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SpongeBob SquarePants: visionary American patriot or corporate
shill?
No color is more stridently offensive to the adult eye than
SpongeBob yellow. SpongeBob SquarePants, the cartoon, turned 10
years old this spring. Poor parent, poor shattered schoolteacher,
wherever you look in the general welter of
21st-century-consumer-kid-dom, there it is: cadmium yellow,
Cheerios-box yellow, yellowcake yellow, striking its inhuman note of
fervency. The marketing of products to children is a dirty business,
no doubt, but SpongeBob's economic buoyancy has a very pure relation
to his character and pursuits. The sponge is a one-man stimulus
package, not just commercially but morally. If consumer confidence
had a face, it would be the gleaming, avid face of Mr. SquarePants.
"SpongeBob is one of the greatest believers in the American dream in
all of children's entertainment," says Greg Rowland who has
performed brand analyses for Unilever, KFC, and Coca-Cola. "He's
courageous, he's optimistic, he's representing everything that
Mickey Mouse should have represented but never did. There's even
something Jesus-like about him -- a 9-year-old Jesus after 15
packets of Junior Mints." Embrace him, drained adult.
A shift in voucher support?
Most Democrats have historically rejected taxpayer-supported
private-school vouchers, saying they drain resources from public
schools, but a number of black lawmakers, mayors, and school
officials have split with party orthodoxy on the issue, according to
USA TODAY. The group includes Sacramento, Calif. Mayor Kevin
Johnson; Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker; and former Washington,
D.C., mayor Anthony Williams. Jeanne Allen of the Center on
Education Reform, a Washington think tank, says the issue can no
longer be dismissed by liberals as Catholic or right-wing. "I
actually think it has to do with more-principled people who
understand and have seen how badly the existing system has hurt
minority kids," she said. First proposed in 1955 by University of
Chicago economist Milton Friedman -- a conservative --
private-school vouchers have never fully taken root in U.S. public
schools. The federal government often underwrites college tuition to
attend private colleges and universities, but K-12 vouchers are
presently limited to programs in a few cities that include
Cleveland, Milwaukee, and New Orleans. Special-education students in
some states also attend private schools with public money, but
voters in nearly a dozen states have rejected voucher proposals over
the past few decades.
New insight on females and 'math phobia': overcoming 'stereotype
threat'
A new study shows that when women are aware of both negative and
positive stereotypes related to performance, they identify more
closely with the positive stereotype, according to Science Daily.
The research by cognitive scientists at Indiana University pertains
specifically to women and math ability, but has broad implications
for other groups affected by "stereotype threat." While studies --
including this one -- have shown that women perform worse on
mathematical tasks if made aware of the stereotype that women are
weaker at math than men, this is the first study to examine the
influence of concurrent and competing stereotypes. The study also
demonstrates how negative stereotypes encroach on working memory,
leaving less brainpower for the mathematical task at hand. Positive
stereotypes had no such effect, however, and even when coupled with
the negative stereotype, erased its drain on working memory. "This
research shows that because people are members of multiple social
groups that often have contradictory performance stereotypes (for
example, Asian females in the domain of math), making them aware of
both a positive group stereotype and a negative stereotype
eliminates the threat and underperformance that is usually seen when
they dwell only on their membership in a negatively stereotyped
group," said Professor Robert Rydell, a lead author of the study.
Study indicates less-known learning disorder with significant impact
A learning disability less recognized than ADD and dyslexia may
strike a significant number of children, according to Forbes
Magazine. The inability to write properly, or written-language
disorder, is a "forgotten learning disability," according to Dr.
Slavica K. Katusic in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics. The
epidemiologist from the Mayo Clinic says the ability to write is "a
critical skill that [children] need to have for academic success and
social well-being," stressing that children who lag in this area may
suffer long-term personal and economic consequences. Specialists
define written-language disorder as the inability to write near the
level expected based on a person's age, intelligence, and education.
People who suffer the condition may have problems with grammar,
spelling, paragraph organization, and handwriting. Katusic and her
colleagues looked at school and medical records of 5,718 students in
Rochester, Minn., and found that between 6.9 percent and 14.7
percent of the children had the condition, depending on the formula
used. Boys were two to three times more likely to have the condition
than girls. Tutoring can help children learn how to write, Katusic
said, but educators must appreciate that writing is just as
important as reading and math skills.
See an abstract of the study:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/123/5/1306
Is Harlem Children's Zone a 'No Excuses' program?
In a post on The Core Knowledge Blog, Robert Pondisco dissects the
reaction among educators over David Brooks's recent and widely read
column in The New York Times about the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ).
"Le Blogosphere is up in arms this week," Pondisco writes,
"wondering how Brooks came to conclude 'the Harlem Children's Zone
results suggest the reformers are right' in arguing that
school-based approaches alone can close the achievement gap." This
conclusion, Pondisco says, is "hard to support based on even a
passing familiarity" with Paul Tough's book on the HCZ, "Whatever It
Takes." In his column, Brooks aligns the HCZ with the so-called "no
excuses" school of education reform of which the Knowledge Is Power
Program schools are a high-profile example -- rather than the
"cradle-to-college" philosophy -- i.e., reform and support that
encompasses an entire neighborhood. Pondisco maintains this
dichotomy in education reform is a false one: "Like many such
debates, it seems rather obvious (and utterly uncontroversial) to
suggest that we need to draw from both sides to get to a solution."
He does, however, come down on the side of Brooks's detractors,
suggesting that Brooks, who recommended Tough's book in his column,
actually read it.
NYT column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1&em
A contrary analysis:
http://gothamschools.org/2009/05/08/just-how-gullible-is-david-brooks/
A case for student analysis of 'To Kill A Mockingbird'
Why spend time teaching the arcane skill of writing about
literature? asks Carol Jago, president-elect of the National Council
of Teachers of English. "Because writing about literature
disciplines the mind. It challenges students to look closely into
what they read and express clearly and powerfully what they find
there." Some teachers feel writing an essay about a book ruins the
reading experience, but Jago, a teacher of 23 years, says writing
can function as "a vehicle for exploring students' understanding of
what they have read." If every student writes an essay, every
student does the hard work of analyzing the text -- something that
never quite happens in a classroom discussion. Jago feels kids
"write poorly about literature when they don't understand what they
are writing about." The elimination of certain analytic words such
as "clarify, motif, and device" from teaching is counterproductive,
she says, because while they initially pose obstacles for students,
in the end they become tools for articulation. Dumbing down the
process defeats the purpose, and more than ever, students need the
skill of analytic thinking.
A rapidly growing demographic that needs immediate intervention
Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing racial-ethnic group in
the United States, but they trail whites and Asian Americans at all
proficiency levels of reading and math, according to a new report
from the Society for Research in Child Development. The authors
urgently recommend an expansion in educational opportunities for
three- to eight-year-old Hispanics. The federal government should
develop programs to raise the number of preschool and
early-elementary teachers proficient in English and Spanish, they
say, as well as recruit more Spanish speakers to work as classroom
language specialists. The feds should also expand dual-language
programs through Head Start, Early Head Start, and the like. State
governments must collaborate with communities to offer educational
experiences at different times of the day and week, and provide
free, state-funded, high-quality preschool programs to Hispanic
three- and four-year-olds. Local governments should work with
federal and state governments and Hispanic organizations to give
parents information on pre-kindergarten, Head Start, and Early Head
Start programs, boosting Hispanic enrollment.
Less violent, yes -- but safer?
A study published jointly by the federal Education and Justice
departments last month underscores that while schools are less
violent than in the past, they are not necessarily safe, The
Washington Post reports. Eighty-six percent of public schools in
2005-06 reported one or more violent incidents, thefts, or other
crimes -- a rate of 46 crimes per 1,000 enrolled students. Almost a
third of students aged 12 to 18 reported being bullied inside
school, and nearly a quarter of teenagers reported the presence of
gangs there. "For both students and teachers, victimization at
school can have lasting effects," the report says. "In addition to
experiencing loneliness, depression, and adjustment difficulties,
victimized children are more prone to truancy, poor academic
performance, dropping out of school and violent behaviors." The
study used the most recent data, from school year 2006-07, and drew
information from a handful of surveys and other studies. Reporting
systems, however, are imperfect, and attempts to pinpoint particular
schools is problematic because principals are reluctant to cast
their schools in a bad light. The report's author, Katrina Baum,
attributes the decline to the overall decrease in societal violence,
but other criminologists are not sure. They say the issue is
multi-faceted, and may be due in part to efforts to improve school
climate.
Remaking the bottom one percent
In a speech to the Brookings Institution this week, Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan said that the president is determined to turn
around the lowest five thousand public schools in five years, and
will commit $5 billion to achieve this. "If we turn around just the
bottom one percent, the bottom thousand schools per year for the
next five years, we could really move the needle, lift the bottom
and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children,"
Duncan said. In particular, the administration wants to fix middle
schools and high schools, focusing on "dropout factories" where two
in five kids don't make it to graduation. Mr. Obama doesn't have
authority to close and reopen schools himself, since that power lies
with local districts and states, but he can apply subtle or
not-so-subtle pressure through funding incentives. Duncan explained
that turnaround may mean firing an entire staff and bringing in a
new one, replacing a principal, or turning a school over to a
charter operator. The point, he said, is bold action to remake
persistently failing schools. The turnaround program receives about
$500 million a year, but stimulus legislation has boosted funding to
$3.5 billion, and the president's budget, released last week, would
add another $1.5 billion by shifting dollars away from traditionally
funded programs.
Charter hardball in LAUSD
Parents of children at failing schools in Los Angeles are
petitioning to shut them down and have the district reopen them as
charters, according to U.S. News & World Report. Steve Barr, founder
of charter operator Green Dot Public Schools, is a force behind the
grassroots campaign, dubbed the "Parent Revolution" by The Los
Angeles Times. Barr is known for headline-grabbing tactics to drive
reform, most famously the takeover of Locke High School, one of
L.A.'s worst. The petition drive aims for at least 51 percent of
parents signing at every failing school, giving organizers leverage
to convert those schools into charters. Principals would have
authority to dismiss bad teachers swiftly, and students would be
better prepared for college, according to proponents. If the
district ignores these petitions, Barr's organization or another
charter operator could open schools in the neighborhood and lure
students away from the district school, depriving the district of
state funding. Ramon Cortines, superintendent of LAUSD, seems open
to the idea of converting poor schools into charters, but emphasized
collaboration over hostility. "I think competition is healthy, but I
don't think any of us have all the answers," he told The L.A. Times.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Free beer part of teacher's union campaign
Kim Schroeder, a candidate for vice president of the Milwaukee
Teachers' Education Association makes a bold campaign promise, "I
will make sure that there is at least beer and wine available for
our monthly Leaders' Meetings."
'Just say no' fails, again
The president's budget would eliminate most money for
abstinence-only sex education and shift it to teen pregnancy
prevention.
A brief history of child policy in the U.S.
A new 28-page publication from First Focus, a bipartisan advocacy
organization on federal children and families policies, has released
a history of federal legislative, executive, branch, and judicial
actions impacting America's children, from Teddy Roosevelt and the
Progressive Era to the first month of the Obama Administration.
That's what they want
California's teacher union has filed a lawsuit against Gov.
Schwarzenegger and other officials to recoup $12 billion in
education funds it says the state owes schools.
Stephen Colbert did it. Why not you?
DonorsChoose.org has launched a campaign called The Great Give-Back
Birthday, which invites individuals to donate the money and gifts
they would have gotten for their birthdays to support classroom
projects in high-need schools.
NYC radically trims the applicant pool
A citywide moratorium on hiring from outside New York's school
system has many hopefuls looking elsewhere, including private
schools.
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