mr. Obama’s assertion that this election proved that “the dream of our Founders is alive in our time.’’ But he was clearly referring to the founding ideals as they were improved upon and transfused through subsequent generations of founders who, like King, worked toward the “more perfect union” that Lincoln himself had talked about.

Mr. Obama’s moment would not have been possible without the interventions of those latter-day founders.

Who Will Obama Pick as Secretary of Education? ~ By Kathleen Kingsbury

2008-11-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

[reprinted from http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1857195,00.html]

As Barack Obama begins to assess his potential picks for his cabinet, Secretary of Education is not one of the positions you would necessarily expect him to focus on first. But American parents especially may wish to study up on the possible candidates. After all, if Obama's campaign proposals are to be fulfilled, Margaret Spellings' successor could oversee a dramatic $18 billion overhaul of the nation's public education system over the next few years.

Whoever gets the spot, Obama's new Ed chief should expect to face a huge test right off in the contentious reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind act, considered to be one of the first priorities in Congress come January. Down the road, he or she can also plan to direct the founding of hundreds of new charter schools and the spread of universal pre-K nationwide, as well as a continued focus on increased accountability and a better trained teacher corps.

So whom will President-Elect Obama tap for this enormous task? That announcement isn't expected until at least early next week. But here's a look at some of the presumed contenders.

JOEL KLEIN

Current position: New York City schools chancellor

Why he could be tapped: In New York, the former Clinton appointee has distinguished himself as a keen reformer under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. An attorney by training, Klein has also shown himself adept at working with unlikely partners — union leaders as well as the Rev. Al Sharpton — and is a major proponent of charter schools, a keystone in Obama's education agenda.

Why the job will go to someone else: With Bloomberg recently getting the OK to seek a third term as mayor, Klein may prefer to stay put and finish the job of reforming New York's 1,500 schools.

LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND

Current position: Top Obama education adviser

Why she could be tapped: Her day job is professor of education at Stanford, but for the past year, she has been a key voice defining Obama's positions on issues such as school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.

Why the job will go to someone else: Darling-Hammond is not popular among education reformers, particularly those to the center-right. That's because her views on issues such as merit pay vs. teacher tenure are more conventional than even Obama's. So if the President-elect really wants to shake things up on the education front, Darling-Hammond won't likely be his choice.

ARNE DUNCAN

Current position: CEO of Chicago Public Schools

Why he could be tapped: Like Klein in New York, Duncan has made a name for himself as a reformer in a big city, accomplishments candidate Obama highlighted several times on the campaign trail. He's also a close friend and basketball buddy of the President-elect. And unlike Darling-Hammond, Duncan could represent a more neutral selection.

Why the job will go to someone else: A Duncan nod could risk upsetting Chicago mayor Richard Daley, a vocal advocate of the Chicago schools' chief.

JAMES HUNT, JR.

Current position: Former governor of North Carolina

Why he could be tapped: As governor, Hunt focused attention on one of Obama's key schools proposals: expanding early childhood education, especially to low-income and minority children. He also worked hard to improve teacher quality, testing innovations in this area of perpetual struggle for American schools. On the federal level, he recently served on Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

Why the job will go to someone else: Hunt has not been especially outspoken on how to expand charter schools and other alternatives to traditional public schools, which appears to be a priority for the Obama team.

JANET NAPOLITANO

Current position: Arizona's governor

Why she could be tapped: Once considered a contender for Obama's VP slot, Napolitano has signed legislation boosting elementary education in her state, including an initiative to guarantee full-day kindergarten throughout Arizona. She also co-chaired a panel called Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future, which in 2005 recommended a $325 billion increase in federal education spending over 10 years.

Why the job will go to someone else: Term limits prohibit Napolitano from running for governor again in 2010, making her a potential — and popular — candidate to vie for Arizona Sen. John McCain's seat in that year's election. She has also been mentioned as a possible pick for Attorney General in the Obama administration.

COLIN POWELL

Current position: Former Secretary of State in the first Bush Administration

Why he could be tapped: Since leaving the State Dept. in 2004, Gen. Powell and his wife Alma founded America's Promise Alliance, a group dedicated to improving the well-being of the country's young people. The non-profit has been especially strong on finding a means to combat the country's dropout crisis. Plus, Powell made a high-profile endorsement of Obama in the final weeks of the campaign.

Why the job will go to someone else: On the day after Obama's Nov. 4 victory, Powell told reporters that he has not been asked nor does he plan to return to government service, preferring to instead leave the new Cabinet open to a younger generation.

The Schools Children Deserve

2008-11-03T21:59:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Carolyn!

ON THE ISSUES: MCCAIN'S EDUCATION PLAN (directly from the McCain/Palin Website)

2008-11-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

Excellence, Choice, and Competition
in American Education

John McCain believes American education must be worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves. He understands that we are a nation committed to equal opportunity, and there is no equal opportunity without equal access to excellent education.

Public education should be defined as one in which our public support for a child's education follows that child into the school the parent chooses. The school is charged with the responsibility of educating the child, and must have the resources and management authority to deliver on that responsibility. They must also report to the parents and the public on their progress.

The deplorable status of preparation for our children, particularly in comparison with the rest of the industrialized world, does not allow us the luxury of eliminating options in our educational repertoire. John McCain will fight for the ability of all students to have access to all schools of demonstrated excellence, including their own homes.

No Child Left Behind has focused our attention on the realities of how students perform against a common standard. John McCain believes that we can no longer accept low standards for some students and high standards for others. In this age of honest reporting, we finally see what is happening to students who were previously invisible. While that is progress all its own, it compels us to seek and find solutions to the dismal facts before us.

John McCain believes our schools can and should compete to be the most innovative, flexible and student-centered - not safe havens for the uninspired and unaccountable. He believes we should let them compete for the most effective, character-building teachers, hire them, and reward them.

If a school will not change, the students should be able to change schools. John McCain believes parents should be empowered with school choice to send their children to the school that can best educate them just as many members of Congress do with their own children. He finds it beyond hypocritical that many of those who would refuse to allow public school parents to choose their child's school would never agree to force their own children into a school that did not work or was unsafe. They can make another choice. John McCain believes that is a fundamental and essential right we should honor for all parents.

As president, John McCain will pursue reforms that address the underlying cultural problems in our education system - a system that still seeks to avoid genuine accountability and responsibility for producing well-educated children.

John McCain will place parents and children at the center of the education process, empowering parents by greatly expanding the ability of parents to choose among schools for their children. He believes all federal financial support must be predicated on providing parents the ability to move their children, and the dollars associated with them, from failing school.

Early Childhood Education

Every child born in America is destined to compete with his or her peers around the world. Their success will be determined in great part by whether or not we meet our obligation to provide them with the education critical to their success. A foundation for this effort is ensuring that every child, regardless of their financial means, arrives on the first day of elementary school ready to learn.

There is no shortage of federal programs targeted at early child care and preschool. State and federal funding for early childhood care and education programs is over $25 billion each year. The list of programs includes Head Start, Title I preschool programs, Early Head Start, Even Start, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Early Reading First, the Social Services Block Grant, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. There is much to be achieved by leveraging and better coordinating these programs to increase availability of high quality programs. When used effectively this approach has had a tremendous impact on the wellbeing and educational outcomes of children.

State-level preschool and early care programs have created greater access for very young children whose families could not otherwise afford high quality programs. Several states such as Minnesota have launched new, high quality pre-K programs with a commitment to study their outcomes. Estimates are that 70-85 percent of children from low-income families have access to early care and/or preschool, and that nearly 90 percent of children younger than five with employed mothers are in a regular child care arrangement. However, due to complicated formulas and budgetary constraints, not every low-income child is getting access to high quality care and education on a consistent basis. Federal dollars can do far more to broaden access to high quality programs.

As President, John McCain will focus federal resources on ensuring that the neediest children have access to a range of high quality programs. The objective will be to ensure that these children have the opportunity to begin school with a strong foundation in language and numbers, and that they have the social and emotional skills necessary to succeed. Where taxpayer dollars are involved, early childhood programs must be built on a solid foundation that focuses on the fundamentals necessary to prepare children for a lifetime of learning.

Early Childhood Development: Make certain students are ready to learn.

The Head Start program was created to meet the educational and social needs of young children. While there are some excellent Head Start centers that can serve as models for leadership and best practices, far too many Head Start centers have fallen prey to the same institutional flaws that have undermined the larger public education system. They lack quality instructors; they lack accountability to parents; and they are focused on process, not outcomes. We should build Centers for Excellence in Head Start that actually leads to excellence in all of the pre-K and early learning programs that taxpayers support.

Centers for Excellence in Head Start

Who is eligible? Head Start centers operating in the state with a demonstrated record of success in improving the school readiness of children are eligible to be nominated by the Governor for recognition as a Center of Excellence.

How does it work? The Secretary of HHS will pick at least one Head Start Center in each state based on the qualifications and experience of the Head Start Center

Each Head Start Center identified by the Secretary as a Center of Excellence will use their funds to expand their programs to serve more children, disseminate their best practices to other Head Start agencies (similar to a charter school dissemination grant), and improve coordination of early childhood education in their city or state.

How will the funding be distributed? The Secretary will provide at least $200,000 per year to each Center of Excellence, depending on availability of funding. The Secretary has discretion to increase awards if more funds become available.

Building on the principles advanced in the “Centers of Excellence”, that highlight highly effective practice, we must work with states, Head Start parent councils, high quality early care and education providers, and other stakeholders to ensure that state and federal pre-K programs are well coordinated.

Any successful reform effort requires clearly defined goals and objectives. Where ever federal funds are used in providing early childhood education programs, these programs must include certain fundamental elements that are basic to successfully preparing young children to enter school ready to learn:

Measurable Standards

Standards for quality should be centered on the child and outcome-based. Every federally supported program (including Head Start) must include meaningful, measurable standards designed to determine that students are ready for school by measuring their school readiness skills. We should also encourage and enable states to better align Head Start with their own pre-K programs.

Quality Instruction

A primary objective is to ensure that every instructor in an early learning or care program has strong preparation with an emphasis on performance and outcomes as measured by student development. To attract quality instructors, efforts must be made to bring income parity to qualified instructors in these programs and their counterpart’s elementary school system. As President, Senator McCain will promote the replication of professional development programs with a proven record of preparing our children for kindergarten and encourage more research to determine what skills and training make the most difference for young children.

As President, John McCain will require all federally supported preschool programs to offer a comprehensive approach to learning that covers all significant areas of school readiness, notably literacy/language development, as well as math readiness and key motor and social skills.

Healthy Children

Because healthy children learn better, partnership grants and targeted federal funding can be used to encourage and facilitate early screening programs for hearing, vision and immunizations for preschool age children to ensure that all children are able to reach their full potential.

As President, John McCain will ensure that there are no federal prohibitions against preschool programs offering basic healthcare screenings to children (with parental consent) in their care. This may include developing partnerships with rural and community health clinics, teaching hospitals and other public health institutions to lend their expertise to ensuring that poor health and easily diagnosed conditions are detected and addressed before they undermine a child’s ability to learn and reach his or her potential.

Parental Education and Involvement

Parental involvement is critical to the success of any pre-K program. Current federal programs will be focused on educating parents on the basics of preparing their children for a productive educational experience. These programs will place an emphasis on reading and numbers skills, as well as nutrition and general health. Reinforcing to parents the fundamental importance of reading to their children as a primary way of expanding their vocabulary and preparing their young minds to learn will be emphasized at every level.

John McCain's Plan for Strengthening America's Schools

Today, John McCain Outlined His Vision For Strengthening Education To Ensure Opportunity For Every American. John McCain's education policy removes needless bureaucracy, empowers parents, teachers and principals and ensures that every child has the opportunity to gain from a quality education.

John McCain's Education Principles:

John McCain Will Enact Meaningful Reform In Education. Now is the time to demand real, new reform earned through discipline, grinding work, tough choices and leadership. John McCain has dedicated his career in public service to the hard and sometimes unpopular work of achieving meaningful reform.

The Education System Must Provide For Equality Of Choice. Too many of our children are trapped by geography and by economics in failing schools.

We Must Empower Parents. Involved and empowered parents and excellent teachers are the two greatest determining factors in a child's education. If we are to succeed, we must empower committed parents with critical knowledge about their child's performance, and empower them with real and meaningful choices to act upon that knowledge.

We Must Empower Teachers. If America is to truly reform public education and make good on the promise of individual freedom and independence through knowledge, we must ensure that every child has the opportunity to be inspired and motivated to achieve their potential by a strong classroom leader.

John McCain's Education Policy:

John McCain Will Build On The Lessons Of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). There should be an emphasis on standards and accountability. However, our goal cannot be group averages. Instead, our focus should be to inspire every child to strive to reach his or her potential. While NCLB has been invaluable in providing a clear picture of which schools and students are struggling, it is only the beginning of education reform.

John McCain Will Provide Effective Education Leadership. John McCain is committed to high standards and accountability, but he is also committed to providing the resources needed to succeed. He believes we should invest in people, parents and reward achievement.

John McCain Will Work To Ensure That Our Children Have Quality Teachers. The single biggest challenge in turning around a failing school is getting quality teachers into that school. To overcome this challenge, John McCain will:

Encourage Alternative Certification Methods That Open The Door For Highly Motivated Teachers To Enter The Field. John McCain will devote five percent of Title II funding to states to recruit teachers who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class or who participate in an alternative teacher recruitment program such as Teach for America, the New York City Teaching Fellowship Program, the New Teacher Project, or excellent university initiatives.

Provide Bonuses For Teachers Who Locate In Underperforming Schools And Demonstrate Strong Leadership As Measured By Student Improvement. John McCain will devote 60 percent of Title II funding for incentive bonuses for high performing teachers to locate in the most challenging educational settings, for teachers to teach subjects like math and science, and for teachers who demonstrate student improvement. Payments will be made directly to teachers. Funds should also be devoted to provide performance bonuses to teachers who raise student achievement and enhance the school-wide learning environment. Principals may also consider other issues in addition to test scores such as peer evaluations, student subgroup improvements, or being removed from the state's "in need of improvement" list.

Provide Funding For Needed Professional Teacher Development. Where federal funds are involved, teacher development money should be used to enhance the ability of teachers to perform in today's technology driven environment. We need to provide teachers with high quality professional development opportunities with a primary focus on instructional strategies that address the academic needs of their students. The first 35 percent of Title II funding would be directed to the school level so principals and teachers could focus these resources on the specific needs of their schools.

John McCain Believes We Must Empower School Principals With Greater Control Over Spending. Funding cannot be effectively apportioned in Washington, but it shouldn't be a state-level official or district bureaucrat either. The money must be controlled by the leader we hold accountable: the school principal with a single criterion to raise student achievement.

John McCain Will Make Real The Promise Of NCLB By Giving Parents Greater Choice. Choice is the best way to protect children against a failing bureaucracy. But parents must have more control over the money.

John McCain Will Expand The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. In our nation's capital, we have seen the dramatic benefits of giving parents control of money and choices. The Opportunity Scholarship program serves more than 1,900 students from families with an average income of $23,000 a year. More than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. The budget for the Opportunity Scholarships is currently $13 million. John McCain believes that this extremely successful program should expand to at least $20 million benefiting nearly a thousand more families.

John McCain Will Ensure Children Struggling To Meet State Standards Will Have Immediate Access To High Quality Tutoring Programs. Local school districts can certify education service providers but providers can also bypass the local bureaucracy and receive direct federal certification. Education service providers can then market directly to parents. Title I money will be directed straight to the provider.

John McCain Supports Expanding Virtual Learning By Reforming The "Enhancing Education Through Technology Program." John McCain will target $500 million in current federal funds to build new virtual schools and support the development of online course offerings for students. These courses may be for regular coursework, for enhancement, or for dual enrollment into college.

John McCain Will Allocate $250 Million Through A Competitive Grant Program To Support States That Commit To Expanding Online Education Opportunities. States can use these funds to build virtual math and science academies to help expand the availability of AP Math, Science, and Computer Sciences courses, online tutoring support for students in traditional schools, and foreign language courses.

John McCain Will Offer $250 Million For Digital Passport Scholarships To Help Students Pay For Online Tutors Or Enroll In Virtual Schools. Low-income students will be eligible to receive up to $4,000 to enroll in an online course, SAT/ACT prep course, credit recovery or tutoring services offered by a virtual provider. Providers could range from other public schools, virtual charter schools, home school parents utilizing virtual schooling resources or district or state sponsored virtual schools. The Department of Education would competitively award the funds to a national scholarship administrator who would manage the student applications, monitoring, and evaluation of providers.

John McCain's Higher Education Policy

Prepare for the 21st Century in Higher Education
America is facing increased competition from overseas like never before. Higher education is as much a part of that competition as the job sector, and we must rise to the challenge and modernize our universities so that they retain their status as producers of the most skilled workforce in the world. The answer is not to impose more regulations on institutions, but to encourage the government to support innovative approaches to education, removing regulatory barriers that prevent us from moving forward with new ideas.

Improve Information for Parents
Institutions report on hundreds of factors to the U.S. government every year, but the government does nothing with the information. Making this information available to families in a clear and concise manner will help more students make more informed choices about higher education.

Simplify Higher Education Tax Benefits
The existing tax benefits are too complicated, and many eligible families don’t claim them. By simplifying the existing benefits, I can ensure that a greater number of families have a lower tax burden when they are helping to send their children to college.

Simplify Federal Financial Aid
Too many programs and a complicated application process deter many eligible students from seeking student aid. The number of programs also makes it more difficult for financial aid officers to help students navigate the process. Consolidating programs will help simplify the administration of these programs, and help more students have a better understanding of their eligibility for aid.

Improve Research by Eliminating Earmarks
Earmarking is destroying the integrity of federally funded research. Billions of dollars are spent on pork barrel projects every year; significant amounts come from research budgets. Eliminating earmarks would immediately and significantly improve the federal government’s support for university research.

Fix the Student Lending Programs
We have seen significant turmoil in student lending. John McCain has proposed an expansion of the lender-of-last resort capability of the federal student loan system and will demand the highest standard of integrity for participating private lenders. Effective reforms and leveraging the private sector will ensure the necessary funding of higher education aspirations, and create a simpler and more effective program in the process.

ON THE ISSUES: OBAMA'S EDUCATION PLAN (directly from the Obama/Biden Website)

2008-11-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

A World class education
The Problem

No Child Left Behind Left the Money Behind: The goal of the law was the right one, but unfulfilled funding promises, inadequate implementation by the Education Department and shortcomings in the design of the law itself have limited its effectiveness and undercut its support. As a result, the law has failed to provide high-quality teachers in every classroom and failed to adequately support and pay those teachers.

Teacher Retention is a Problem: Thirty percent of new teachers leave within their first five years in the profession.
Soaring College Costs: College costs have grown nearly 40 percent in the past five years. The average graduate leaves college with over $19,000 in debt. And between 2001 and 2010, 2 million academically qualified students will not go to college because they cannot afford it. Finally, our complicated maze of tax credits and applications leaves too many students unaware of financial aid available to them.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan

Early Childhood Education
Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.
Expand Early Head Start and Head Start: Obama and Biden will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both.

Affordable, High-Quality Child Care: Obama and Biden will also provide affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families.

K-12

Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

Support High-Quality Schools and Close Low-Performing Charter Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will provide this expanded charter school funding only to states that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing down chronically underperforming charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will also prioritize supporting states that help the most successful charter schools to expand to serve more students.

Make Math and Science Education a National Priority: Obama and Biden will recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession and will support efforts to help these teachers learn from professionals in the field. They will also work to ensure that all children have access to a strong science curriculum at all grade levels.

Address the Dropout Crisis: Obama and Biden will address the dropout crisis by passing his legislation to provide funding to school districts to invest in intervention strategies in middle school - strategies such as personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Obama and Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children.

Support College Outreach Programs: Obama and Biden support outreach programs like GEAR UP, TRIO and Upward Bound to encourage more young people from low-income families to consider and prepare for college.

Support College Credit Initiatives: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a national "Make College A Reality" initiative that has a bold goal to increase students taking AP or college-level classes nationwide 50 percent by 2016, and will build on Obama's bipartisan proposal in the U.S. Senate to provide grants for students seeking college level credit at community colleges if their school does not provide those resources.

Support English Language Learners: Obama and Biden support transitional bilingual education and will help Limited English Proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school.
Recruit, Prepare, Retain, and Reward America's Teachers

Recruit Teachers: Obama and Biden will create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location.

Prepare Teachers: Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively. Obama and Biden will also create Teacher Residency Programs that will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.

Retain Teachers: To support our teachers, the Obama-Biden plan will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced teachers with new recruits. They will also provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.

Reward Teachers: Obama and Biden will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. Districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as a mentor to new teachers with a salary increase. Districts can reward teachers who work in underserved places like rural areas and inner cities. And if teachers consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well.

Higher Education

Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit: Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.

Simplify the Application Process for Financial Aid: Obama and Biden will streamline the financial aid process by eliminating the current federal financial aid application and enabling families to apply simply by checking a box on their tax form, authorizing their tax information to be used, and eliminating the need for a separate application.
Barack Obama's Record

Record of Advocacy: Obama has been a leader on educational issues throughout his career. In the Illinois State Senate, Obama was a leader on early childhood education, helping create the state's Early Learning Council. In the U.S. Senate, Obama has been a leader in working to make college more affordable. His very first bill sought to increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,100. As a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, Obama helped pass legislation to achieve that goal in the recent improvements to the Higher Education Act. Obama has also introduced legislation to create Teacher Residency Programs and to increase federal support for summer learning opportunities.

THE TOP THREE: EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES OVER THE NEXT EIGHT YEARS

2008-11-02T13:36:00.001-08:00

What an election season this has been. We are faced with major challenges over the next eight years. Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama have made their closing arguments for why they each should be elected. Neither, I believe, has made the case for educational policies that would be any different than George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

The last two terms of the Bush administrations have been a boon to the textbook and testing companies by promoting an ill-conceived and ill-executed educational policy--No Child Left Behind--which underscores the inherent problems with most of the Bush era policies, foreign and domestic.

The Clinton years were not any more successful in helping school-aged children. Indeed, the school accountability movement got its legs under Bill Clinton's administration. School Choice found voice, teacher and student "competencies" became a mantra, and religious acceptance in schools became issues from 1993 to 2000. Teachers, students, and schools have all suffered under the yoke of failed policies, and no matter who wins on Tuesday, we may be in for more years of grandstanding.

Perhaps George W. Bush needs to be pilloried the most for this failure (let's all pile on) because he ran on a platform of being the "Education Candidate" in the 2000 election. Yet, with 9/11, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the only education the nation received was in war and failed policies, both foreign and domestic. We are in sad, sad shape as a country because of failed ideology, Realpolitik. We are desperate for leadership and vision rather than just rhetoric and cult of personality.

So, what should our top three educational initiatives be in the next eight years with regard to education?

1.) REPEAL NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: Great idea in theory but lousy execution. This law should be buried and schools should be given a pass on what it portends and pretends to be. No equity and justice, no peace.

2.) SCHOOLS AS CENTERS OF STRENGTH: Using K-12 schools as educational Centers of Strength (see the Harwood Institute for descriptions here). Schools should be at the center of our collective thoughts. Current and future leaders who understand the processes of their community should be given more weight during these next four years. It's important to have our working and successful schools become models to follow rather than being broad-brushed and dismissed as not working. Most schools work and work well.

3.) INCREASE SPENDING FOR EDUCATION: More schools need to be created, more teachers must be inducted into the profession, and higher rates of pay should be given for effective teachers and administrators (where testing is only part of what gets rewarded). We should also look at ways of creating consistent professional development opportunities for teachers and other school personnel so that we look at school work as closely as scientific exploration.

Gallup Poll: Candidate Support by Education

2008-11-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

The election is coming down to he wire. Let's take a look at a Gallup Poll that tracks the support of Obama and McCain by education level.

Candidate Support by Education

Election Trends by Group

Key Indicators

May Day

2008-04-29T22:44:00.000-07:00

May signals the last full month in most schools. In many public schools across America, teachers finally have the opportunity to take their students out of the schoolhouse to attend the field trips that they have been saving up for for months.

Before the September 11th, I took a group of high school sophomores to ride public transit to the airport where we hung out at the gate as people waited for their loved ones to arrive. Remember that. The students wrote wonderful pieces about loss, waiting, and longing. High school style.

What about you? What are your favorite May field trips? Let me know...

Remembrance: What Can I Do To Make This Happen?

2008-04-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

On the 40th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death, a friend sent this video to me from the Barack Obama for President website. I know that we have a moral obligation to do better and be better as a people and a nation. Hope is not something that one person possesses. It is shared. In fact, hope is no good unless it is shared. Hope without vision is just a dream.

So, how can a dream become reality.

I would much rather be a nation where the people are filled with hope rather than cynicism. I would much rather be nation that puts more emphasis on the next generation rather than on our current one. Finally, I would much rather be a a nation of believers rather than "can't sayers" or "haters," which begs the question...

What can I do to make this happen?

To Test or Not To Test? Is That The Question?

2008-03-10T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'll occasionally put up videos that I don't entirely agree with to spark debate.

Test scores do not measure how successful a child or a nation will be. That's just a simple fact. So, what do test scores measure? Should we put the kind of emphasis on the them that we have done over the last few years?

Many education reformers argue vehemently against using test scores as a way to measure what kids know and what schools (and teachers) do. What should we measure? The nations is far too big to leave it all up to chance. Right? Is there a better way to see if we are getting our taxpayers' moneys worth? So many questions, so little time as we hear the tick, tick, ticking of our own time bomb--about to/go/off.

What do you think?

The Audacity of Hopelessness By FRANK RICH

2008-02-26T20:26:00.000-08:00

(reprinted from the New York Times February 24, 2008)

WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.

It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.

That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.

In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.

Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn’t won in “any of the significant states” outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the “insult 40 states” strategy.

The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.

If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.

The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity.

There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence.

In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.

What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Hillary on the High Road? By BOB HERBERT

2008-02-23T21:39:00.001-08:00

(reprinted from the New York Times February 23, 2008)

A referee would stop the fight. Hillary Clinton is exhausted, and her supporters are becoming increasingly demoralized. The candidate who tried to present herself as inevitable has been out-maneuvered nearly every step of the way by a prodigy with a warm and brilliant smile who still seems as energetic as an athlete doing calisthenics before a big game.

Texas and Ohio and several other states still have to vote. But there was a wistful quality and a strong hint of resignation in Senator Clinton’s voice at the end of the debate Thursday night when, after saying she was “honored to be here with Barack Obama,” she added:

“Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. We have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people.”

Mrs. Clinton said later that she had not become pessimistic about her chances to win the democratic presidential nomination. But her words were an unmistakable echo of John Edwards’s remarks last month when he ended his campaign in New Orleans.

Just a few months ago, the prevailing wisdom in the world of punditry was that the Obama campaign was in trouble. Senator Clinton was enjoying a huge advantage in fund-raising and big leads in national polls.

A pair of headlines placed side by side on the front page of The New York Observer in October said: “Aaaaugh-bama!” and “Clinton Campaign Gets in Gloat Mode with $27 Million.”

Senator Obama, according to the conventional wisdom, was too soft. His call for a new kind of politics was naïve. And quietly, behind the scenes, the widespread view was that he couldn’t get enough white votes to secure the nomination.

No one outside the Obama campaign was paying much attention to the disaster for the Clintons that was already taking shape in Iowa.

There’s nothing like the terra firma of hindsight. Senator Obama, it turned out, was a far more gifted candidate and strategist than many of us gave him credit for. And Senator Clinton, for all of her command of the issues, was mediocre, at best, on the stump. He was the inspirational leader. She remained the wonk.

And then there was Bill. It was an article of faith that Senator Clinton’s campaign had a built-in advantage: her husband was the smartest Democrat of them all. But when you think about it, Bill Clinton was never much of a benefactor for others in his party.

When he took office in January 1993, Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Less than two years into his presidency, the Republicans swept to majorities in both houses, putting Newt Gingrich in line to become speaker. A New York Times article at the time described Democrats in the House as “disoriented.”

When Mr. Clinton left office in 2001, the Republicans were still in control of Congress, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment had opened the door to the era of George W. Bush.

The former president’s less-than-magic touch in Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign contributed to her devastating defeat in the South Carolina primary. He’s been kept more or less under control since then.

You can analyze the Clinton campaign every which way from sundown. But I suspect that the senator’s biggest hurdle from the beginning was the unforgiving nature of time. The tides of history change. Some of Barack Obama’s young and most fervent supporters were just three or four years old when Bill and Hillary Clinton were joined by Al and Tipper Gore for a remarkably successful bus tour through eight states to kick off their campaign against George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle in 1992.

The Clintons and the Gores seemed the embodiment of youthful promise, of change, and that turned the country on. Their campaign theme song was Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” with the crucial lyric, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

Barack Obama, who is 46, the same age that Bill Clinton was on that bus tour, has managed in his campaign to make the Clintons seem the embodiment of yesterday. “Something better awaits us,” he told a cheering crowd after his victory in Iowa, “if we have the courage to reach for it.”

Senator Clinton’s options are not officially closed. But to have any chance at all, she would need a sudden startling string of prodigious victories against a candidate who is better-financed and riding a tremendous wave of momentum.

At the debate on Thursday night, Senator Clinton, who is 60, passed on a number of opportunities to harshly criticize Senator Obama. She refused to say that he was not ready to serve as the nation’s commander in chief. And she suggested that she does not intend to pursue a ruinous fight for superdelegates at the Democratic convention.

She seemed like someone unwilling to sacrifice her dignity or the interests of her party in an attempt to stave off a likely defeat.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Does Cheating Really Matter?: Clinton Campaign Charges Obama with Plagiarism

2008-02-18T21:36:00.000-08:00

For most English teachers, like me, plagiarism is tantamount to kidnapping, which is the latinate root that it comes from. Did Barack Obama plagiarize Massachusetts's Governor Deval Patrick's campaign speech?

See for yourself...

YES!

Is it "not that big a deal"? At least that is what Barack is claiming. After all Patrick and Obama are good friends. After all, what's a few lines lifted from your friend's speech without attribution.

It's a HUGE deal. Not just for anal English teachers like me but for all Americans. It's not just about kidnapping other people's words, but it's about being perfect and humble and not believing your own press, or the cult of personality that is building around your campaign. What Black people know is if you want to win in the dominant culture, you have to play an almost flawless game. It's not the pursuit but the attainment of perfection. It's being twice as good. The rules are different. Sad, but true.

This could be a very big deal in the weeks and months to come, especially as we get closer to the Democratic Convention finish line.

Ultimately, it's about character. Damon Bruce is a sports talk radio host here in the Bay Area. He has a saying at the end of his show that is apropos to this campaign season, which is "sports don't teach character, it reveals it." So, does politics.

ORAMA 08' Youth Make Their Case for Sticking with Mitt

2008-02-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Even though he is gone, Mitt Romney is not forgotten. This falls into the category of: "You won't have Mitt Romney to kick around anymore."

BALM IN GILEAD: I VOTED FOR BARACK!

2008-02-06T10:22:00.000-08:00

After searching my conscious and reviewing a great deal about what others have written about the junior senator from Illinois, I voted for Barack Obama in the Super Tuesday election yesterday.

I read Gary Kamiya's wonderful article in Salon.com, "Biracial, But Not Like Me," which solidified some of what I was thinking, but it became clear to me that the time has come to heal the wounds that this nation still holds pre- and post-Civil War. Kamiya, a Presidio Hill School parent, asserts:

But I wasn't going to vote for Obama just because he was black, or because he had the gift of appealing to people across the spectrum. I agreed with his staunchly liberal positions on the issues (if I hadn't, I never would have considered voting for him), but there was a fuzziness about some of them that was a little troubling to me. He seemed stronger on the high intellectual and spiritual themes than on the nuts and bolts of governance. And I had some ambivalent feelings about his political leitmotif, his call for national reconciliation. God knows we need it. But after the devastation wrought by the Bush presidency, it would take a truly extraordinary politician, and person, to bring the country together. Was he that person?

To try to find out, I went out and got Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." And after reading it, I've made up my mind: I'm voting for him.

I VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA FOR ESSENTIALLY THREE REASONS:

1.) Obama has not wavered from his theme of unity and hope for the country--from his electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 to his acceptance speech on Super Tuesday last night. Although these ideals are Lincoln-esque at best, what Obama has wrought, like so many of us crave, is a "united" United States of America. A country that we badly need right now. In other words, we can't give up on our Unionist quest to be one nation, under God, indivisible (truly undivided) or we will fail. We haven't had that sort of energy about what we are and who we are as a country for over 150 years: Union and undivided. The work that we began pre-slavary is the work that needs to continue into an Obama first term in office.

2.) Unlike other biracial folk (I am not biracial), Barack Obama's adoption of being an African American male, not like he could pass (for white), indicates his awareness of the kind of strength and fragility that Black men in this country possess. He assumes this position in solidarity with other Black men rather than rejecting the identity that comes with being male and Black in this country--skimming the margins or accepting the half-privileges of faux-whiteness. (Note: I do not believe that someone like myself born in this epoch as a male "Negro" --at least that's what my birth certificate said back in 1962--could strike the same kinds of chords and themes in the electorate that resonate with so many people.) He's truly doing some avatar kind of work for the planet.

3.) Finally, I voted for Barack because he does inspire people. He has inspired me, even as I think Hillary may be a more solid leader. She just does not inspire confidence that we all together, as a nation, will be greater than we are alone. Barack does. Part of leadership is to inspire, motivate, tell it like it is, and use moral suasion when all else fails. FDR did it, Kennedy did it, Reagan did it, and Bill Clinton does it (sometimes and when he is not shooting himself in the foot, or 'nads--as the case may be).

Does Hillary Clinton inspire this kind of worship?

Hell, Naw!

GOING DEEP: MCCAIN ON EDUCATION PART II

2008-02-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

From many of the polls and pundits, it looks like Senator John McCain has the fast track to becoming the Republican nominee for President of the United States. Here is where the Senator from Arizona stands on educational issues, according to On the Issues:

Teaching creationism should be decided by school districts

Q: Do you believe creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools?
No, I believe that's up to the school districts. But I think that every American should be exposed to all theories. There's no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and I believe that God loves us. But I also believe that all of our children in school can be taught different views on different issues. I leave the curricula up to the school boards.
Source: 2007 GOP debate at Saint Anselm College Jun 3, 2007
Believes in evolution, but sees the hand of God in nature

Q: Do you believe in evolution?
McCAIN: Yes.
Q: I'm curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree, believe in evolution?
[TANCREDO, HUCKABEE, and BROWNBACK raise their hands, indicating that they do not believe in evolution].
McCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.
Source: 2007 GOP primary debate, at Reagan library, hosted by MSNBC May 3, 2007
Against nationally imposed standards & funding strings

Q: Should federal money be linked to how well students perform on national or statewide tests? A: I do not favor nationally imposed standards or federal funding strings. State and local education agencies should be responsible for developing & enforcing high academic standards. I don�t believe we should penalize students by taking away limited education dollars according to federal dictates. Such strings would invariably require states to spend even more money on federally imposed bureaucratic requirements-money that would be better spent in the classroom. I propose sending education funding directly to classrooms rather than having it siphoned off by federal and state bureaucracies. If this funding flows to classrooms that continue to fail, the state should have the authority to allow students to use that funding directly for programs that best meet their academic needs. Empowering parents and students through educational choice and competition is the surest path to academic excellence.
Source: Associated Press Feb 23, 2000
Teach virtues in all schools

I walked into a charter school classroom in Phoenix. On the desk was a children's book of virtues. The teacher was teaching the virtue of the month, which happened to be the importance of telling the truth. We need to inject that in all of our charter schools and in schools all over America. I would provide the much needed tax breaks that are necessary to encourage them. I would certainly make them part of any voucher program, a test voucher program which I would not take out of education funds.
Source: Phoenix Arizona GOP Debate Dec 7, 1999
Enlist retirees for tutoring

McCain wants to create a pool of military veterans, retirees and others who would tutor students in math, science and English. "You really need to have a lot more people helping kids get their education, McCain said. Tutors can help reinforce the message that education is important and give students the support they need to succeed, McCain said. If tutors aren't available in some neighborhoods, the Internet may be able to link them with students, he said.
Source: Associated Press Nov 22, 1999
Good teachers should earn more than bad lawyers

Q: How can we attract the best and the brightest teachers, given the current salaries? A: I don't see why a good teacher should be paid less money than a bad senator. It's important that we have merit pay for teachers, that we have teacher testing, that we do everything we can to motivate young men and women to enter this profession. There's a whole generation that's retiring. It is unconscionable that the average salary of a lawyer is $79,000 a year and the average salary of a teacher is $39,000 a year
Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College Oct 29, 1999
Decisions on teaching evolution should be made locally

On teaching evolution in schools, McCain says the decision should be made at the local level.
Source: Bruce Morton, CNN Aug 27, 1999
Help unqualified teachers find other lines of work

McCain feels that each and every child in every classroom deserves a teacher who is qualified and enthusiastic about teaching. "Some people just aren't meant to be teachers, and we should help them find another line of work. Because if teachers can't teach, our kids can't learn."
Source: McCain for President web Site Jul 2, 1999
Supports tax-free savings accounts for education expenses

McCain co-sponsored the Education A-Plus bill in 1997 (which Clinton vetoed) and again in 1999, to allow parents to open tax-free savings accounts for their children's educational expenses - including tutoring, computers, and tuition.
Source: McCain for President web Site Jul 2, 1999
Supports "Reading Excellence"; and rewarding good schools

McCain's voting record on education:
1998: Supported the Reading Excellence Act, to combat illiteracy, promote adult education, and strengthen teacher preparation.
1989: Co-sponsored the Educational Excellence Act , to recognize and reward schools, teachers, and students for their outstanding achievements; enhance parental choice; and encourage the study of science, mathematics, and engineering.
Source: McCain for President web Site Jul 2, 1999
Supports at-risk programs; homeless ed.; anti-drop-out ed.

McCain's voting record on at-risk education:
1998: Co-sponsored the Child Nutrition Act, to create enrichment programs for low-income and at-risk children.
1991: Funded educating homeless adults and family literacy programs.
1990: Supported Dropout Prevention Programs legislation, and secured funding for Project Prime to help reduce the dropout rate for minority students.
1998: Supported amendment focusing on the unique dropout problems facing Hispanic students.
Source: McCain for President web Site Jul 2, 1999
Internet access, with filters, at every school & library

McCain seeks high-speed Internet access for every school, but suggested requiring filtering software for all public school and library computers as a way to keep children from potentially harmful Internet sites.
Source: Associated Press Jun 14, 1999
Merit pay & competency testing for teachers

Also promoted merit-based pay for teachers, calling higher teacher salaries an "urgent necessity." But he added that teachers should be tested for competence periodically and fired if they don't meet certain standards.
Source: Associated Press Jun 14, 1999
Ed-ACT Bill: college plans; language proficiency

[McCain's proposed Senate bill], Educating America's Children for Tomorrow (Ed-ACT), would:
Return control of our children's education to parents, teachers, and local communities
Help schools hire and retain quality teachers
Provide more opportunities for disadvantaged children
Increase parents' options to save for their children's higher education
Encourage proficiency in English plus other languages in order to increase our competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Source: www.mccain2000.com/ "Position Papers" 5/24/99 May 24, 1999
John McCain on School Choice

We need more choice and competition in education

schools, some have failed, but they're competing with the public schools, and the level of education is increasing. In New York City today, there are some remarkable things happening under Mayor Bloomberg, who has done marvelous work with an educational system that was clearly broken. Those can be examples of a way to improve education, provide choice and competition, and give every family the same choice I and my family had, and that is to send our child to the school of our choice.
Source: 2007 Des Moines Register Republican Debate Dec 12, 2007
Charters, homeschooling, & vouchers are key to success

Q: How can we improve the quality of public schools in this country?
A: Choice and competition is the key to success in education in America. That means charter schools, that means home schooling, it means vouchers, it means rewarding good teachers and finding bad teachers another line of work. It means rewarding good performing schools, and it really means in some cases putting bad performing schools out of business. I want every American parent to have a choice, a choice as to how they want their child educated, and I guarantee you the competition will dramatically increase the level of education in America. And I applaud our former Governor [Jeb] Bush for the great job he's done on education in Florida and America.
Source: 2007 Republican primary debate on Univision Dec 9, 2007
Local charters are the best Arizona schools

Q: To combat the teachers unions you deplore, should we have federal standardized tests?
A: You would agree with that if you believed that the power of the teachers unions cannot be broken. The teachers unions in my state fought tooth & nail against charter schools. Yet we prevailed and the best schools in my state happen to be charter schools. I believe that it's a serious mistake to allow some bureaucrat in Washington to decide about the standards to be set by the people of the state of Arizona.
Source: GOP debate in Los Angeles Mar 2, 2000
Let states decide if they link vouchers to student testing

McCain supports a program of federally financed vouchers, but states would decide individually whether to use standardized tests to make high-stakes decisions about who could get the vouchers.
McCain's proposal would create the most ambitious voucher experiment yet, spending $5.5 billion over three years to present one million students with vouchers of up to $2,000 annually.
To counter the argument that vouchers siphon money from public schools when students leave, McCain would create a new source of financing: the tax money now spent as corporate subsidies.
The senator has yet to define how the vouchers would be awarded, but he has said the poorest children in the worst schools would be immediately eligible.
McCain's voucher proposals would probably face stiff opposition in Congress. Not only would the industries targeted by McCain fight to retain their share of subsidies, but the House, as recently as last fall, declined to consider a voucher proposal.
Source: New York Times Feb 29, 2000
Use sugar, oil, and ethanol subsidies to finance vouchers

Q: How much power should the federal government have over state education? A: Choice & competition are the key to the future of education in America. Students in America rank at the bottom in the most disciplines such as physics & chemistry. We should try charter schools all over America. I would take the gas and oil, ethanol and sugar subsidies and take that money and put it into a test voucher program over three years to be used in every poor school district in every state in America.
Source: GOP Debate in Johnston, Iowa Jan 16, 2000
Tax breaks for charters - not from public school funds

I walked into a charter school classroom in Phoenix. On the desk was a children's book of virtues. The teacher was teaching the virtue of the month, which happened to be the importance of telling the truth. We need to inject that in all of our charter schools and in schools all over America. I would provide the much needed tax breaks that are necessary to encourage them. I would certainly make them part of any voucher program, a test voucher program which I would not take out of education funds.
Source: (Cross-ref from Education) Phoenix Arizona GOP Debate Dec 7, 1999
Vouchers & charters will improve our school system

We have to have choice and competition in our schools in order to improve our school system, including charter schools, including a test voucher program that would be paid for with ethanol subsidies and with sugar subsidies. And in order to make that system work, the test voucher program throughout America, we have to have good teachers, and I would argue that merit pay, rewards for good teachers and helping bad teachers find another line of work is the way we must go about it.
Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College Oct 29, 1999
Nationwide test of school vouchers

Our children deserve the best education we can provide to them, whether that learning takes place in a public, private or parochial school. It's time to give middle and lower income parents the same right wealthier families have -- to send their child to the school that best meets their needs. It's time to conduct a nationwide test of school vouchers. It's time to democratize education.
Source: Candidacy Declaration Speech, Nashua NH Sep 27, 1999
$5B program for 3-year test of school vouchers

McCain proposed a school voucher program to offer education opportunities for disadvantaged children, paid for by eliminating $5.4 billion worth of subsidies for ethanol, sugar, gas and oil. Under McCain's three-year test program, disadvantaged children would receive vouchers worth $2,000 a year. The money would be used to offset the costs of attending any school chosen by the student or parents. "We shouldn't have special interest giveaways at the expense of our neediest children," McCain said.
Source: Mike Glover, Associated Press Jul 29, 1999
Tax-funded vouchers for private schools or charter schools

McCain's platform calls for a school voucher program that would give tax money to middle- and lower-income families to send their children to private schools. And he praised charter schools - publicly funded schools that often serve a specialized curriculum and operate free from many government mandates.
Source: Associated Press Jun 14, 1999
Shift policy-making from bureaucrats to parents

McCain knows we can save public education if we "have the courage to do more than placate the defenders of the status quo." McCain [supports] more money reaching our classrooms, increased financial flexibility for parents, greater choices for families, and well-trained teachers. He [opposes] Washington bureaucrats and public education unions dictating education policies. He believes in letting parents, educators, and local communities make the important decisions about our children's education.
Source: www.mccain2000.com/ "Position Papers" 5/24/99 May 24, 1999
Vouchers needed where teachers fail

McCain believes school vouchers should be available to parents in order that they may place their children in the best learning environment for their particular needs. He feels that each and every child in every classroom deserves a teacher who is qualified and enthusiastic about teaching. "Some people just aren't meant to be teachers, and we should help them find another line of work. Because if teachers can't teach, our kids can't learn."
Source: www.mccain2000.com/ "Position Papers" 5/24/99 May 24, 1999
Vouchers for any schools; more charter schools

McCain supports the following principles concerning school choice:
Allow parents to use vouchers to send their children to any participating school: public, private or religious
Allow parents to use tax-free savings accounts to send their children to any participating school: public, private or religious
Support creation of more charter schools where teachers and professionals receive authorization and funding to establish new schools
Source: Project Vote Smart, 1998, www.vote-smart.org Jul 2, 1998
John McCain on Voting Record

Unrestricted block grants--let states decide spending

McCain would be reluctant to tie federal dollars to a school's academic standing. But he seems intent on pleasing conservatives by extracting the federal government from most school-level spending decisions. McCain has said he would present most federal education money to states in unrestricted block grants -- he would include an additional $500 million earmarked broadly for teachers' merit pay -- and leave it to the states and districts to spend as they see fit.
Source: New York Times Feb 29, 2000
Voted NO on $52M for "21st century community learning centers".

To increase appropriations for after-school programs through 21st century community learning centers. Voting YES would increase funding by $51.9 million for after school programs run by the 21st century community learning centers and would decrease funding by $51.9 million for salaries and expenses in the Department of Labor.
Reference: Amendment to Agencies Appropriations Act; Bill S Amdt 2287 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-279 on Oct 27, 2005
Voted NO on $5B for grants to local educational agencies.

To provide an additional $5 billion for title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Voting YES would provide:
$2.5 billion for targeting grants to local educational agencies
$2.5 billion for education finance incentive grants
Reference: Elementary and Secondary Education Amendment; Bill S Amdt 2275 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-269 on Oct 26, 2005
Voted NO on shifting $11B from corporate tax loopholes to education.

Vote to adopt an amendment to the Senate's 2006 Fiscal Year Budget Resolution that would adjust education funding while still reducing the deficit by $5.4 billion. A YES vote would:
Restore education program cuts slated for vocational education, adult education, GEAR UP, and TRIO.
Increase the maximum Pell Grant scholarship to $4,500 immediately.
Increases future math and science teacher student loan forgiveness to $23,000.
Pay for the education funding by closing $10.8 billion in corporate tax loopholes.
Reference: Kennedy amendment relative to education funding; Bill S AMDT 177 to S Con Res 18 ; vote number 2005-68 on Mar 17, 2005
Voted NO on funding smaller classes instead of private tutors.

Vote to authorize a federal program aimed at reducing class size. The plan would assist states and local education agencies in recruiting, hiring and training 100,000 new teachers, with $2.4 billion in fiscal 2002. This amendment would replace an amendment allowing parents with children at under-performing schools to use public funding for private tutors.
Reference: Bill S1 ; vote number 2001-103 on May 15, 2001
Voted NO on funding student testing instead of private tutors.

Vote to pass an amendment that would authorize $200 million to provide grants to help states develop assessment systems that describe student achievement. This amendment would replace an amendment by Jeffords, R-VT, which would allow parents with children at under-performing schools to use public funding for private tutors.
Reference: Bill S1 ; vote number 2001-99 on May 10, 2001
Voted NO on spending $448B of tax cut on education & debt reduction.

Vote to reduce the size of the $1.6 trillion tax cut by $448 billion while increasing education spending by $250 billion and providing an increase of approximately $224 billion for debt reduction over 10 years.
Reference: Bill H Con Res 83 ; vote number 2001-69 on Apr 4, 2001
Voted YES on declaring memorial prayers and religious symbols OK at schools.

Vote to declare that erecting religious symbols and praying on public school campuses as part of a memorial service does not violate the First Amendment to the Constitution, and to provide legal assistance to any government entity defending such a case.
Reference: Bill S.254 ; vote number 1999-121 on May 18, 1999
Voted YES on allowing more flexibility in federal school rules.

This vote was a motion to invoke cloture on a bill aimed at allowing states to waive certain federal rules normally required in order to use federal school aid. [A YES vote implies support of charter schools and vouchers].
Status: Cloture Motion Rejected Y)55; N)39; NV)6
Reference: Motion to Invoke cloture on Jeffords Amdt #31; Bill S. 280 ; vote number 1999-35 on Mar 9, 1999
Voted YES on education savings accounts.

This Conference Report approved tax-sheltered education savings accounts.
Status: Conf Rpt Agreed to Y)59; N)36; NV)5
Reference: H.R. 2646 Conference Report; Bill H.R. 2646 ; vote number 1998-169 on Jun 24, 1998
Voted YES on school vouchers in DC.

This legislation would have amended the DC spending measure, imposing an unconstitutional school voucher program on the District.
Status: Cloture Motion Rejected Y)58; N)41; NV)1
Reference: DC Appropriations Act; Bill S. 1156 ; vote number 1997-260 on Sep 30, 1997
Voted YES on $75M for abstinence education.

Vote to retain a provision of the Budget Act that funds abstinence education to help reduce teenage pregnancy, using $75 million of the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program.
Reference: Bill S 1956 ; vote number 1996-231 on Jul 23, 1996
Voted YES on requiring schools to allow voluntary prayer.

Cut off federal funds to school districts that deny students their right to constitutionally protected voluntary prayer.
Reference: Bill S.1513 ; vote number 1994-236 on Jul 27, 1994
Voted NO on national education standards.

Approval of national education standards.
Status: Bill Passed Y)71; N)25; NV)4
Reference: Goals 2000: Educate America Act; Bill H.R. 1804 ; vote number 1994-34 on Feb 8, 1994
Focus educational resources to help those with greatest need.

McCain adopted the Republican Main Street Partnership agenda item:
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) helps to fulfill the most basic mission of federal education programs' equal opportunity for all children. To help improve the federal role in education, the Republican Main Street Partnership has identified the following areas that should receive priority during the reauthorization of IDEA:
Focus resources to help those with the greatest need, particularly the disadvantaged and disabled
Target Title I funds, those specifically designed to aid disadvantaged students, to students with the greatest need
Although Title I funds are already allocated according to population and poverty, more funds must be targeted to our neediest schools. We propose funding, for the first time, grants that send at least a portion of Title I funds solely on the basis of need.
Increase the maximum award under Pell Grants to help first-generation & low-income students continue their education
Increase the maximum award for students from low-income families to restore the balance between grants and loans, particularly among those with the greatest need.
Continue efforts to increase federal funding for IDEA to help states and locals offset the cost of providing a "free appropriate public education" for students with special needs
Move federal funding toward its goal of providing up to 40 percent of the average cost of educating a disabled child.
In addition, we need to better evaluate the effectiveness of this program and ensure that federal funds for IDEA "particularly in light of recent funding increases" are being targeted to our students with real learning disabilities.
Finally and most important, any fiscal incentives must be examined to ensure that the overidentification of learning disabled students is prevented, and our efforts must focus on the regular evaluation of the program to ensure that our special needs children are truly being provided a "free appropriate public education."
Source: 2001 GOP Main Street Partnership Action Agenda for Education 01-RMSP2 on Jul 2, 2001
Require state standards, regular assessments, and sanctions.

McCain adopted the Republican Main Street Partnership agenda item:
To help improve the federal role in education, the Republican Main Street Partnership has identified the following areas that should receive priority:
Require states to implement high standards of achievement in core subject areas, such as reading, math, writing, and science, for all students.
Nearly all states have established high standards for education content in reading, writing and math. To continue to be eligible for Title I funds, we must ensure that states meet these standards.
Require states to demonstrate success in raising the performance of all students -- from those who score below basic to those who are already proficient -- and narrowing the gap between disadvantaged students and their more advantaged peers.
Without regular assessments, we cannot determine how well students are achieving with respect to each state's performance goals. Although states are required to have assessments aligned with their content and performance standards by the 2000-2001 school year, it now seems that no state will be approved in time. To continue to be eligible for Title I funds, states must continue to work toward this goal and waivers must be provided only for those who are making substantial progress toward the implementation of their aligned assessments.
Establish a meaningful system of rewards for schools that significantly increase student achievement and sanctions for those that fail.
Schools that consistently fail to make progress toward their state's own performance goals, after assistance and opportunity to improve, must be sanctioned with corrective actions ranging from the reconstitution of the school staff to the authorization of students to transfer to another public school. Schools that meet or exceed their performance goals should receive monetary awards through a new grant program designed to reward achievement.
Source: 2001 GOP Main Street Partnership Action Agenda for Education 01-RMSP3 on Jul 2, 2001
Support Ed-Flex: more flexibility if more accountable.

McCain adopted the Republican Main Street Partnership agenda item:
To help improve the federal role in education, the Republican Main Street Partnership has identified the following areas that should receive priority:
Provide flexibility in exchange for increased accountability.
Encourage more states to take advantaged of the Education-Flexibility waiver to better align federal programs with state and local priorities.
Currently, 15 states have Ed-Flex authority and, according to GAO reports, the waiver authority promotes a climate that encourages state and local educators to explore new approaches to education. Ultimately, the states must make the decision to apply for the waiver, but education leaders must encourage states and schools to be innovative in their approach to education improvement.
Enact new legislation to give states the option to combine education programs and funding in exchange for demonstrated improvements in student achievement at all levels
In exchange for new flexibility, a participating state would have to show how it would combine and use funds to advance education priorities, improve student achievement and narrow the learning gap. If, after three years, the state has failed to meet its own requirements, the flexibility authority would be terminated and administrative funds would be withheld.
Source: 2001 GOP Main Street Partnership Action Agenda for Education 01-RMSP4 on Jul 2, 2001
Rated 45% by the NEA, indicating a mixed record on public education.

McCain scores 45% by the NEA on public education issues
The National Education Association has a long, proud history as the nation's leading organization committed to advancing the cause of public education. Founded in 1857 "to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States," the NEA has remained constant in its commitment to its original mission as evidenced by the current mission statement:
To fulfill the promise of a democratic society, the National Education Association shall promote the cause of quality public education and advance the profession of education; expand the rights and further the interest of educational employees; and advocate human, civil, and economic rights for all.
In pursuing its mission, the NEA has determined that it will focus the energy and resources of its 2.7 million members toward the "promotion of public confidence in public education." The ratings are based on the votes the organization considered most important; the numbers reflect the percentage of time the representative voted the organization's preferred position.
Source: NEA website 03n-NEA on Dec 31, 2003

GOING DEEP: CLINTON ON EDUCATION PART II

2008-02-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

Here's is a much deeper "drill down" on where Senator Clinton stands on education from the website On the Issues:

Get more teachers into hard-to-serve areas

I support school-based merit pay. We need to get more teachers to go into hard-to-serve areas. We've got to get them into underserved urban areas, underserved rural areas. The school is a team, and it's important that we reward that collaboration. A child who moves from kindergarten to sixth grade in the same school, every one of those teachers is going to affect that child. You need to weed out the teachers not doing a good job. That's the bottom line. They should not be teaching our children.
Source: 2007 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Nevada Nov 15, 2007
We have not yet reached consensus on education reform

Q: Has the debate so far in this campaign paid enough attention to education?
A: I don't think it has. In the debates that we've had, education is an afterthought. But when I go out and campaign all over the country, it's really on the minds of people. And I've outlined a very vigorous education agenda starting with universal prekindergarten, changing No Child Left Behind, making college affordable, finding programs for training and apprenticeship for kids who don't go to college.
Q: Why has education not come along as fast as other societal changes?
A: I think it's a combination of a lot of factors. Everybody is an expert on education because we all went to school. And therefore, local control means that there are millions upon millions of opinions in America about what we should do. I don't think we have reached a consensus that reflects the reality today. Our public school system worked so well for America for so long. We've got to make sure it works as well for our future.
Source: Huffington Post Mash-Up: 2007 Democratic on-line debate Sep 13, 2007
Universal pre-kindergarten; and make family the best school

[We should be] particularly focusing on kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, I think you have to start with preschool, even before pre-kindergarten. I've advocated universal pre-kindergarten. I think you have to start even earlier to try to help the family be the best school and teaching opportunity for their own children.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on "This Week" Aug 19, 2007
Working families cannot participate in school between 9 & 3

I want a partnership among families and students, schools and teachers and our government. Our families have to be their child's first school & every parent has to understand they are their child's first teacher. And we need to help parents do that job. That's why I started Early Head Start. That's why I expanded Head Start when I was first lady. That's why I want to have universal free kindergarten for every single four-year-old, because if we give that opportunity, they will stay in school longer & they will do better.
We have to work more closely with our schools to make them reflect more the way people live today. Working families cannot get there between nine and three. They have to be given a chance to participate with their children in their education.
And we have to respect and honor our teachers and that does require paying them what they deserve. And we have to make college affordable again so that every single middle class and working family can send their children.
Source: 2007 NAACP Presidential Primary Forum Jul 12, 2007
It takes a village; American village has failed our children

I really believe that it takes a village to raise a child--and the American village has failed our children.
I have fought for more than 35 years for early childhood education, for more mentoring, for more parent education programs, to get our children off to a good start. I have fought to make sure that schools were fair to all children. That's the work I did in Arkansas, to try to raise the standards particularly for the poorest of our children, and most especially for minority children. And certainly in the White House years, and now in the Senate, I've continued that effort because I don't think there is a more important issue.
But I also believe we cannot separate the education part from the economic part. There is still discrimination in the workplace. There are still people who are turned down and turned away who have qualifications and skills that should make them employable. So this is a broader issue that we have to address.
Source: 2007 Democratic Primary Debate at Howard University Jun 28, 2007
Establish right to education from pre-school thru college

Let's recommit ourselves to the idea that every young person in America has the right to a high-quality education, from pre-school all the way through college. I have proposed universal pre-kindergarten for every 4-year-old. If we provide that, the evidence is overwhelming, children will stay in school longer, they will do better, and they'll stay out of trouble. Because you know what? There are states in our country who actually plan how many prison beds they will need by looking at third grade reading scores. They look at the failure rates and they extrapolate how many prison spots they're going to need in 10 to 15 years. Well, I think it is time that we had a real debate about that. And I, for one, would much rather pay for pre-kindergarten than for more prison beds. Let's keep kids on the right track and out of the prison system.
Source: Take Back America 2007 Conference Jun 20, 2007
Early education affects things from IQ to lifelong earnings

New research in childhood development establishes that a child's environment affects everything from IW to future behavior patterns. These studies confirm the importance of breast-feeding infants, of setting aside time for family meals, and of empowering parents to shield their children from predatory marketing and the violent and sexually explicit media that contribute to aggressive behavior, early sexual experimentation, obesity, and depression. The case for quality early childhood education and programs like Head Start is stronger than ever, and we should expand them. According to a study conducted by Federal Reserve economist Rob Grunewald and conducted by Nobel laureate economist James Heckman, high-quality preschool programs are among the most cost-effective public investments we make, lowering dependency and raising lifetime earnings.
Source: 2006 intro to It Takes A Village, by H. Clinton, p. xviii Dec 12, 2006
2001: Proposed and passed National Teacher Corps

The standards and accountability movement has grown dramatically over the last decade. The No Child Left Behind Act became law, and it has laid bare the problems in many of our poorest, worst-performing schools. We can no longer say that we didn't know that these schools were failing some of our most vulnerable kids. To improve the quality of education, we need to improve instruction in the classroom. Nationwide, two million teachers will leave teaching over the next decade. NYC already loses 30% more math teachers and 22% more science teachers than it certifies every year. IN 2001, I proposed the National Teacher Corps, which brings teachers into the classroom, and a new initiative that would provide more schools with strong principals. Both became law.
Source: 2006 intro to It Takes A Village, by H. Clinton, p.304-305 Dec 12, 2006
Teacher testing only for new teachers

LAZIO: Mrs. Clinton said that she was for teacher testing. Well, but only for new teachers. I�m for teacher competency examinations for teachers whether they�re new teachers, but more importantly teachers that have been in the system for some time. I don�t understand why you would not want to have examinations for teachers that were already in the system that are perhaps failing our children.
Q: Is it true what he says - that you�re for testing new teachers but not teachers who are already in the system?
CLINTON: That�s right. And that�s what the New York law is. You know, I agree that we should be testing new teachers. I believe that we ought to have pay for performance where we evaluate teachers. I think we ought to streamline the due process standards so that teachers that don�t measure up would no longer be in the classroom.
Source: (X-ref Lazio) NY Senate debate on NBC Oct 28, 2000
Testing only new teachers respects professionalism

LAZIO [to Clinton]: Why you would say to a new teacher that just came out of school and has learned the most current up-to-date methodology for teaching-why you would say teacher testing is OK for them but it�s not OK for somebody that�s been out there and teaching for 15 years and may have lost touch with their ability to use the latest techniques. And I think it�s because in the end I�m not trapped by the status quo. I�m not trapped by the teachers� unions, which I think Mrs. Clinton is.
Q: Are you trapped by the teachers unions?
CLINTON: No. In fact I�m very much in line with what I think will work and what experts in the field think. You know, I�m a lawyer. I had to take a bar exam. Mr. Lazio�s a lawyer. He took a bar exam and he wasn�t tested every five years. I think teachers are professionals and should be treated as professionals. That�s why I believe that we should test teachers in the beginning to make sure that when they got their teaching degree, that they�re qualified.
Source: (X-ref Lazio) NY Senate debate on NBC Oct 28, 2000
Hold kids to high standards, starting at home

First and foremost, we have to expect every single child to succeed and we have to hold every one of them to high academic standards. There should be no exceptions, no excuses, to our solemn commitment that every child can learn; every child deserves to be challenged, to have their imaginations sparked. That is not just the task in our schools; it has to start in our homes with parents and family members who value education.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Teachers need more peer consulting & more recognition

1 out of 3 new teachers leaves the first year, and in some urban areas it�s 1 out of 2. We�ve got to make sure that our newly minted teachers teach in fields that they are prepared in; and that we not give the toughest assignments to such young teachers. We also have to provide quality, ongoing professional development. And teachers need the time to prepare their courses, consult with their peers about the strategies that work, and be recognized & rewarded for your knowledge and your skills.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Social promotion cheats our children

[We should] call for an end to social promotion. We really do cheat our children if we continue to promote them to the next grade if they don�t have the necessary skills and knowledge to do the work required. We do them a terrible disservice if we set the bar of achievement higher and then we don�t provide the help and resources needed to enable them to catch up. We�ve got to do more to give every child the chance to reach the pride of accomplishment.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
More after-school; smaller classes

We need extended learning time. We need after-school and summer programs. We need smaller classroom sizes. Reducing class size is one of the most critical investments we can make, not only in our children�s future, but in our teachers� ability to succeed. Too many teachers have to spend more time keeping order, dealing with personal problems, trying to understand what one child out of 30 or 35 needs, than maintaining high academic standards for the entire classroom.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Read to young kids 20-30 minutes daily

The early years of development are critical to successful learning later on. A parent is a child�s first teacher. If family members would read to their children just 20 or 30 minutes a day, it would literally revolutionize American education. And stand with me in pushing for universal access to quality, affordable preschool programs for every child. And that includes Head Start, home visitations, high quality child care, early Head Start-whatever it takes to be well-prepared for school.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Entire school staff should focus on school safety

Too many children bring guns to school, too many children believe that violence & aggression is the way to solve problems. Teachers & principals need help. Everyone who works in a school-from the custodians, or the counselors, or the teacher�s aids- everyone needs help in knowing how to target those children who need extra help & make sure they get it; to diffuse difficult situations; to provide cooling off periods; and to remove from schools those students who are disrupting the learning of others.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Metal detectors at school are not much of an intrusion

Q: How do you draw the line between bringing in security and students feeling violated? A: The metal detector is much less intrusive than having random searches. I think people feel that after a while that metal detectors didn�t become much of an intrusion-it�s like getting on an airplane. But that�s not the real problem. We have to protect kids, but we�ve got to create a climate in which kids feel free to seek out help, kids feel that they�ve got support if they�ve got problems.
Source: ABC�s �Good Morning America� Jun 4, 1999
Arts education is needed in our schools

Art education is needed in our schools. The University of California at Irvine�s ground-breaking research demonstrates that instruction in the arts, and particularly instrumental music, enables a child to enhance their reasoning, their spatial understanding, and their analytical abilities. This is why supporting arts education is not only the right thing to do, but it is the smart thing for our nation.
Source: Recognizing the Power of the Arts in Education Speech Sep 17, 1998
Give kids after-school activities to prevent gangs

One of the best ways to combat juvenile crime is to give kids something positive to do after school. Let�s follow Houston, where children play golf and soccer after school. Their mentors are coaches and teachers, not gang leaders. We also have a responsibility to protect our children at home. Guns are the fourth leading cause of accidental deaths among children. Almost half of American households have guns, but often, instead of being locked up, they are merely hidden or left in a drawer.
Source: Column: �Talking it Over� Apr 20, 1998
Allow student prayer, but no religious instruction

To bring reason & clarity to this often contentious issue, my husband's administration developed a statement of principles concerning permissible religious activities in the public schools. The complete guidelines include:
Students may participate in prayer during the school day, as long as they do so in a non-disruptive manner and when they are not engaged in school activities.
Schools should open their facilities to student religious organizations on the same terms as other groups.
Students should be free to express their beliefs about religion in school assignments.
Schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about the Bible, civic values and virtue, and moral codes, as long as they remain neutral with respect to the promotion of any particular religion.
This last point is particularly important, [because religious institutions, parents, & schools share] the responsibility of helping children to develop moral values and a social conscience.
Source: It Takes A Village, by Hillary Clinton, p.162-163 Sep 25, 1996
Character education: teach empathy & self-discipline

A number of schools around the country are incorporating the teaching of empathy & self-discipline--what social theorists call "character education"--into their curricula. In New Haven CT, a social development approach is integrated into every public school child's daily routine. Children learn techniques for developing & enhancing social skills, identifying & managing emotions like anger, and solving problems creatively. The program appears to raise grades as well as to improve behavior.
Source: It Takes A Village, by Hillary Clinton, p. 55-56 Sep 25, 1996
Supports Goals 2000: hardly the stuff of revolution

As soon as Goals 2000 passed, it was attacked by extremists, who stirred up anxious parents with visions of totalitarian control over their children's minds and of "secular humanists" stealing their children's souls. What are these goals that promote suc reactions: By 2000
All children in America will start school ready to learn
High school graduation rates will increase to at least 90%
All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter
US students will be first in the world in science & math
Every adult will be literate and will possess the skills necessary to compete in a global economy
Every school will be free of drugs & violence
Teachers will have access to continuing education
Every school will promote partnerships with parents.
These goals are hardly the stuff of revolution and are not likely to be fully achieved by 2000, We cannot expect to reverse decades of declining standards in a few years.
Source: It Takes A Village, by Hillary Clinton, p.242-243 Sep 25, 1996
Supports structured inner-city schools, with uniforms

I have advocated for highly structured inner-city schools. I have advocated uniforms for kids in inner city schools. I have advocated that we have to help structure people�s environment who come from unstructured, disorganized, dysfunctional family settings. Because if you do not have any structure on the outside, it is very difficult to internalize it on the inside.
Source: Speech at Drew University, Madison, NJ May 18, 1996
Hillary Clinton on Arkansas Ed Reform

AR Ed Reform taught that there is a place for testing

Q: How do you feel about the testing mania forced upon our children by No Child Left Behind?
A: I believe in accountability. In 1983, I led the effort in Arkansas to improve our schools, and I do think there is a place for testing. But we should not look at our children as though they are little, walking tests, and we've gone way overboard. So I would like to see us do assessments, but understand we need a broad, rich curriculum that honors the spark of learning in every child.
Source: Huffington Post Mash-Up: 2007 Democratic on-line debate Sep 13, 2007
Sent Chelsea to public schools in Arkansas, but not DC

Q: Do you send your kids to public school or private school? We know, Sen. Clinton, you sent your daughter to private school. Is that correct?
A: No, it's not correct. Chelsea went to public schools, K-8th grade, until we moved to Washington. And then I was advised, and it was, unfortunately, good advice, that if she were to go to a public school, the press would never leave her alone, because it's a public school. But we were very pleased she was in public schools in Little Rock.
Source: 2007 YouTube Democratic Primary debate, Charleston SC Jul 23, 2007
1983: Teacher testing as part of AR education reform

Hillary would prevail in the political battle for education reform. It would be her greatest achievement in public life until she was elected to the Senate.
In addition to teacher-testing, the plan that Hillary and her education task force eventually formulated required that all local school districts adopt uniform, state-imposed standards for curriculum and classroom size.
When Hillary announced the plan to the state legislature, she called teacher-testing the real heart of the reform package. It was clear that the state's teachers would therefore oppose it.
Exactly how Hillary decided that teacher-testing might be the smoothest road to education reform is unclear. Democrats were generally opposed to the idea. Hillary was sure that testing teachers' competence and holding them to minimum standards would help the schools educate. Hillary also knew her words would appeal to conservatives: "The first purpose of school is to educate, not to provide entertainment or opportunities to socialize."
Source: A Woman in Charge, by Carl Bernstein, p.172-173 Jun 5, 2007
AR Reform plan pushed mandatory teacher testing

Bill asked me to chair an Education Standards Committee to recommend reforms. Nobody, including me, thought it was a good idea. Bill was convinced he was right to appoint me, & I relented.
This was a risky move. Improving the schools would require an increase in taxes--never popular. The 15-member committee recommended that students take standardized tests, including one before they could graduate from 8th grade. But the cornerstone of the proposed reform plan was mandatory teacher testing. Though this enraged the teachers union, civil rights groups & others who were vital to the Democratic Party in Arkansas, we felt there was no way around the issue. How could we expect children to perform at national levels when their teachers fell short? Gettin the legislature to approve and fund the reform package turned into a knock-down-drag-out fight among interest groups. I pled our case for improving schools before a joint session of the Arkansas legislature, and the reform plan was implemented in 1984.
Source: Living History, by Hillary Clinton, p. 93-94 Nov 1, 2003
Arkansas education: improvement against great odds

LAZIO: In Arkansas, when you had responsibility for education, the student performance when you left was at the bottom of the barrel. Spending was up. Taxes were up.
CLINTON: The work that was done in Arkansas received numerous awards and praise, because we really started something that I�m very proud of. And test scores went up in third grade and sixth grade. High school graduation went up. The work was done against great odds, in a very poor state.
LAZIO: I have a very different perspective on your record in Arkansas. And I would just urge the voters not to rely on what I�m saying, but to look it up.
CLINTON: I�m not here to defend Arkansas. I�m here to run for the Senate to represent New York.
LAZIO: I realize that you don�t want to talk about Arkansas because that experience was a disaster for Arkansas.
CLINTON: I�m happy to talk about it if that�s what you want to spend your time talking about.
LAZIO: That�s your record, Mrs. Clinton. You can�t run away from your record.
Source: (X-ref Lazio) NY Senate debate on NBC Oct 28, 2000
Pushed teacher testing in Arkansas

[In 1983, while chairing a committee to improve Arkansas� education system, then ranked 50th in the nation], Hillary snapped up the idea of higher standards for teachers which conservatives in the legislature were pushing. �Why don�t we have a test for teachers and fire the ones that fail?� she suggested.
Hillary spearheaded a requirement for a onetime teacher examination. She pushed on to introduce a consumer rights approach to education, and he concept of continuing education for educators.
Source: Hillary�s Choice by Gail Sheehy, p.152-153 Dec 9, 1999
AR ed reform: mandate kindergarten, no social promotion

Hillary outlined her legislative recommendations:
mandatory full-day kindergarten
a 20-to-1 pupil-to-teacher ratio
testing students before they could be promoted
more math and science units
recommended that extracurricular activities not interrupt the school day: �When you play, you should play hard. And when you work, you should work hard. But you shouldn�t confuse the two.�
Source: Hillary�s Choice by Gail Sheehy, p.153 Dec 9, 1999
Passing illiterate students is educational fraud

[A school that] passes illiterate students commits educational fraud. There is a feeling of urgency and a need for changes in education. If we do not seize the opportunity we have now, we will go backward.
The road to being someone in this society starts with education, and we intend to be sure that every child in this state is somebody. Because we�re going to give them every chance we can to develop their minds so they can play a role in this state to make it the kind of place it needs to be.
Source: Unique Voice, p. 32-33: Educational Standards Committee Sep 6, 1983
Hillary Clinton on Education Funding

Fully fund special education & 21st century classrooms

Let's use those dollars for education strategically. Let's do what we said we were going to do. How about funding special education which we never have to the extent we promised? How about fully funding whatever we ask the local communities to do? I want to have a very holistic view of this because if you go into a classroom today, it didn't look like the 21st century in most instances. It looks very familiar to me who was last in a classroom decades ago.
Source: 2007 Des Moines Register Democratic Debate Dec 13, 2007
Incentive pay for school wide performance

Q: What about performance-based pay?
A: Well, I have long supported incentive pay for school wide performance. You know, what we're trying to do is to change the culture within schools and to provide the resources, the training and the support that teachers need to do the job they do want to do. You have to reform No Child Left Behind. We're going to try to do that and begin to make it much more in line with the reality of teaching.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on "This Week" Aug 19, 2007
Transfer tax cuts from rich & corporations to student aid

We were making progress in narrowing the gap between high tuition and costs and what the average student and his or her family could pay. We ought to be making sure every qualified student can go to college and pursue his or her dreams. And you know, there's a very easy way to do that. All we have to do is cut all the tax breaks for oil companies, pharmaceutical companies and billionaires and put it into student aid.
Source: Annual 2006 Take Back America Conference Jun 14, 2006
Reforms: teacher corps; more federal funding; modernize

What are we going to do about education? I have put forth an education plan that is based on my years of working to reform and improve education.
I have very specific proposals about lowering classroom size, getting more qualified teachers into the classroom, starting a national teacher corps to recruit young people.
If they�re willing to teach, they would get a scholarship. As well as some mid-career people that I would like to see, perhaps, go into teaching with some incentives.
I support the 100,000 teachers from the federal government, which my opponent has opposed -- we need those teachers in New York.
I also support modernizing our schools with the construction bonds that are a bipartisan piece of legislation that would be such a help to us because we could deal with our repair and construction challenges without having to raise property taxes.
Source: Clinton-Lazio debate, Buffalo NY Sep 13, 2000
Opposes merit pay for individual teachers

Merit pay to individual teachers would discourage teachers from helping troubled students and would create a distorted competition among teachers. I don�t think that�s a very good way to inspire teachers. We want our best teachers to work with the kids who are the hardest to teach. If teachers are going to be told that the people who look better on a test are the ones who are going to get them rewarded in salary or compensation, why would anyone take on the kids who are harder to teach?
Source: New York Times, Page A25 Apr 6, 2000
Supports merit pay for entire schools

I could support merit pay awarded to entire schools rather than individual teachers. I also support pay for performance. This extra pay would be given to teachers who take on additional responsibilities like serving as mentors to other teachers.
Source: New York Times, Page A25 Apr 6, 2000
Scholarships for teachers who go to urban schools

The first lady offered a menu of proposals for schools. She called for higher salaries for teachers. She restated her support for providing four-year scholarships to teachers who promise to work in inner-city schools. She called for more federal spending to hire teachers and to repair run-down schools. She said she would work to ensure passage of a $29 billion federal bill aimed at repairing and modernizing public schools.
Source: Adam Nagourney, New York Times Mar 12, 2000
Increase resources to meet increased standards

Yes, we need to end social promotion. Social promotion-peers are allowed to graduate without consideration for academic performance. But what good does it do to raise the bar if we don�t lift up our young people to be able to vault across it. You cannot raise standards without increasing the resources needed to meet those standards.
Source: Adam Nagourney, New York Times Mar 12, 2000
Address teacher shortage with salary increases

We�re facing a critical teacher shortage-we�re going to have to recruit more teachers. But I agree with the NEA president that there�s not only a teacher shortage, there�s a respect shortage and a salary shortage as well. There is no way in today�s complicated, information-overdrive world that we�re going to get and keep those in the teaching profession to carry on the tradition of public education, unless [they] receive the salaries that [their] important work deserves. We�re going to have to recruit more teachers. I agree with the President�s proposal that we expand the already successful Troops to Teachers program. We should also provide loan forgiveness to new teachers committed to teaching in hard-to-serve areas. But we cannot lower the standards in this recruitment drive, and I am very much in agreement with the proposal that states be required to phase out emergency certification and improve state teacher certification systems.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Hillary Clinton on School Choice

Total change in No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind has been a terrible imposition on teachers & school districts & families & students. Part of it is because it was an unfunded mandate. And part of it is that the Dept. of Education under Pres. Bush did not absolutely enforce it and interpret it in the right way. So we need growth models for students. We need broader curriculum. We need to make sure that when we look at our children, we don't just see a little walking test. We've got to have a total change in No Child Left Behind.
Source: 2007 AFL-CIO Democratic primary forum Aug 8, 2007
Supports public school choice; but not private nor parochial

In 2006, Hillary disparaged vouchers partly on the worry that vouchers enabling parents to send their children to parochial schools could be used to train children to become terrorists. A Cato Institute Education specialist pointed out that "under federal law no one would be permitted to open a school that advocates violence against the country." Thus vouchers could not go to a "School of Jihad."
Years earlier, Hillary tried to play centrist on the school choice debate. In It Takes a Village she said she supported "choice among public schools" but redefined "school choice." Instead of helping provide choice between public and private schools, she uses choice to mean choice among public schools. She wrote "some critics of public schools urge greater competition among schools as a way of returning control from bureaucrats and politicians to parents and teachers. I find their arguments persuasive, and that's why I strongly favor promoting choice among public schools."
Source: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, by Amanda Carpenter, p. 89-90 Oct 11, 2006
More teachers, smaller classes, no vouchers

I�ve been involved with schools now for 17 years, working on behalf of education reform. And I think we know what works. We know that getting classroom size down works. That�s why I�m for adding 100,000 teachers to the classroom. We know that modernizing and better equipping our schools works. And we know that high standards works. But what�s important is to stay committed to the public school system, not siphon off money, as my opponent would, with vouchers.
Source: NY Senate debate on NBC Oct 28, 2000
Vouchers would take money from public schools

Q: Why don�t you support vouchers for low-income parents?
CLINTON: I could not support vouchers that would take money away from schools where teachers are in partitioned hallways, where the teacher has the only textbook in the classroom. If we can get class size down, if we can provide qualified teachers, we can make a difference. I support adding 100,000 teachers to lower class size. I support the bipartisan school construction funding authority that would permit New York to have school construction without raising taxes.
LAZIO: I have voted twice to support hiring additional teachers. Under my plan, New York would not get shortchanged. Under Mrs. Clinton�s plan, New Yorkers would be subsidizing Southern states. I think it�s immoral to force a child to go to a school where they can�t learn. Poor parents want to have the choice to give their children the education that I want for my children. I trust parents to make that decision, and that�s a major philosophical difference.
Source: Senate debate in Manhattan Oct 8, 2000
Vouchers drain money from public schools

Q: Do you support vouchers for private schools?
CLINTON: I�ve visited schools throughout the state and some of them are among the finest in the world that you could find anywhere. But others are overcrowded, under-resourced. That�s why I put forth a plan to try to get the teachers that we need and to provide the funds that are required for modernizing our schools, as well as setting high standards, making them safe from violence. I do not support vouchers. And the reason I don�t is because I don�t think we can afford to siphon dollars away from our underfunded public schools.
LAZIO: I believe that it�s immoral to ask a child to go to a school where they can�t learn or where they�re not safe. 80 percent of African-American and Hispanic parents feel that they need it. Why should we trap poor kids in failing schools simply because the teachers unions won�t agree with it?
Source: Clinton-Lazio debate, Buffalo NY Sep 13, 2000
Vouchers will not improve our public schools

I know there are some who believe that vouchers are the way to improve our public schools; I believe they are dead wrong. There is simply no evidence that vouchers improve student achievement. We�ve been experimenting with vouchers in some jurisdictions for a couple of years-we�ve found no evidence that these have made any difference in student achievement. But what they have done is to divert much-needed public funds for the few and have weakened the entire system.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Let�s build up our schools-not tear them down

We know a lot more today than we knew five or, certainly, 10 years ago about what we need to do to marshal the resources to make every school that successful. So let�s build up our schools-not tear them down. And let�s make sure that everyone has the same goal in mind-to make our public schools and our public school students the best in the entire world.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Charter schools provide choice within public system

I stand behind the charter school/public school movement, because parents do deserve greater choice within the public school system to meet the unique needs of their children. Slowly but surely, we�re beginning to create schooling opportunities through the public school charter system-raising academic standards, empowering educators. When we look back on the 1990s, we will see that the charter school movement will be one of the ways we will have turned around the entire public school system.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Charters meet needs of failing public school students

Charter schools can play a significant part in revitalizing and strengthening schools by offering greater flexibility from bureaucratic rules, so that parents, teachers, and the community can design and run their own schools, and focus on setting goals and getting results. Many of these schools are meeting the needs of students who had trouble succeeding in more traditional public schools. Every child deserves a quality public education as part of their American birthright.
Source: Remarks at Charter School Meeting, Washington DC Aug 4, 1998
Vouchers siphon off much-needed resources

Charter schools are a way of bringing teachers and parents and communities together-instead of other efforts-like vouchers-which separate people out-siphon much needed resources; and weakening the school systems that desperately need to be strengthened.
Source: Remarks at Charter School Meeting, Washington DC Aug 4, 1998
Parents can choose, but support public schools

I believe strongly in a parent�s right to choose the best education for his/her child. We have a proud tradition of parochial and private education in America. We also know that the majority of children are educated in the public education system. So we have to support the public education system whether or not our children are in it or whether or not we have children. The public education system is a critical investment for the well-being of all of us.
Source: Unique Voice, p.173 Feb 3, 1997
Supports public school choice and charter schools

Some critics of public schools urge greater competition among schools as a way of returning control from bureaucrats to parents and teachers. I find their argument persuasive and I favor promoting choice among public schools, much as the President's Charter Schools Initiative encourages.
Charter schools are public schools created and operated under a charter. They may be organized by parents, teachers, or others. The idea is that they should be freed from regulations that stifle innovation, so they can focus on getting results. By 1995, 19 states had enacted charter school laws about 200 schools have been granted charters.
The Improving America's Schools Act, passed in October 1994 with the President's support, provided federal funds for a wide range of reforms, including launching charter schools. Federal funding is needed to break through bureaucratic attitudes that block change and frustrate students and parents, driving some to leave public schools.
Source: It Takes A Village, by Hillary Clinton, p.244-245 Sep 25, 1996
Hillary Clinton on Voting Record

Solemn vow never to abandon our public schools

Since 1983, I have been a vigorous advocate of reforming & fixing schools that do not work. I have seen that we do know how to turn around failing schools. What we have too often lacked is the staying power & the will to deliver on what we know would make a difference. But if we are to make that difference, then we have to make a solemn vow never to abandon our public schools or the children who attend them, but to instead redouble our efforts to pursue strategies that we know can make a difference.
Source: Remarks to NEA in Orlando, Florida Jul 5, 1999
Voted YES on $52M for "21st century community learning centers".

To increase appropriations for after-school programs through 21st century community learning centers. Voting YES would increase funding by $51.9 million for after school programs run by the 21st century community learning centers and would decrease funding by $51.9 million for salaries and expenses in the Department of Labor.
Reference: Amendment to Agencies Appropriations Act; Bill S Amdt 2287 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-279 on Oct 27, 2005
Voted YES on $5B for grants to local educational agencies.

To provide an additional $5 billion for title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Voting YES would provide:
$2.5 billion for targeting grants to local educational agencies
$2.5 billion for education finance incentive grants
Reference: Elementary and Secondary Education Amendment; Bill S Amdt 2275 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-269 on Oct 26, 2005
Voted YES on shifting $11B from corporate tax loopholes to education.

Vote to adopt an amendment to the Senate's 2006 Fiscal Year Budget Resolution that would adjust education funding while still reducing the deficit by $5.4 billion. A YES vote would:
Restore education program cuts slated for vocational education, adult education, GEAR UP, and TRIO.
Increase the maximum Pell Grant scholarship to $4,500 immediately.
Increases future math and science teacher student loan forgiveness to $23,000.
Pay for the education funding by closing $10.8 billion in corporate tax loopholes.
Reference: Kennedy amendment relative to education funding; Bill S AMDT 177 to S Con Res 18 ; vote number 2005-68 on Mar 17, 2005
Voted YES on funding smaller classes instead of private tutors.

Vote to authorize a federal program aimed at reducing class size. The plan would assist states and local education agencies in recruiting, hiring and training 100,000 new teachers, with $2.4 billion in fiscal 2002. This amendment would replace an amendment allowing parents with children at under-performing schools to use public funding for private tutors.
Reference: Bill S1 ; vote number 2001-103 on May 15, 2001
Voted YES on funding student testing instead of private tutors.

Vote to pass an amendment that would authorize $200 million to provide grants to help states develop assessment systems that describe student achievement. This amendment would replace an amendment by Jeffords, R-VT, which would allow parents with children at under-performing schools to use public funding for private tutors.
Reference: Bill S1 ; vote number 2001-99 on May 10, 2001
Voted YES on spending $448B of tax cut on education & debt reduction.

Vote to reduce the size of the $1.6 trillion tax cut by $448 billion while increasing education spending by $250 billion and providing an increase of approximately $224 billion for debt reduction over 10 years.
Reference: Bill H Con Res 83 ; vote number 2001-69 on Apr 4, 2001
Rated 82% by the NEA, indicating pro-public education votes.

Clinton scores 82% by the NEA on public education issues
The National Education Association has a long, proud history as the nation's leading organization committed to advancing the cause of public education. Founded in 1857 "to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of popular education in the United States," the NEA has remained constant in its commitment to its original mission as evidenced by the current mission statement:
To fulfill the promise of a democratic society, the National Education Association shall promote the cause of quality public education and advance the profession of education; expand the rights and further the interest of educational employees; and advocate human, civil, and economic rights for all.
In pursuing its mission, the NEA has determined that it will focus the energy and resources of its 2.7 million members toward the "promotion of public confidence in public education." The ratings are based on the votes the organization considered most important; the numbers reflect the percentage of time the representative voted the organization's preferred position.
Source: NEA website 03n-NEA on Dec 31, 2003

GOING DEEP: OBAMA ON EDUCATION PART II

2008-02-03T21:05:00.000-08:00

Now that we are entering the home stretch in the primaries, I wanted a deeper excavation about where the candidates stood on education. Taken from the On the Issues website:

http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Barack_Obama_Education.htm

BARACK OBAMA: FURTHER THOUGHTS AND VOTING ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES

We need a sense of urgency about improving education system

Q: How would you assess the American education system, how well is it doing from K to high school?
A: Well, I think it's doing very well for some. But it's not doing very well for all. So, No Child Left Behind has been false advertising. And there doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency about improving the education system. It is a sense of urgency that we've got to restore if we're going to be able to remain competitive in this new global economy. So, a couple of steps that I think we have to take. Across the board we're going to have to recruit a generation of new teachers. We're going to have to pay our teachers more, we going to have to give them more professional development, and we're also going to have to work with them rather than against them to improve standards. We've got to improve early childhood education, because that's the area where we can probably most effectively achieve the achievement gap that exists right now.
Source: Huffington Post Mash-Up: 2007 Democratic on-line debate Sep 13, 2007
Nationwide program to reconstruct crumbling school buildings

Q: What could you do to curb the high Hispanic dropout rate?
A: Well, keep in mind this is not just a crisis for the Hispanic community; this is a crisis for the entire country because increasingly the workforce is going to be black and brown, and if those young people are not trained, then this country will not be competitive. Closing the achievement gap involves making sure that children are prepared the day they come to school, and so working with at-risk parents & poor children to make sure that they're getting their childhood education they need is absolutely critical. I've seen crumbling school buildings & children learning in trailers because of overcrowding. We've got to have a program of school construction all across the nation. After-school programs and summer school programs can make an enormous difference in preventing dropout rates because a lot of times young people after they get out of school have no place to do their homework. And that can make an enormous difference.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on Univision in Spanish Sep 9, 2007
STEP UP: summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged

Differences in learning opportunities during the summer contribute to the achievement gaps that separate struggling poor and minority students from their middle-class peers. Obama's STEP UP plan supports summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged children through partnerships between local schools and community organizations.
Obama supports increasing funding for the Head Start program for preschool children. Obama has called on states to replicate the Illinois model of Preschool for All.
Source: Campaign website, BarackObama.com, "Resource Flyers" Aug 26, 2007
We left the money behind for No Child Left Behind

I've had a lot of discussions with teachers. And they feel betrayed and frustrated by No Child Left Behind. We shouldn't reauthorize it without changing it fundamentally. We left the money behind for No Child Left Behind, and so there are school districts all across the state and all across the country that are having a difficult time implementing No Child Left Behind.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on "This Week" Aug 19, 2007
Pay "master teachers" extra, but with buy-in from teachers

Q: What about performance-based pay?
A: Teachers are extraordinarily frustrated about how their performance is assessed. And not just their own performance, but the school's performance generally. So they're teaching to the tests all the time. What I have said is that we should be able to get buy-in from teachers in terms of how to measure progress. Every teacher I think wants to succeed. And if we give them a pathway to professional development, where we're creating master teachers, they are helping with apprenticeships for young new teachers, they are involved in a variety of other activities, that are really adding value to the schools, then we should be able to give them more money for it. But we should only do it if the teachers themselves have some buy-in in terms of how they're measured. They can't be judged simply on standardized tests that don't take into account whether children are prepared before they get to school or not.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on "This Week" Aug 19, 2007
Sends kids to private school; but wants good schools for all

Q: Do you send your kids to public school or private school?
A: My kids have gone to the University of Chicago Lab School, a private school, because I taught there, and it was five minutes from our house. So it was the best option for our kids. But the fact is that there are some terrific public schools in Chicago that they could be going to. The problem is, is that we don't have good schools, public schools, for all kids. A US senator can get his kid into a terrific public school. That's not the question. The question is whether or not ordinary parents, who can't work the system, are able to get their kids into a decent school, and that's what I need to fight for and will fight for as president.
Source: 2007 YouTube Democratic Primary debate, Charleston SC Jul 23, 2007
Supreme Court was wrong on school anti-integration ruling

Q: In light of the recent anti-integration Supreme Court decision, please tell us what would you do to promote an equal opportunity and integration in American public schools and how would you ensure that the courts would hand down more balanced opinions
A: The Supreme Court was wrong. These were local school districts that had voluntarily made a determination that all children would be better off if they learned together. The notion that this Supreme Court would equate that with the segregation as tasked would make Thurgood Marshall turn in his grave. Which is why I'm glad I voted against Alito & voted against Roberts. But let's remember that we also have a crisis in all our schools that have to be fixed, whether they're integrated or not. We've got to have early childhood education. We've got to fix crumbling schools. We've got to have an excellent teacher in front of every classroom. We've got to make college affordable. The Supreme Court doesn't have to order that. We can do that ourselves.
Source: 2007 NAACP Presidential Primary Forum Jul 12, 2007
Incentives to hire a million teachers over next decade

We've got to make sure that teachers are going to the schools that need them the most. We're going to lose a million teachers over the next decade because the baby-boom generation is retiring. And so it's absolutely critical for us to give them the incentives and the tools and the training that they need not only to become excellent teachers but to become excellent teachers where they're most needed.
We're going to have to put more money into after-school programs and provide the resources that are necessary. When you've got a bill called No Child Left Behind, you can't leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind. And unfortunately, that's what's been done.
The reason that we have consistently had underperformance among our children is because too many of us think it is acceptable for them not to achieve. And we have to have a mindset where we say to ourselves, every single child can learn if they're given the resources and the opportunities. And right now that's not happening.
Source: 2007 Democratic Primary Debate at Howard University Jun 28, 2007
Pay teachers more money & treat them like professionals

It's time to turn the page on education, to move past the slow decay of indifference that says some schools can't be fixed, that says some kids just can't learn. As president, I will launch a campaign to recruit and support hundreds of thousands of new teachers across the country--because the most important part of any education is the person standing in front of the classroom. It's time to treat teaching like the profession that it is. It's time to pay our teachers what they deserve. Pay them more money.
And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.
Source: Take Back America 2007 Conference Jun 19, 2007
Public school system status quo is indefensible

We know that global competition requires us to revamp our educational system, replenish our teaching corps, buckle down on math and science instruction, and rescue inner-city kids from illiteracy. Our debate seems stuck between those who want to dismantle the system and those who would defend an indefensible status quo, between those who say money makes no difference in education and those who want more money without any demonstration that it will be put to good use.
Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p. 22 Oct 1, 2006
More teacher pay in exchange for more teacher accountability

Conservatives argue that the problems in schools are caused by bureaucracies and teachers' unions; and that the only solution is to hand out vouchers. Those on the left find themselves defending an indefensible status quo, insisting that more spending will improve education.
Both assumptions are wrong. Money does matter in education. But there is no denying that the way many public schools are managed poses at least as big a problem as how well they're funded.
Our task is to identify those reforms that have the highest impact on achievement, fund them, and eliminate those programs that don't produce results. We are going to have to take the teaching profession seriously. This means paying teachers what they are worth. There is no reason why an experienced, highly qualified teacher shouldn't earn $100,000. In exchange for more money, teachers need to become more accountable for their performances, and school districts need to have greater ability to get rid of ineffective teachers.
Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p.161-163 Oct 1, 2006
Guarantee affordable life-long, top-notch education

We've got a story to tell that isn't just against something but is for something. We know that we're the party of opportunity. We know that in a global economy that's more connective and more competitive that we're the party that will guarantee every American an affordable, world-class, life-long, top-notch education, from early childhood to high school--from college to on-the-job training. We know that that's what we're about.
Source: Annual 2006 Take Back America Conference Jun 14, 2006
Provide decent funding and get rid of anti-intellectualism

I try to avoid an either/or approach to solving the problems of this country. There are questions of individual responsibility and questions of societal responsibility to be dealt with. The best example is an education. I'm going to insist that we've got decent funding, enough teachers, and computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve.
Source: Meet The Press, NBC News Jul 25, 2004
Address the growing achievement gap between students

Our public education system is the key to opportunity for millions of children and families. It needs to be the best in the world. Of particular concern is the growing achievement gap between middle and low-income students, which has continued to expand despite some overall national achievement gains.
Source: Campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.com May 2, 2004
Will add 25,000 teachers in high-need areas

Obama will fight for full funding for Head Start and expanded pre-school, so every child starts school ready to learn.� He has proposed a national network of teaching academies to add 25,000 new teachers to high-need urban and rural schools. And, he will work to send deserving students to college through loan programs that help middle-class families instead of banks.
Source: Campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.com, ?On The Issues? May 2, 2004
Supports charter schools and private investment in schools

Principles that Obama supports on education:
Increase state funds for professional development of public school teachers and administrators.
Encourage private or corporate investment in public school programs.
Favor charter schools where independent groups receive state authorization and funding to establish new schools.
Increase state funds for school construction and facility maintenance.
Source: 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test Jul 2, 1998
Free public college for any student with B-average

Principles that Obama supports on education funding:
Fund public school education in Illinois by increasing certain state taxes and decreasing local property taxes.
Provide state-funded tuition and fees to any Illinois student who attends a public college or university as long as they maintain a B average.

Source: 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test Jul 2, 1998

-------

Barack Obama on Voting Record

First Senate bill: increase Pell Grant from $4,050 to $5,100

Free Up Money for Student Aid and Protect Student Borrowers:

The first bill Obama introduced in the Senate was to help make college more affordable by increasing the maximum Pell Grant from $4,050 to $5,100. As president, Obama would eliminate wasteful subsidies to private student lenders, which will save nearly $6 billion dollars per year, and invest the savings in additional student aid.
Source: Campaign website, BarackObama.com, "Resource Flyers" Aug 26, 2007
Sponsored legislations that recruit and reward good teachers

Obama co-sponsored legislation to create a National Teaching Academy of Chicago that recruits, prepares and develops quality teachers for high-need urban school districts. He co-sponsored legislation that created the Future Teacher Corps Scholarships to provide financial aid for undergraduate & graduate students studying to become teachers. He was chief sponsor of a bill creating the Certified Teacher Retention Bonus Program that provides grants to reward high quality teachers in low performing schools.
Source: Campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.org, "On the Issues" Sep 28, 2004
Voted YES on $52M for "21st century community learning centers".

To increase appropriations for after-school programs through 21st century community learning centers. Voting YES would increase funding by $51.9 million for after school programs run by the 21st century community learning centers and would decrease funding by $51.9 million for salaries and expenses in the Department of Labor.
Reference: Amendment to Agencies Appropriations Act; Bill S Amdt 2287 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-279 on Oct 27, 2005
Voted YES on $5B for grants to local educational agencies.

To provide an additional $5 billion for title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Voting YES would provide:
$2.5 billion for targeting grants to local educational agencies
$2.5 billion for education finance incentive grants
Reference: Elementary and Secondary Education Amendment; Bill S Amdt 2275 to HR 3010 ; vote number 2005-269 on Oct 26, 2005
Voted YES on shifting $11B from corporate tax loopholes to education.

Vote to adopt an amendment to the Senate's 2006 Fiscal Year Budget Resolution that would adjust education funding while still reducing the deficit by $5.4 billion. A YES vote would:
Restore education program cuts slated for vocational education, adult education, GEAR UP, and TRIO.
Increase the maximum Pell Grant scholarship to $4,500 immediately.
Increases future math and science teacher student loan forgiveness to $23,000.
Pay for the education funding by closing $10.8 billion in corporate tax loopholes.
Reference: Kennedy amendment relative to education funding; Bill S AMDT 177 to S Con Res 18 ; vote number 2005-68 on Mar 17, 2005

Millennials Part 2

2008-02-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

The Democratic Process

2008-02-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, February 5th, 24 states will hold primaries, caucuses, and state conventions to determine the number of delegates that will be elected to the national conventions this summer. The two main political parties in this country, Republicans and Democrats, will then choose a nominee at their respective conventions who will in turn square off against each other in a national election in early November that will determine who will be the next President of the United States. After Super Tuesday, the Democrats will elect about 54% of its total delegates and the Republicans will select around 41%.

Okay, that’s Civics 101, but what do you tell your children about the elections and this seemingly endless process, if anything?

Well, please do engage with them in talking about “the process.” It’s a truly an amazing and wonderful way of electing one of the world’s most powerful leaders that often gets lost by talking about the individuals and the acrimony. I resist telling my own children who I intend to support, but I do spend a fair amount of time talking about the country as a whole and educational policies in particular.

I do this for two reasons. First, we as a nation must get away from the winners and losers mentality that makes politics just another sport. Will Hillary put Barack in his place? Has Bill overstepped his bounds? Will McCain and Romney win the ultra-right wing support of the Republican Party if Mike Huckabee drops out? All of these “ripped from the headlines” kinds of questions dilute the real issue of the marvel of this peaceful (and convoluted) process that is the envy and (sometimes) scourge of the world, especially when it is rammed down the throats of other nations and people. Second, we owe our children, many of them who have never experienced the kind of political upheaval that other children in the world have experienced, an explanation about what process truly means.

A few years ago, I was invited to a symposium at the Castanoa Retreat Center in Half Moon Bay by the Harwood Institute to discuss civic engagement. In off election years, particularly in underserved communities, people depend on certain organizations as beacons in the night to get them and their children through the storms that they encounter every day. A contingent of leaders from the Agassi School, including myself, along with other “Centers of Strength” in Las Vegas were invited to discuss issues relating to poverty, education, and social services. Our goal was to just talk about our process. How did we do what we were supposed to be good at? How did we build a school out of thin air and create a (then) $60 million endowment in less than ten years to keep the school running for forever? Finally, how did we get people to feel less silo-ed (i.e., isolated) from the process of civic engagement?

In short, the answer was what Jane Addams at Hull House did so fabulously well. It was to provide her community with highly process-oriented choices. Addams (1860 – 1935) collaborated with a great many people and made Hull House a Center of Strength in the City of Chicago at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Hull House provided young immigrant women in Addams’ “Settlement House” not just a community but a way to advance themselves beyond their present circumstances by engaging deeply in Democratic principles. Hull House had a library, gymnasium, swimming pool, Chautauqua’s (which is like the Berkeley Extension School—or adult education—today), and much, much more. Hull House is the model for Progressive Schools because it explicitly taught Democracy.

So, what does that have to do with you, your children, and the Democratic Process?

Understand that Presidio Hill School is our Hull House, of sorts, allowing children and parents the opportunity to engage in process driven work and ideas that will carry them far beyond their current circumstances. You can discuss the issues that are important to your family because even as early as kindergarten your children are discussing “big ideas” at school related to Democracy. Find ways to engage them in process-oriented work that underscores the democratic principles of vision, collaboration (rather than service), and sacrifice. Again, Progressive Education does teach a specific kind of engagement and is activist in its origins.

One small way that we at PHS give back and are in collaboration in our community is by being a polling place on Election Day. Truly, we are so limited and constrained by space that having one more box in our school is a hardship. However, having PHS as a Polling Place teaches a subtle yet powerful message, which is we at PHS care deeply about the Democratic Process. It also says that we care about our city, State, and country. Patriotism is not always about flag-waving and bumper stickers, but it is about making sure that we are a part of the process in a small but symbolic way.

Ghandi, King, and Mother Teresa were all activist in the Democratic tradition. Yet, their greatest strengths as leaders involved the processes that gave people hope, a sense of wonder, and the ability to transform the lives of others by bearing witness to the work they did in collaboration with others. In the end, that is what we do, that is what distinguishes us as a school, and as a community.

Millennials Part 1

2008-01-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

What the hell is a millennial? Why should you care? Are we late boomers responsible for their creation?

The Millennial Generation (guest article by Wally Bock)

2008-01-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

Last week, Joanna, the daughter of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, took an afternoon of her time to help me do car shopping. After driving me around and functioning as my car buying advisor, she went off to babysitting, which is one of several jobs that she's got.

Now, if you're thinking, "Wow, what a good kid. She sure is different than most teenagers," you're right and you're wrong.

You're right if you think that Joanna is a good kid. She's also smart and pretty sure of herself. She's got some values, too. She is a good kid. But she's not that different from lots of others in her generation.

You're wrong if you think that "She sure is different than most teenagers." The generalization you're working with came from the last couple of generations. It includes things like lots of youth crime, teen pregnancies and plummeting test scores.

None of those are true for Joanna's generation. Instead teen pregnancies and crime have been falling for the last decade, the time they've been teens. Test scores are going the other way, steadily upward. It seems that this is a group that's very different from their older brothers and sisters or Baby Boomers like me.

Joanna is part of what we're calling the Millennial Generation. That's the group born from around 1977 to 1995 or so. I'm imprecise here because there's not much agreement on exact dates, but the oldest of those are just graduating from college and entering the workforce. Others are moving through the teen years.

There's very little agreement on how many there are either. The estimates range between 60 and 74 million, but whatever number you choose, there are a lot of them, more than any generation except the Baby Boom.

That means that they are and will be a huge economic and social force. They may already be the most studied generation in history. All the major polling and market research firms, including Gallup, Yankelovich and Harris have studied them, along with a bevy of "trendspotting" firms and a clutch of academics.

Like any other generation, their perceptions and attitudes grow out of their own experience. Experiences and events that matter to you may not even appear on their radar.

A few weeks back Joanna and I were talking with some other folks. I mentioned the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. She said, "What's that?" She didn't know. Why should she? It happened before she was born. For Joanna and others born around the same time, the world has different reference points than it does for older folks.

The Kennedy Tragedy for them is the plane crash, not an assassination. Someone named George Bush has been on every national ticket but one since they were born. There have always been ATM machines and round the clock coverage of news and public affairs on cable. They've never used a bottle of White Out or heard a telephone actually "ring."

Here are the events that they remember based on a survey of high school seniors in the class of 2001.

Colombine Shootings
War in Kosovo
Oklahoma City Bombing
Princess Di's Death
Clinton Impeachment and Scandal
OJ Trial
Fall of Berlin Wall
Mark McGwire/Sammy Sousa homerun contest
They've been well cared for. Children seem to be valued and cared for most in alternating generations. These folks caught a generational wave where children are highly valued and they've benefited from the longest economic boom in history. When they were kids, they got four times the number of toys that their Boomer parents got just twenty years earlier.

Today, nearly six in ten Millenials aged 6-17 have a TV of their own. There are different estimates of the teenagers personal spendable income, but the lowest is $60 per week. Twenty-two percent of the older teens have their own checking account and forty-two percent have a credit card. So, they've got high expectations.

They've got confidence that they'll achieve those expectations, too. Some of that is the natural confidence of youth. Some of it comes from growing up in good economic times. According to the Harris Poll of the class of 2001, eighty-eight percent have established specific goals for themselves for the next five years and virtually all (ninety-eight percent) are sure they'll someday get to where they want to in life.

And where is that? The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA has surveyed college freshman for 35 years. They found the class entering in September 2000 to rank "status" the lowest that it's been in 23 years. The Harris poll of this year's graduates found ninety-seven percent saying that "doing work that allows me to have an impact on the world" is important.

All in all, they seem to be an interesting mix of ambition and practicality, with a solid underpinning of values. One of their biggest worries is reducing debt. Sixty-three percent of the college graduates believe they'll have to make some sacrifices to achieve those goals they have.

This is a connected generation. Joanna is online like virtually all the college grads, seventy-five percent of those aged 12-17, and half of those aged 9-11. If computers and net technology were bolted on to the lifestyle of their parents, and mastered by their older siblings, the Millennials have always had it in their world.

The net is their primary source of news. Eighty percent use the net frequently as an information source. The next closes sources are radio (fifty-seven percent) and television (fifty-five percent). Compare that with American adults in general who prefer TV (seventy-five percent) followed by radio, newspapers, magazines, and, last in line, the net.

For them, this technology is a natural part of life. Where my daughters, who are a little older than Joanna, used to chat on the phone with friends, Joanna has added instant messaging and email to the ways she stays in touch. My kids wanted their own phone line, Joanna has her own cell phone.

Here's an important distinction. My generation and the Millennials older siblings see the net as something they connect to. But Millennials see the net as a way to connect to the world and each other.

Being connected is important. If the Baby Boomer slogan is "Be all you can be," then the Millennial slogan might be "Be all we can be." And technology is just one of the ways to make it happen. Seventy-eight percent of those college graduates feel that the net has brought them closer to other people.

Other people, including family and friends and society as a whole are important to them. Seventy-one percent of those eligible voted in the 2000 presidential election. They've vocal about issues like civil rights and the environment.

So, what we've got is a bunch of bright, concerned, connected and technologically savvy kids that work and play well with others. And they're coming soon to a classroom or workplace near you.

This feature appeared on 2 July 2001

Copyright 2002 by Wally Bock

Mwenye Baraka--Jemmimah Thiong'o

2008-01-26T22:02:00.000-08:00

"Hey, Rock, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."

"Agaiiin?"

"Roaaaar."

"...and now, for something that we hope you'll really like."

Baraka: "Disposition" Tool: What Do We Know?

2008-01-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

What Is Creativity?

2008-01-24T22:46:00.001-08:00

Sleeping On The Job: Are We Keeping You Awake, Bill?

2008-01-24T22:38:00.000-08:00

Pictures From Iraq: What We Learn From War

2008-01-23T22:49:00.000-08:00

In all the debate about Iraq, we forget that human faces are attached. Living, dying, connecting. Iraqis, American troops, civilian personnel, they all have stories to tell about the lives they have led and friends they have lost.

Tim Clemente, former FBI agent, and a friend, has been a counter-terrorism expert, but he found some humanity in the work that he does. We probably wouldn't agree on politics, per se, but he has been a good friend and tremendous father to eight beautiful children. Good kids.

Make no mistake, the Iraqi War is a tremendously unpopular conflict complete with epic villains and Shakespearean deceivers, but the soldiers who went there to fight and show a human side of a nation in turmoil, won't face the scorn that their brethren from Vietnam went through nor will they have the heroes welcome that the "greatest generation" received after World War II.

What will be their legacy? These troops, former students, humans, all.

Bill on Obama: Whose Line Is It Anyway?

2008-01-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

Stay out of the race.

It seems that Bill Clinton is getting it from all sides. Bill the Clinton has been all over the country stumping for Hillary and setting the record straight. To the point where Barack Obama retorted at the CNN Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate on Monday evening (1.21.08), "Sometimes I don't know who I'm running against."

Senator Obama's query is certainly justified. Rarely does a former president take sides in the primary election, usually letting the events before the party's convention play themselves out. Today's Chicago Tribune's editorial (1.22.08), "President Heckler," makes the case that Bill should keep his mouth shut, indicating that the former President always did have a problem with restraint.

Can you blame, Bill? Before Hillary teared up in New Hampshire and "found" her voice, she needed help--a great deal of it. Out came the big guns. Enter Bill Clinton, stage right, in full Lady MacBeth regalia.

However, now that Hillary has regained her frontrunner status, do we need to hear Bill being oh so un-presidential and slinging the mud.

The Clinton's have been known for their fierce loyalty to each other, even in the face of infidelity and other acrimony. It's all about the power. Just win baby.

The Clinton's have also been known for their equally vociferous destruction of the opposition. For them, politics is a blood sport (think 2007 New England Patriots and Mike Tyson chomping Evander Holyfield's ear).

When Barack Obama talks about wanting a change in business as usual in Washington, DC, he is speaking directly to and about the Clintons.

So, where does this leave us, the voters? Well, we watch and we wait, looking for one of them--Bill or Hillary--to slip up on the slippery rocks of presidential politics, waiting for the O'Reilly's of the world to pounce. That's what David Axelrod, Obama's chief political strategist, is banking on.

As a result, Bill and Hillary Clinton have to play Barack's game. It's the audacity of hope, baby.

The Clintons have been baited into giving up their "win at all cost" and "destroy your opponent" game because, in the end, they will need Barack's support and supporters to have a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Republicans in November. If Barack doesn't win the Democratic nomination outright, he won't be anybody's number two. His ego is way too big to allow that. So, he'll be a power-broker of a different sort.

So, again, where does that leave us?

Unfortunately, as one reader of this blog observed, the Democrats are squandering their best chance of winning the most winnable election they have had in more than a generation.

Thanks, Bill.

Presidio Hill School: What is a Progressive School?

2008-01-22T22:00:00.001-08:00

A few months ago (October 5 – 6, 2007), the teachers at Presidio Hill School joined other progressive educators from around the country for the first national Progressive Schools Conference in more than a decade. You’ll be happy to note that we helped to host the event by sponsoring 15 progressive educators at the school for a lunch and tour. Many of the other area progressive schools were involved with the conference planning, including San Francisco School, Park Day School in Oakland, Blue Oak School in Napa, and several others. Two of our own teachers presented at the conference, talking about progressive practices and what they are up to in their classrooms.

As I have often said, progressive education is less about regurgitating rigid content standards (although content is very important as students mature) and more about creating habits of mind that make life-long learners successful. Progressive Education is also democracy in action.

Thinking about Presidio Hill School as not only the oldest progressive school in California, but also as one of the exemplars of progressive practices, I put together some questions that people ask me about our school. The questions serve as a starting point for this discussion.

What are the hallmarks of a truly progressive school?
Progressive schools value the social-emotional growth of students. Progressive Schools also value collaboration over competition, which is part of both democracy in action and our social activist heritage. Also, progressive schools promote depth over breadth in all content areas, which spurs student interests and helps students pave their own way into a particular subject or discipline. Additionally, many Progressive Schools either de-emphasize or just don’t give grades as a way to tell that a student is progressing. Written comments take the place of just having grades only.

Don’t many other schools do this?
Absolutely, comments and commenting is a hallmark of not just progressive schools but most independent schools in general. What’s unique about our school is that parents, teachers, and even students are in on the conversation. It’s not just a one-way monologue, but the whole community is engaged in the discussion. Comments serve as a way for teachers, parents, and students to understand what can be done to improve and how we all can work together to usher that improvement along.

Who decides what gets taught at PHS?
At many independent schools, the school decides. It is the school’s curriculum. It is what the school values.

At PHS, teachers have great autonomy on what is taught, what is added, and what is taken out. The school (in teams of educators) does “scope and sequence work” to determine what should be taught where and when in the curriculum. The school audits what we teach by having conversations around what students know and should know, and what skills they have or should have from teacher to teacher and year to year. Nearly all our teachers belong to national and local organizations where best practices (and even standards) are shared. Our teachers present what they know at conferences, workshops and staff meetings and learn from each other and from conferences, workshops and other means all the time. We don’t rely on textbook companies or the state to tell us what gets taught when.

In what other ways do teachers collaborate?
Teachers discuss students constantly. This is a very important point: teachers know more about students and their world—socially, emotionally, and academically—than at any other school that I have worked. I have worked in traditional schools, progressive schools, and alternative schools. Teachers also tend to know other students that aren’t in their classroom, too. The great thing about being the size that we are is that we get to know one another well.

Last question, my child really loves PHS, can I go to school here?
Absolutely. Many parents and adults involved with PHS report they get so much satisfaction from engaging the students they love with what they are learning. By attending the Corporation Meetings, Follies, driving on field trips, going to Dialogue Circles, volunteering at the auction, and many other kinds of endeavors gives parents and the adults in the community a progressive school education too.

REPRINTED FROM MY BIMONTHLY
FRIDAY LETTER 10-19-2007
(http://www.presidiohill.org/news/archives/from_the_director/)

Barack Obama at Ebenezer Baptist Church on January 20, 2008

2008-01-21T17:47:00.000-08:00

The cadence is not exactly King-like, but Barack Obama, on Dr. King's birthday, captures the essence of King in talking about the substance of hope in a speech that he gave in the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church: Martin Luther King's Church (both senior and junior). Ebenezer was Dr. King's church for most of his career as a Civil Rights leader.

In the end, Obama's speech is more Lincoln-esque than King-like in the theme that it tackles: Unity.

The biggest complaint against Barack Obama is not that he's inexperienced, per se, but that he's short on ideas. I'm not sure if the speech at Ebenezer changes that perception. What he does do for the very first time in the campaign is light a small fire under the core of the national African American electorate, perhaps save the remaining lions of the Civil Rights Movement.

Why such a small fire for people who want to trust and follow him? Why such a small fire for a people who want to be excited and ignited?

Some people would say that Obama has kept Black people at arms length. However, exhorting Black people to take responsibility for themselves, more of a Bill Cosby theme rather than a King one, gives Barack Obama a different dimension than other African American presidential candidates and leaders in the recent past. He tells Black people what they must do rather than what others must do for them.

It's why most African American Civil Rights leaders have been luke-warm to Obama's candidacy. He refuses to strike the same refrains that Civil Rights leaders have struck since King's death. King's "promissory note" and "insufficient funds" are the stuff that Barack avoids on the stump and in the pulpit at Ebenezer. Obama's "fierce urgency of now" is to join him and elect him because there will not be a him without a broader us.

At the very end of his Ebenezer Baptist Church sermon, Obama tells a story of a young white worker in his campaign, Ashley, which explains all you need to know about Barack Obama.

For most of Senator Obama's speech he has had the flights of oratory that hearkens the Kennedy (both JFK and RFK) rather than King, yet when he mentions Ashley, people seem a bit more skeptical about where Barack intends to take them next.

Would King have advanced a trope like Ashley into one of his speeches? Probably not. You could hear a pin drop in Ebenezer because Barack is leading them home to where he wants to go.

Ashley's story is about self-sacrifice. She has gotten Black people mobilized in South Carolina since the start of Obama's campaign. It's not just him, as Barack states, that people want to follow. It's the hope that an Ashley feels from his candidacy, which elevates her out of the degradation of poverty, eating mustard and relish sandwiches while her mother struggled with cancer when she was nine years old.

It's not exactly what Black people want to hear at the end of the speech where Barack has had them in the palm of his hands, but it is, I suspect, why so many white liberals embrace Barack's candidacy. He speaks to them. He certainly speaks to a number of Black folk, too. But has he convinced them yet. Has he convinced all of us.

In this house divided, only time will tell.

---

A Dream Deferred: Dr. King's Mountaintop Speech

2008-01-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

The greatest speech that Dr. King delivered happened just two days before his death. King was a pretty defeated man by April 1968, understanding that his time in this world was nigh. He was the prophet predicting his own demise.

The Memphis Sanitation Worker's strike gave King a bit of a bounce in his step, while he was preparing for the Poor People's March on Washington, the site of King's greatest triumph up until that time. Yet, King took a moment in the Memphis march during what would be his last campaign to fire up his peaceful warriors.

Dark days were ahead, and King was beyond worrying. He had given all he could to advance a movement in the South to finally rip the chains from the sharecroppers and children of sharecroppers where he grew up and cut his teeth as a young preacher. Although the North gave King the money he needed, he saw intense opposition to his own opposition to the War in Vietnam. King's fiery furnace phrase, "I don't fear any man" was less a taunt to his would-be killer(s) and more a challenge to the people who would pick up his historical mantle of direct yet radical non-violent movements four decades later: Us.

In my estimation, politicians are not these peaceful warriors--sorry Barack Obama. High-flying and churchy oratory aside, the next people's leader will come from the fields, jungles, or forests of the developing nations rather than the halls of our current version of the House of Lords, also known as the US Senate.

The new Kings are leading their people in second and third world nations where the grassroots movements can halt the scythe of dictators, industrialized nations, multinational corporations, and time.

There will never be another King in our nation, I fear, because we are all too much in and of this world.

Juno: A Movie and a Cautionary Tale

2008-01-19T21:51:00.000-08:00

Juno. Have you seen it? A movie, directed by Jason Reitman, about a sixteen year old who gets pregnant by her high school boyfriend, the nice kid, and puts the baby up for adoption but falls in love with the adoptive dad (Jason Bateman??!!) is the stuff that the old ABC After School Specials used to be made of. It goes to show you, it's not the what that makes a great movie, it's the how.

Juno should be seen by every junior high and high school student as a kind of cautionary tale about how to be authentic. It's less John Hughs's Breakfast Club and more in the vibrant dialogue flavor of Michael Lehman's Heathers because it will spawn other pretenders that won't be nearly as good. Yet, Juno is different than Lehman's movie because it goes against type. It's a wise-talking and rather normal character-driven movie that seems to be popular during this epoch, kind of like Dan in Real Life and other recent flicks where the central characters are borderline depressed people who find it hard finding love or even loving themselves, while all the while the audience is rabbit-eyes over them.

A clip from Jason Reitman's Juno

Harrowing: Are We Headed for a Recession?

2008-01-19T20:16:00.000-08:00

After some harrowing weather in Virginia on Thursday, I returned home late last night to a whole bunch of new ideas. Mostly what I have been thinking about is how to keep my little school in San Francisco growing and striving without killing the people who are having a tough time just making ends meet. Raising tuition six to eight percent on families as we enter what could be the beginning of a recession (or worse) is not a good plan for longevity.

More on the plan in future posts.

Whiffenpoofs 2007--Baa Baa Black Sheep

2008-01-15T23:30:00.000-08:00

On Yale: Is Financial Aid to the Rich Fair?

2008-01-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

Did Yale get it right?

For over forty years, the Ivy League colleges have been trend-setters in providing financial assistance and other forms of aid to people that some newspapers are calling the new middle class in America--or a family of four earning between $150-200,000. That's $150K!!!

Believe it or not, the so-called elite universities have priced themselves out of the market for what some people would call the moderately rich. If Yale and Harvard (plus some of the other wealthier Ivies) are sitting on their billion dollar nest eggs, also known as endowments, then is this really good for education?

Probably. But Probably not.

According to the article below from the New York Times, Congress is doing some arm-twisting, making these schools spend money from their endowments. Yale's endowment is over $22 Billion dollars. That's billion with a "B." At four percent interest on $22 Billion dollars, Yale would reap $880 million in interest to spend from its nest egg with another $220 million that can go back into the endowment. That's a great deal of money, even when you think about the size of the an institution like Yale. To put this in perspective, the cost of educating all 4,000 of its undergrads is a mere $192 million. Of course, the price of a Yale education is priceless, but should a university earn more money in its endowment than it cost to educate its students? Hmmmm....

What does this mean? Since the Ivies set the trends for the other colleges and universities in the US, small and large, particularly when tuitions began to mirror buying a foreign luxury sedan (between $30 - 48,000 a year), Congress is banking that the universities must begin to make college more affordable. Who wants to see a coed go to debtor's prison (see Countrywide Home Loans). Universities that have been literarily printing money since the mid- to late-Eighties will see some of that come back to the people (who can probably afford the high tuition), although it may be a stretch for most. Perhaps that remodel of the kitchen will have to wait four more years.

Indeed, some families are opting out of the rat race by "disowning" their children, emancipating them early on or even making them go and and get a "real" job so that they will appear to be penniless in the eyes of the universities. Do many kids do this? Probably not, but the desperation of getting those poor little rich kids into Yale has its price.

$22 Billion!! With a "B."

January 15, 2008
Yale Plans Sharp Increase in Student Aid

By KAREN W. ARENSON

Yale said Monday that it would sharply increase financial aid for undergraduates, including those from families with annual incomes up to $200,000, in a bid to ease costs for a broad swath of students.

Yale and other universities with large endowments have been under pressure from Congress to spend more and reduce charges for students. Harvard announced a similar aid expansion in December, saying the policy would cut the cost of attending college to 10 percent of income for a typical family making $120,000 to $180,000 a year.

Last week, Yale said that it would increase its annual spending from its $22.5 billion endowment, freeing up money for more aid.

The president of Yale, Richard C. Levin, said Monday in an interview, “I hope this will send a strong message to people with incomes between $45,000 and $200,000, some of whom at the high end perceive our sticker price as very daunting, that Yale does offer help at that range.”

On average, students who receive financial aid will see their charges drop in half, Mr. Levin said. A family with two children in college, $180,000 in income and $200,000 in assets will sees its Yale bill drop, to $11,650 from $22,300. Full tuition, room and board this year costs $45,000.

Students will still be expected to contribute in addition to parental payment — but the bill will drop to $2,500 next year, down from their $4,400 share of the $45,000 total. Despite other efforts to increase the aid and outreach to low- and middle-income students, Dr. Levin said, “we are still believed in many parts of the country to be inaccessible and too expensive.”

Yale said its changes, to take effect in the fall and apply to all undergraduates, would raise spending on undergraduate aid by $24 million, to more than $80 million. Yale also said it would limit the increase in tuition, room and board next year to 2.2 percent, raising total costs to $46,000. In the last five years, the increases have ranged from 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who has been pressing colleges and universities to spend more of their endowments, applauded Yale, saying, “Students and parents are the winners.”

But Mr. Grassley questioned why other colleges with endowments of more than $1 billion had not followed suit.

Other well-heeled colleges have also taken steps to assist low- and middle-income students by replacing loans with grants in aid packages.

Not everybody welcomes the trend. Critics say it could lead less-well-off colleges to reduce aid for lower-income students as they tried to compete for upper-income students.

“We encourage colleges to fully fund the neediest students before extending financial aid pledges up the income scale,” said Robert Shireman, executive director of the Project on Student Debt, a group that focuses on financial aid.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

The Little Rock Nine--50 Years Ago

2008-01-14T22:39:00.001-08:00