Solving the crisis in education is completely possible, and we can't afford to ignore the state of our schools any longer.

America: land of innovation, of the can-do spirit, of Yankee ingenuity.

Americans were the first people in the world to declare independence from an empire -- and get away with it. Americans dug the Erie Canal, reversed the flow of rivers, invented powered flight and the skyscraper, harnessed the power of the atom, sent men to the moon and brought them back alive. We supplied the world with an abundance of food and high-quality manufactured goods. We defeated fascism, take credit for having defeated communism, co-founded the United Nations, absorbed tens of millions of immigrants and made a single people out of many. We are one goddamn amazing country.

Or at any rate, we were. Something happened to us around 30 years ago. Suddenly, things seemed so awfully difficult. Preposterous, even. Reducing poverty? Building a 200-mpg automobile engine? Signing the Kyoto Protocols? Manufacturing consumer goods domestically? Fighting crime and terrorism without recklessly abrogating civil liberties? Forget it. It's too hard. Too inconvenient. Too unprofitable. Too much of a hassle. Or it might mean that we had to follow the same rules as every other country, that our specialness didn't render us exempt.

We've turned into Emo Nation, for crying out loud.

I'm an avid reader and I belong to a book club.  Our book club chose a book that was so incredible I actually sent some money to the author after reading it.

Unless you've read "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson, you'll have no idea what prompted me to do so. Nicholas Kristof in his op ed piece in Sunday's NY Times discusses this book.

That could well have been the headline back in 1925.  For it was on this very date of  July 10, 1925 that the trial of a high school football coach and substitute biology teacher – John Scopes – began after he was arrested for teaching Evolution in Dayton, Tennessee.  It became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial – but many of us may be more familiar with it after being memorialized on Broadway and in film as "Inherit the Wind".

Well, if charity doesn’t start right at home, it at least starts at the elite, private, preparatory schools the McCains just happen to send their kids to.

What prompted me to quickly post this hopefully informative rebuttal is a Comment in one of today’s Recommended Diaries

Somehow the Comments transitioned from discussing McCain’s temper during a Town Hall meeting when he was trying to deal with a vet who was asking McCain why he so frequently voted against our troops, to a discussion on his wife, Cindy.  And hat’s when this comment popped up:

More than a half century of research has documented a powerful association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement. Weakening that association is the fundamental challenge facing America's education policymakers.

Too often we attempt to address educational policy in isolation, ignoring the well-document relationship between school performance and socioeconomic status, a relationship that leads to significant gaps even before students start school.  And we can note

Despite impressive academic gains registered by some schools serving disadvantaged students, there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can substantially, consistently, and sustainably close these gaps.

The quotes are from the home page of a new initiative, entitled as is this diary, A Broader, BOLDER Approach to Education.  Please keep reading as I tell you a bit about this initiative.

There has been a lot of grumbling lately concerning Worcester's support of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program. This is a youth program funded by various military branches in addition to the school district, but is administered by the public schools. It's an elective course and does not exempt students from fulfilling the gym requirement (Noting in Worcester will ever exempt you from the gym requirement, but that is a completely different issue). The program has been around for a long time and is well established in the Worcester Community, with Air Force units located at South High and Burncoat High and a Navy unit situated at North High.

I had fun today.  I gave a talk at the Math Science Innovation Center in Mechanicsville Virginia.    It was part of a conference on

Fractals: A New Lens on the Natural World
A Conference for 6-12 Science Teachers

 My talk was not on fractals but was entitled: TEACHING  SCIENCE THAT MATTERS: REFRAMING THE QUESTION IN SCIENCE, and can be viewed from my webpage.
 I was dealing with  issues that may reflect back on the way science is being taught.  The three examples I was using for them were

Global warming and climate change
Evolution vs. creation ("Intelligent" Design)
Determining when something is "alive"

 I thought some of you might be interested in what Complexity Science has to say about these issues and their relationship to "standard" science.  Look below the break if this is of interest to you.  I'll suggest that there is relevance to this election in what I had to say

Tell you what.   Take about 7 minutes.   Please.  Watch this video.   Then we'll talk.

Have you watched?  ALL THE WAY THROUGH?   You wouldn't lie to your favorite teacher, would you?

You have?  Great.  Now let's talk.

Today I thought I was actually going to have a day where something wouldn't piss me off. Well the FISA thing ended that notion, but also something else I read in the news.

This week's newsletter includes another discussion about the Republican neglect of our infrastructure. Since I wrote it two more levees have failed, flooding Des Moines, which aren't included in my analysis. If you want to help the Midwest, you can go here.

Turning to the election, the attacks have begun in earnest. Republicans rolled out a whole slew of attacks against Barack and Michelle Obama...some borderline racist, some merely lies, and none all that effective. In most states Obama's popularity has surged such that if the election were held today, Obama would easily win with over 300 electoral votes, just like Senator Chuck Schumer predicts will happen. But keep in mind, this is just the first volley of attacks.

This is sick!

As if the D.A.R.E program -- where kids are taught the fine art of narcing on their parents -- wasn't bad enough. As if having drug raids in high schools -- where kids are thrown to the floor with guns pointed at their heads, as their lockers are searched -- wasn't bad enough.

Now there's this...

There was always something slightly insane about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ambitious education law often described as the Bush Administration's signature domestic achievement.

   That is the opening sentence of a piece in the current issue of Time.   Written by Claudia Wallis, the piece is entitled as it this diary, and it is very much worth your going to this link and taking the time to read it.  It is especially interesting as we now have on record a key insider in the Bush Department of Education acknowledging the arguments of critics that for some in the Department

No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a cynical plan to destroy American faith in public education and open the way to vouchers and school choice.

It is a piece that has been widely discussed on some of the educational lists in which I participate, and I thought it might be worthwhile for me to examine it and  offer some commentary here.  

I have been following the financial reports regarding the price of crude oil.  It has been going down, so why exactly has there been no refection of that in our everyday lives?  The dollar is getting stronger.  Thank goodness for that.

...Light, sweet crude for July delivery fell $1.27 to $126.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices peaked at a record $135.09 on May 22.

Concerns about falling demand for oil and gasoline are also weighing on prices, analysts said. Recent data from the Energy Department and Federal Highway Administration and several surveys suggest high prices are cutting American's appetite for fuel. A new survey by RBC Capital Markets finds about 90 percent of Americans have made changes in their daily lives to counter high energy prices, including driving less and taking public transportation more often

.

By John Wilen, AP Business Writer

I thought this was a supply vs demand driven increase.  Atleast, that's the excuse that we were fed.  If we have adjusted, wouldn't it make sense to get some relief?

According to a post on Richard Dawkins web site, a bill working its way through the LA congress has been roundly criticized by teachers, scientists and science advocacy organizations.

The shocking part - to me - is that the bill was introduced by Democratic State Senator Ben Nevers (D-Bogalusa) who claims that the bill does not introduce religion to the classroom.

November 23:  A Date to
Act for Peace & Healing

Save this date: On Sunday, November 23, in New York City, there will be a one-day  gathering (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) of  "Jews Uniting to End the War and Heal America."

The gathering in NYC is co-sponsored by The Shalom Center and the Workmen's Circle/ Arbeter Ring. These were the only two national Jewish organizations to oppose the Iraq invasion, war, and occupation before they began, and ever since.

The gathering will address WHY the Jewish community MUST and HOW it CAN take vigorous action to end the war and heal America.

I had hoped my first candidate diary would be one of those ones that simply lavish praise upon a presidential hopeful – maybe a nice "Thank You, Barack, for Today's Beautiful Sunrise" – but alas, it wasn't to be.  This is partly my fault (I could've written one earlier in the primary season) but it's also Barack Obama's, for his astonishingly poor choice of venue in giving an address on education on Wednesday, May 28.

Even as I write this, the Denver traditional media is tripping over itself with laudatory comments about the Mapleton School District and the school "reform" measures it undertook three years ago.  Regrettably, they're not going to do much fact-checking beyond the talking point fed to them by District officials, because while it is indeed a fantastic success story that all 44 of this year's Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts' senior class have been accepted to college, the other numbers, not to mention the seamy history of the reform project itself, paint a far bleaker picture of the effectiveness of "small school reform" measures – and gives at least one voter cause for concern about the educational company Senator Obama is choosing to keep.

Today, if you are interested in seeing what alternative assessment of student learning looks like, you will have a chance.  Yes, I wrote about this yesterday in A different way of assessing student learning, but I wanted to be sure that as many people as possible were aware of the opportunity to see a student exhibition as possible.  There are ways of students demonstrating competence - that is, sufficient application of learning to warrant graduation from high school.  The webcast should provide an opportunity for those who have not seen what this can look like.

I will within the week do another diary which explores the subject in more detail when I have time to go through my notes.  In the mean time, if you have the time and have any interest in changing how we evaluate the learning of our students, I urge you to watch.   Details are below the fold.