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Commentary:
Those Greedy Teachers
Just about everybody has a friend, neighbor
or relative who decided to become a teacher.
Have you ever met anyone who went into the teaching profession to make
money? On the other hand, have you ever
heard of a hedge fund manager or financier who decided to go into their
profession to help kids? Businesses
exist to make a profit. Public schools
exist to make informed American citizens.
These are radically different missions, with different priorities, goals and objectives.
Private Funding of Public Schools
The Bridgeport Education Reform Fund in all
likelihood will mean nothing to most people. But ignoring the fund is a mistake
because it is a model that figures to play an increasingly prominent role in
the funding of schools in the years ahead in this country. Although the present
venue is the largest city in Connecticut
What is troubling is that the $400,000 in the
fund has come from wealthy donors who remain anonymous. According to The Wall
Street Journal, the probable benefactors are officials from the ZOOM
Foundation, which is backed by hedge fund manager Steve Mandel ("Schools Look to Donors," Dec. 23).
Because no one knows for certain at this date who the principals are, their
agenda remains hidden. In business, opaqueness is common, but it is anathema in
education - at least in public schools - because there are almost always
strings attached.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/walt_gardners_reality_check/2011/12/private_funding_of_public_schools.html
“The
NCLB mandate for standardized tests requires the nation’s public schools to
administer some 50 million tests annually, costing some $700 million a year,
most of that money going to corporations that create and publish the tests,
score the results and provide “interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic
reports.” Since I was a school boy, testing costs have risen by 3,000 percent.
And so too has the opportunity to make a buck.”
No Child Left Behind has
turned schoolkids into commodities
By Fred Grimm -
Compared to modern
school kids, I was a downright worthless student. I don’t mean worthless as a pejorative. (My father would have used a more colorful
term to characterize my scholarly pursuits.) But worthless as a commodity. Us kids at Montrose Elementary School Florida
http://educationviews.org/2011/12/26/no-child-left-behind-has-turned-schoolkids-into-commodities-mcclatchy/
Despite their grip
on state government, Republicans did not always get along in 2011
December 26, 2011 |By Angela Couloumbis, Inquirer Harrisburg
HARRISBURG
No new taxes were slapped on Pennsylvanians. But
neither was a long-debated "impact fee" imposed on the lucrative
extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale.
And though a new law extended the hours beer can be
sold on Sundays, wine and hard liquor can still be bought only in those beloved
state-owned stores.
Despite one party's grip on the reins of power in Harrisburg
http://articles.philly.com/2011-12-26/news/30559258_1_transportation-funding-natural-gas-marcellus-shale
In RTI Era, is Federal Special Education Law Out
of Date?
When districts first started adopting
response-to-intervention, the approach quickly became the target of criticism from parents who believed
school districts were trying to put off more costly special education services. RTI, an approach that involves using an
escalating set of techniques to address skills a student is struggling with, got a boost in 2004, when the federal law
changed to require states to let districts use it if they chose.
The hope was that its use would help distinguish
between children who truly have specific learning disabilities and students
whose learning difficulties could be resolved with general education
interventions. Sure enough, in the last few years, the number of students
identified as having learning disabilities has dropped.
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