Smarter Citizens – Kate McKeon

Pushing our Bottoms

Falling and Failing by pushing our bottom third into teaching. According to McKinsey and Co., Finland, Singapore and South Korea have 100% of their incoming teachers coming from the top 1/3 of their college classes. The US . . . has a dismal 23%. Over 47% of our teachers graduate in the bottom third of …

More Math Education, Less Self Esteem Training

Finances. If you’ve ever struggled with your tax return, wondered how interest rates could stay so low, or tried to explain why raising taxes on employers is actually not conducive to job creation…. We need solid math education now more than ever. We are no longer an agrarian nation yet we teach math like …

The Real Robin Hood

Would the real Robin Hood please stand up? “If you don’t stop levying these evil taxes, I will lead the people of England in a revolt against you!” -Robin, Men in Tights, 1993 Mel Brooks made a mildly popular movie to skewer the story of Robin in 1993 – if you love puns, you will …

Obama’s Fiscal Priorities are Skewed

Blinder’s Blinders lead to National Blunders, or Obama versus King Solomon . . . So here’s a question for you: Is it better to give 50,000 people $1 or give one employee a $50,000 job that allows him to contribute to a growing company? Increasing the tax burden on small employers to increase the unemployment …

Laffer’s Laughing

Arthur Laffer recently offered his thoughts on the Unemployment Benefits in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages…. What kept coming to mind is, how are we even having this conversation? And by conversation I mean, how can we look at the empirical evidence concerning unemployment benefits and still somehow draw the conclusion that extending them …

Frenchonomics

I can’t even make this up . . . Students in France are protesting again. A few years ago they protested AGAINST lowering the bar for employers to be able to hire students. Employers wanted to be able to pay less experienced people a lower rate. The minimum benefits an employer has to set aside …

Education Issues – State v Federal Standards

Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett is behind the Common Core State Standards Initiative and hopes you will be too…. Mr. Barrett sees common education standards as essential to creating the work force of tomorrow and he wants to narrow the gap in education quality among the states. All of which sounds ideal . . . …

Education Issues: Quantity, Quality?

So let’s go for a drive. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to cross the US by car . . . say from Chapel Hill, NC to Berkeley, CA, or Boston, MA to Berkeley, CA or Atlanta, GA to San Diego, CA, you have seen that there are many choices to make along the way. …

Contextual Cues Influence Learning

Did you know . . . The fusiform facial area is a special area within the brain that processes facial images. This is apart from the processing of other spatial objects. The neurons literally light up in a different pattern depending on whether we are looking at a human face or a non-human object. It …

Education Issues – Teacher Signaling

Confession: as a teacher I have challenges with the different levels of students who cycle through my classroom. I am not unbiased, and yes, I take my students’ performance personally. But this is as it has been and should be…. Some students are bright, but it’s not just the ability level of the student it …

It’s Not the Size of (the School Day), It’s What You Do With It.

What would you do if you had another hour everyday? Could you get more done? How would you spend that time? In Chicago, the parents are raising money so their kids can spend an additional 1 hour a day at school. At a cost of $385 per student, per year, that breaks down to $2.13 per hour – the base wage of a waitress.

Getting the Scoop on Entrepreneurship Early

A new program at Milford High School in upstate NY has opened the doors of entrepreneurship to students in grades 9-12. The students are building their own businesses and interacting with local business owners.

This is a brilliant way to encourage growth!

Education Issues: Peer Effects?

The gadflies at Fordham are stirring the pot again. Mike Petrilli takes issue with a recent statement from Kevin Welner, “(Tracking student progress) is a destructive practice that has the undeniable effect of lowering expectations and opportunities for students who have already fallen behind.” As far as Mr. Welner is concerned the debate is closed….

Education Issues: Cuts to Classtime is Unacceptable Way to Cut Costs

Reprint in full from education.change.org >>>>>> One of the highest ranking education officials in America has told Hawaii they’re going in the wrong direction by reducing the number of school days, and that the state and union need to put their personal agendas aside to help their students. Peter Cunningham, the assistant secretary for communications …

Education Issues: Calling Out Bill Gates on Treating Schools Like Corporations

Now they’re eating their own! Mike Smith at Change.org skewers Bill Gates’ plan to provide $200 Million annually to schools willing to take on his ideas for reform. Apparently the idea of basing teacher pay on student test score performance is untenable. What I keep circling back to is this, if we are not to …

Education Issues: Performance Pay’s Effect is Weak?

This post was sent to me and sadly I do not have the original link. This brings up the debate between the perpetuated myth of evil business and good education as though the two must remain mutually exclusive. Which reminds me, why do we educate everyone? Most countries don’t. So, callous though it may be, …

Education Stimulus Money Establishes Test Standards, Can’t Fix Test Problems

One-hundred billion dollars of stimulus money is beginning to go into education, prompting states to track students progress more closely, use more rigorous tests, and generally embrace the Obama administration’s reforms. These changes in federal education policy is explained in a report by the Center on Education Policy who are working to understand what the impact of stimulus funds, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

They explain that “the stimulus dollars, in a time of economic challenges, mean that the federal government is poised to play a far greater role in driving education reforms.” YOWZA!

Frightening: Arne Duncan Say Principals Must Act Like CEOs

Ran across this article this morning . . . in which the author complains that pushing principals to be like CEOs will single handedly destroy education. Hey buddy, we’re already there.

More telling is the vitriol for CEOs. Are all CEOs bad? Really? I missed that. Indeed, anyone familiar with local businesses has met plenty of very, very good CEOs. CEOs who care passionately about their companies, their people and their communities. The defeatist mentality of all-business-people-are-bad is exactly what gets us into debates that reduce to screaming matches. There’s no reasonable conversation possible if you believe the other side is pure evil. Article follows…

How to Fix Education — the Greatest National Security Crisis

Why is it so hard to bring quality leadership to the table in education? Surely we have a decent mix of men and women who have served both in the business world and the education field? But do we have enough to make a difference?

I am a huge proponent of speak softly and carry a big stick . . . but what do you do when the population can’t figure out what a stick is? “The greatest national security crisis in the United States is the crisis in education,” those are the words of Bob Herbert in the New York Times. He’s right on with his call for exactly the sort of leadership that is currently lacking in education: a cross section of skills — not principals that exclusively come from a business background (as we reported recently), and not those coming from traditional schools of education who then lack the necessary business acumen to lead and efficiently manage their school or district.

Adult Education Issues

The Wall Street Journal recently published a special section on Education. What inspired me was the opener. If an educated work force is the nation’s human capital, business is seeing a lot of subprime these days. It’s a snarky little comment, but it hit entirely too close to home. Even if your school’s graduation rate …