EducationNews Commentaries and Reports

An Interview with George Leef: Math and Common Denominators
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
In a recent article posted on this site, George Leef of the Pope Center commented upon the state of math instruction in the U.S. The article can be found at http://ednews.org/articles/28232/1/Ed-School-Math-Training-Does-Not-Compute/Page1.html . In this interview, George responds to some questions about certain specific concerns in the realm of math instruction.

ASQ to Create K-12 ‘Must Do’ List
Educators Invited to Submit Priorities
American Society for Quality
Milwaukee, Wis., For teachers and school administrators who would like to offer the next president of the United States and his administration a list of K-12 education priorities for America, here’s your chance. The American Society for Quality (ASQ) invites educators from across the country to help shape our nation’s K-12 education agenda by participating in a five-minute, three-question survey available on the ASQ Web site K-12 Priority Survey.

Debt-ridden students, parents, recent grads get national platform on costly tuition
Press Releases on EducationNews.org
NEA, Huffington Post launch first-ever “Got Tuition?” video contest
WASHINGTON – Millions of students and families facing skyrocketing tuition costs in a sour economy can tell policymakers how to fix the problem. The National Education Association (NEA) and top news blog The Huffington Post launched today a first-ever, “Got Tuition?” national video contest to provide a high-visibility platform to push for solutions to tuition costs.

An Interview with Dr. Jane Arabian: About the ASVAB.
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
First of all, what exactly is your position and what do you currently
do? I'm Dr. Jane Arabian, the Assistant Director for Enlistment Standards,
in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. How long has the ASVAB been in existence? Who first started it?

School Reform requires a Reality Check - An Open Letter to Bill & Melinda Gates, Jonathon Kozol, Rev. Meeks, & Oprah Winfrey:
Dr. Kathleen Loftus
Columnist EducationNews.org
As a seasoned educator I witness firsthand every day the problems with our current educational system that are not simply the result of racially-biased education, but of a bureaucracy designed to ensure the success of only one group of students. I have identified what I believe to be the five greatest problems affecting America’s schools today, as well as five corresponding and achievable solutions.

THE PARMA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT TAXPAYERS NEED TO WAKE UP.
SchoolWatch Report
The district is a target of the corruption scandal and the scandal is explocive.Everyone in Cleveland is following the corruption scandal in Cuyahoga County, which appears to be focused on three government officials, Dimora, Russo, and Kelley, who appear to have been involved in some sort of kickback schemes and quid pro quo shenanigans in which they abused the public trust. The FBI raided their offices and homes and executed search warrants, including Kevin Kelley’s office at the Parma City School District where he was the Board of E ducation President.

In Defense of Testing Series: More presentations from the 6th Conference of the International Test Commission:
The Impact of Testing on People and Society: Enhancing the Value of Test Use Additional presentations from the July 2008 conference in Liverpool, UK, include those from Adwere-Boamah, Anderson, Bartram, Berberoglu, Dogan, Grisay, Hornke, Hughes, Lyren, Makransky, Rintala-Rasmus, Solano-Flores, Talento-Miller, Taylor, and Zenisky.

An Interview with Ralph Fletcher: Dude, Listen to This!
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Ralph, I understand that you have a new instructional video out. What can you tell us about it? Yes, I have just completed Dude, Listen To This! It's a DVD about boys as writers, and it is an extension of my book, BOY WRITERS: Reclaiming Their Voices (Stenhouse).

"It's Mine; It's All Mine!"
Ron Isaac
Columnist EducationNews.org
How ironic! Although knowledge is achieved largely through research and has expanded exponentially in almost all fields coinciding with the advent of personal computers, hand-held devices and other outrageously convenient tools for learning ( or at least getting by), the academic research skills of "average" students are less than in the days when they had to trek to a library, sift through periodicals, muddle through card catalogs, and blow off dust from stacks of books, just to access potential material for a term paper.

If We Lose Our Children We Lose America
Karl Priest
John Stossel (of television’s “20-20”) produced an outstanding report entitled “Stupid in America” which reported that a South Carolina governor would not send his own children to public schools because---it would “sacrifice their education”. The governor wanted to allow the free market to deliver an alternative to public schools. Teacher unions and politicians (who are controlled by teacher unions) complained.

An Interview with Nancy Nichols: The Elements Curriculum
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
First of all, tell us about yourself and your experience. I have been an educator for over 30 years. As a teacher, residential director, educational diagnostician, school psychologist, and professor, I have worked with children with every disability, every level of severity, and every age. I am a mom too. It really doesn't matter if a child has an IQ of 40 or 140; all children respond positively to genuine care and attention. Kids are fascinating to watch, and it is wonderful to help them grow.

The High Speed Electronic Learning — Standardized Testing Partnership: A Do-Yourself Laptop Experiment
by Robert Oliphant
Columnist EducationNews.org
As represented by the S.A.T., standardized testing has been taking some heavy hits lately. Its new tests for 8th graders have been fiercely scolded by professional educators and the general public. Even worse, as reported via Educational News 8/15/08, the British government’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has just dissolved its contract with ETS Europe to handle national curriculum testing. Clearly America’s standardized testing industry needs help, ideally in the form of a productive, socially responsible partnership with high speed electronic learning.

Ending the Achievement Gap: A Marshall Plan for Reading
City Journal
Sol Stern
“We have to make education the civil rights issue of our time,” Klein asserted in a speech for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Memphis this year. “In America today, we have a racial achievement gap that is the shame of this great nation, and until we get right on education, we are not going to be right.”

The Spell of Literacy
Children of the Code
As you know “Children of the Code” has two meanings. One, that approximately 100 million people in the U.S. alone are living lives significantly diminished by their difficulties with reading. The other, that we are all children of the code in the sense that everything about our modern world; our science, law, politics, organizations, and technologies are all outgrowths of what the code made and makes possible in our minds. These two meanings are of course related. To really understand the challenge of learning to read we must understand the code.

An audit for educational disadvantage

By Valerie Yule
True measures of educational disadvantage are the proportion of young people who leave formal education unqualified in anything and illiterate, the numbers of adults who cannot cope in jobs, who cannot apply simple arithmetic to shopping or gambling, and who have learned no constructive leisure interests.

Peddlers of Ideas
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Jerry Kirkpatrick
Teachers are peddlers of knowledge and ideas.
Well, that's what they would be in a free market in education and that's how they should think of themselves in today's government-run and government-controlled system.
In a free market in education, teachers would be sales reps for their schools. Some might even be owner-entrepreneurs who hang out their shingles and then must recruit — i.e., sell and service — their paying customers by meeting the customers' needs and wants.

Ed School Math Training Does Not Compute
Pope Center for Higher Education
Education schools have lots of room for improvement when training teachers to teach math.
By George Leef
The U.S. has long been pouring resources into K-12 education. Yet American students do not shine in mathematics. For years, their performance been at best mediocre when compared with students in other, poorer countries. (Evidence of our mediocrity is found in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment.)

Ohio corruption scandel
SchoolWatch Report
KELLEY'S KICKBACKS -- PARMA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD DISCUSSES ALLEGATIONS
by George Deabold
It was reported to SchoolWatch that at the Board of Education meeting of August 13th, the Parma Board hustled through business and postponed other planned business so that they could scurry into executive session and discuss the allegations made against board member Kevin Kelley that he has been involved in kickback schemes. Kelley was one of three individuals that had his home and office searched pursuant to a warrant executed by the FBI

An Interview with Roya Klingner: Reflecting on Gifted Education
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
The first president of World Council for Gifted and Talented children, Dr. Iraj Broomand, started a program for gifted children in Iran about 30 years ago. The kindergarten teacher recommended that my mother should send an application for me to join that school. In order to join that school, it was necessary for me to take a test.

It’s Always The First Day of School Preparing Children at Different Grades for School Success
by Dorothy Rich, Ed.D.
Columnist EducationNews.org
It’s always the first day of school – no matter what grade our children are going into. It’s the new shoes, excitement and yes, apprehension…not only for kids but for parents and teachers too. Different kinds of support and reinforcement are needed at different stages of a student’s school experience. There are new dimensions needed in this thinking about school readiness, especially for parents.

The danger of social engineering
It’s a bad idea to use extreme policies of social inclusion to decide who will go to university, writes Kevin Donnelly
A KEY reason for Kevin Rudd’s success in last year’s federal election was that he acted like a John Howard mini-me. Fiscally responsible, economically conservative and an education traditionalist, on many issues it was impossible to tell the difference.

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