The HML Post
 
 
Greetings!
 
Welcome to the January 13th, edition of the HML POST

More about the Horace Mann League of the USA at  HML website.

The HML Annual Meeting/Luncheon is on Friday, February 14, 2014, at the Omni Hotel in Nashville - in conjunction with the AASA Nation Conference. More is in the mail to you.
Check out HML's Cornerstone on "FLIPBOARD."   (The public schools are the "Cornerstone" of our democracy.)



Charter schools are sold as an answer. With awful discipline and shocking scandals, many really cause new problems. Charter schools have been relentlessly marketed to the American populace as a silver bullet for "failed" public schools, especially in poor urban communities of African-American and Latino/a students. Politicians in both parties speak glowingly of these schools - which, by the way, their children seem never to attend.Opening charter schools has become the latest fad for celebrities including athletes and rap stars.

Inequality Remains a Critical Issue in the US   by Paul Krugman in Truthout.
It has taken an amazingly long time, but inequality is finally surfacing as a significant unifying issue for progressives in the United States - including the president. And there is also, inevitably, a backlash, or actually a couple of backlashes.  Meanwhile, estimates of the output gap - the extent to which our economy is operating below capacity - are generally less than 6 percent. So in raw numerical terms, rising inequality has done more than the slump to depress middle-class incomes.
 
 
This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.   Can this be applied to teaching and merit pay?
 
 
 
  In the latest math-focused PISA survey, Shanghai, Singapore, and Korea top the rankings, bumping three-time leader Finland to 12th place, with Massachusetts and Connecticut (which were assessed separately for the first time) scoring significantly above the US average.

Responding to the US's overall average performance, secretary of education Arne Duncan repeated his wake-up call of three years ago, calling on Americans to "face the brutal truth that we're being out-educated."

  

A Battle Over School Reform: Michelle Rhee vs. Diane Ravitch   by John Buntin,  in Governing States and Localities 

As the No Child Left Behind era ends and Common Core begins, two education heavyweights face-off over what we've learned and where we've gone wrong.
When President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in early 2002, he described the sweeping education overhaul as a landmark piece of civil rights legislation. Closing the achievement gap between white students and non-Asian minority students was, the former president liked to say, "the civil rights struggle of our time."  

  

A Guide to the Conspiracy Theories Fuelling the Common Core Fight  by Arit John in The Wire.Com

So far only one Common Core conspiracy theory has panned out: conservative megadonors like the Koch brothers want to destroy the plan and eventually take down the Department of Education. But plenty others are floating around.  As Politico reported on Tuesday, conservatives are funding advocacy groups that want to use anger over the national education standards to get rid of teacher tenure, promote voucher programs and push the government out of education policy. As it turns out, they have a lot of anger to work with.

  

Rising Above The Mark   A video.

Rise Above the Mark is a documentary narrated by Peter Coyote that brings to light the heartbreaking realities of public education.  It's the story of what happens when politics enters the classroom.

Public schools are boxed in by current corporate reforms. Rules and regulations restrict vision, depreciate funding, demoralize teachers, and turn students into test-taking machines, robbing them of time to foster creativity.  Experts Diane Ravtich, Linda Darling-Hammond, Pasi Sahlberg and others discuss how America can make positive changes to provide an exceptional public school system for all children. 

  

For right, Common Core fight prelude to bigger agenda  by Stephane Simon in Politico 

National advocacy groups powered by the Koch brothers and other conservative megadonors have found a new cause ripe with political promise: the fight to bring down the Common Core academic standards.

The groups are stoking populist anger over the standards - then working to channel that energy into a bold campaign to undercut public schools, weaken teachers unions and push the federal government out of education policy.

  

Getting teacher evaluation right  By Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post

  Here is an edited version of a briefing on the right way to evaluate teachers that Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond and other leading education research experts gave this week on Capitol Hill to policymakers.  There is a widespread consensus among practitioners, researchers, and policy makers that current teacher evaluation systems in most school districts do little to help teachers improve or to support personnel decision making. For this reason, new approaches to teacher evaluation are being developed and tested.   

  

The Call to Teach: The Role of Technology  by Mathew Lynch in the Huffington Post.

Most of the so-called "disadvantages" of technology in K-12 classrooms cannot be avoided, even if every instructor in every school swore off computers, mobile devices and all other forward-thinking educational platforms. Whether teachers use technology in lesson plans or not, it exists outside classroom walls and therefore influences the way children learn.    

  

Other related articles on the HML Cornerstone Flip Board

States Grapple With Common Test-Score Cutoffs

Ninth Grade: The Most Important Year in High School

The Case Against High-School Sports 

High-School Sports Aren't Killing Academics

  

See these and other related articles in the "Cornerstone" Internet magazine.

 

 


Reprinted with permission.
 
 
About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.

 

Officers:
President: Joe Hairston, President, Vision Unlimited, Reisterstown, MD
President-elect: Gary Marx, President, Center for Public Outreach, VA
Vice President: Charles Fowler, Executive Director, Suburban School Superintendents
1st Past President: Mark Edwards, Supt., Mooresville Graded Schools, NC
2nd Past President: Julie Underwood, Dean, Sch. of Ed. U. of WI, Madison, WI
3rd Past President: George Garcia, (ret.) Supt., Boulder Valley Schools, CO
4th Past President: Steve Rasmussen, Supt., Issaquah School District, WA

 

Directors:
Martha Bruckner, Supt., Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Carol Choye, Instructor, Bank Street College, NY
Brent Clark, Exec. Dir., Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Charles Fowler, Exec. Dir., Suburban School Superintendents, NH
James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
William Hite, Supt., Philadelphia City Public Schools, PA
Christine Johns, Superintendent, Sterling Heights, Michigan 
Eric King, Superintendent, (Ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Steven Ladd, Superintendent, Elk Grove Unified School District, Elk Grove, CA 
Barry Lynn, Exec. Dir., Americans United, Washington, DC
Stan Olson, Superintendent, (Ret.) Boise Public Schools, ID

 

Executive Director:
Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
 
To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.