Archive for October 2008
Financial crisis may lead to independent college crisis
Forbes Magazine (via MSNBC.com) reports that the ongoing financial crisis may lead to the closure of small, independent colleges that depend on tuition income to survive.
Some US cities now able to compare their schools’ math scores with those of other countries
Now, for the first time, educators in a few big cities can see how the math skills of their students compare to those of peers worldwide.
For a study released today, Gary Phillips, a former top U.S. Education Department official now at the private American Institutes of Research, a Washington, D.C., think tank, created a sort of math-score mashup. He superimposed scores from the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, over those of the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), from 2003.
What he found is eye-opening. Fourth- and eighth-grade students in six U.S. cities — Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Houston, New York City and San Diego — actually hold their own against international competitors from Singapore, Japan, England and elsewhere.
But international students in many nations outperform students in five other U.S. cities: Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Newsweek: Adventures in teaching
NEWSWEEK has published an essay by Dallas-area educator Heather Robinson. An excerpt:
“Don’t you get bored doing the same thing each day?” is another question I get a lot. It’s a teacher’s windfall if any two given class periods are identical and flow according to the lesson plan, let alone an entire day or more. What many people don’t understand is that we teachers are working with wiggling, chatting children with varied needs. They are not robots who perform exactly as we direct without exception. Teachers are not on autopilot—we make thousands of decisions each day while working hard to produce a quality product that provides each student with what she needs and deserves. Teaching isn’t simply perching at a lectern and pontificating to hungry minds; it’s being an educator, a mentor, a parent, a nurse, a social worker, a friend, a diplomat and an expert on the curriculum. In short, we are professionals.
