Friday Open Thread
Today will see the long-awaited hearing on the Washington State charter school law. Charlie or I hope to make the hearing and will let you know what is said/outcomes.
What a long week it has been. President Smith-Blum told the audience last night that she planned to sleep in today (and that was at the beginning of the meeting).
I plan to take some time off next week myself. Thanksgiving IS a good time to reflect, resolve and be grateful. And mostly, to enjoy your family.
What's on your mind?
What a long week it has been. President Smith-Blum told the audience last night that she planned to sleep in today (and that was at the beginning of the meeting).
I plan to take some time off next week myself. Thanksgiving IS a good time to reflect, resolve and be grateful. And mostly, to enjoy your family.
What's on your mind?
Comments
JFK Presidential Library has online archives www.jfklibrary/Research.aspx
CCA
CCA
"The American “system” of education, for much of its history, consisted of local governance of educational institutions, high-levels of voluntarism by parents and members of local communities, and a rich diversity of public and private institutions that aimed to offer to families the kind of education that each saw fit for their children. . . .
. . . it was in the very absence of any national standard for education, and the strong tradition of local control of education, that we could perceive, in fact, a pervasive historical commitment to the aspiration of republican self-government. Because humans in their social and political communities are various, it was understood by our Founders that the way that these educational purposes to be achieved would be various, and so the commitment to local control of education was not born of a resignation in the absence of a strong central government, but a positive embrace of variety and multiplicity. Because there is likely to be debate and disagreement in a pluralistic society over the nature of our civic ends and the nature of a good character, it was understood that only in more local circumstances could the highest aspirations of education be pursued, even if that would be various and multiple. In our modern insistence to standardize and equalize, we necessarily discard any higher aspiration of education’s end in an embrace of a widely-secured agreement about lower, debased ends: an education based upon a lowest common-denominator, “career-readiness.” Our civilization thus shows its ultimate commitments through how it educates its young—that we think them incapable of anything higher than being workers in a deracinated globalized economic system, neither citizens nor, in the fullest sense, humans.
At the same time, we condemn ourselves, betraying our ancient faith in our own ability to educate and cultivate our young, handing over our final and most basic liberty to a distant power. Contained in the very act of handing over the education of our young is the self-indictment of a decaying Republic, a future feared by, among others, Tocqueville, as a possible path that America might take, since it is one that all republics heretofore have taken, and is an inevitability once a people has lost the taste and the art of ruling themselves."
“Duncan’s foot-in-mouth-disease comes from the fact that he doesn’t understand that this is no longer a political thing. This is about our children. As a teacher who left the classroom because of Common Core and the abuse of our children, I can promise it has nothing to do with color, or sex, or education level, or income, or political party. As a Democrat myself I will be voting all over party lines in November. If you support Common Core….we will show you the door. There are a lot of Dems who have signed onto Harkins bill, which will effectively remove all local boards of education, and they need to watch their re-election bids carefully.
“As the co-founder of MAD (Moms Against Duncan) we are linking groups of parents all over this country together. Our ultimate goal is a 10% standardized test opt out rate in every school K-8. We will corrupt the data so it is useless. No school scores, no teacher scores, no student scores. No databases, no prison planning data, no economic development data. Pearson, Gates and Duncan can kiss our multicolored backsides. Our children are NOT data. We want all this wasted money back in the hands of our teachers.
“If Arne Duncan thinks he can take a poop on someone’s yard and apologize by saying “it would have looked better if I’d been over a few feet” he is sadly mistaken. We are America’s MOMS (and Dads) and WE ARE MAD!!!”
- sallyforth
My favorite conferences were when my kid was at Salmon Bay for middle school - they were "student-led" conferences where your kid showed you a portfolio of their work and their homeroom teacher was there with their MAP scores and to answer questions. Teachers also had open office hours if you had questions about specific classes.
-- Ivan Weiss
Jane
How can any kid learn, or any teacher have continuity, with that schedule?
It's absurd and makes it basically January before kids learn anything again. NO OTHER DISTRICT around us does this.
Signed: attend school
"To get input that helped shape the school year calendars for 2013-14 through 2017-18, LWEA asked for input from its members while the LWSD surveyed parents. The result is a calendar that is similar to current patterns."
Can you believe that the Lake Washington School District actually solicits input on the proposed calendar from the parents, and then takes it into consideration in its planning?
From: http://www.lwsd.org/About/Pages/School-District-Calendars---More-Info.aspx
Ann D
The week off for conferences doesn't bother me too much. I do have a problem with midwinter break in February. It's only a month and a half since winter break, and we need another week off already? And then another week off in April? If we're going to have two weeks off during the year, why not put them together, so we could take a long trip without missing school? Though better yet would be getting our earlier in the summer, to facilitate working for HS students.
I'd really like to have the schedule made up more than a year ahead, to allow booking international trips. I don't see why it's so difficult to plan ahead. The District knows how long the year has to be. It should be an advantage to teachers and other District employees to know in advance, as well as parents.
In terms of midwinter break, according to my school's union rep, the union has been asked and they split pretty evenly down the middle. I suspect the same thing would happen if there was a way to conduct a statistically accurate poll of parents. Some people hate it, and others love the chance to get in a winter ski or sun vacation. To each family its own.
High School Mama
I'd prefer to skip mid-winter break and get out of school earlier in June myself. Doesn't that move the learning loss from February to summer though? Either way, we'll have the same number of days out of school. I'm totally in agreement with you on the high school start times.
That is a good question about learning loss at holiday versus summer. Interrupted learning time does exacerbate gaps, but at the moment, I haven't read any research addressing the question you ask. I am going to dig around to see if there is any research out there on that. Of course, if we were really serious about addressing learning gaps, we would have year-round school schedules coupled with support during breaks, which research shows does make some difference for low SES kids. A person can dream...
High School Mama
Many schools in Europe have 6 weeks of school and then a week off. With a bigger break at Christmas and 8 weeks during the summer, 4 of which are August. It seems like the curriculum can be planned around these breaks. The summer break may be too long though and should be shortened.
HP
Here's another thing. Mid winter break seems to strike a negative chord in some people. When concerns are expressed about it, however, no one ever seems to suggest shortening the December holiday or spring break. As a result, complaints about midwinter break always strike me as people who prefer time off when they've always had time off, or to follow the school schedule in place when they were young.