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Monthly Archives: May 2009

There’s a place for us

Friday, May 29, 2009

The last day of school we had our annual talent show, and some of the acts were pretty good. It made me think again about how there are so many important things that kids can learn at school – about themselves and each other – that don’t come from books. One of my favorite moments [...]

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Retro reform idea – Merit Pay

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Now and then I like to post about writers who have contributed to our knowledge about progressive education. It would be nice to talk about new ideas, but if we’re going to discuss old ideas, we should at least know what’s already been said so we can stop repeating ourselves and either move the discussion [...]

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80 days

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Summer break kicked off yesterday; I’ve got about 80 days to work with, doing whatever needs doing. A few people have asked me what I’ve got planned, and my basic answer is, As little as possible. I do have some general objectives, though, to include: exercise, camping, fishing, gardening, reading – just being here. -thinking [...]

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Back and Forth and Back on Teacher Unions

Friday, May 22, 2009

Before I fill in a missing piece from a wide-ranging discussion about teacher unions, we should review: Diane Ravitch: If getting rid of the unions was the solution to the problem of low performance, then why…. do the southern states — where unions are weak or non-existent — continue to perform worse than states with [...]

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My Evil Plan

Friday, May 15, 2009

There are 3 days of school left, and they are all early-out days with afternoons set aside for administrative chores. My principal had a Title 1 evaluation meeting downtown today, and he asked the teachers if we had any classroom data (pre/post) he could take with him. I asked if he’d be interested in student [...]

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Rewriting David Brooks

Friday, May 8, 2009

The fight against poverty produces political posturing and fatuous claims about “Harlem miracles.” You go visit any low-income public school, job-training program, or community youth center, and you meet committed, caring, idealistic people, hard at work. Then you look at the results from low-grade standardized tests that have been forced on school communities by politicians [...]

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What Did You Learn in School Today?

Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Nation ran an article about Pete Seeger, written by Studs Terkel in 2005, honoring Pete on his 86th birthday. This video of him singing Tom Paxton’s, “What Did You Learn in School Today?” accompanied the article. Studs Terkel: For sixty-five years, he has held forth continuously through periods known more for their bleakness than [...]

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