NRU Education Edition

I couldn't bring myself to post this on Labor Day as it had been the traditional end of summer and call to school for children.  But, the day after Labor Day, formerly first day of school, seems appropriate, though many students have already been in school for two or three weeks at this point!  It seems like an unfortunate coincidence that school starts earlier in the summer just as the heating effects of global warming are hitting so many places that have no experience or equipment to deal with overheated children and teachers.  Alas…

I am not sure how to feel about this initiative to bring four year degrees to the community colleges.  That is not to say that I am exactly ambivalent (can anyone be exactly ambivalent or is that inherently an oxymoron?).  I have strong feelings about how our community college system functions – how it was intended to function, how it actually functions, and whether or not these functions are at odds.  I also see the community college as a frequent death blow to the college aspirations of many first in their family college goers.  Whatever the prevailing commentary may say, community college is not for the dabblers or uninitiated to college culture.  It is more like the tar pits where mastodons remain after getting stuck in the muck.  There is the additional nagging concern that putting four-year degrees here is intended to keep those children of color and first-in- right where the other people would like them to be.  Of course none of these issues are addressed in the article. It is just what comes up for me when they so leisurely mention only the intended consequences and supposed intentions of this kind of legislation.

I almost don't know what to say about this article -- the evaluations are in ... and yet they do not reveal the answer to low scores being as a result of teachers.  So, the critics decide the evaluation system must be wrong.  Ok ... as someone who has been evaluated by many principals, I agree that the old way of evaluating produced not very helpful reports.  But theoretically this is the reporting system the powers that be wanted, designed and negotiated with all the teachers except those in New York City.   But it does bring us around to the fact that the governor of California is appealing the ruling on teacher tenure.  This war on teachers is setting up to become another chapter in the war of teaching ... and we all know that war doesn't necessarily bring progress.   With so much attention on teachers, my proposed study is either super timely or utterly irrelevant... we'll see.

There are tons of more articles in the queue ... but no time to read and process just now.