Data Driven Education is destroying the minds of our kids.
Education is not how much we “put in the bucket” or how much material we cover, but rather, how much we inspire the students to fill the bucket on their own. A dentist does very little to prevent cavities, but their advice is what inspires us to brush and floss in order to avoid them. My high school Spanish teacher taught me very little of the Spanish I currently speak today with my wife and family, but she planted the seed of excitement to want to learn Spanish.
This is the Way Public Education Ends
Okay, so you really should give this a listen. It’s the story of a school district in New York where a motivated majority takes over the school board. They do it in order to destroy the public school system. So? Why should you care? Ohio isn’t New York. Because it’s a working model of how a group of people, duly elected, can go about destroying a public school system with impunity. It’s a model that can be adapted to work anywhere.
Support Public Education by Voting Out ALEC
American journalist Walter Lippmann once said, “Successful politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate elements in their constituencies.” Most people’s viewpoints aren’t quite as cynical …
Support the candidates who are going to support you as an education professional
This time, four years ago, we had no idea what was coming as a result of the November 2010 elections. Unfortunately, we now know the ramifications of that election. We know that it doesn’t matter whether you’re an educator who is Republican, Democrat or Independent. The education mandates of the last four years apply to all of us equally. We know what happens when we elect people who don’t value public education, who are more loyal to charter profiteers than to Ohio’s children. With all that has happened in the last four years, is there any doubt how critical this November’s elections are?
What We’re Fighting For
Normally, the first thought about a labor dispute is that it is about salary and benefits. That really isn’t the case in Reynoldsburg. This is about what is the best learning environment for our students and giving our students, our parents, and our community the schools they deserve.
Pros, prose and now checklists
I’m looking over Gallup’s “State of America’s Schools Report.” There’s a lot of interesting stuff in it and you should probably read it. This statement caught my interest: Among employees in 12 different occupational categories Gallup surveyed in 2012, K-12 …
Give Our Students the Services They Need to Succeed
Recently, I received another email from a colleague that all of her school district’s libraries will be manned by paraprofessionals next year. The position of “certified school librarian” is being eliminated entirely. This has become an-all-too common scenario in the …
Stop the buying and selling of school board elections
It was Tip O’Neil who made popular the phrase “All politics is local.” No adage has been more accurate in describing school board races, in big cities or small, across America, until recently. Education reformers have decided to pump big …
Equity and Fairness in Higher Education
Is it time for Ohio to revisit the part-time faculty, collective bargaining issue in higher education? The Mid-Biennium Review calls for Higher Education funding to be tied to student completion of programs and degrees. Is this fair to our higher institutions, including community colleges? Weigh in with your comments on the OEA blog.
The Education Spring
Earlier this month I traveled to Austin, Texas for the Network for Public Education (NPE) National Conference. Spring was definitely in the air in Austin, but it had less to do with the weather than with the NPE conference attendees. The spring they were referring to is the upcoming “education spring,” which we are hopeful will play out over the next few months.
