Looks like union-basher Richard Berman has a new blog.

Posted by John at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

About education, that is.  Here's a glimpse inside Chuckbutt's thinking on the subject. He reports on an argument with his longtime friend Troy after they drank a little scotch.

;

Chuckbutt, who acknowledges he doesn't know much about the issue and has an anti-union bias, thinks teacher unions are to blame for too much standardized testing. Dude, get the talking points right!  If you have an anti-union bias and don't know anything about education, you're supposed to blast teacher unions for opposing standardized testing.

Posted by John at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Washington Post columnist and former Bush administration official Michael Gerson must have gone back to the White House last night for about a gallon of Kool-Aid. 

His take on NCLB makes Armstrong Williams look like a skeptic, his thinking about teachers and their unions suggests that he has never set foot inside a school, and his understanding of what motivates teachers is breathtakingly uninformed. 

Also, if George Bush is Abraham Lincoln, then I'm a dancing chicken.

Posted by John at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kevin Carey aims a blog-o-broadside at Michael Winerip for his NY Times column about a recent ETS report describing the effects of poverty on student achievement. 

Kevin asks, "But what would government policy that 'reflects' knowledge of the ETS report look like?"

Well, I found a few answers in Winerip's article.  He cites sources calling for better daycare for poor children and paid leave for new parents.  One expert seems to be calling for a growth model.  Personally, I have reservations about growth models and would add universal health care and living wage legislation to the mix, but Winerip hits a few key points in this short piece.  Those are government policies that would reflect "knowledge of the ETS report" and demonstrate concern about the effects of poverty on poor children.

Posted by John at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Former Washington Times education beat reporter George Archibald is seeking to become the paper's editor-in-chief, according Media Bistro.

Not mentioned in his application letter -- the U.S. Department of Education ranked his reporting on No Child Left Behind as the least friendly to the law.  The Department's contractor, Ketchum, ranked five of Archibald's articles and gave them a score of -2. 

If Archibald were to get the top job, he'd be following in the footsteps of other DC education reporters who have recently moved to more high-profile jobs after covering education, including the AP's Ben Feller, now on the White House beat, and Amit Paley, who is headed to Iraq.

(*Okay, technically he was a "senior investigative reporter" or somesuch, but national education policy was certainly one of the things he wrote about often.)  

Posted by John at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on one of the effects of Renaissance 2010, an attempt to improve the quality of education in the city's schools.  Under Ren10, as it's sometimes called, the district closed certain high schools, sending students to nearby schools. 

From the Chicago Sun-Times, March 12, 2006 "School closings lead to surges in violence, fear on receiving end."

...Last semester, a Hyde Park Career Academy teacher was punched in the face after he asked a student for identification....

This is the kind of violence that is troubling Chicago's public high schools -- especially those accepting students from areas where failing schools are being systematically shut down under Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 initiative.

Since they began admitting those students in the fall of 2004, all eight schools have posted an increase in reported violence that is at least twice as high as the average for similar high schools systemwide, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis indicates.

The most dramatic example was Hyde Park, where the average number of reported violent incidents per month jumped 226 percent during that period, the analysis of CPS data showed.

In fact, Hyde Park was hit by a double-whammy, being forced to accept more than 300 students -- more students than any other receiving school -- in the past two years because two schools closed to freshmen: Englewood this school year and Calumet the year before....

Experts say spikes in violence can make students depressed, worried, anxious and, for the unlucky ones, victims....

In class, it's not unusual to hear new underclassmen swear at teachers, triggering arguments that interrupt instruction.

Most of the bathrooms have been shut down due to a rash of arson fires in them last year.

So, it should be pretty clear that this systemwide reform effort would hurt student achievement at Hyde Park Academy.  And it did, according to an article today's Chicago Sun-Times.  Here's the lede: "At Hyde Park Academy, a neighborhood high school serving black, mostly low-income students, reading scores have dropped dramatically over the last five years." 

Dropped. Dramatically.  But not surprisingly.

Posted by John at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The award for most egregious agenda-pushing exploitation of the recent AP series on teacher sexual misconduct goes to...the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence.

According to the ABCTE blog: "When the talent pool gets shallow, school districts end up hiring whoever is available. When HR spends the bulk of their time running around filling jobs at the last minute, the wrong people are going to slip through and get into a classroom."

Matthew K. Tabor picks apart this silliness better than I can, so go to his blog if you can't see through it yourself.

Posted by John at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I know a guy named Dave who has been married several times.  His groomsmen for the most recent marriage said they were going to put a bumper sticker on his wedding getaway car that said: "Honk if you've been married to Dave."

Which leads me, of course, to Education Week and its many blogs.  I have Mary Mary Ann Zehr's Ed Week blog, the Ravitch-Meier Ed Week blog and David Hoff's Ed Week blog on my RSS feed.  And, when I was on Alexander Russo's Ed Week blog this morning I saw that Marc Dean Millot's Edbizbuzz blog is now, you guessed it an Ed Week blog.  And today I heard secondhand that an Ed Week reporter who had called for the AFT's reaction for a story had put something up on an Ed Week blog about it.  But, not knowing which Ed Week blog, I haven't been able to find it.  (It's like looking for a needle in a cyber-haystack.)

Which brings us to my bumper sticker idea:  HONK IF YOU...HAVE AN  ED WEEK BLOG. 

Posted by John at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Answer: Because Fox News doesn't do enough education stories.

Question: Why would anyone continue reading syndicated columnist Ruben Naverette after he wrote the idiotic sentence below?

As someone who is obviously committed to the law and to preserving its intent, Spellings isn't afraid to square off against powerful opponents of NCLB such as Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Hat tip to Sherman Dorn, who notes that Naverette uses the bankrupt "kids vs. adults" trope.

UPDATE:  It looks as if Eduwonk's Andy Rotherham and I, who disagree on many things, read Sherman Dorn's post, clicked on the link, and did spit-takes on the same Ruben Naverette claim.  And Andy got there a few hours before I did.  No rip-offs here, I swear, but I clearly have to check that Eduwonk RSS feed before lunch.

Posted by John at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Dear Alexander Russo: 

I was surprised to find that a recent claim by President Bush was "new to" you.  Yesterday wasn't the first time President Bush made the claim that "During the most recent five-year period on record, nine-year-olds made more progress in reading than in the previous 28 years combined."

The claim has been made repeatedly by the president and Secretary Spellings and other administration officials in op-eds and speeches and newsletters.  Also, we cited it often -- one might say obsessively -- on this blog.  See here, here, here and here.  (As someone who has been a frequent scolder of other bloggers for not reading your blog, it's surprising to find that you weren't reading ours.)

At the very least, you might have noticed a news article that mentioned the claim a few months after we wrote about it.  It appeared in Education Week and is available, like your blog, on the Ed Week Web site.  The article questioned the Bush administration's stat-citing to support NCLB.

By the way, yesterday's claim is the technically accurate but still misleading version of the claim, which is based on NAEP scores.  At times, Bush administration officials had substituted "last five years" for "most recent "most recent five-year period" -- making the claim not just deceptive but false. 

The truth is that the five-year period included time before NCLB was signed, so it's a stretch (putting it politely) to use the gains as evidence that NCLB is working.

Hey, thanks for reading. 

P.S.  UPDATE:   Alexander Russo politely acknowledges our crusade against the Bush administration's claims

Posted by John at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Below are a few of today's education and labor news articles: 

How to fix 'No Child' law:Act’s sanctions, aid should be targeted at most-troubled schools.  In Florida last year, only 29% of schools made "adequate yearly progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Can Florida schools really be that bad?  USA Today editorial

Too destructive to salvage It's time to say in a national newspaper what millions of teachers, students and parents already know: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is an appalling and unredeemable experiment that has done incalculable damage to our schools — particularly those serving poor, minority and limited-English-proficiency students.  USA Today, Alfie Kohn

Disabled access in schools faulted  An audit of the Los Angeles Unified School District's progress in building and remodeling schools to make them accessible to the disabled found chronic problems in the design of parking, restrooms, ramps and drinking water fountains, as well as a troubling lack of documentation and misstatements of accomplishments.  Los Angeles Times

'No more' dropouts, governor declares Gov. Ted Strickland declared war Wednesday on the high-school dropout rate of black males, saying the state has a moral and economic imperative to fix the problem. Plain Dealer

City Expands Test Program In Schools The announcement of a battery of new standardized tests for students rekindled the debate over whether such testing is emphasized too much.  New York Times

Tainted Soil Around a School Stirs Up Dust and Distrust  After a week of confusion and worry that led the mayor here to step in and close a middle school, state environmental workers on Wednesday carted away two truckloads of soil contaminated with old, banned pesticides unearthed last fall.  New York Times

Schools' faster feedback Just days after students are tested in reading and math, teachers and parents will be able to analyze the kids' strengths and weaknesses under a new assessment system.  New York Daily News

Spitzer Names a Panel to Improve Universities in New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer named a commission on Tuesday to recommend how to overhaul higher education in New York, saying he wanted to improve the reputation of the states public universities.  New York Times

Fenty's Foe On Schools Takeover No Mere Granny It's an irresistible story line Grandma takes on City Hall.  Washington Post

Ohio School Fears Cuts Will Rewrite Its Success Story The 32 students who graduated from the Dayton Early College Academy on Wednesday evening were mostly from low-income families. Few of their parents went to college.  New York Times

Missouri government workers win right to bargain  The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that public employees have a constitutional right to engage in collective bargaining with their government employers, overturning a precedent set 60 years ago. St. Louis Post Dispatch

Robert Morris faculty approves new contract  Robert Morris University faculty members have reached a four-year contract with the university, effective immediately.  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Academic Fallout from Middle East Delegates at the annual meeting of Britain’s main faculty union on Wednesday voted to circulate to members and divisions a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel.  Inside Higher Ed

Posted by John at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Center for Education Reform (CER) needs a copy-editor.  CER hasn't listed the position, but the first three sentences of this week's CER Newswire are a cry for help:

DEMAND. A parent always knows whats best for their child. When a parent is well informed, they can make the decisions that will affect a childs future; decisions like where to buy a home or where to send their child to school. And now, thanks to the DC Oportunity Scholarships and other voucher programs, the former has less to do with the latter.

Three sentences, and I count at least six grammatical errors.  Everyone makes a typo now and then, but this level of sloppiness is extraordinary. Oh, well, maybe the folks at CER are good at math!  Or not.

The first person to use our comments section to identify five or more errors gets a copy of School Choice: Why You Need It -- How You Get It by David Harmer.

UPDATE:  We have a winner.  Alexis, if we can track you down, we'll send you the book.

Posted by John at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Below are a few of today's education and labor news articles:

Activists Push to Allow Vote on Takeover Plan  A coalition of D.C. activists launched a campaign yesterday to enlist volunteers to gather about 20,000 petition signatures in an uphill effort to put Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's school takeover legislation to a referendum.  Washington Post

School daze as gov eyes college cuts? Gov. Spitzer has created a newly formed commission to examine how to streamline and improve state-run colleges - leaving open the possibility of consolidating campuses.  New York Daily News

Using His Wealth to Help Improve Urban Schools He counts the Prince George's County school superintendent and D.C. school board president among his disciples.  Washington Post

Concern about environment creates shift in school design   Nestled in the lush trees of suburban Atlanta's Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve sits the foundation of a school that is being built with partly recycled materials.  Baltimore Sun (AP)

Workers' comp rate reduction pushed   California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner recommended Tuesday that insurers slash the rates they charge businesses for workers' compensation coverage by 14.2%, topping the 8% cut proposed by the largest insurer.  Los Angeles Times

Limit on pay-bias lawsuits upheld A deeply divided Supreme Court ruling sharply limits the ability of workers to sue employers for gender pay discrimination linked to actions taken years earlier.  Baltimore Sun

NWA flight attendants OK givebacks  By a narrow margin Tuesday, Northwest Airlines flight attendants became the last union to accept a concessionary contract with the airline, just as Northwest prepares to leave bankruptcy protection. Detroit Free Press

Posted by John at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A somewhat random collection of education articles from the past few days.

Impostor Allegedly Lived at Stanford, Chicago Tribune
Drawn to the culture of black colleges Cleveland Plain Dealer
Teachers Lacking Certification Face Dismissal Washington Post
Good News for Middle Schoolers New York Times
The sciences for the fittest Baltimore Sun
Panel discusses school security Baltimore Sun
For graduates who return home Baltimore Sun
State test bars thousands from high school diploma Cleveland Plain Dealer
Budget deal a blow to colleges Detroit Free Press
Testing Industry Feels Own Pressure Washington Post
Parents Challenge Request By Army Washington Post
Colleges try to get high schoolers to take classes Cleveland Plain Dealer
Ohio school reformers say Maryland is a model Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Education Dept. on the Loan Scandal New York Times
'No Child' Tests Hard on English Learners Washington Post
Work vs. Play in Kindergarten Washington Post
Teachers to return to schools today in Richmond Hts. Cleveland Plain Dealer

Posted by John at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Legal Victory for Families of Disabled Students (New York Times)

Labor wielding clout in U.S. presidential race (Washington Post)

Treasury Union Wins Fight Over Border Officers (Washington Post)

Education put to the humor test (USA Today)

Why AP and IB Schools Soar (Washington Post)

La. Senator Blocked Vote On D.C. Schools Measure (Washington Post)

Posted by Jaime at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Clinton Wants Pre-K for All 4-Year-Olds Baltimore Sun

Contractor wears 2 hats on jobs for L.A. Unified Los Angeles Times  

A 'Burnham Plan' for schools Chicago Tribune  

What teachers want -- and do not need Los Angeles Times

Annual College Survey Criticized Washington Post

In Higher Ed, the Year of Dishonesty Baltimore Sun

Teachers re-elect their union chief Chicago Tribune

Montessori and Me Washington Post

Mayor drops school fight Los Angeles Times

Schools Amid Uncertainty, Janey Keeps Focus on Reforms Washington Post

Posted by John at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inside Higher Ed is reporting that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings will be on the Daily Show tomorrow.  US News' Paul Bedard has that info -- and the news that Sec. Spellings was in the audience of a recent American Idol show. 

A fan of Melinda Doolittle, Sec. Spellings wasn't aware of the Byzantine nature of the voting on American Idol until recently, and she is "shocked over the Melinda situation."  Rumor has it that Sec. Spellings is forming a task force to make sure future AI voting is free of corruption and cronyism.

Posted by John at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Daily Show looks at President Bush's differing notions of accountability for 8th grade teachers and for the administration.

Posted by John at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gregory Michie doesn't think much of the way the media cover education.  Over at Rethinking Schools, Michie, who teaches at Illinois State University, rips into education reporting in Chicago.  (H/T Pen Weekly Newsblast.)

He takes on the Chicago Tribune for missing the big picture and blaming a parent for her child's problems: 

"When the ground-level reality in Chicago was that schools had a thousand available spots for 270,000 eligible transferees, wasn't that the big story?"

He calls out Oprah for not asking the right questions about the differences between two Chicago area schools: 

"Several of the most significant causes of such disparities — state funding formulas that perpetuate abominable monetary gaps between rich and poor districts, persistent residential segregation, and the near-total abandonment of public schools by white and middle-class city dwellers — went unmentioned."

He chides Chicago magazine for its best schools list:

"...in only five of the 30 "best" schools do even a majority of the students qualify as low-income. And in only one does the percentage (79 percent) come close to the system average of 86 percent. What's more, in nine of the 30 schools, the percentage of students from low-income families is less than 20 percent. Talk about apartheid education."

I can't agree with everything Michie writes -- Did the Tribune reporter really miss the mark by pointing out that a parent let her kids stay up past midnight on school nights? But this is a thought-provoking piece.

Posted by John at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What could be better? Last week AFT Executive Vice President Toni Cortese and Joel Packer of the NEA took part in an online chat at Edweek about the role and perspectives of teacher unions in NCLB policy.  You may need to register to view the transcript, but if you haven’t already registered at Edweek this is the perfect opportunity.

And  did you know Ed Week has a MySpace page? Apparently Editorial Projects in Education is 28, a Virgo and single.   So, does this explain why Russo wanted to move his blog over to Ed Week?

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In an e-mail to subscribers earlier this week, Education Daily said it would not be publishing yesterday and today.  Why the decision not to publish?  Why do so on such short notice?  Note clear.

But a reporter called about a story for the Thursday edition, though, which actually goes out tonight after 5:00, so subscribers like me who are jonesing for their daily dose of insider news should be satisfied soon.

In e-mails and phone calls with two Ed Daily reporters, I got absolutely no information in response about what's going on over there.  Funny, whenever I don't want to talk about something going on at the AFT, they always manage to squeeze some information out of me.

UPDATE:   I'm hearing Tuesday and Wednesday were previously scheduled no-publish days.  The publisher forgot to give subscribers the usual advance notice, so it seemed to be a last-minute decision.  No truth to the rumor, then, that Ed Daily staffers were using the two days to pack up and move to corporate headquarters in Florida.

Posted by John at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does NCLB need a major overhaul, tweaking or something else?  Sunday, the Washington Post  embraced Education Margaret Spellings' "tweak" rhetoric.

An editorial stated, "No Child Left Behind certainly needs tweaking," calling for stronger state assessments and help, rather than punishment, for poorly performing schools.

Of course, it's possible that those calling for a major overhaul and those calling for tweaks are closer than the rhetoric would make it seem.  The Post's help-not-punish line echoes recent congressional testimony from AFT President Edward J. McElroy, who has called AYP "fundamentally flawed" and said that the law is "burdensome and demoralizing to teachers."

In any case, there's at least some consolation for those hoping for a serious approach to NCLB reauthorization:  At least, the Post editorialists didn't follow Sec. Spellings' lead in saying NCLB was 99.9 percent pure.

Posted by John at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the Washington Post's Amit Paley, on today's online NCLB chat: "We're getting mostly anti-NCLB voices. Anyone reading who wants to write supporting the law?"

UPDATE:  Someone responded to this request.  The NCLB supporter thinks teachers are overpaid, don't work hard, and want to avoid accountability.

D.C.: Yes, I will support the law. Teachers salaries continue to rise, while they only work 9 months year and work less hours per-week than most private sector employees.

If they are complaining about NCLB, it is because it actually wants to hold them accountable. The NEA and the other teachers unions will do anything to say it isn't our fault, its the parents' fault. The parents say it is the teachers fault, so who looses? THE KIDS.

Obviously, 100 percent isn't possible....but you have got to have lofty goals if for nothing else than the kids.

Amit Paley: Here's a defender of No Child Left Behind, tapping into a common refrain among some politicians and others that the teachers unions are the major roadblock to educational reform. Ask teachers, of course, and they'll say that the unions are the only groups making sure public education doesn't collapse.

Posted by John at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's Samuel Clemens award for precise writing in a piece about education goes to Amit Paley of the Washington Post. Clemens, discussing the importance of choosing precisely the right word, once wrote, "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

In today's Washington Post, Amit Paley takes a look at NCLB's goal of having 100% of students proficient by 2014.  He lays out the arguments for both sides pretty well, and the piece is worth a look just for that. 

But what struck me was one word in this sentence:

"Critics, including some teachers unions and many testing experts, view the law as a forced march toward an impossible education nirvana."

Paley gets it.  There are two major national unions, and the AFT alone has 3300 affiliates.  Too many reporters would omit "some" and associate all teachers unions with the loaded phrase "forced march toward an impossible education nirvana."

It's just one word in a piece full of important words, but Paley deserves praise for refusing to treat teachers unions as a monolith.

Posted by John at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I enjoy Eduwonk's thoughtful posts but rarely click on the links in his cryptic posts.  Maybe that's a mistake.

In this one-sentence post, Eduwonk claims that the Associated Press is characterizing a recent ad campaign by the AFT's New York state affiliate as "misleading."  That seemed fishy to me, so I clicked.  Sure enough, it's Eduwonk, not AP, that is doing the editorializing.

The story use the word "misleading," but it comes from a person quoted, not from the reporter. And the closest the AP's Michael Gromley comes to editorializing is using the word "however" in drawing a distinction between the language used in the ads "private interests" and "private schools."  While Gormley's lead says the ad campaign "is drawing a failing grade for honesty," it's clear -- to anyone who reads the entire article -- that the "failing grade" comes from a New York Daily News columnist quoted in the article. 

If the AP is guilty of anything, it's careless editing, not editorializing. 

Eduwonk, an avid fisherman, can be forgiven for stretching the facts about the one got that away, but he should tell the trout truth on his blog.  Using fewer than 20 words, he underestimates his readers, willfullly miscontrues the article, and shows a lack of respect for the AP's objectivity.  He's got a shiny lure, but don't let him reel you in.

Posted by John at 01:26 PM | Permalink

USA Today's preview of a new Fox reality show, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" quotes Alexander Russo, who blogs at This Week in Education.

"Education news blogger Alexander Russo says the show could be compelling if it doesn't turn into a train wreck of adult ignorance. 'Most parents,' he points out, "are effectively on this game show every night.'"

The article quotes Diane Ravitch, a Serious Education Scholar who has stooped to enter the education blogosphere.  Her blog, like Russo's, is hosted by Education Week.

I'm hoping the show, which challenges adults to answer questions about topics taught in fifth grade, will make a nice counterpoint to the "kids are stupid" theme in education reporting.

Posted by John at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't resist joining Kevin Carey at The Quick and the Ed and Alexander Russo at This Week in Education in their critique of how education news stories are written.  My pet peeve is different than theirs, however.  What bugs me is the education journalist who frames her story in this fashion: "I visited a classroom for one period of one day and saw this thing happening, therefore my observations are emblematic of what is wrong with public education today."

Witness this story in today's Washington Post, in which Amit R. Paley compares two ninth grade classrooms in Prince George's county, a suburb of Washington, D.C.  In a classroom in the more affluent part of the county,  the teacher is doing a compare and contrast assignment using Animal Farm and the poetry of Langston Hughes.  At a different high school, in a classroom with "more poor and black students," the teacher is doing a writing assignment on the student's immediate goals.  Paley uses the comparison between the two classrooms to illustrate that instruction for some students is "dumbed down."

Is it possible that the level of instruction at one high school is higher than at another in the same county?  Of course.  In fact, if Paley didn't even need to drive to another school--he could have just walked down the hall and found different levels of instruction within the same high school.  But is it fair to make a judgment about a teacher and her teaching practice based on what is observed during one class on a random day selected by the journalist?  I would argue it is not.

Who is to say that the teacher Paley observed focusing on the students' goals hadn't also taught a lesson on Animal Farm or Langston Hughes' poems earlier that month? County Superintendent John Deasey is quoted later in the article as saying that the county has adopted a standardized curriculum, but that doesn't mean that ninth grade teachers in different classrooms (in different high schools) have to be doing the same lesson on the same day--or at least I hope it doesn't.  And, getting the teacher to admit, as Paley does, that she sometimes modifies instruction for her students based on their academic background does not convince me that she has lowered her expectations for her students, which seems to be what he is implying.

While I think that journalists should get out to actual schools and try to translate what they see for their readers, I also think they should be more cautious in drawing conclusions based on their limited experiences in the classroom. The whole, "I went to school myself so I know what should happen in a classroom" attitude really gets on my nerves.  So, that's my contribution to the edublogosphere discussion of "what's wrong with education journalism."

Posted by Michele at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's a quasi-joke (not particularly funny) circulating about NCLB reauthorization.  It goes like this:  If you put the Manhattan phonebook in front of President Bush, weakened in the polls and desperate to leave a positive legacy, and told him it was NCLB reauthorization, he'd sign it and say it upheld the core principles of the law.

Speaking for myself -- rather than AFT legislative staffers and the smart people at the AFT who know much more about education politics than I do -- I expect President Bush to fight hard to preserve much of what's in the current version of the law.

But the one-liner, such as it is, got me thinking about what the media coverage of the signing would be like....

From the newspapers: 

"President Bush today signed an updated version of the No Child Left Behind Act, saying the bill would 'preserve the core principles of No Child Left Behind.'  Some Democrats claimed that the president had actually attached his signature to the Manhattan phonebook, but White House spokesperson Tony Snow responded that the Democrats were "nitpicking obstructionists who don't care about America's children."

From cable TV news: 

"President Bush today signed an updated version of the No Child Left Behind Act that upholds the law's core principles. We'll have more later about the response from the Democrats who are running for president, but nothing about the policy itself. 

Now back to our lead stories:  Anna Nicole Smith is still dead, and there are shocking new relevations in the case of the diaper-wearing, allegedly murderous astronaut."

From the Washington Post's Style section: 

"At today's Rose Garden signing event, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings wore a black skirt and boots reminiscent of the outfit Condoleeza Rice wore in Germany two years ago, which gives us an excuse to run this photo again."

Posted by John at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In online discussions, the convention is that anyone who compares opponents to Nazis has automatically lost the debate.  The convention is sometimes called Godwin's Law (though, technically, Godwin's Law has a different definition).  Based on comments from former Education Secretary Rod Paige and, more recently, conservative hate radio host Neil Boortz, I'm proposing a corollary:  In education debates, anyone who compares teacher unions to terrorists automatically loses the debate.

Are teacher unions imperfect?  Yes.  Should critics be free to point out perceived flaws?  Sure.  Are we on par with terrorists?  Uh, I don't think so. 

ThinkProgress (watching Hannity and Colmes so we don't have to) has video of Boortz telling Fox News's Sean Hannity that teacher unions are worse than Al Qaeda: 

Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.

To appreciate the feebleness of Boortz's reasoning, all you have to do is look at his easy dismissal of the effects of a nuclear attack.  "Ok. We would recover from that."  What would the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have said about Boortz's dismissive statement, even decades after the bombing of their cities?  Boortz thinks a nuclear bomb is something to be shrugged off, and, just as stupidly, he thinks America's teachers support something akin to terrorism.

Leo Casey of Edwize illustrates just how patently stupid Boortz's statement is, noting Boortz's inapt use of the term "terrorist" as it applies to members of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT's New York City local:

"A number of our union brothers and sisters died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Some of the dead were members of our state affiliate, NYSUT. Others were first responders — police, fire, EMTs — who gave their lives in a valiant attempt to save others. In a number of cases, these responders were the literal brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters of UFT members. They all died in the public employee union tradition of service for others. We take great pride in being part of that tradition, and of doing our best to continue it in our daily work."

Last week, I mentioned that there was cause to speculate about the identity of the ghostwriter of former Education Secretary Rod Paige's new book.  My old guess was Matt Robinson, whom Paige calls, "a great writer and friend whose assistance with the writing constituted only a sliver of his contribution." But that's too obvious. My new guess is Neal Boortz.

Posted by John at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 Update: Alexander Russo at This Week in Education weighs in here. Eduwonk here.

The image to the left captures the reaction of
AFT leaders and staffers who read a recent Education Week article about the union's supposed loss of influence. But I had an extra cup of coffee today, so I'm alert enough to put together a brief response. 

First, the article laments that the AFT is a membership-driven organization instead of a leadership-driven organization.  Well, there's a word for that kind of organization -- "union."

Second, just two months ago, Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), ranked the AFT 6th among organizations that influence education policy.  And here's the kicker -- EPE is Ed Week's parent organization.  Apparently, after the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, the richest man in the world, Ed Trust, and the National Governors Association, the AFT is the organization with the most clout.  Either the AFT has plummeted in the last two months, or Ed Week has a little internal communications problem of its own.

Third, the article mentions the November elections without noting that the AFT's election effort was the union's largest effort ever in a nonpresidential election and contributed to the election of a Congress receptive to changing education policy in a real and substantive way.

Fourth, the article paints the AFT as an organization that has had nothing but defeats, even as it acknowledges recent victories:

"Earlier this month, the union celebrated the U.S. House of Representatives’ adoption of a federal minimum-wage bill, and cuts in interest rates for student loans and efforts to lower Medicare prescription-drug costs, all issues the AFT has lobbied for."

And in the same Ed Week edition that has the piece on the AFT, another article includes this tidbit: "As with private school choice, the proposal on trumping collective bargaining won’t advance in the Education and Labor Committee, Rep. [George] Miller said."

Wow!  Just imagine what life would be like if the AFT still had some influence and respect. All right, cue the mandatory swipes about protesting too much and the rumor-mongering about real concern inside AFT headquarters. We'll now return to our regularly scheduled programming and Washington power lunches. 

(By the way, Joe Williams thinks the Ed Week assessment misses the mark.  Thanks, Joe, but then you mention the AFT vs. NEA thing.  Did you have to go there?)

Posted by John at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This weekend's Washington Post reported the stunning news that some young people don't know much about the life of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. -- and one of the causes of this ignorance is NCLB. This is wrong in so many ways -- the information is based on a survey that finds most students are knowledgeable about MLK, the survey tests college students whose K-12 education came mostly pre-NCLB -- that it's hard to know where to start. But here's a quick response, paraphrasing one of the nation's leading education policy analysts, Shawn Corey Carter (also known as Jay-Z): NCLB has 99 problems but this ain't one.

The article bends over backwards to employ one of the media's favorite education themes: Young people are stupid.  The article reports that "more than 81 percent [of surveyed college students] knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for 'racial justice and brotherhood' in his historic 'I Have a Dream' speech."  Should that figure be higher?  Yes.  Will most media reports focus on the silly answers from those who were guessing or deliberately answering incorrectly?  Yes. 

Another favorite theme is that every education story has an NCLB connection.  True in some sense, but this article's mandatory NCLB link is a stretch:

"In many schools across the country, teachers say social studies has taken a back seat under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which stresses math and reading. Squeezing history into the curriculum can be difficult, educators say, and taking time out of a scheduled lesson to use a federal holiday -- even King's -- as a teaching moment can be tough."

That paragraph is followed by a quote not from a teacher but from a student.  And where's the pre-NCLB data about young people's knowledge of MLK?  How much school time is spent on MLK?

As this blog has discussed many times, NCLB really is leading some schools to give less time to subjects other than math and reading.  But this simplistic handling of a serious issue just makes it easier for the "NCLB just needs a tweak" crowd to ridicule the media and dismiss NCLB's real problems.

Posted by John at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)