The Horace Mann League's 95th Annual Meeting and Luncheon, Friday, February 27, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in San Diego.
Pedro Noguera, The HML Outstanding Friend of Public Education Award. Dr. Noguera's more than 200 research and scholarly articles and publications address topics such as urban school reform, education policy, conditions that promote student achievement, education and community development, youth violence, and race and ethnic relations.
Gene Carter, HML Outstanding Public Educator Award.
Gene Carter, who served as executive director and CEO of ASCD, retired in June 2014, after 22 years. Prior to joining ASCD, Dr. Carter was superintendent in Norfolk, Va., for nine years. During that time, he was selected as the first National Superintendent of the Year.
Mark Edwards, Friend of the HML Award. Mark Edwards is the AASA Superintendent of the Year, and the recent Past President of the Horace Mann League. He is currently the superintendent of the Mooresville Graded Schools in North Carolina. His second book, Thank You for Your Leadership: The Power of Distributed Leadership in a Digital Conversion Model, is featured at the AASA Bookstore.
Click here for registration form. Please register on or before Tuesday, February 24th, so a lunch count can be available for the hotel staff.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.
We all want to be more productive but getting motivated enough to actually get things done can seem impossible. Social scientists have been studying motivation for decades, trying to find out what motivates our behavior, how and why. Dozens of theories of motivation have been proposed over the years. Here are 5 popular theories of motivation that can help you increase workplace productivity...
pending in Washington State's Senate would clear the way for experienced adjunct faculty members at colleges to be certified as substitute teachers in public schools.
The measure, introduced on Thursday, calls for the state's Professional Educator Standards Board to provide for the issuance of substitute-teacher certificates to adjunct instructors, whether or not such faculty members have completed teacher-preparation programs or hold regular teaching certificates. To qualify for the substitute-teacher certificates, the adjuncts would need to have at least a master's degree from a regionally accredited higher-education institution and three or more years of demonstrated success teaching. They also would need to meet existing requirements for teachers regarding personal fitness and moral character.
Beyond Measure by Vicki Abeles on the Beyond Measure site
Every day we hear stories about the troubles in American education: our test scores are stagnant, we're falling behind our international peers, and our schools are failing to prepare future generations to succeed in the 21st century. For the last decade, this story - and the fear it inspires - has shaped the way we talk about our education system and informed our national education policies.
More pressure. More assessments. More of the same. But what if the efforts we've been pushing so hard in our schools are actually the things that are leaving our education system worse off? What if the initiatives that narrow, standardize and pressure our school environments, are the reasons our children are less engaged in school and less prepared to be thoughtful, capable, contributing adults?
In Beyond Measure, we set out to challenge the assumptions of our current education story.
Rather than ask why our students fail to measure up, this film asks us all to reconsider the greater purpose of education. What if our education system valued personal growth over test scores? Put inquiry over mimicry? Encouraged passion over rankings? What if we decided that the purpose of school was not the transmission of facts or formulas, but the transformation of every student? And what if this paradigm-shift was driven by students, parents, and educators, not politicians and policymakers?
In 2009, just half of faculty members in higher education were part-timers. But now, owing in part to resources moving away from classroom instruction and toward student services, research and other areas, adjuncts make up 76.4 percent of the total across all institution types in the United States.
An anti-testing backlash has emerged among parents demanding changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, and education researchers have pointed to evidence-based ways forward. Yet, as a new National Education Policy Center Policy Memo published today points out, the mistakes in NCLB are still being repeated, and lawmakers' discussions in Washington, D.C., surrounding reauthorization of the law are failing to adjust course. NCLB was "an ineffective solution to some very real problems," according to the new NEPC Policy Memo. The memo, Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Time to Move Beyond Test-Focused Policies, discusses the broad research consensus that standardized tests are ineffective and even counterproductive when used to drive educational reform.
Debate about the purposes of education never seems to end. Should young people become educated to get prepared to enter the workforce, or should the purpose of education be focused more on social, academic, cultural and intellectual development so that students can grow up to be engaged citizens?
Over the last 50 years, anxiety about competition with the Soviet Union, Japan, and China for global economic, military and political dominance have supported periodic calls for more effective workforce development. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently tried to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin to focus exclusively on workforce development. With each new workforce development or economic competitiveness demand on our K-12 schools, there has been push-back from those who want greater emphasis on a broader view of education. But it doesn't have to be either-or. Education should prepare young people for life, work and citizenship.
Noted conservative political activist Star Parker recently penned an article extoling the virtues of legislation being offered at the federal level to let education dollars follow students to schools beyond their local public school. The problem is school choice is just another red herring that conservatives continue to offer to fix the manufactured "crisis in education."
Of course choice falls in a long line of conservative ideas that don't actually improve education. Ending tenure doesn't increase test scores. Despite what you might have heard, schools win 75 percent of their cases against tenured teachers. In fact data show non-tenured teachers are less likely to lose their job for poor performance than tenured teachers.
Studies show that the majority of charter schools perform at or below the level of their public school counterparts.
Decades of research show that merit pay doesn't improve student perform.
Even though the states with the high teacher union rates get better results than the states with the low rates, conservatives still pretend that unions are somehow ruining public education.
After some initial resistance about the necessity and uncertainty surrounding the endeavor, our educators, parents, and business community rallied around the idea and in 2009, Mooresville's digital conversion began in earnest. And it has not stopped since.
Mooresville's pioneering journey continued this fall as we began to implementRosetta Stone language learning modules for the 3,000 students in our five elementary and intermediate schools.
In an America stuffed with charter schools, how would I make a pitch for a public school? I don't mean how would I argue the ins and outs and dollars and cents of policy decisions. I don't mean how would I, for instance, try to talk the GOP out of turning ESEA into the Charter and Privatization Act of 2015. I'm not talking the big idea macro-scale argument about the place of modern charters in education. Stability, Shared Expertise, Commitment, Ownership, Money.
In 1840 Mann wrote On the Art of Teaching. Some of HML members present On the Art of Teaching to new teachers as part of their orientation program. On the inside cover, some write a personal welcome message to the recipient. Other HML members present the book to school board members and parental organizations as a token of appreciation for becoming involved in their schools. The book cover can be designed with the organization's name. For more information, contact the HML (Jack McKay)
The Horace Mann League website (click here) contains information about the League's projects, activities, past events, galleries, publications, and much more.
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: Gary Marx, President, Center for Public Outreach, Vienna, VA
President-elect: Charles Fowler, Exec. Director, Suburban School Admin. Exter, HN
Vice President: Christine Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
1st Past President: Joe Hairston, President, Vision Unlimited, Reisterstown, MD
2nd Past President: Mark Edwards, Superintendent, Mooresville Graded Schools, NC
Directors:
Laurie Barron, Supt. of Schools, Evergreen School District, Kalispell , MT
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
James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
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
Kevin Maxwell, CEO, Prince George's County Schools, Upper Marlboro, MD
Stan Olson, Director, Silverback Learning, Boise, ID
Steven Webb, Supt. of Schools, Vancouver School District, WA
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.
Gene Carter, HML Outstanding Public Educator Award. 
We all want to be more productive but getting motivated enough to actually get things done can seem impossible. 
Every day we hear stories about the troubles in American education: our test scores are stagnant, we're falling behind our international peers, and our schools are failing to prepare future generations to succeed in the 21st century. For the last decade, this story - and the fear it inspires - has shaped the way we talk about our education system and informed our national education policies.
It all started when Doug Ducey won the governor's race last November. Ducey, who cut his political teeth as a student at Arizona State University editing the campus newspaper, made his millions in the ice cream business (Cold Stone Creamery). Immediately upon taking office he instituted a hiring freeze and promised to increase school choice. That same mid-term election saw a virtual unknown Republican school board member, Diane Douglas, defeat ASU Education professor David Garcia for the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Douglas vowed to dump Common Core on grounds of its being federal intrusion into a state responsibility, but policy had nothing to do with her victory; if you had an R behind your name in the mid-term election, you won.
An anti-testing backlash has emerged among parents demanding changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, and education researchers have pointed to evidence-based ways forward. 
In an America stuffed with charter schools, how would I make a pitch for a public school? 
In 1840 Mann wrote 