Flap of the Week: Close Schools, Fire Teachers
Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments
Being either cunning or careless, President Obama this week gave the nod toward supporting the Central Falls, Rhode Island, superintendent who announced that he would close a failing high school and fire all the teachers who staffed it. The American Federation of Teachers, which represents the teachers at the school, and the National Education Association–the nation’s largest teacher union–immediately criticized the action, and the AFL-CIO has joined them. Randi Weingarten, the AFT president, called it another example of scapegoating teachers. Read more
New Policy Brief Based on Learning from L.A.
Posted on | February 25, 2010 | No Comments
PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education) has just issued a new policy brief based on the conclusions in Learning from L.A.: Institutional Change in Public Education. It retraces a little of the historical narrative from the book and introduces the five policy levers we think are necessary to move the District past muddling through permanent crisis. Download the brief.
LLA has also been picked by Choice as one its academic books of the year. See the announcement.
Wounding Public School Choice in L.A.
Posted on | February 25, 2010 | 1 Comment
The Los Angeles Unified School District board did serious damage to their Public School Choice plan on Tuesday. They amended Superintendent Ramon Cortines’ recommendations to remove the strongest of the charter school applicants, those that could have been future contenders to take over failing schools. The district has more than 100 schools that have been in federal program improvement status for more than three years. This action represents a real setback for the District as it muddles its way from a hierarchy to a network. A contest over school design is impossible unless there is a variety of applicants, and the chilled competition rather than inviting it. More about the Public School Choice process in my Huffington Post columns.
Learning About Learning Differently
Posted on | February 20, 2010 | No Comments
When we finished with Learning from L.A. and The Transformation of Great American School Districts, we came to the crashing insight that almost all the education reform we had seen was about rearranging what adults did. All the reforms had a trickle down assumption, such as, “if teaching became more interesting for teachers, students would learn more.” Across the country, but particularly in Los Angeles, we saw what Transformations co-editor dubbed “permanent crisis:” a continuing assertion that some great turning point was upon a school district, or the whole institution of public education. In the case of Los Angeles, commentators have called the school district “in crisis” for 20 years. That notion defies the conventional political wisdom, because in a crisis is supposed to draw sufficient attention from the political system to resolve the situation and move on.
I came to believe that changes in teaching and learning were the most likely social events to break the “permanent crisis” cycle. And with some assistance from the John and Dora Haynes Foundation, which has financed public policy research in Los Angeles for many decades, I have begun to study settings in which students learn differently. I’ll be reporting on those findings here and in other venues. [In this regard see my review of Disrupting Class about the capacity of new learning technologies to upend how education works. Click on the Projects link at the top of the page.]
Thus far, I have looked at the Scottish intranet system, GLOW, that has the capacity to link all 700,000 students in the country, their teachers, their families, and the national curriculum. I’m beginning to explore the question: If they can do it in Scotland, why can we? I have also been looking at the California Virtual Academy, which is growing by leaps and bounds. It combines the learn-at-home idea of home schooling with a packaged curriculum and live teacher support. Then, I traveled to St. Paul, MN, to look at the most project-based of project based learning at the Avalon school. And most recently I visited the New Tech school at Jefferson High School and The Design High School, a charter located in the Pico-Union District in L.A.
Mindworkers.com is changing
Posted on | February 11, 2010 | No Comments
Mindworkers.com is changing. With the help of John Watson and Anja Ross, the web site will be fronted with a blog page. I will share my thoughts on education politics and policy here and invite your comments in the convenient blog fashion. I’ll also provide links to writing that appears in other places. The behind the scenes parts of Mineworkers will remain the same as before. Large projects, and papers will continue to be available by clicking on “Projects” at the top of the page. The photo gallery will continue to be viewable and updated as I get a chance. There will be some new features to the blog, too, which I will introduce as they are added.
Best,
ctk
Recent Posts
- Flap of the Week: Close Schools, Fire Teachers
- New Policy Brief Based on Learning from L.A.
- Wounding Public School Choice in L.A.
- Learning About Learning Differently
- Mindworkers.com is changing
Recent Projects
- Disrupting Class and the End of Batch Processing Teaching
- Learning from L.A.: Institutional Change in American Public Education
- For Teacher Unions: Things That Go Bump In The Night
Currently Reading
About
Charles Taylor Kerchner is the Research Professor in the School Educational Studies at The Claremont Graduate University and a specialist in educational organizations, educational policy, and teacher unions.