Friday Open Thread
Reminder - Community Meeting tomorrow with Director Carr from 8:30 am to 10 am at Bethany Community Church, 8023 Green Lake Drive N (entrance near the playground). Director Carr indicated that she expected quite a number of people based on BEX/Capacity issues.
Also, next Wednesday, the 12th, is a School Board meeting and one the last times to register input on BEX/Capacity in a public forum. Call (252-0040) or e-mail (boardagenda@seattleschools.org) to sign up to speak, starting at 8 am on Monday morning.
For a great holiday event, the Pathway of Lights around Green Lake is tomorrow night starting around 5 p.m. Volunteers line the path with luminarias and there are choirs who sing at various spots around the lake. The weather is likely to be windy but mostly dry so bundle up and go for a lovely walk. They also collect food for the needy.
What's on your mind?
Also, next Wednesday, the 12th, is a School Board meeting and one the last times to register input on BEX/Capacity in a public forum. Call (252-0040) or e-mail (boardagenda@seattleschools.org) to sign up to speak, starting at 8 am on Monday morning.
For a great holiday event, the Pathway of Lights around Green Lake is tomorrow night starting around 5 p.m. Volunteers line the path with luminarias and there are choirs who sing at various spots around the lake. The weather is likely to be windy but mostly dry so bundle up and go for a lovely walk. They also collect food for the needy.
What's on your mind?
Comments
Tuesday, Dec 11th
7:00-8:30 PM
John Stanford Center Auditorim
-North End Mom
http://www.queenanneview.com/2012/12/05/learn-more-about-upcoming-school-levies-at-coe-elementary-tomorrow/
Public School Parent
Can anyone confirm this means that the half-day kindergarten kids don't have school, but the the full-day K kids still do?
NEP
Half Day K Parent
Some of it may actually be a little surprising, here's a quote: But the Kochs are also capable of surprise, with their libertarian instincts often trumping their conservative ones. David Koch, for instance, supports gay marriage and opposes the war on drugs. The brothers’ new political emphasis in the coming year? Fighting corporate welfare.
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Separately, can we lose the #!$#@ captcha thing?! This is my 12th attempt to post this (plus a couple refreshes, yes I've been counting), which is even worse than usual. Is it really helping drastically? I'm about ready to stop participating.
Remembering MGJ
http://heraldnet.com/article/20121208/NEWS01/712089967#State-road-money-may-be-used-to-fund-school-buses%0A
Public School Parent
EDM enjoyer
Profiting From a Child's Illiteracy, by NIcholas Kristof, profiles how some parent/guardians purportedly try to keep their kids from learning too much, lest they stop receiving a sizable monthly check for SSI (over $600);
and Schoolhouse to Courthouse, chronicling the way NYC police in schools seem to be using a heavy hand (and courts) to resolve problems in the schools they patrol.
Both articles have an element of disproportionality in them, of course: Poor people are more often people of color; the police in the NYC schools seem to be using the law to deal with more students of color than white students.
EDM enjoyer, thanks for making parents feel lazy.
On 2012 MSP Math testing
35.5% of SPS low income grade 4 students placed Well Below Standard and only 45.2% met standard in MATH on the 2012 MSP.
and it was 33.4% of grade 5 low income students at Well Below Standard and 47.8% met standard.
I suggest the district use materials and instructional practices that have a track record of success.
While you may "enjoy EDM" ... and find the fault with the parents ... most of the students who cannot afford "effective interventions" are not performing very well.
To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data.
-- Dan Dempsey
-signed, no place for hate, let love rule!
Hopefully some teachers who no doubt attended or will attend some now legal marriages can share with their students the new law that is in force in Washington. As far as EDM, I just did some review with my student for a test and the stuff is truly mind-blowingly obtuse and difficult. So maybe it is good for them if it's that hard. Those that move to Astrophysics or even carpentry will need to learn specia
Lized math later. Would low income kids do better on old math? Maybe, they don't need good reading or even language skills to do well. EDM puts demands on their reading and English skills. What's more important for most people is facility in those.
Moonlight reflection on Elliot bay
There is another perspective that believes that the District should reach out to people where they are, and not where the District wants or expects them to be.
We are not going to close the opportunity gap with EDM Enjoyer's attitude.
The opportunity gap in public education has been like a banquet set out on a table six feet off the ground. Children provided with ladders or tall chairs by their families have eaten their fill, but there has been no effort to make the banquet more accessible to students without ladders or tall chairs, or some that aren't even in the room.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/education/gates-foundation-gives-25-million-to-charter-school-collaboration.html
Same demanding curriculum for all kids and those that need it get a boost up. Meeting kids " where they are" could be interpreted as using a double standard. I don't think we want to bring any students down to close the "gap", we want to bring everybody up until they are all playing their best game. Education isn't about feelings or perceptions, it's numbers, cold and hard. Are the resources available for those kids who need them? If not, make some noise, but let's not dumb down the academic offerings for the less advantaged. That smacks of separate but equal mentality.
Required Reading
EDM is NOT "demanding" curriculum, it is bad, ridiculous, Byzantium, ineffective, and (insert your own adjective here) curriculum.
What every child needs, deserves, is a great teacher who has a great, straightforward text, who has the freedom to exercise his/her professional judgment to educate.
By the way, teachers around my school call Every Day Math 'All Day Math', because it takes so long to get across basic concepts because of it's obtuse language and indirect, round-about approach.
Fortunately, our principal supports 'mastery' (what a concept!), so teachers are 'adapting' and 'supplementing' so that kids learn.
Another classic saying with respect to EDM, is 'diffuse and confuse' as opposed to 'drill and kill',
-signed, it's not the height of the table legs
The comments that EDM and CMP may be challenging for ESL students are quite valid if you actually work and teach these kids. It's not because these kids can't do math. Many are quite adept. But it's quite tough to work through heavily verbal math text (and EDM does have its own unique math vocab) and then try to write out how to explain a concept using EDM language. The goal to ESL is to achieve a certain level of language competency so kids can be in a classroom operating independently, but that does not mean they are by any stretch fluent. That still takes years of practice & immersion (from 4-8 years). It's what we call the difference between social language skills (informal/conversational) vs. academic language skills.
I don't have a problem with kids learning multiple ways to do an math operation as long as they master at least one way and it's not dependent on calculator usage.
There are many ways to get a math concept across and the best teachers (and successful parents) are adept at finding what works. Sometimes that's EDM for some kids, other times for example, it's breaking out the worksheets or using rods and physical objects to explain fractions in adjunct to EDM. And there are the rare kids who figure out how to do things there own way that works. So you let them at it.
math lover
math lover
Our child does not find CMP challenging - she finds it boring and baroque.
-math user
--FedMomof2
You also can't rely on having the "best" teachers each year that will make the curriculum work. If the curriculum can't stand on its own, is it really the best choice?
math whiner
Senator Frockt followed with a comment that HE had been on that trip with Tom, and while there were some good things going on, what he saw were over-crowded classrooms.
Thom is all ego.