Full text here.

One segment that I found particularly moving:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

Can’t quite find a place for this quote in my dissertation but it captures something really important about the constructed world of schools:

“This is not to say that a well-designed school or campus can change everything. But it can do a lot to improve a child’s subliminal reception of a message right now extremely negative. A crisp modern building with long corridors and great, efficient asphalt yards won’t do it. Neither will a stylish, windowless garrison that is safe from the assault of the surrounding community. School must be as exciting as education is exciting, and what comes first — chicken or egg — is really unimportant. The building can be as varied and as colorful as a personal relationship. Above all, it must have intimate scale and a sense of freedom — to look outside, to move about, to choose where and when to study, to think independently, to find one’s special meaning an involvement in a place where life is really lived — whether school, city or home.”

Thompson, Benjamin. “Visual Squalor, Social Disorder or A New Vision of the City of Man ” Architectural Record 145, no. 4 (1969): 161-164

So there’s your standard issue “scare-the-middle-class-parents-who-still-send-their-kids-to-public-school” story in today’s Inqy.

The first two paragraphs are solid:

A Philadelphia School District plan to send more money to schools with the neediest students has some parents worried even though the change is at least a year away.

Each school in the district receives a budget to pay for teachers, programs and other resources. There are long-standing inequities among schools in part because inexperienced teachers, who earn less, tend to work at the most troubled schools.

The author then shifts to quotes from parents regarding the devastation such an attempt at equalization might cause.

Here’s the problem and it should have been spelled out clearly:

1. Every school is allotted a particular number of teachers based on enrollment.

THEN,

2. They are given a budget for staff based on that number TIMES a set-figure per teacher. A few years ago it was $63,000. I don’t know what it is now.

If your staff is composed primarily of senior teachers, you’re fine. If, however, you have thirty teachers and twenty of them are within their first five years of teaching, your school is getting screwed.

The schools where people want to transfer are full of senior teachers. It’s the only way they can get there — a voluntary transfer after years of service. The schools where no one wants to work, where there are always vacancies, these schools have immense turnover. And these schools do not receive a fair share as a result.

The high-performing schools get to have it both ways: they get the best, most experienced teachers AND they get a huge break on the budget.

What if poor performing schools were given the differential between what the district budgeted and what their teachers actually cost?

Example:

Presently: 30 teachers @ 70K= 2,100,000 That’s all.

My idea: 30 teachers @ 60K=1,800,000 and then give that school $300K to spend.

Unfortunately, finding the make believe money that emerges from this accounting slight of hand will be impossible UNLESS you start messing with the budgets of the schools where senior teachers work…

USA today story on the lack of historical knowledge among teenagers. Nothing particularly new about this study.

What’s interesting, though, is this description:

The study’s release today in Washington also serves as a sort of coming out for its sponsor, Common Core, a new non-partisan group pushing for the liberal arts in public school curricula. Its leadership includes a North Carolina fifth-grade teacher, an author of history and science textbooks, a teachers union leader and a former top official in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Clearly, one won’t be able to predict the outcome of the study based upon this group of individuals. And for the American Enterprise Institute — the sponsor — to be characterized as non-partisan? That’s crazy talk.

From the NYT:

Re “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers” (front page, Feb. 17):

If F. Scott Fitzgerald knew that today’s high school students would be comparing Jay Gatsby’s elusive green light to admission to Harvard, he would be shaking his head in disdain.

“The Great Gatsby” is not a novel that glorifies the rags-to-riches American dream. It is, in fact, the very opposite, and I find it most surprising that the students and faculty of the Boston Latin School featured in the article could be so misinformed.

The light does give Gatsby hope, but between West Egg, where Gatsby is, and East Egg, where his hope is, there lies an insuperable cultural divide. The green light represents all of what we want, but that we never can attain. Jay Gatsby would never reach that light, for the end of his American dream saw him face down in his swimming pool.

Nathaniel Eiseman
Charlestown, Mass., Feb. 18, 2008

The writer is a member of the class of 2008 at Boston Latin School.

I asked my class this question, having first considered the Time article on merit pay and the WAPO article on National Board Certification. And I realized midway through their answers that I had constructed the question badly. I wasn’t asking how teachers overcome the significant structural forces aligned against them — lack of prestige, lack of time, etc — but rather how they could improve on their own.

In other words, what do teachers need to do in order to maintain a thoughtful teaching practice? What needs to be in place for teachers, new teachers especially, to continue to re-think their practice?

Five starting points:
1. You must respect your students.
2. You must believe in your students.
3. You must trust your students.
4. Your intentions must be clear.
5. You cannot use academic work you want students to do as part of your disciplinary approach.

Five Statements
1. Be fair and consistent…but you don’t need to treat all students the same way.
2. Don’t make threats…but follow through if you do.
3. Discipline isn’t personal…but you are a human being.
4. The culture of the school may trump your efforts…but don’t give up.
5. Your whole class needs to reinforce the academic and “civic” culture of your room…but you can’t force them to do so.

New report floating about that purports to address the most “troubled” schools in the city:

The remaining 23 schools – the worst performers – would get academic coaches, increased support personnel and resources, principals who work year-round rather than on the district’s regular 10-month calendar, and more time for training and planning, among other benefits. The model for these most troubled schools was created by the district in 2002 and yielded good results until the program office for them was disbanded a few years ago.

Nothing here about empowering the teachers who actually come to work each day in these buildings. Why a “coach” when you could have more teachers? Why support personnel when you could have more teachers? What exactly is “more time to plan” ? Is that code for bringing in more well-paid consultants?

I don’t often read CNN, but in looking for Clemens information, I stumbled across this article, which featured the following quote from Willie Brown:

“[Superdelegates] are the keepers of the faith,” said former San Francisco, California, Mayor Willie Brown. “You have superdelegates because this is the Democratic Party. You don’t want the bleed-over from the Green Party, the independents and others in deciding who your nominee will be.”

Scary.

Usually not a huge fan of the books that explain the fall of Western Civilization but I did like this argument, as put forth by Susan Jacoby (or at least by the reviewer):

anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Usually pundits/scholars base the latter portion of the argument on the rise of relativism. I like this characterization better. Oftentimes, high school teachers fight a losing battle in trying to get students to appreciate multiple points of view without allowing the “everybody has their own perspective so nobody is really right or wrong” stance.