Seattle Schools Community Forum

Think it's just teacher evaluations that Arne Duncan wants to manipulate?  Nope, according to this op-ed on Obama and American public education that appeared in the Huffington Post, This past week, as the deadline approached for states to make their submissions to Arne Duncan's Department of Education requesting monies appropriated under the Race to the Top initiative, we were reminded that the DOE has decreed that no proposal will be considered where the state government has put a cap on charter schools. Penalties are being imposed on those who choose to limit, in any quantitative way, the charter school movement. Good " either this or that" article on public education by Chester E. Finn, Jr. in Education Next (whose viewpoints I don't embrace 90% of the time but this one is valid).  Questions like: Learning with the Help of Technology or Human Beings? Diversity vs. Uniformity Skills vs. Knowledge “Sage on the Stage” vs. “Guide on the Side” Who ...

I was watching NBC news last night and they featured a story about Sal Khan.  He's a guy who was trying to help his cousin in another state with math.  He made a video lesson of himself teaching and got her through it and now's she's pre-med at Sarah Lawrence. He created the Khan Academy which is a warehouse of about 2100 10-20 minute  FREE video lessons from K-12 math (the original one) to biology, chemistry and physics with a little humanities (history and finance).  From the website : Each problem is randomly generated, so you never run out of practice material. If you need a hint, every single problem can be broken down, step-by-step, with one click. If you need more help, you can always watch a related video.  You can also get stats on how you are doing.  You can track your progress or, if you are a teacher, your class' progress.  Sal started doing this while his wife was doing her residency.  He had started to dip into his savin...