Please let us know if you attend the rally before the meeting. Seeing photos from Twitter; looks like a good crowd at the rally. The West Seattle Blog is there reporting. I am going to attempt to live blog so you will see abbreviations, spelling/grammar errors, etc. I will clean it up but I think it is worth trying to do. I will be refreshing the page as I go. I am sad to see that apparently President Liza Rankin is not even going to allow 10 people over the regular 20 to testify. Just five. Also, right at the beginning, the Board has stuck in, after Board comments, a Progress Monitoring presentation. They could have put it at the end but they didn't. They think - in 45 minutes - they can do Superintendent comments, Board comments and this presentation. I doubt that public testimony will start on-time. Tone-deaf doesn't even cover it with Board leadership. To note, apparently the district scheduled the NE community meeting on closures on Rosh Hashanah which is October 2. I
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The mathematics programs encompass separate Master's Degree-earning programs for elementary and middle school teachers (starting 2007/January) as well as after-school programs (starting 2006/December), both for elite students and for students who need remedial guidance.
As will be expected by those who know members of the content team the learning approach is fundamentally different from the one of Kumon, in that it is based on fewer, harder, richer problems that develop a deep understanding of mathematical concepts.
Advanta.net is at the absolute technological forefront in that the company's classrooms are set up so that the Master Instructors and program participants all see each other, from schools or their home, through high-quality Internet video, and in that the community knowledge is quickly expanded by the consistent use of wikis. Advanta.net's infrastructure will soon allow it to serve, with much live and rich media interaction, some 300,000 teacher program participants and a similar number of student program participants.
In New York City Advanta.net is preparing to run sessions for math coaches - this as a stepping stone towards serving many of the more than 10,000 NYCDOE teachers who need extensive professional development even if strict subject specialization is introduced at the elementary school level.
For information email advantanet@www.socialtext.net, with the Subject line preferably set to precisely
Policy and marketing/United States/National and Multi-State/Mathematics/General
Erik Syring
http://eriksyring.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/world-leading-mathematics-and-languages-program-now-accepting-applications/