There’s a new report out on the KIPP schools, which at least according to the blurb I read at edweek, seems to finally address the question of sustainability. This model, premised upon lawyer-style work days for teachers, has always seen a great deal of turnover.

Edweek, quoting the report:

“Teacher turnover, a result of both ambitious young teachers’ moving on and the demanding nature of the job, poses challenges for Bay Area school leaders and may have implications for the sustainability of the model.”

As James Traub points out, almost eight years ago, ” any method that depends on a Jaime Escalante is no method at all.”

Any teacher can break themselves for a couple of years and have significant success. What can we do to take this success from classrooms to entire schools and then sustained building-wide? How can we address school culture rather than individual heroes?

Desegregation is not and was never expected to be an easy task. Racial attitudes ingrained in our Nation’s childhood and adolescence are not quickly thrown aside in its middle years. But just as the inconvenience of some cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the rights of others, so public opposition, no matter how strident, cannot be permitted to divert this Court from the enforcement of the constitutional principles at issue in this case. Today’s holding, I fear, is more a reflection of a perceived public mood that we have gone far enough in enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of equal justice than it is the product of neutral principles of law. In the short run, it may seem to be the easier course to allow our great metropolitan areas to be divided up each into two cities–one white, the other black–but it is a course, I predict, our people will ultimately regret. I dissent.

The best part of teaching a foundations course is that you get to return to old friends, old documents, every semester.

From George Counts, Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?

Society is never redeemed without effort, struggle, and sacrifice. Authentic leaders are never found breathing that rarefied atmosphere lying above the smoke and dust of battle.

Here’s what Obama and McCain had to say about education during their convention speeches:

Obama

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance. I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American – if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Here’s McCain:

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

A historian capable of telling stories and explaining why those stories matter. Robert Caro’s brief editorial in yesterday’s Timeswas powerful stuff.

His conclusion:

“Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans,” I have written, “but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy’s sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life.”

LOOK what has been wrought! Forty-three years ago, a mere blink in history’s eye, many black Americans were unable to vote. Tonight, a black American ascends a stage as nominee for president. “Just give Negroes the vote and many of these problems will get better,” Lyndon Johnson said. “Just give them the vote,” and they can do the rest for themselves.

All during this long primary campaign, after reading, first thing every morning, newspaper articles about Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency, I would turn, as part of the research for my next book, to newspaper articles from 1965 about Lyndon Johnson’s campaign to win for black people the right to vote.

And I would think about Johnson’s great speech, when he adopted the rallying cry of black protest as his own, when he joined his voice to the voices of all the men and women who had sung the mighty hymn of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King cried when he heard that speech. Since I am not black, I cannot know — cannot even imagine — Dr. King’s feelings. I know mine, however. To me, Barack Obama is the inheritor of Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legacy. As I sit listening to Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing Lyndon Johnson saying, “We shall overcome.”

Barack Obama speaking last night:

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could’ve heard many things. They could’ve heard words of anger and discord. They could’ve been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead – people of every creed and color, from every walk of life – is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

“We cannot walk alone,” the preacher cried. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

There was an article in yesterday’s Times about a proposed testing program for kids in kindergarten. Kindergarten. The most telling lines:

Mr. Liebman also pointed out that kindergartners and first and second graders are already evaluated by their teachers. Most schools use a system called the Early Childhood Literacy Assessment System, which takes teachers a long time to administer because they must meet with every child individually.

The new testing methods combine results to create a single score for English and a single score for math for each child, he said, making comparisons across classrooms and over time easier.

Purposeful misunderstanding, I think. If you think that a standardized test is the same thing as a lengthy assessment conducted by a teacher on a one-to-one basis, then you have a total misunderstanding of early literacy.

I was at a meeting last night where someone declared that “we know what works in American education, “that research based best practices” are the answer.

There are 38,100 exact hits in google for this phrase. This phrase is embedded in the No Child Left Behind Act and occurs throughout the National Reading Panel’s work.

Despite the apparent consensus that these practices not only exist, but that they are the solution, do schools continue to fail because:

of improper implementation?

They (local school districts, teacher unions, communists) won’t let us do it?

Bizarre.

I’ve ranted before about how the writers and creators of “The Wire” have as a good an understanding of urban life as I’ve encountered. We’re watching season five now and there’s a scene where Daquan (dookie) and Dennis are talking about what it means to live where they do.

Dookie asks, “How do you get from here to the rest of the world?”

Exactly right…

I loved and hated this movie — what up with the Richard Gere scenes — but the moment where the young Bob Dylan visited an ailing Woody Guthrie while the song Blind Willie McTell played in the background…superb.

So I’m re-reading Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels and I can’t quite think who I’d want to play Scudder in a film. It’s a futile exercise — they’d screw it up anyway — but I’m at a loss. What actor could make you believe that they spent their time in church basements drinking cruddy coffee?

I still believe that someday, someone will write the perfect Patrick O’Brian adaptation, and that Nick Nolte will play Aubrey and Ben Kingsley will play Maturin.