There are some posts which remain timeless. ~ Ed.
It’s one of the biggest debates going on among early childhood development experts: Is it more important for kindergartners to focus on academics and learn their ABC’s and numbers? Or spend more time on social and emotional issues, like how to play nice and pay attention?
Recent research by a UC Irvine education professor shows that math skills among kindergartners turn out to be a key predictor for future academic success. Continue reading
They came by the hundreds, one newspaper said — “perhaps thousands.” Some traveled hours, others waited hours, all for the opportunity to protest one of the most outrageous homeschooling bills ever introduced: California’s AB 2756. Spilling out into crammed hallways and overflow rooms, families poured into the Statehouse just for the opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking out on a measure that would give the government more power over parents who educate at home. Continue reading
America’s taxpayer-funded schools have become the promoters of these unhealthy behaviors, while replacing traditional education
California lawmakers are not only bulldozing classic liberal education, they are legislating more LGBT lifestyle and pornographic perversion in education curricula. At the same time, they are also trying to outlaw homeschooling, removing all doubt that the left is indoctrinating your kids, and using them as revolting sociological experiments. Continue reading
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In light of recent headlines around standardized testing for kindergarteners in Oregon and New York, the growing voice of opposition against bubble tests is gaining steam. Continue reading
President Donald Trump greets Education Secretary Betsy DeVos before signing the Education Federalism Executive Order, Wednesday, April 26, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday (April 25, 2018) to start pulling the federal government out of K-12 education, following through on a campaign promise to return school control to state and local officials.
The order, dubbed the “Education Federalism Executive Order,” will launch a 300-day review of Obama-era regulations and guidance for school districts and directs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to modify or repeal measures she deems an overreach by the federal government. Continue reading
I started wondering about this recent movement of teachers and their attempt to change fiscal policies toward education. Why the association with this particular colour? There are other powerful colour associations. I was also curious about the reasons. I’m not a teacher, but I am interested. Why not choose one of these colours instead?
The colour purple is associated with independence. Our European cousins’ see this colour as that of royalty, power, and strength. It was the colour of the Emperor and the aristocracy. It symbolizes leadership and confidence. Why not push for a more independent educational system? One not bound by governmental oversight and regulations. One that allows teachers the freedom (independence) to teach classes geared toward the abilities of the students rather than forcing these kids into neat little common core boxes of homogeneity? Everyone is the same… aren’t we? Don’t we want more confident leadership? Don’t we want well educated, thinking people capable of making value-based decisions? Isn’t this what we expect from our teachers; to shepherd our children to and through the power of learning and to help them become leaders? Continue reading
I was reminded this evening by a long-time reader of Kettle Moraine Publications, John Pickelsimer about this post from one of our other blogs. It fits on Metropolis Café as well. ~ Ed.
As we look at the preachers of early America what we will see is a total dedication to preaching the uncompromised Word of God and a refusal to budge from its true meaning.
The Church of England had been established in America because America was a subject of England, but many of the colonists had left not just England, but Europe in general to be free to worship in the manner that they saw fit. The Geneva Bible, which was the Bible of the majority of the pilgrims, had opened the eyes of many preachers and citizens alike because of its footnotes and commentaries as to what the Word was really saying about things like self-government, taxes, freedoms and liberties that no nation at that time allowed let alone practiced. Continue reading
The PR announcement came out today: Columbia University has launched a new center to research failure and its role in learning, growth and success.
Based at the Ivy League university’s prominent graduate school of education — which preps future teachers — the Education for Persistence and Innovation Center’s goals are “to inspire people to persist and triumph over adversity; to help them channel frustration and use negative emotions constructively; to identify effective strategies for overcoming failure; and to learn how organizations can help employees fail successfully,” according to a news release. Continue reading
Is this man a genius? Kudos To This Insightful Prof.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on this plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…” Continue reading
On July 5, 2010, on FederaObserver.com ~ we were forwarded a column by Granny entitled, This Manufacturer Can’t Find 100 Unemployed Americans With Basic Math Skills To Hire, (the original article is is no longer active on line). What follows, are transcribed from a comments, Granny received from Ed Lewis & Lynn Finney, regarding said column.
Looks like we better bone up on our basic math skills – or can’t you count that high? (Ed.) Continue reading
Earlier this month, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. The Nation’s Report Card, was released. It’s not a pretty story. Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math. Among black students, only 17 percent tested proficient or better in reading, and just 7 percent reached at least a proficient level in math.
The atrocious NAEP performance is only a fraction of the bad news. Nationally, our high school graduation rate is over 80 percent. That means high school diplomas, which attest that these students can read and compute at a 12th-grade level, are conferred when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 percent are not proficient in math. Continue reading
It is rare that I step outside of the known within this blog to share with you what I share today. It began with my decades long love of art, and my discovery of ‘the Petite Picasso,‘ Alexandra Nechita in 2006. Although I have never been a fan of her type of art – I became a fan of hers. Her story is amazing, but her desire to share much of her work for philanthropic purposes is equally amazing. Some days ago, I discovered one of her early works from 1995 (she was 10 years of age at the time).
…and then, while doing some research about the artwork itself, I discovered a scant piece of writing on a blog from 2011 – and I felt compelled to share this marvelous post with you. It says all that needs to be said. Given what teachers all over America, and specifically those in my home state of Arizona (for the past 42 years), I wanted to share with all – Alexandra Nechita’s art entitled, Tribute to the Teachers. Let the battles begin, fought well and end in Victory for the teachers and students alike. ~ Ed.
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Homeschoolers today have it easy. Many of us were in diapers when, in 1977, educator John Holt created Growing Without Schooling, the first newsletter to connect and encourage homeschooling families. Holt and other social reformers provided the support and facilitated the networks that would ultimately lead to homeschooling becoming legally recognized in all U.S. states by 1993.
I sometimes wonder about the courage it took those earlier homeschooling parents to remove their children from school before it was fully legal, to chart an alternative education path for their children when they were often the only ones on that road. Continue reading
QUESTION: Is it so that the teachers might be able to pick up a part-time job at some burger joint to make ends meet, which still holding on to their meager salaries for the District? Or maybe it is because the District cannot afford ‘Hazardous Duty‘ pay. ~ Ed.
The public school in Campo, Colorado, hasn’t required all its students to come to class on Fridays for nearly two decades. The 44-student district dropped a weekday to boost attendance and better attract teachers to a town so deep in farm country that the nearest grocery store is more than 20 miles away.
“I think the four-day week helped us, initially, in recruiting teachers,” the superintendent, Nikki Johnson, said. “Now that so many districts are on four-day, that’s not much of an incentive.” Continue reading
Do you remember sentence-diagramming in school? I do. It was the onerous process of breaking apart individual sentences into their component parts and identifying those parts, like the subject, the verb, the modifiers, and so on.
By the time sentence-diagramming was introduced in elementary school, I had learned how to play the game of school. I had learned that obedience, memorization, and regurgitation of exactly what the teacher wants is the key to school success. I played it well. Looking back, and witnessing how my own unschooled children learn how to write, I realize how arbitrary and artificial learning in school was. Continue reading
A California man has described how he managed to keep his illiteracy a secret from the world for decades – even when he worked as a teacher for 17 years.
John Corcoran, now 77, remarkably only learned to read at the age of 48.
Despite the fact that he couldn’t read or write, Corcoran finished high school, went on to earn himself a college degree and then landed himself a high school teaching job in the 1960s.
He went years without telling anybody about his illiteracy secret. Continue reading
Stalin and Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943
For all those admirers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who believe he was a great president, remove the blinders and face up to the fact that his socialist mindset and administration destroyed the last remnants of the Old Republic. Most of these same cheer leaders for the “New Deal” are in love with big government and seek to empower a federal authority at the expense of the Federalism model that is based upon separations of power and States Rights.
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Education experts widely recognize that a strong early childhood education is an important factor to set kids up for success in school. But whether kindergarten is more like preschool or elementary school has long been an open question that leaves teachers caught in-between. For some children kindergarten is the first time they’ve been to school, and at five-years-old they’re still too young to shoulder the anxiety and pressure of benchmark testing. All this leaves kindergarten teachers in a tough spot — they are required to teach an increasingly demanding set of standards, but many are also trained in child development and see the new demands as developmentally inappropriate. Continue reading