The “vote the kid out of class” teacher is at it again
Remember Wendy Portillo, the Palm Beach County teacher who had a classroom "vote" to kick a student with autism out of her kindergarten class in 2008? Looks like she's in the middle of another news story on teachers failing to meet the needs of students with disabilities, this time one of a small handful of staff […]
Hoping that the Digital Learning Council is not Strong American Schools, digital version
Apparently there is now something called a Digital Learning Council, which a press release announced in August and apparently has Bob Wise and Jeb Bush on board as co-honchos. I would point to the website of the new DLC, but there isn't a website I can find (though there is a Twitter feed). I will […]
Mistakes are public: The foot-high erratum
In the 1920s, as the Lincoln Memorial was constructed, one of the people carving part of Lincoln's second inaugural address into the northern interior wall made a mistake, turning FUTURE into EUTURE. As the National Park Service explains, the extra line on the letter was filled in, but it's still visible, as I saw when […]
Florida’s public-sector purgatory
Happy Labor Day: what are your plans for being laid off? Because whatever you'd like, I'm thinking about your being laid off, or having a hard time finding work. Let me approach this more gently: The details in the BLS "Employment Situation" table as updated 9/3/10 look depressing, less because of the unemployment rate (not […]
Popperian chutzpah
I have no idea whether Andy Rotherham is correct in claiming that the Economic Policy Institute paper on value-added scores and teacher evaluation is marginal to the current policy debate. The historian in me wants to talk about contingency and the human vulnerability to confirmation bias, and it seems the EPI paper follows one line […]