I have no intention of making this blog an apologist for everything that teachers or their unions. I’ll admit that like all professions teachers have their own bad apples. However, when I see a lot of people lose their jobs and every news source in America applaud their firing, I feel obligated to dig just [...]
Archive for the ‘Education’ category
Judgment at Central Falls Part 1
February 18, 2010The Myth of Freedom Writers
February 15, 2010From time to time, I’ll look at the links that Word Press puts at the bottom of my articles. I do this because I hope to see what other bloggers are saying on similar topics. A post I did on Guggenheim Elementary took me to this little nugget today, “In order to achieve quality education, [...]
Education Reform and the Status Quo
February 8, 2010“Education is the most important problem facing the United States today” “Only the massive upgrading of the scholastic standards of our schools will guarantee the future prosperity and freedom of the Republic.” “The chronic shortage of good scientists, engineers, and other professionals which plagues us today is the result of time wasted in public schools.” [...]
Chicago’s Guggenheim Elementary School
February 4, 2010Chicago’s Guggenheim Elementary School is a failing school. By failing I mean that Guggenheim is located in a poor black neighborhood where many of the students have trouble making the grade on culturally biased standardized tests. Guggenheim is located in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. If you google it you’ll see plenty of talk about [...]
Goals Gone Wild
January 15, 2010I’ve often said that the moment you try to run schools like a business you succeed only in running it like the worst type of top down autocratic business where the big bosses make edicts that have nothing to do with the job reality of their work force. In other words, think of Chrysler in [...]
Fighting Privatization
January 4, 2010I’ve made a resolution to do a better job keeping this blog updated this year. The assault on education in this country and in my own city of Chicago is too pressing not to be vocal about what’s going on. I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of CORE (The Caucus of Rank and [...]
Teach Locally, but Think Nationally
December 9, 2009I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from Washington, DC lately on both of my blogs because of the writing that I’ve done on Michelle Rhee. To my mind, Washington is definitely ground zero in the battle to privatize our schools. What Michelle Rhee has done with her summary firings in our nation’s capital should [...]
Oh The Tests You Will Take
December 3, 2009With apologies to Dr. Seuss, I got this idea from reading Richard Kessler. Oh The Tests You Will Take By Nate Peele Congratulations! Today is the best You’re off now to School! To take your first test! You have your eraser. You have your number twos. You can fill in whichever circle you choose. We’re [...]
Why Teacher Accountability Flounders
November 30, 2009“If you catch a man a fish you can sell it to him. If you teach a man to fish you lose a wonderful business opportunity.” -Groucho Marx. There was a blog post that I saw on twitter today from the ironically named Charter School Insights blog. The post was entitled Michelangelo with a fillet [...]
Teacher Tenure and Patronage
November 28, 2009I think one of the hardest things to make non-teachers understand is tenure and it’s purpose. Tenure for public school teachers grew out of the same movement that awarded tenure to college professors. It was also a byproduct of movements in the late 19th century to professionalize civil service jobs. No city could be expected [...]
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