Oakland’s American Indian Public Charter High School will graduate its first class of low-income, minority students in June: All 18 are headed to college with 10 going to University of California campuses and two more to MIT and Cornell. Spitting in the eye of mainstream education has worked for the two AIPC middle schools and [...]
The higher education bubble is bursting, writes David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute. “Between 2000 and 2005, the average wages of college graduates declined after adjusting for inflation,” he writes. College graduates have flooded the market. There may be jobs for the CalTech math major with a 4.0 grade point average, but not for [...]
As you probably can guess, I’ve returned from my travels — Bruges, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm — and partially recovered from jet lag. Travel Tips: Bruges is beautiful, but don’t eat the mussels at the Golden Mermaid on the main square. Amsterdam is great but the lines at the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum [...]
A Pennsylvania newspaper ran a classified ad calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama, reports AP.
The ad read, “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!” The four presidents were all assassinated.
The newspaper’s advertising staff didn’t make the historical connection, said Warren Times Observer Publisher John Elchert, who’s now apologizing [...]
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor went to Catholic schools as a girl in New York City, reports the New York Times. Her father died when she was 9; her mother worked as a nurse to support her daughter and son, who became a physician.
In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled [...]
The Case for Everyday Mathematics is made by Andy Isaacs of the University of Chicago Mathematics Project in response to Barry Garelick’s critique.
Isaacs writes:
The highly efficient paper-and-pencil algorithms that have been traditional in the U.S. may no longer be the best algorithms for children in today’s technologically demanding world. Today’s elementary school children will be [...]
Chaz wonders whether principals can find a way around using ATRs to plug openings.
Norm Scott, union troublemaker, says Randi Weingarten is on a “national sellout tour.”
Here’s a write-up of the Queens charter school myth-busting session we previewed.
An internal NEA e-mail, reported by Andrew Rotherham, marshals union officials against TFA.
Sawchuck: Why fight a group your own [...]
Just days after a massive protest against a proposed charter school siting at a Brooklyn middle school, the charter school under contention withdrew its request for public space today.
The Hebrew Language Academy Charter School, which the Department of Education had proposed siting inside a middle school in Marine Park, Brooklyn, told school officials today that [...]
An issue that dominated California’s Prop 8 battles is reappearing in New York: whether legalizing gay marriage will have an effect on what children are taught in schools.
In an ad campaign by the Empire State Pride Agenda, a pro-gay marriage group, State Deputy Secretary for Education Duffy Palmer assures people that should marriage equality legislation [...]
In my first year of teaching, we received word that our school building was “underutilized” and a new high school would be moving in. Rumors started to fly that we were going to be phased out. We began showing up at Community Education Council meetings and signing up for two-minute slots, to make it known [...]
Rev. Al Sharpton invited one of the strongest opponents of mayoral control onto his live radio broadcast tomorrow morning.
This is not the first time the reverend has publicly distanced himself from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s support for mayoral control. In April, at a conference for their shared group, the Education Equality Project, Sharpton ceded the [...]
A group of New York City mothers are appealing to divine intervention to stop the renewal of mayoral control, with a daylong fast that starts a minute before midnight tonight.
“I am hoping that the legislators in Albany, if they don’t have direct knowledge of how bad things are for our children, that they will be [...]
I just finished reading The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream by John Zogby of Zobgy International, a public opinion polling company. In addition to compiling lots of interesting findings about how the American dream has / is shifting, Zogby creates a pictures of the new generation of [...]
From New York City:
Democratic lawmakers are pushing Shelly Silver to impose fixed terms for school board members. (Post)
Downtown Express, a paper from Silver’s Manhattan district, says it hopes he resists the pressure.
A top Democratic state senator has a plan that would leave the PEP unchanged. (Daily News)
A hearing held by a Queens state senator last [...]
From New York City:
Democratic lawmakers are pushing Shelly Silver to impose fixed terms for school board members. (Post)
Downtown Express, a paper from Silver’s Manhattan district, says it hopes he resists the pressure.
A top Democratic state senator has a plan that would leave the PEP unchanged. (Daily News)
A hearing held by a Queens state senator last [...]