Curriculum Resource: The Story of Broke

I found a new resource to use if you are having discussions with your middle schoolers about the Occupy Wall Street (and other cities) movement, the supercommittee, and other things related to our national economic system.  It is a short animated video called The Story of Broke (made by the same people who created the popular video, The Story of Stuff).

This is not an objective, news-type presentation.  Rather, this video represents the point of view of the 99% movement.  However, it does explain the budget and some of our major expenditures in a simple way, and it does support a peaceful and democratic approach to changing the situation.  I would supplement it with other materials, but it can, if nothing else, help explain some of what the Occupy movement is upset about and is trying to change.

You can watch the video below:



PS:  Here is a link to the previous Occupy Wall Street resource I posted last month.

New Study finds Average Test Scores for Middle Schoolers at Network-run Charter Schools Not Significantly Different than Public Schools

There was another study released this month that showed that, counter to public beliefs, the average test scores at charter schools run as a network (multiple charter schools run by the same management company, such as the KIPP and SEED schools featured in Waiting For Superman) is not statistically different than the averages at typical public schools.

But, as is so often the case with statistics, that statement obscures what is really happening.  Among the 22 schools in the study, close to half had test scores in reading and math were higher than the norm for regular public schools.  But about another third had test scores in those subjects that were significantly worse than public schools, with the remainder on par with the schools.

So, that means that taken as a whole, charter schools aren't doing any better than public schools.  If your child goes to any individual charter school, though, there is a good chance that it will outperform the average public school.  However, there is also a fair chance that it will do worse that its typical neighbors.

Once again, I don't mean to bad mouth charter schools; some are obviously doing an exemplary job, such as Raleigh Charter School here in our area.  However, parents need to know that charter schools are not the panacea that many educational reformers make them out to be.  Charter schools are experiments, and like all experiments, some will work out well, while others will be a failure.  There are a high percentage of these network-run schools that even though they have all the things these reformers want--longer class hours, performance-based payment for teachers, etc.--they have lower test scores than the average middle school

If you want to see the report, which was done by Mathematica Policy Research and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington, you can access it here.

Curriculum Resource: The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM)

:When you have a big task looming ahead of you (like writing 50,000 words in 30 days), which you have been spending too many of your waking hours on already, distraction is only a click away with the Internet.  In one of my flights of fancy today, I discovered the Museum of Online Museums (MoOM), which actually is a fabulous resource.

The Museum of Online Museums is just what it sounds like--a collection of links to museums around the world with exhibits and other information available online.  But what a collection!

It is divided into different sections.  The first section, The Museum Campus, has all your usual suspects--the Smithsonian, MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Virtual Museum of Canada, etc--with links conveniently located on the same page.  Then there is The Permanent Collection, which has mostly art and university collections that you might not be aware of, but that could prove useful--sites like Duke's Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, or the Flanders Fields Museum, or Art Treasures from Kyoto.

Finally, you come to Galleries, Exhibits, and Shows.  This part contains listings to the most bizarre and diverse collections I've ever seen.  Here are a sampling of the current exhibits:

• Museum of Snake Charmer Imagery
• The Aerosol Spray Paint Can Museum Covers
• International Gallery of Restroom Hand Dryers
• Take Out Beverage Lid Collection

And it goes on and on like that.  MoOM picks out a few of these to feature each quarter, but there is something there to fit almost anyone's fancy.

However, this is a great resource to know about to answer questions our students have about obscure things.  For example, I have accessed The DOS Museum (one of their listings) before when trying to remember and explain the history of computer development to my son.  That's not one of the most obscure, but you get the idea.  It's a good place to bookmark for when they ask you something about the history of some aspect of our culture that you have no idea where to start looking for the answer.

Finally, it can come in handy when you are writing something like NaNoWriMo.  For example, say I am writing a scene about my protagonists going to the movie in either a different country or a different time period.  What candy should I have them buy to consume during the movie?  Well, by visiting Mike's Candy Bar Wrapper Collection, I can not only find the correct name of the candy they would eat in Canada, but describe the wrapper as well.

So whether you are looking for more academic purposes, or want to lose yourself in the wormhole of the World Wide Web, (MoOM) can help you out.

How to Write Good

It has been an intense week of writing for NaNoWriMo, so I thought I would end the week with a humorous piece of writing advice that was composed by Frank L. Visco and originally published in Writer's Digest (June 1986):

HOW TO WRITE GOOD
by Frank L. Visco

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

New Program Allows NC High Schoolers to Enroll at Community Colleges for Free

For your future planning about your middle schoolers' high school years, which will be here before you know it....

Today North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue announced a new program that will allow eligible high school students to take classes at local community colleges for free.  The new Career & College Promise program, which consolidates and replaces previous dual enrollment programs, is designed to help students maximize their time in high school by taking community college courses that will give them a head start in either completing college or starting their careers after high school.

In the Career & College Promise programs, students are only eligible for the free community college enrollment if they maintain a B average, demonstrate capability for doing college-level work (largely determined by test scores), and continue to work towards their high school graduation requirements.  They can choose one of three paths:  (1) a college track that covers courses that will transfer to a four-year undergraduate institution; (2) a career track that includes classes and certifications in their designated profession, (3) for students enrolled in specified innovative high schools, students may be able to earn an associates degree at the same time as they complete their high school graduation requirements.

In the past, many homeschoolers have taken advantage of older free dual enrollment programs at community colleges.  However, my friends with high schoolers have told me it has been harder to get such classes because of budget cuts.  The official announcements from the Governor's office do not say specifically whether this program includes (or excludes) homeschooled students.  However, this page on the website of Durham Tech says that the program is available for any public, private, or homeschooled student.  So it appears that this program will include homeschoolers.  However, Durham Tech also says this replaces previous programs, so homeschoolers or other student categories, such as gifted and talented, will have to follow the rules under this program, rather than the previous systems to which they may be accustomed.

For more information, visit the Career & College Promise website, and/or watch the video below:

Studying Hinduism Through Art

In our World Religions class this week, we had as a guest speaker the Interfaith minister Rev. Donna Belt, who specializes in exploring spirituality through art.  She did an exploratory art project with the students that helped them connect parts of Hinduism to their own lives.

We started on the floor, with Donna talking about her own attraction to and study of Hinduism, then heard a version of the famous Hindu story of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god who is the remover of obstacles:

One of the lessons of Ganesh is to focus on possibilities and creative ways to overcome obstacles, rather than focusing on our limitations.  We did a brief mediation on obstacles in our own life, and then moved to an art project on the tables.

Donna gave everyone some watercolor paper with an outline of Ganesh's head on it.  The students were to use not only watercolors, which can flow together in ways we can't control, but also to adapt the watercolors by using them with items that give other unpredictable effects, such as scattering the paint by putting salt on it, adding wrinkles with plastic wrap, or using crayons for wax resist ornamentations.

After the painting was done, we returned to a circle on the floor, and each artist displayed his/her work and explained his/her design and color choices, as well as discussing anything they had discovered about themselves through this process.

They did an excellent join on their paintings, so I wanted to share them below:

Democrats Gain Control of Wake County School Board

Well, it's official.  Democrat Kevin Hill won the run-off election for the final seat on the Wake County School Board, giving the Democrats a 5-4 majority for the next four years, since in the elections for the other half of the board that will take place two years for now, only the four seats currently held by Republicans.  This means that the Republican sweep of two years ago, when all Republicans were elected and started to take the nation's 18th largest school system in a dramatically different direction, has effectively been swept out again.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I have had a lot of issues with the Republican-led board over the past two years (for reminders, you can see some of my posts such as Wake School Board Majority Should Be Ashamed  or How NOT to Respond to Reports Critical of Wake County School Board).  Such readers will not be surprised to hear that I'm glad that the Democrats have regained control.  For one thing, I happen to agree more with the educational priorities of the Democrats than I do with the Republicans.  I believe even the choice plan that was passed by the Republicans just weeks before they lost all the elections will lead to a less equitable and more segregated community, and I think that is a bad idea.

However, politics and policies aside, here are some reasons why I think the counter-sweep is a good idea.

Reason Number One:  The Board Majority Was an Embarrassment to our Community
Please understand that I'm saying all Republicans are an embarrassment, because I'm not.  I'm referring to the specific personalities of the individual people elected, particularly the two whose names appeared in the newspaper most frequently.  Too often, the board were rude to the public, to school system personnel, and even to each other.  They would insult each other in public meetings.  Too often, they were arrogant, and refused to listen to their colleagues or to public they were supposed to serve.  Too often, they displayed an astounding ignorance of the educational issues about which they were supposed to setting policy.  And too often, they meddled where they didn't belong, such as the time when the two board members decided they would draw up redistricting maps all on there own.

And when I say they were an embarrassment, I really don't think I'm speaking subjectively.  I think that any school board that gets singled out and criticized by Stephen Colbert and the US Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan  can be said to be tarnishing our reputation.

This point was also made frequently in letters to the editor of the local newspaper.  Several authors pointed out that even though the area is increasingly mixed demographically, we are still in the South, and we just don't believe in people behaving badly, especially people who are supposed to be leading our children.  So I think one message of this new election is for people to behave better, which is certainly something I support.

Reason Number Two:  Money Didn't Carry the Day
This was the most expensive school board election in Wake County history, and perhaps in the history of North Carolina.   The news is now saying that half a million dollars was spent on this school board election, much coming from interest group outside our community.

However, in most, if not all of the races, the Republican candidates received a much higher percentage of the money.  In the case of the run-off between Hill and his opponent, the Republican's donations were twice that of the Democrat.

And despite all that money, every Republican lost.  So this election is a reassuring example of money not being able to just "buy" an election.

Reason Number Three:  It Shows that Trying to Cram Through One-Sided Ideology Doesn't Work
Here is what I think is potentially most important about these results.  I hope our elected official at all levels will see this as a lesson that just because you won the latest election, it doesn't mean you can enact everything you want 100% your way.  If you refuse to listen to or compromise with or accommodate the other side's concerns, at least to some extend, you are shooting yourself in the foot.  You'll simply rile up your opposition, who will turn you out of office as soon as the next election comes along.

So here is an admission:  while I don't agree with everything the Republicans were trying to do, they had some valid concerns and proposals.  I think the school system needed some shaking up.  In the early 2000s, it was the schools who were arrogantly refusing to listen to parental frustrations about the constant moving about of their children.  It wasn't until the Towns of Cary and Apex threatened to sue their own school system that the school system started to take the family complaints seriously.  So the Wake County Public School System made their own bed, and were made to lie in it when a too-long-ignored public turned out WCPSS' traditional supporters on the Board for the innovators offered by the Republicans.

However, the Board majority blew their opportunity.  They refused to listen to any concerns from the other side about their plans.  They tried to move much more quickly than the school system or the community were obviously ready for.   They rejected any attempts towards compromise that might buy them some more public support for their plans.  And so here they are, two years later, with the control snatched away from them by a public that didn't like their radicalism.

So what happens now?  Who knows.  Will the Democratic majority put a stop to the choice plan?  We'll have to see.  I doubt the rifts dividing the community about how we should structure our school system will be settled any time soon.

However, I am hopeful that the new majority will have learned a lesson from the past two years, and proceed with a more respectful, more deliberative, more consultative, and more compromising approach than their predecessors did.

UPDATE:  The political commentator for the local News & Observer has a good article analyzing the Republican defeat, which echoes and expands upon some of my points above.