Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

10-9-13 Schools Matter

Schools Matter:

Horn & Wilburn




Tens of Thousands March in Support of Brazilian Teachers
Well-supported: People pack the Cinelandia square during the march in Rio de JaneiroBrazil faces a challenging security situation as it gears up to host the World Cup in eight months’ time.In June thousands of demonstrators, angered by the billions spent in preparations for the event, clashed with riot police near the Mineirao Stadium in Belo Horizonte.'We don't need the World Cup,' said Leonardo

Invest in libraries, not more tests
Sent to the Houston Chronicle, October 9Lisa Falkenberg ("Cutting libraries shows warped priorities," October 9) is right: Spending money on increased testing while cutting libraries and librarians is like investing in precise scales to weigh the animal, but neglecting to feed it.  Decades of research show that the most important factor in developing literacy is self-selected reading, or

Corporate Christian Missionaries of Memphis and Many Shining Charters on the Hill
Education historian, Carl Kaestle, developed the thesis that the American ideology developed in the 19th Century from an overlapping and mutually supportive combination of three elements: protestantism, capitalism, and republicanism.  They are so closely linked, Kaestle argued, that a challenge to one often brings defensive reactions from the believers of the others, so that a skeptic of reading t

Confessions of a "Bad Teacher" Confronting Treachery During an Age of "Reform"
I read Rafe Esquith’s Real Talk for Real Teachers and James Owens’ Confessions of a Bad Teacher during the same week. Esquith described many types of educational malpractice being imposed in the name of “best practices” that I have seen. In fact, he recounts disgusting incidents that are worse than anything I have witnessed. On the other hand, Esquith describes the joys of teaching. He makes it cl


10-8-13 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: ASD and RSD Built on Empirical House of Cards and Mountains of Tax-Sheltered CashThe NEPC has a completed a review of the "documentation" used by corporatists in New Orleans and Tennessee to justify the takeover and colonization of NOLA and Memphis schools.  To say the evidence is slim for such anti-democratic privatization schemes is an understatement.  Here is the link