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Why the politics we’ve got won’t produce the schools we need
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) Why, one might ask, should California, the headwaters of the digital revolution, be stuck in the eddies of an early 20th Century school design? The answer lies partly in culture and partly in politics. Almost all the politics of education concerns rearranging adult power and privilege. Relatively little political energy is spent consciously designing a contemporary system of public education that addresses the needs of today’s students. That should change. Schooling faces a major redesign problem. Learning 1.0 is a century old. Now we have the opportunity to redesign education, creating Learning 2.0, a more flexible, personalized, and experiential form of learning. The capacity to do this comes partly from the Internet’s network technology but mainly from changing how people think about learning. More than their schools, it … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, Twenty-first Century Learning
10 essential blogs on California education – no, make that 11 (mine)
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) About 10 years ago, I set out to learn how education works in California, when it fails, and who could tell me why. I devoured books and magazines. I peppered educators with questions. I attended conferences. I attended leadership meetings of teacher associations. I gate-crashed school board association meetings, conferences of charter school associations, and administrators organizations. I visited schools with community organizers and met with advocates. I read the voluminous Getting Down to Facts research. I got to know people at the organizations that walk California’s education policy field wearing referee’s stripes, including EdSource, PACE, and the Legislative Analyst’s Office. I learned the lingo. In multiple dialects. Californians face a huge learning curve to get involved in making education work better. This week, Full Circle Fund launched Ed100.org … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary
Districts will lay off some of their best and brightest today; that must change
March 15th, 2011 | 6 Comments
By Arun Ramanathan / commentary ~ EdSource Extra
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) Kaitlin Donovan, Nicholas Melvoin, Emilie Smith, and Tyler Hester didn’t expect to get a layoff notice. They were the kind of teachers typically romanticized in Hollywood movies. Young, energetic, and idealistic, they sought out the challenge of teaching in high-poverty urban schools and set high expectations for their students. Yet, each of them went to their teacher mailbox and found a pink slip. As a young teacher in San Francisco in the ’90s, I experienced a similar layoff. Reading the pink slip was a like a punch in the gut. It said to me, “Nothing you’ve done matters to us.” That feeling was echoed more than a decade later by Emilie, who said, “It was like getting an F on a paper you didn’t write. It … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, Equity issues, Teachers, Tenure