Testing found to have no effect on learning.

The very last line from this article in Edweek.com. is a quote that sums up this article perfectly for me- (Mr. Baron said. “That was basically accepted without evidence or support in NCLB and other government and private sector efforts to increase performance.”) All the money, time and effort put it to judging performance just makes me sad. Knowing that so much more could have been done to improve education. We all know that it is not a perfect system and all that money could have gone into things that had been proven to work. This may sound crazy but maybe school performance should be based on end results... Do the students get jobs? Are they good at them? Are they productive? Are the Successful? Maybe when a person gets to the end of their life they should look back and reflect on the relevance of their education.

Cutting Edge vs. Cutting Cost

Wow is all I have to say about the district in Florida that is buying every student in two schools ipads. It is both super cool and foolish at the same time. I like that they are giving students the next generation of learning material but at what cost. I guess it's ok because they got a grant for it? I still don't know how to react, I mean $900,000 is a lot of money and could have been a lot of teachers... That is a tough decision. The part in this article about the cell phone towers is interesting because it raises question about how schools can make extra money. Could the do more to raise funds, maybe rent out space during the summer?

Sports come under fire in local schools

After this weeks outpour of emotion regarding rumors of Salem Keizer School District cutting sports from public schools I thought it would be interesting to see what was going on around the country under the same topic. This search on Edweek.org brought up about a half dozen articles about the subject. Interestingly enough the very first article is about Oregon Schools. It's mostly about closing schools and the impacts they have had throughout Oregon. It is a very sad day when these issues are raised, because I feel they could have been avoided. Long term thinking should have been the focus since schools where institutionalized all those years ago. Maybe during the eighties we should have set aside some of the revenue from the boom years so that we wouldn't be faced with these decisions. I have never been much of a financial planner so maybe I shouldn't say anything but even I know when you have to make the hard choices education should always be first priority.

4-Day Weeks for Schools?

Two Pennsylvania school districts are considering 4-day work weeks in order to save money. Having students stay home an extra day sounds like most kids wish come true, but how about learning? Will they loose electives in order to compensate for the lack of instruction time? It seems to just be permanent furlow days for all the teachers. If you cross reference this article on Edweek.com with this one from Politicususa.com you can see why we are falling behind in many aspects of world competition, lack of emphasis on the future:( It makes me sad to see the repercussions of the last 30 years of a lack of value placed on education. 100 years ago not everyone got to school and today everyone takes the process for granted. Hopefully we figure out that eduction is the key to our nations success before we go the way of ancient Rome and implode.