Reform v. Status quo, the fight.

The lead for EW is about the argument over reform. EW says that the world tends to be divide between those who want reform and those who do not. Really? It is so easy when there are only two jelly beans to choose from. The rest of the flavors are terrible anyway. Right?

While I can understand the arguments that the article is making, I believe that the biggest problem is not about the charter schools or, the testing or, the teachers, it's all about the contact time with a qualified and engaged teacher. Period.

How well is Korea doing? They out rank us in college degrees and certificates per 100 persons. They are number one and out rank us by 12 points on the number of young adults in college.

We do need reform to be and stay competitive globally. However, we do not need the kinds of reform that are currently on the table for debate. We need to have more contact time with our students, we need to make education a priority again!

What is a cohort?

Boston area schools are experimenting with teacher-leader cohorts that are helping teacher turn around schools.

Clinton Gertenrich said to our class; "I have never seen a successful teacher who isolates themselves. Teachers who do well work in teams."

So, I wonder what a successful cohort looks like?

By using these teams, Boston area schools are seeing changes in the academics. Teacher teams that work together are sure to work but, the key is working well together. Principals should hire those who get along with others and are contributing forces in an education environment.

The funding cliff

The back of EW has an article about educations pulling away form the funding cliff. Do we need to be on a cliff. Oregon has its own problems with funding. The legislature meets only one every two years, we send back anything we don't use to the tax payers, and we do not have a real fund for emergencies. If you couple that with some of the issues pointed out in the article about failure to budget properly, sate and federal mandates on schools, and oversight failures, it is clear we have set ourselves up for failure.

How do we get to a point where we can make sure we don't get ourselves into this kind of a situation? As EW points out, we will need to plan. Will Americans do that? I think no.

A look at advertizing in EW

Page One: None
Page two:EW
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Between pages:Solution Tree. This is a seminar for teacher(continuing ed)
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Page Seven: Seton Hall University. Get your doctorate in just 10 weekends and four one week sessions!
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Page nine: EW
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Page twelve: EW
Page thirteen: ASCD young educator award.
Page fourteen:Apex Learning. Webinar. Learn from home as you get those continuing ed credits!
Page fifteen: EW editorial funders.
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Page Seventeen: EW
Page eighteen- twenty one: none
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Page Twenty three: ASCD. a book to help you help students.
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Page twenty five: A new publication by EW? Vanderbuilt Peabody College... Get you PhD!
Page twenty six to thirty three: none
Page thirty four:EW
Page thirty five: GEMS education job posting.
Page thirty six, seven, and eight: Jobs postings for education managers.

EW does not post its ad rates. Most of EW's support appears to come from grants and from student and professional subscriptions.

Teacher Education Programs

Hmmmm..... EW says evidence is mounting that these programs amount to well, lets just say not a lot. It's funny because what I am paying and the cost to my family is well, a lot. As Mike once said "25K can buy a lot of beer!" I remember when I equated everything to the cost of beer. I was in the military and some friends of mine and I developed a currency exchange chart for the European countries we frequented to determine the countries who had the best beer exchange rate. I can make one very clarifying comparison in my current program, each hour i am in class costs me $66. If there are 24 of us remaining we are collectively paying $1584 per hour of class or $6336 per Monday night class or, $11088 per Saturday class(I only counted 7 hour---I gave them one for lunch).

Once we get past the point where Feistritzer gets to tell us that she heads the National Center for Education Information, she points out that 15 percent of all education degrees are conferred by just 25 institutions in the country. I wonder if this is the problem? If this is the "cash cow" of higher education that she is reporting, maybe some good old competition can get some serious teachers out into the field.

I guess the number that strikes me is that more than one in three teachers is getting ready to leave the profession. Why?

Technology

This weeks EW is all about Technology. I have some serious reservations about the ushering in of wide-sweeping tech changes. I'm not sure we're ready to use technology to engage our youth. I have expressed my concerns to some educators and they are not sure of any studies that can tell us about the pitfalls or, even the methods in which we might work on to adjust our teaching skills to account for new and ever evolving technology in our classrooms. Keven Bushweller does voice his concern about applications of technology in ways that would be universal so that schools, districts and maybe even nationally we are working to a standard. I do not believe that this exists today even at the school level.

As I read these articles for "Tailoring Math", "Personalizing Tests", and "The School of One" I am worried that managers see technology as some kind of Holly Grail that can fix the funding of teachers problem.

Listen, I don't have much of an education in education, maybe just enough to make my rants seem well, like rants, but I know that students learn and thrive on the information they receive from human beings, us, our interactions, our relationships, our styles. I think we must be

very careful in our approach toward the de-humanizing and de-socializing of our education system. I don't believe students will fare well in a "school of One." But, lets see if anyone has the will to study this assertion being made by a growing, yet still small, group?

Political Animals

I remember my adviser saying in one of our first days in the MAT program that we as "teachers are simply a political extension of the school board."

The article in EW starts off by missing the point of the use of the animal when it comes to politics. This is a simple fix for Mary Ester Van Shura, she simply needs to dust off some of her classics in philosophy and really read this phiolosophical discussion that has been going on for ohhh, only about 2000 years. This little mistake aside, she also errors by saying that education leaders must become adept at political landscapes. The truth is, we all must become good at politics in this career choice we have made(god know I have made some recent bad calls on this one). However, I also think that the reason this article was written is because she sees a clear threat aimed at leaders in education. This country is experiencing a significant decline in economic power(Like I need to tell any of you readers) but, we need not aim our angst that has built up over this current economic climate toward educators. To do so is to take a shot at an already ailing limb of our society. This is a limb we can not afford to injure further as our children's future is at stake in the ever more competitive global market place. We need our students to be well funded and for our education system to be revered as a world class system that produces quality minds. This

is what we should be politicking about.