Education Major

Hey, Guys! You're Not Helping!!!!

2010-10-04T08:13:00.002-04:00

And I was frustrated that superintendents in my state banked the money for next year instead of hiring folks now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/02/AR2010100203530.html?wprss=rss_education

MEA Board of Directors

2010-10-04T08:07:00.002-04:00

I was appointed interim director by the MEA Board of Directors at the September meeting. My term will expire in July and a call for candidates will go out in January. With an election looming, I'd better look like an attentive representative of your interests by posting some of the most salient points from the recent meeting.

1. Political Action We endorsed a handful of legislative candidates. Most endorsements were done over the summer, but there are some late filers or replacement candidates that needed to be considered. To find the list of endorsed candidates, go to this site.

2. Political Action Having examined some unpublished poll results, MEA has decided to become more involved in the gubernatorial race. Please note that the decision to support Libby Mitchell was based on her career of support for MEA's positions, not mere partisanship. MEA endorsed several Republicans running for the legislature, including two state senate candidates in the most recent list. However, it is clear that Paul LePage does not seek to further the interests of public education in Maine and therefore, MEA will encourage its members to campaign actively for the election of Libby Mitchell, whom the directors see as the only other viable candidate. If you would like to help, please contact your UniServ director. If you can recruit other members, all the better.

3. Benefits Trust We heard from representatives of the Benefits Trust, which has come under increasing pressure from municipal leaders who would like to reduce costs by diminishing our benefits, raising our rates, raiding our risk pool, and ransoming our health. MEA and MEABT will be working to get facts about the system out to counter the impending assault on the integrity of our health benefits system.

4. Benefits Trust The MEABT is offering a host of new services, including the PathPoints program in which we will be paid cash for living a healthy lifestyle. Go to http://meabt.org and pull down the wellness menu for more info. [PathPoints is similar to the Anthem Rewards program that was offered a couple of years ago, except that this time they'll pay you in money instead of lunch boxes.]

Oops

2010-09-19T17:23:00.005-04:00

Sometimes I post something to the wrong blog. A recent post here should have been directed at my American history class. Oh well.

Virtual Education

2010-09-19T08:48:00.002-04:00

The quote below is from a NY Times article linked here.

For better or for worse, imagine a near future in which your avatar can attend high school in a Second Life-like environment, your body no longer required to sit quietly in a row and your mind no longer obliged to settle for what the local district can offer. You won’t need a locker, and if you realize with swooping horror that there’s a big test today and you’re not ready, you can stop time and study until you are. And your avatar’s skin is clear. And you can fly.

The point that on-line courses will increasingly be substituting for traditional human interaction in classrooms is well taken. It's happening more frequently each year. Alternative schools used to be the model -- now traditional schools have become a bigger market for virtual courses than non-traditional schools.

This will offer flexibility and competition. It will offer consumer choice. That's the upside. It will also atomize the labor inputs. That's a downside for those of us in the industry, though it might be an advantage for the Appropriations Committee.

Local control has meant that cities and towns have power. For a few years now, I have said that local control is mostly illusory, allowing boards to meet and argue endlessly about choices that are so narrowly constrained within state and federally mandated parameters as to be nearly pointless. If the tipping point of virtual classes is reached, the school board and its sense of community control will end with the big school buildings.

Two things suggest that this day may never come. One is a sense that kids must get together and interact. Granted, smaller private spaces could open -- effectively daycares offering supervision for kids of any range between 5 and 18 that will ensure kids spend a specified amount of time on their classes. But right now, the city pays for the big box What sort of voucher will the city offer for those centers when the market is competitive? Minimal, I'm guessing.

The second impediment is sports. About twenty years ago, I was pitching public school choice to some of my colleagues. They contended that giving kids choice of which school to attend would make sports powerhouses that could never be beaten. My solution was to get sports out of schools -- operate on a club model like European countries. The howls in the faculty lounge could be heard all the way to Stuttgart.

You can teach physics on-line. You can farm out AP government, and Latin, and health, and maybe even PE. But you cannot, will not, MUST NOT ever screw with high school sports.

Ed Funding Equity and the ACLU

2010-09-12T07:45:00.003-04:00

The NY Times has an article here about a California lawsuit against fees required by school districts. The lawsuit seems to be about fees for required courses, but the fees discussed are mostly for sports or electives. I suspect the suit prompted the writer to make a longer, more thorough investigation of the use of fees to provide relief from the school budget shortfalls, but most of the research got hacked away to make the article fit into the paper. If not, it is really just crappy, sensationalist writing -- not something I associate with the Times.

If we are talking about required courses, I agree with the ACLU; the state has an obligation to provide a free, appropriate, public education to all its children. AP test fees wouldn't be covered because AP is not a requirement (at least I wouldn't think so). Pay-to-play fees for sports would not either. Lab fees for homec and art make sense, as long as a student can meet the graduation requirements without having to take fee-based courses. If all art courses have lab fees and art is a core requirement, then the ACLU has a point.

The use of fees will, of course, create inequities in the system. Rich kids can join cheering ($1,833), but the less wealthy can still be on the water polo team ($180). Okay, in truth, those fees are from different schools, but the point is that the poorest kids will not be able to participate because they don't have money for fees. This is not new -- it happens now because of work, transportation, and interest -- but it will be exacerbated.

If the Court finds against the ACLU, fees may proliferated. That will not last long, however, as parents grow resentful of writing check after check and start complaining. Ultimately, it will fall to the school boards to reexamine the school's core mission and realign the offerings to concentrate on it. If the Court finds for the ACLU, that reexamination and pruning may come sooner. With 15% unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, compounding debt, burgeoning prisons, and spiraling health care costs, the public may well decide it cannot afford schools that are all things to all kids.

After Thought & the Holiday

2010-09-03T07:09:00.003-04:00

I looked up the quote from Saturday Night Fever. It wasn't exactly as I remember it, but pretty close -- good enough for three decades later. But in reading some of the other quotes, I think the dialogue must have actually been way better than I remembered. I'm not talking Casablanca or anything, but surprisingly good. Maybe even worth watching again on a snowy evening next winter.

Monday is Labor Day in a few countries, including the USA. Most celebrate it on May 1, but that has a Marxist tinge to it that we in the USA have avoided. Teachers unions have been taking it on the chin in the press lately, but as a former president, I am proud to defend my association and its interests. Our critics range from idealistic visionaries through corporate apologists to misanthropic misers; likewise our defenders range from idealists through pragmatics to self-serving louts. One of my union's idealistic critics told me recently, "I'm not against teachers unions. I just think other voices should be heard too." I feel the same way about them. Happy Labor Day.

Augury

2010-09-01T07:40:00.003-04:00

I make a point every year of paying close attention to the first song I hear on the radio during my commute on the first day of each school year. While working at Cabela's, I learned that country-western songs tend to be more about values and life lessons than classic rock, so I made sure my radio was tuned to 99.9 (The Wolf) on August 30. Chatter, so I switched to WPOR. More chatter, so I switched to WCLZ. And ad. So with much trepidation, I returned to the station which initially gave me the idea by playing "A Long December" by the Counting Crows: 102.9 WBLM.

"Peace of Mind" by Boston. I didn't actually hear any of the lyrics, but that astral flight of guitar at the end was unmistakable. And what, thirty years later I could still call the lyrics to mind (misspent youth, and not even misspent in the good way). I don't object to pursuing peace of mind, but the lyrics themselves seem to condemn all ambition. I suppose it fits for a band that played enough variations on their one song to fill a few albums and then vanished, leaving their record label with an unfulfilled contract. The song might have been an anthem for the post-Vietnam, stagflationary era when it took too much energy to even be anti-establishment. My favorite exchange (okay, the only one I remember) from Saturday Night Fever comes to mind.

Tony: Fuck the future.
Boss: Hey! You don't fuck the future. The future fucks you!

Let's remember that peace of mind won't really be found by wandering around ponds gnawing bark or coking up and dancing the night away. True peace of mind comes from the knowledge that you have examined your life and lived according to a consistent set of values that encompass a moral system. I'm not recommending a particular code or creed -- I'm talking about finding the values that seek The Good and reject The Bad. Boston didn't offer it, but they did call attention to it and for that, my thanks.

Reinaugural Post

2010-09-01T07:09:00.003-04:00

While I was president of the SPTA, this passed for the official information source. News and views of the SPTA will now be found here. Because I am really only Web 1.4 pretending to be Web 2.0, I am keeping this blogspot address for a new blog. This one will be my own views -- not the views of the SPTA, the MEA, the NEA, the NRA, or any other group with this I might be affiliated.