News Nuggets

You will either have to work a second job, part-time, temporary, menial...or teach summer school...

Or, you will spend the time tuning up your work for the next school year.

Hopefully, you will work on open-ended strategies that are adaptable in case you are shuffled to a new grade level or content-area assignment.

But, take time out to lobby for the demise of NCLB.

Sidebar

NCLB is really the "spin name" for the Elementary and Secondary School Act, that can't go away. But, the odious features of NCLB, i.e., the ones that stupidly handcuff and sabotage education in favor of making public schools look bad so that vouchers can be used to prop up church schools; can be eliminated.

Think about all the pain and misery that the noble, but subverted, goals of NCLB have wreaked upon students and the teachers who teach them. Then, take action and hound your highly-paid representatives and senators until they commit to radical changes in NCLB.

You will save yourself lots of time and aggravation and stress if you are successful in eliminating the odious features of NCLB.

Dark and Dangerous Forces are Already at Work

Forces bent on continuing the "legacy of ill" of NCLB well into the next administration are at work.

For example, note these sources

Secretary Spellings Lobbies Congress for NCLB

Secretary Spellings testifies before the House Committee

Secretary Spellings Invites House and Senate Education to Convene on No Child Left Behind

Of course, the Secretary of Education has the "inside track" in influencing members of Congress because she speaks the same dialect as they do, i.e., "Spin-based, Bureaucra-tease."

A Educational Technology Related Item

US Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, has asked for ideas on the integration of technology in education. There is a form on the ed.gov site, but no ability to dialog or even leave your contact information if you fill it out.

Link to the US Dept. of Education "Ed Tech Roundtable" Page

You will have to send an E-mail message because there is no way to leave feedback on the page.

E-mail link: edtech@ed.gov

Here are the questions, and Classroom Toolkit's less than reverent answers…

1. In what ways has technology improved the effectiveness of your classroom, school or district?

Answer: Technology's history in public schools misses the potential that proponents promised. This is not the fault of the technology (though the technology is too hard to use), but is the fault of partially funded and under funded technology projects, the faultof a lack of professional development focused upon our curriculum, and the fault of the general mismanagement that occurs when the federal government bureaucrats meddle in something (like education) that they understand little about.

 

2. Based on your role (administrator, parent, teacher, student, entrepreneur, business leader), how have you used educational data to make better decisions or be more successful?

Answer: Nobody uses "educational data" to make better decisions. This is not the fault of the data, because useable data is non-existent. Fault school district officials who base decisions more on budget requirements than instructional needs. Also fault our federal government and our "public" for focusing on (and exaggerating until it is a caricature with monstrous proportions) a strategy of limited usefulness, i.e., high-stakes test scores.




Anyone who wants usable (and actionable) educational data needs to be willing to pay for it. And, the cost of acquiring this data has only a minor technological component. Most of the cost of building that data. Useable educational data comes at the cost of hiring, training and employing large numbers of trained observers. Without professional observational data, any other (easy to collect) data is "next to useless."

 

3. In what ways can technology help us prepare our children for global competition and reach our goals of eliminating achievement gaps and having all students read and do math on grade level by 2014?

No answers, but more questions. Note: The face validity of this question seems to indicate that the author is unqualified to meddle in education in any way.




Three unrelated question stems are twisted into one sentence. These question stems are:

 

1. Technology preparing children for global competition



Question 3, Part 1.) Comments:




Technology doesn't seem to prepare children for anything except for more technology.




Learning experiences, generally facilitated by teachers, prepares students for later life experiences.




Preparing children for global competition doesn't seem to be one of our core curriculum subjects.




Are we planning a high-stakes test that assesses each student's readiness for global competition?




Wouldn't the study of foreign languages be for productive than technology initiatives in developing global competitors?




 

2. Eliminating achievement gaps (in whom?)

Question 3, Part 2.) Comments:




Achievement gaps are calculated as the deviation or discrepancy between the arbitrary (Grade Level) standard and the arbitrary high-stakes test




The correct standard is the progress toward each student becoming all that they can be, with each student focusing on personal milestones and personal benchmarks




The "Grade Level/ Group Achievement Gap" is an arbitrary and distracting target. This Grade Level/ Group Achievement in reading and math has no relationship to global competition, or even a relationship to success on future jobs




This "standard" is based upon philosophies that didn't even function during the 19th Century when they were proposed. There is no chance that these concepts will be functional during the 21st Century

 

3. All students reading and doing math on grade level

Question 3, Part 3.) Comments:




Answer: Does this assume that reading and math are keys to competition and world domination?




What evidence exists to prove that reading and math are the independent variables that determine success at global competition?




Corporate research shows that needed Twenty First Century skills include:

Collaboration




Teamwork Skills




Problem-Solving




Decision-Making




Project Management




Plan into Action and Vision into Reality, i.e., Execution




Application and Performance (AnP)




Personal Marketing




 



4. What should be the federal government's role in supporting the use of technology in our educational system?




Pay lots and lots of money and get out of the way.




Develop realistic timeframe's about how long changes will take in our schools




Develop realistic budgets. Hint: Realistic budgets will be levels of magnitude higher than the skimpy, wimpy, anemic budgets that school disticts now rail about.




Realistic budgets also will be controlled by different folks (teachers) than the people that currently control those budgets (business office staff and administors)

Sidebar

One thought: Develop a matching grant program where our federal government matches dollar for dollar the money that we spend in warfare. This would be a 1:1 Program where the Feds really could provide a positive impact upon education.

But, don't just settle for our ideas. Prepare your own rebuttal for NCLB and put this "vampire-like" law out of its "dark world" existence. Halt this law from its continued sapping the lifeblood of educational excitements and teacher empowerment.

Tell your senators and representatives what this law is really doing to education.