This is why I admire my Senator, Claire McCaskill

My wife sent this on to me.  She's an elementary art teacher working in a low-income, primarily Hispanic school district. In spite of the wonderful experience she has of helping children she also gets to experience the full scourge of the move to discredit and emasculate our public school systems that is occurring today in the name of greater accountability and standardized testing.  

With the FISA vote coming up tomorrow, I plan to spend the day at Walden Pond, a place that has provided guidance and comfort to me at various points during my life. When I was a kid, I swam there. Granted, I didn't know about Thoreau back then. I was 6. But I also spent the day before the biggest professional challenge of my life: my dissertation defense at Walden Pond. It seems laughable to me now that I ever worried about that defense. Seven years later, I'm concerned more about defending the Constitution.

Let's assume triangulating Democrats and screaming progressives don't screw it up for us, and Obama is elected the next president.

I feel strangely confident that this will occur.

But it's been widely noted that President Obama will be taking over a wounded nation; by what measure should we judge his ability to lead us towards a brighter future?

You may have heard, "truth is stranger than fiction," and indeed, that often seems the case.  While that strange truth is usually just entertaining and innocuous, there are times when it is exactly the opposite... stupefying, shocking, even threatening.

Mimicking Ripley is not the intent here, though.  It is simply to point you to a variety of recent articles, some of which just bring a smile, some that give pause for thought, and some that deal with very serious issues.  Not surprisingly, many involve government and elected officials at various levels.

Aside from the trivial 'fun' articles, many are important but have been beneath the radar for whatever reason.  They need greater exposure, for they have implications which scream for attention.

The entries here do not comprehensively quote their referenced sources, except for maybe a one or two line teaser that might pique your interest, and, of course a link, along with maybe short comment. Better that you follow the links and look in the horse's mouth yourself:)   Hope you enjoy.

With all the recent distress over a couple of not-completely-progressive stances -- and the requisite not-more-more-dime comments, it's probably a good idea to step back for a moment for some perspective:

Barack Obama will be the most progressive president in the history of our great nations.

I'm not here to get into historical disputes about why, given the times, FDR or JFK or whoever may prove more progressive.  My point is that, on issue after issue, Obama will be the most progressive than any President before him.  By a long shot.

We know he's going to end the war in Iraq, restore habeas, reduce the influence of lobbyists, close Gitmo, engage in tough diplomacy with our enemies, appoint progressive judges, etc.  But this just scratches the surface.  Just a quick trip through some of Obama's issues pages reveals the breadth of progressive change that he wants to bring to American

Some talk has surfaced lately about the NCLB. Barack has mentioned it in speeches saying that the No Child Left behind law left the money behind. I wanted to point out that there are other provisions of the law that also need scrutiny and review.

No Child Left Behind, Subpart 2, Section 9528 requires that school districts release the names, addresses and telephone numbers of juniors and seniors to military recruiters upon request unless an opt-out form is signed by the student's parents and returned.

I am not yet done reading it, but find myself wanting to write about it now.    And I will tell you more about this book.  But now I am about to explode.  

How large is your heart?  Who is included in it?  What is possible?  I remember reading somewhere the words of Jerome Bruner that every child was capable of some level of mastery in every subject. My job as a teacher is to help that child connect with the subject and support the child so that the mastery becomes possible.  Every child.  Just as my job as a human being is two-fold, and here I refer again to the words of George Fox that guide me:  that I need to walk gladly across the earth and answer that of God in each person I encounter.

I am writing this for myself.  If it benefits anyone else that is a nice addition, but I need to write, to clarify my own thinking.  Hopefully as I write what I mean will become clear, at least to me.

Tell you what.   Take about 7 minutes.   Please.  Watch this video.   Then we'll talk.

Have you watched?  ALL THE WAY THROUGH?   You wouldn't lie to your favorite teacher, would you?

You have?  Great.  Now let's talk.

Daily Kos Friends:  This diary is from my personal experience as a certified public school teacher. It will be one example of what is wrong with No Child Left Behind.

I am a high school teacher at a suburban public school in the Denver metro area.  I have experienced, first hand, what Bush’s policies and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law have done to education and students.  

When I first heard Obama speak about his views of education, I knew he was on to something close to my heart:  we need to foster both creativity and critical thinking in our students.  We do this by encouraging curiosity.

More than anything else, I see among the great failings of NCLB is that it has objectified students and stripped from them their capacity for creative, critical thought.  This is what Obama wants to fix.

Given that Education is consistently rated as one of the top 2-3 issues (Pew May 29th) it is surprising that it hasn't been more visible in the campaign to date.

Yesterday the campaigns squared off at the Great American Education Forum sponsored by the Association of Education Publishers (AEP) in DC.  Educational policy experts from the campaigns addressed a wide range of positions from vouchers to the federal role in education.

McCain sent Lisa Graham Keegan a notorious school privatization profiteer and probable felon.  In a stunning admission, since McCain recruited her in 2006, she also admitted that they haven't released their education plan yet.  The message was either a) the McCain DOE will double down on the Bush NCLB corruption or b) we don't really give frack about education or c) we are incompetent.  Answer - d) all the above.

Obama sent an amateur who got eaten alive in the debate and then bailed on the press conference leaving the stage to McCain's team alone.  Sigh.

Theres more.

As a first year teacher this year I started paying more attention to the NY Times' education section. One of my favorite writers for the NY Times' education section, Samuel Freedman is moving on. His columns were honest and often displayed an empathy missing from many other straight news stories. He wrote one final farewell, "Education Stories, Inspiring or Otherwise", a collection of stories and reflections on his reporting. A couple of pieces stuck out for me. My thoughts after the jump...

This is a short review of David Hursh's High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning.  Hursh's book is important because it achieves three important aims: 1) to detail how the personal and the political intertwine at the level of schools and schooling, 2) to show how standards-based reform is based on an economic agenda, namely neoliberalism, and 3) to show that alternatives to neoliberal schooling are possible in all respects and that such alternatives can be created by politically-organized parents and teachers.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a review of two books suggesting a constructivist critique of the public school system as it stands: Kaia Tollefson's Volatile Knowing, a constructivist critique of NCLB, and Tollefson and Osborn's Cultivating the Learner-Centered Classroom, a practical guide to constructivist teaching.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

I got good news today. Although not all the scores are in yet, I heard through one of the literacy coaches that one of my students scored a 3 on the ELA. This is especially exciting news because she is one of my lower performing students. Which is what prompts a bit of a dilemma: What do I take away from this news?

Alternative Schools aren't much of an alternative, and even less of a school

I have lived in Atlanta for 20 years. I worked as a mental health professional for Fulton County for 8 of those years and that put me in frequent and in-depth contact with the "school system" here.

There are 2 main school systems: Fulton County School and Atlanta Public Schools, or APS. Fulton County covers a large area and the schools range in quality. Atlanta schools, those run by the the city, are almost uniformly abysmal.

Below is an excerpt of a recent report about a particular private school agency that has come in to provide "alternative school" for the city.

And it stinks.

 Here is Part 1 and here is Part II for those of you who have been ditching or sleeping. Please sit up straight and keep your attention focused on the teacher. Thank you.

   Today's lesson is going to take a closer look at the process of Disaster Capitalism as it relates to public schools.