This is one of the most surprising, inexplicable lists I have ever been on. I have no idea who sponsored it or what the criteria for inclusion were. I was delighted to be in the company of my old blogging partner Deborah Meier. I was taken aback to be on the same list with Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan.
What’s the point? I don’t know.
A group of 40 district superintendents in Néw York banded together to denounce Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system. They said that the law should be suspended as it was neither nor reliable.
Every superintendent should speak up. Cuomo’s plan is not research-based. It is harmful to teachers and harmful to teachers.
Contact info@cadencetheatre.org with any questions or to set up an audition appointment. No phone calls, please.
Cadence Theatre Company in partnership with Virginia Repertory Theatre is holding auditions for The Mountaintop by Katori Hall.
Director Laine Satterfield is inviting African American females (age 30-50) to share a contemporary dramatic monologue no longer than one minute in length.
Auditions take place Sunday, June 14th from 4-7 p.m. at The Children’s Theatre at Willow Lawn, located at 1601 Willow Lawn Drive, Richmond, VA 23230.
Rehearsals begin on or around January 25, 2016, and the show runs February 18-March 12, 2016.
All performers paid.
The role of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been precast.
A teacher in suburban New York sent the following poem, which she wrote after proctoring the ELA test for her 6th graders:
Empathy on ELA Day
I cringe
As I sharpen
A pencil
The whine and grind
Of the sharpener
Shaving curls of wood
Punctures the thoughts
Of my students
As they write furiously
Filling the booklet
With the whisper-scratch
Of penciled thoughts.
I can taste
The tension
And anxiety.
Faces fixed
With frowns
Instead of the smiles
I usually see.
Hands popping up
Randomly
In my perfectly
Arranged rows–
A bathroom break
A pencil blunted
A question
I am forbidden
To answer.
All I can say is,
“I cannot answer that.”
I shut off
That nurturing drive
Thinking about how
I usually answer
Hundreds of questions
every day
As a sixth grade teacher.
I announce
“You have ten more
minutes to complete
the test.”
Startled and panicked
Many dig in harder
And write faster
Rushing the clock.
Don’t worry–
Our torture
Will
Soon
Be
Over.
Janie Fitzgerald
~ April 3, 2014
Last weekend I attended a joyous family wedding and thus was preoccupied and failed to notice one of the seminal moments in reformer history. This was Michael Barber’s speech on “Joy and Data.” Barber is the chief education adviser to Pearson, and he gave this speech in Australia, hoping to debunk the claim that an undue emphasis on data takes away the joy of learning. Barber’s goal was to demonstrate that joy and data go together like a horse and carriage.
Valerie Strauss wrote about Barber’s speech here, and Peter Greene did his usual sharp vivisection of Barber’s ideology here. Strauss collects some of the witty Twitter responses to Barber’s speech; Greene contrasts it with Pearson’s activities and Barber’s publications.
Strauss summarizes:
“In his speech, Barber argues that the pursuit of data has wrongly been accused of sucking the creativity out of learning but that in his world view, data and joy are the two elements that will together improve learning systems around the world in the 21st Century.”
Greene says that Barber’s speech was a celebration of Oxymoron Day. He summarizes Barber’s Big Speech:
“The future of education will be more joyful with the embrace of data. Also, don’t get things wrong– the data does not undermine creativity and inspiration, nor does it tell us what to do, nor does it replace professional judgment. And I don’t even know how to link to all the places where Pearson has contradicted all of this. I would be further ahead to find links to Jeb Bush condemning charter schools and Common Core….
“If we lump all of Pearson’s visionary writing together, the picture that emerges is a Brave New World in which every single student’s action is tagged, collected, and run through a computer program that spits out an exact picture of the student’s intellectual, emotional and social development as well as specific instructions on exactly what the teacher (and, in this Brave New World, we’re using that term pretty loosely) should do next with/for/to the student to achieve the results desired by our data overlords.”
Greene is struck by the scary thought that Barber actually believes what he is saying; arguing with him would be like debating a religious fanatic.
As I read this contemplation of joy and data, I found myself wondering whether Mike Barber might be a cyborg. So I started reading about cyborgs and became persuaded that thos is not the right term to describe a man who confuses quantification with emotion. The right word seems to be android.
News from Chicago about what happens when the Feds start digging and turn over rocks.
Michael Klonsky tells the story here
The cast of characters: Rahm EMANUEL, Paul Vallas, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, and more.
Business as usual in Chicago? Crony capitalism? A city with a big deficit, so big it closed 50 schools. .
