Monday, August 31, 2009

dirgahayu indonesia 64

PERJUANGAN TIDAK BERAKHIR SAMPAI DI SINI
Dirgahayu kemerdekaan Republik Indonesia ke 64, bermula dari suatu peristiwa kecil yang memunculkan suatu gebrakan baru dalam perjuangan melepaskan diri dari belenggu penjajahan kolonial Belanda dan Jepang. Peristiwa ini terjadi menjelang tengah malam tanggal 16 Agustus 1945, yang dilatarbelakangi oleh perbedaan sikap kalangan muda dan tua dalam menyikapi kekalahan Jepang oleh Sekutu. Kalangan muda bersikeras mendesak Soekarno dan Hatta memproklamasikan kemerdekaan pada malam hari itu juga. Tetapi, karena kalangan muda menganggap kalangan tua terlalu tunduk kepada Jepang, maka mereka berinisiatif untuk mengamankan Soekarno dan Hatta ke luar Jakarta. Maksud yang seperti itulah yang melahirkan Peristiwa Rengasdengklok. Kota kecil yang berada di dekat kota Krawang inilah yang menjadi saksi bisu awal mula kemerdekaan Republik Indonesia. Untuk menghindari kecurigaan Jepang, tugas membawa Soekarno dan Hatta ke Rengasdengklok dilaksanakan oleh Shodanco Singgih, dari Daidan PETA di Indonesia. Pembicaraan pribadi antara Soekarno dan Shodanco Singgih, menyimpulkan bahwa Soekarno bersedia memproklamasikan kemerdekaan segera setelah kembali ke Jakarta. Kalangan muda dan tua di Jakarta menyatakan kata sepakat. Kesepakatan berupa dilaksanakannya proklamasi kemerdekaan pada tanggal 17 Agustus 1945, sebelum pukul 12.00 WIB. Setelah bertemu dengan PPKI dan somabuco (kepala pemerintahan umum) Mayor Jenderal Nishimura di Jakarta, Soekarno dan Hatta bergegas ke kediaman Laksamana Maeda. Di sana telah berkumpul para anggota PPKI dan kalangan muda. Kemudian, terjadilah peristiwa bersejarah berupa perumusan teks proklamasi kemerdekaan. Dini hari tanggal 17 Agustus 1945, teks proklamasi kemerdekaan Indonesia selesai dirumuskan. Langkah selanjutnya adalah membacakan lalu menyebarluaskan proklamasi kemerdekaan. Sejak saat itu, proklamasi kemerdekaan Indonesia dikumandangkan ke seluruh penjuru Indonesia dan dunia. Peristiwa itu menandai perubahan drastis kedudukan Indonesia dari negeri terjajah menjadi negeri merdeka.
Peristiwa itu sekaligus mengawali tanggung jawab yang berat, yakni untuk mempertahankan dan mengisi kemerdekaan. Agar Republik Indonesia yang baru lahir dapat terus berjalan, perlulah disusun tata kehidupan kenegaraan. Diawali dari mengesahkan undang-undang dasar, memilih presiden serta wakil presiden, dan membentuk lembaga kenegaraan. Akhirnya setelah melalui serentetan perjalanan sejarah yang panjang pula, kemerdekaan Indonesia bisa bertahan hingga sekarang yang telah genap berusia 64 tahun. Berbagai macam gejolak politik dan peristiwa-peristiwa yang mengancam keutuhan bangsa ini juga pernah terjadi. Tetapi, hingga sekarang kita masih merasakan kemerdekaan dari kaum penjajah dan perjuangan ini tidaklah berakhir sampai di sini.Masih banyak hal yang perlu diperjuangkan dari kaum-kaum penjajah yang masih menggerogoti kemerdekaan Indonesia. Bukanlah kaum penjajah yang bersenjatakan peluru dan alat peledak canggih, tetapi kaum penjajah yang terlahir dari dalam negeri Indonesia tercinta ini. Penjajahan ini tersebar di seluruh daerah di Indonesia, bahkan pelaku penjajahan ini adalah orang Indonesia sendiri dan korbannya juga masyarakat Indonesia sendiri pula. Kemiskinan, peredaran Narkoba dan obat-obatan terlarang, KKN (Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme), ancaman serangan teroris, pemberontakan kemerdekaan di sejumlah daerah, konflik antar suku dan degradasi moral generasi penerus bangsa. Itu hanyalah segelintir penjajahan oleh bangsa Indonesia sendiri, sedangkan penjajah dari luar juga perlu diperhitungkan seperti halnya kasus berikut. Akhir-akhir ini, ulah negara tetangga Indonesia membuat geram bangsa Indonesia. Sebut saja Malaysia, yang oleh masyarakat diplesetkan menjadi “ Malingsia” yang dikarenakan Malaysia melancarkan penjajahan terhadap kebudayaan Indonesia dengan mengklaim beberapa kesenian khas Indonesia menjadi kesenian khas milik negeri Jiran. Sudah begitu banyak tindakan pengklaiman Malaysia terhadap kebudayaan Indonesia. Tarian Reog yang asli berasal dari kota Ponorogo, Jawa Timur ini serta tarian Kuda Lumping yang merupakan tarian khas Jawa Timur ini muncul di suatu pementasan kebudayaan oleh Malaysia dan adanya tayangan iklan mempromosikan kebudayaan Malaysia yang menggunakan lagu yang dipopulerkan oleh Erni Johan “Kau Selalu Di Hatiku” tanpa menyebutkan judul serta penyanyi aslinya dan asalnya. Masih seputar lagu, lagi-lagi ulah Malaysia membuat geram masyarakat Indonesia, khususnya masyarakat Maluku. Lagu “Rasa Sayange”, lagu rakyat yang telah membudaya turun temurun di kalangan masyarakat Maluku juga sempat diklaim oleh mereka untuk mempromosikan pariwisata Malaysia. Begitu pula tarian Pendet, tarian yang sudah ada sejak ribuan tahun lalu d pulau Dewata ini juga turut menjadi korban. Secara spontan, para seniman dan budayawan Bali memprotes hal tersebut, tetapi apa yang dikatakan pemerintah?. “Jangan terpancing emosi”, itu yang dikatakan Menteri Luar Negeri Hassan Wirajuda. Lalu apa yang bisa dilakukan untuk mengatasi hal tersebut, pemerintah hanya diam seribu bahasa, tanpa aksi apa-apa yang bisa dilakukan. Apa mereka akan terus-menerus membiarkan Malaysia mengklaim kesenian serta kebudayaan asli Indonesia yang merupakan hasil cipta dan karsa dari nenek moyang ?. Bila pemerintah tidaklah segera mengambil tindakan, tentunya masyarakat harus bertindak menyelamatkan dan melesatarikan kebudayaan nusantara. Tidak hanya di bidang kebudayaan nusantara saja, Indonesia yang terkenal dengan negara kepulauannya juga seringkali menjadi sengketa batas wilayah dan pengakuan pulau-pulau kecil terluar dari wilayah NKRI. Tentunya masih jelas teringat masalah persengketaan pulau Sipadan Ligitan yang terletak di selat Makasar ini juga telah mencuri perhatian dunia internasional, meminta keterlibatan Mahkamah Internasional. Melalui beberapa perundingan, telah diputuskan bahwa pulau Sipadan dan Ligitan yang memiliki pantai berpasir putih dan keindahan pemandangan bawah laut yang eksotis jatuh ke tangan pemerintahan Malaysia. Lain lagi ceritanya dengan Singapura, negara tetangga kita yang walaupun memiliki pulau kecil, tetapi kehidupannya yang telah maju juga menjajah negara kita. Pulau-pulau kecil terluar dari Indonesia telah habis oleh ulah biadab mereka, pasir dan tanah pulau-pulau kecil itu telah mereka ringgus dengan kapal penggeruk canggih. Timbunan pasir dan tanah itu, kemudian mereka tempatkan pada pulau terluar negara, yang menyebabkan bertambah luasnya daerah mereka. Padahal bila ditelusuri lebih lanjut, banyak sekali ratusan bahkan bisa jadi ribuan pulau kecil yang berada di perairan terluar dari Indonesia yang masih belum terjamah oleh manusia. Ini perlu dipertanyakan dan disahkan kepemilikannya oleh bangsa Indonesia agar kasus persengketaan pulau antar negara tidak perlu terulang kembali. Sebenarnya, bila pemerintah bergerak cepat dan memberikan perhatian pada pulau-pulau kecil ini, bisa jadi pula-pulau kecil ini bisa menjelma menjadi suatu aset pariwisata bagi Indonesia. Hampir semua pulau-pulau kecil ini memiliki objek wisata yang berdaya tarik tinggi. Hamparan pantai berpasir putih, terumbu karang yang berwarna-warni dan juga kondisi perairan yang belum tercemar. Tentunya ini bisa menjadi salah satu aset wisata yang bisa turut menyumbang pendapatan negara dan menjadi pendobrak jumlah wisatawan baik dari luar maupun luar negeri.

Indonesia tidak hanya dijajah dari luar, tetapi juga dalam. Adapun ada empat penjajah utama bangsa Indonesia saat ini, yaitu korupsi,narkoba dan perusakan lingkungan. Korupsi sepertinya sudah menjadi kebudayaan bagi bagi masyarakat Indonesia. Bukan lagi kalangan ke atas, kalangan menengah ke bawah tertulari juga dengan kebudayaan cerminan degradasi moral ini. Pelakunya tidak hanya perseorangan, tetapi juga secara berjamaah pula. Sungguh suatu fakta yang benar-benar menyengsarakan masyarakat. Kini suatu kejujuran telah menjadi mahal oleh tindakan korupsi, kepercayaan dan amanah yang diberikan mulai terlupakan, mereka tergiur dengan nominal rupiah. Rupiah memang telah membutakan mata dan nurani mereka, hanya untuk memakmurkan kehidupan mereka sendiri tanpa memperdulikan asal muasal dan untuk apakah uang itu. Bisa jadi, masyarakat Indonesia tidak akan merana seperti ini bila mereka tidak melakukan hal seperti itu. Perusakan lingkungan di Indonesia begitu memprihatinkan. Bila ditinjau ulang, bencana alam yang selama ini terjadi juga akibat dari ulah manusia Indonesia dengan tindakannya yang merusak lingkungan. Walaupun Indonesia memiliki hutan hujan tropis yang luas, penebangan liar juga marak di hutan-hutan luar pulau Jawa khususnya, yang mencengangkan lagi dalang di balik penebangan liar itu melibatkan wakil rakyat. Sungguh memalukan tindakan mereka, ini menandakan kejujuran dan kepercayaan begitu mahal harganya. Berawal dari penebangan hutan, melahirkan bencana-bencana yang lain seperti kebanjiran, tanah longsor,kebakaran hutan. Kasus Lapindo di Sidoarjo, juga ulah tangan manusia juga. Bahkan yang mengenaskan Pihak yang terkait dengan kasus ini tidak segera menyelesikan tanggung jawabnya dengan warga Porong , Sidoarjo yang menjadi korban kasus ini. Siapa lagi yang jadi korban kalau tidak rakyat Indonesia lagi bukan?. Tetapi kenapa mereka tetap saja melakukannya?. Lagi-lagi alasan ekonomi yang melatarbelakanginya. Angka kemiskinan di Indonesia tergolong cukup tinggi dibanding negara-negara tetangga. Untuk mendapatkan sepeser rupiah, rakyat Indonesia menempuh dengan segala cara, bahkan dengan cara yang haram pun juga dilakukan. Selain korupsi, praktek prostitusi juga mereka jalankan. Para remaja belasan tahun rela menjual diri untuk sepeser rupiah, padahal mereka adalah generasi penerus bangsa. Seharusnya hal seperti ini tidak boleh dibiarkan berlarut – larut, ini merupakan mulai terkikisnya moral generasi penerus bangsa. Belum lagi peredaran Narkoba yang pesat di kalangan rakyat Indonesia, tidak hanya kalangan atas, tetapi juga kalangan bawah. Sekarang, Narkoba bukan barang mahal lagi dan tidaklah sulit untuk didapat. Para pengedar Narkoba internasional juga mebarkan sayap peredarannya di Indonesia, mereka membuka pabrik di beberapa daerah di Indonesia. Hal ini bisa terjadi karena didukung letak strategis negara Indonesia yang berada di posisi silang, sehingga memudahkan mereka dalam mengedarkannya lintas negara dan tentunya juga dibantu warga Indonesia pula. Lemahnya hukum di Indonesia menjadi keuntungan sendiri bagi mereka. Persemain jaringan terorisme di Indonesia juga semakin subur saja. Hal ini dibuktikan dengan suatu fakta yang menggemparkan Indonesia dan dunia. Sudah terhitung beberapa kali ledakan bom bunuh diri terjadi di Indonesia,para pelakunya sering dikaitkan dengan jaringan teroris internasional, Al-Qaeda yang memiliki jaringan di wilayah Asia yang bernama Jamaah Islamiyah. Jamaah Islamiyah ini member gaung bahwa mereka memburu symbol barat, khususnya Amerika Serikat. Dalam melakukan aksinya mereka tidak segan-segan merekrut pelaku bom bunuh diri dari rakyat Indonesia sendiri yang mereka nyatakan sebagai suatu bentuk jihad. Suatu fakta yang mencengangkan, salah satu pelaku bom bunuh diri tanggal 17 Juli 2009 di hotel Ritz Carlton adalah siswa yang baru saja lulus SMA pada tahun ini. Sebenarnya jaringan Jamaah Islamiyah tidak hanya ada di Indonesia, tetapi juga di negara tetangga seperti Malaysia dan Singapura. Tetapi, persemaian jaringan teroris ini lebih subur di Indonesia dikarenakan salah satunya adalah berlakunya undang-undang keamanan dalam negeri di kedua negara tersebut yang memungkinkan orang bisa ditangkap tanpa perlu diadili bila dicurigai berbahaya bagi kepentingan umum. Tetapi setelah reformasi, undang-undang ini tidak lagi diberlakukan. Sehingga mereka memiliki keleluasaan dan kenyamanan tersendiri berada di Indonesia.

Ini suatu bentuk penjajahan bersekutu, antara warga negara Indonesia dengan warga negara asing. Ternyata bila ditelusuri lebih lanjut, kemerdekaan Indonesia yang sudah berusia 64 tahun ini adalah kemerdekaan dari belenggu penjajahan Belanda dan Jepang yang telah diperjuangkan oleh pahlwan nasional. Sedangkan sekarang, Indonesia belum merdeka dari penjajahan oleh bangsa sendiri. Dimana dalam hal ini, peranan mahasiswa sebagai Social Control dan Agent of Change sangat dibutuhkan. Tentunya bukan hanya mahasiswa saja, tetapi perlu adanya kerjasama dengan segenap anggota masyarakat yang lain. Jika bukan mahasiswa, lalu siapa lagi yang akan peduli memperjuangkan kemerdekaan nasib bangsa Indonesia?. Mereka penerus harapan serta cita-cita luhur bangsa ini. Wahai para mahasiswa, berjuanglah meraih kemerdekaan Indonesia di segala bidang kehidupan, tidak hanya berupa aksi-aksi jalanan, demontrasi tetapi juga dibarengi partisipasi politik baik di tingkat local, regional, nasional maupun internasional, penerapan keilmuan dan teknologi dengan tetap berlandaskan moral dan etika. Hidup Mahasiswa!!! Vivat!!!! (lustyyah ulfa)

How to develop mathematics for teaching and understanding

Susanne Prediger has written an article about How to develop mathematics-for-teaching and for understanding: the case of meanings of the equal sign. The article was published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education on Thursday last week. Point of departure in her article is the very important question about what mathematical (content) knowledge prospective teachers need. A main claim which is raised already in the introduction is: "Listen to your students!" In the theoretical background, Prediger takes Shulman's classic conceptualization of three main categories of content knowledge in teaching as point of departure:
  1. Subject-matter knowledge
  2. Pedagogical-content knowledge
  3. Curricular knowledge
She continues to build heavily on the work done by Hyman Bass and Deborah Ball (e.g. Ball & Bass, 2004), and she goes on to place her own study in relation to the work of Bass and Ball:
Whereas Bass and Ball (2004) concentrate on the first part of their program, namely, identifying important competences, this article deals with both parts, the analytical study of identifying, and the developmental study of constructing a sequence for teacher education, exemplified by a sequence in the course entitled school algebra and its teaching and learning for second-year, prospective middle-school teachers.
Here is the abstract of Prediger's article:
What kind of mathematical knowledge do prospective teachers need for teaching and for understanding student thinking? And how can its construction be enhanced? This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on mathematics-for-teaching by investigating the case of understanding students’ perspectives on equations and equalities and on meanings of the equal sign. It is shown that diagnostic competence comprises didactically sensitive mathematical knowledge, especially about different meanings of mathematical objects. The theoretical claims are substantiated by a report on a teacher education course, which draws on the analysis of student thinking as an opportunity to construct didactically sensitive mathematical knowledge for teaching for pre-service middle-school mathematics teachers.
References:
Bass, H., & Ball, D. L. (2004). A practice-based theory of mathematical knowledge for teaching: The case of mathematical reasoning. In W. Jianpan & X. Binyan (Eds.), Trends and challenges in mathematics education (pp. 107–123). Shanghai: East China Normal University Press.




How to develop mathematics for teaching and understanding

Susanne Prediger has written an article about How to develop mathematics-for-teaching and for understanding: the case of meanings of the equal sign. The article was published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education on Thursday last week. Point of departure in her article is the very important question about what mathematical (content) knowledge prospective teachers need. A main claim which is raised already in the introduction is: "Listen to your students!" In the theoretical background, Prediger takes Shulman's classic conceptualization of three main categories of content knowledge in teaching as point of departure:
  1. Subject-matter knowledge
  2. Pedagogical-content knowledge
  3. Curricular knowledge
She continues to build heavily on the work done by Hyman Bass and Deborah Ball (e.g. Ball & Bass, 2004), and she goes on to place her own study in relation to the work of Bass and Ball:
Whereas Bass and Ball (2004) concentrate on the first part of their program, namely, identifying important competences, this article deals with both parts, the analytical study of identifying, and the developmental study of constructing a sequence for teacher education, exemplified by a sequence in the course entitled school algebra and its teaching and learning for second-year, prospective middle-school teachers.
Here is the abstract of Prediger's article:
What kind of mathematical knowledge do prospective teachers need for teaching and for understanding student thinking? And how can its construction be enhanced? This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on mathematics-for-teaching by investigating the case of understanding students’ perspectives on equations and equalities and on meanings of the equal sign. It is shown that diagnostic competence comprises didactically sensitive mathematical knowledge, especially about different meanings of mathematical objects. The theoretical claims are substantiated by a report on a teacher education course, which draws on the analysis of student thinking as an opportunity to construct didactically sensitive mathematical knowledge for teaching for pre-service middle-school mathematics teachers.
References:
Bass, H., & Ball, D. L. (2004). A practice-based theory of mathematical knowledge for teaching: The case of mathematical reasoning. In W. Jianpan & X. Binyan (Eds.), Trends and challenges in mathematics education (pp. 107–123). Shanghai: East China Normal University Press.




"The conference was awesome"

Tamsin Meaney, Tony Trinick and Uenuku Fairhall have written an article with an interesting focus on professional development and mathematics teacher conferences. The title of their article is ‘The conference was awesome’: social justice and a mathematics teacher conference. The article was recently published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. Here is the abstract of their article:
Professional development comes in many forms, some of which are deemed more useful than others. However, when groups of teachers are excluded, or exclude themselves, from professional development opportunities, then there is an issue of social justice. This article examines the experiences of a group of teachers from a Māori-medium school who attended a mathematics teacher conference. By analysing the teachers’ sense of belonging through their ideas about engagement, alignment and imagination, we are able to describe how different kinds of relationships influence the inclusion/exclusion process. This leads to a discussion about what can be done by the teachers as well as conference organisers to increase these teachers’ likelihood of attending further conferences in the future.



"The conference was awesome"

Tamsin Meaney, Tony Trinick and Uenuku Fairhall have written an article with an interesting focus on professional development and mathematics teacher conferences. The title of their article is ‘The conference was awesome’: social justice and a mathematics teacher conference. The article was recently published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. Here is the abstract of their article:
Professional development comes in many forms, some of which are deemed more useful than others. However, when groups of teachers are excluded, or exclude themselves, from professional development opportunities, then there is an issue of social justice. This article examines the experiences of a group of teachers from a Māori-medium school who attended a mathematics teacher conference. By analysing the teachers’ sense of belonging through their ideas about engagement, alignment and imagination, we are able to describe how different kinds of relationships influence the inclusion/exclusion process. This leads to a discussion about what can be done by the teachers as well as conference organisers to increase these teachers’ likelihood of attending further conferences in the future.



The Leadership Academy: the real deal?

Last week the Aspiring Principals Program of the New York City Leadership Academy, made headlines. On August 24, a NYU press release announced:

Public elementary and middle schools in New York City led by ‘Aspiring Principals Program’-trained principals have achieved comparable or higher rates of student improvement than schools led by other new principals ... These results were obtained even though APP-trained principals were more likely to be placed in chronically low-performing schools.”

The New York Times chimed in: “Graduates of a program designed to inculcate school principals with unconventional thinking have gone on to help drive up English test scores even though the graduates were often placed at schools with histories of academic failure.” The article went on to explain that the APP graduates helped increase English Language Arts scores at elementary and middle schools “at a faster pace than new principals with more traditional résumés”; while in math the APP principals made progress, but “at a pace no better than their peers.”

The report

What did this report actually say? Written by Sean P. Corcoran, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Meryle Weinstein of NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, it compared the performance of schools under the leadership of graduates from the Aspiring Principals Program (APP) with that of schools under other new principals.

Both groups had to have been placed as new principals and to have remained in their positions for three years. Of the 147 graduates in the 2004 and 2005 APP cohorts, 88 (60 percent) met the inclusion criteria. 371 non-APP principals met the criteria; of these, 334 were in schools with comparable grade configurations. So there were 88 APP principals and 334 comparison principals in the study.

The schools in the two categories were significantly different. Compared to other new principals, APP principals tended to be placed in lower-performing schools and schools trending downward in ELA and math. There were also demographic and geographic differences.

The study used two types of comparison: (a) a straightforward comparison of average achievement in both types of schools and (b) a regression analysis (controlling for various school and student characteristics). It was the regression analysis that suggested an APP edge in ELA (but not for math) for elementary and middle schools.

The findings


The study found that test scores at schools in both groups improved over the period of the study in terms of test scores– but not as much as schools in the rest of the city. More specifically, the regression analysis indicated that the ELA standardized scores of APP elementary and middle schools were relatively stable, compared to schools headed by new principals who were not APP graduates. In math, APP elementary and middle schools fared slightly worse than comparison schools in relation to the city, but the differences were not statistically significant.

At the high school level (not mentioned in the NYU press release or NYT article), the differences between APP and comparison schools were “minor and inconclusive.”

Unanswered questions

There are many questions that the study did not address. Only 88 out of 147 graduates in the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 cohorts met the inclusion criteria. More than 18 percent of APP graduates were never placed as principals at all. The rest stayed in their positions for fewer than three years.

Is this a high or low number? The authors wrote that they did not have comparative mobility information for the non-APP principals, but they presumably could have reported the average attrition rate for New York City principals overall.

Also, the study only analyzed test score data – which alone are insufficient to fully evaluate a school’s performance. Wasn’t there other data that could have been examined? What about the parent and teacher surveys at APP-headed schools compared to schools run by other new principals?

Though the study compared the size of the schools for both cohorts (APP graduates on average headed smaller schools) they did not compare class sizes – or other school-level conditions that could have contributed to the relative performance of both groups.

Most intriguing is the finding that the relative test scores at both sets of schools continued to decline compared to the rising achievement of schools citywide, but schools headed by APP principals declined less –at least in terms of their ELA results:

“... relative student test performance falls modestly in the years following the installation of a new principal, in both APP and comparison schools…..we find a statistically significant negative relationship between new principals and achievement in both mathematics and ELA.”

It was only after doing a regression analysis, by controlling for various factors (including student background), that they found that the relative performance of APP schools was relatively stable while the comparison schools continued to decline. See this graph:
Thus, the reigning philosophy of the Klein administration – that new leaders properly trained in the methods propounded by the Leadership Academy will spark significant improvements in low-performing schools does not seem to hold true. Instead, these appointees may stabilize what otherwise would be expected to be continued decline resulting from a new principal.
As a way to deal with ongoing attrition and fill positions in elementary and middle schools, the Leadership Academy might be said to be “promising”. But as a way to “turn around” schools it does not seem to be promising at all.

Unmentioned in any of the news articles was the fact that the research organization Mathematica had originally been commissioned by DOE to do an in-depth, multi-year study of the Leadership Academy. Yet after several years of analysis, this study was cancelled by DOE, just months before the results were supposed to be released. What Mathematica might have been discovered about the program and its graduates will probably never be known.

For another close look at this study, see Aaron Pallas’ critique at Gotham Schools.

Back to School: Help I need a placement! (and other concerns)

It's back to school time around here, with some school districts starting back this week and many starting immediately after Labor Day. As expected, it is a busy time for all of us advocates and attorneys. Here are some of the concerns we hear all too often from parents as school starts back:

1) Where is my kid going to school?!

One of the common back-to-school disasters happens when a kid doesn't have a placement. Knowing where your kid will be in school when the year starts out seems like a pretty basic question, regardless of if your kid is on an IEP. How, you may ask, could not having a placement possibly happen?! Here are some examples based on real-life scenarios:

Scenario A: Child has been in an SDC for the past couple of years and now has "aged out" of that particular class. Parents disagreed with the offer of placement for the next school year, as the new SDC is substantially different and won't meet their kids needs. The school year starts, and parents and district are still in dispute. A problem arises because there is no "stay put" placement, since the child aged out of the previous classroom. Where does the kid go for the first day of school?

Scenario B: Child's specialized program, which the IEP team offered for this school year in the most recent IEP last spring, closed down over the summer based on an "administrative decision" and probably due to budgetary concerns, and no staff was available at that time to hold an IEP meeting.

Scenario C: Family moved into a new school district over the summer, and did not take the IEP document in to the school district because the office was closed, or they didn't know where to take it, or whatever the reason. On the first day of school, parents show up with the kid and the IEP, but the District does not have a placement readily available that is comparable to what the child previously received.

Scenario D: Child had significant emotional problems during the previous school year, to the point that he/she was unable to attend school due to anxiety. Parents requested assessments and an IEP at the end of the year, which have not yet been completed. Because there is no IEP, there is no offer of an appropriate placement, but because of the significant anxiety, child's doctor says he/she cannot return to school without a different program in place.

There are many scenarios which could lead to an issue about placement at the start of the school year. Advocates and parents (and districts) are often scrambling around at the last minute to locate an option that can be implemented. Here are a few tips on dealing with this:

Make lots of phone calls! In these circumstances, talking to a live person about the urgency of your concerns may get you further than starting off by sending a letter documenting all of the ways the district is out of compliance. That's not to say that you won't need to ultimately document all of your concerns, but starting out with a personal call may be the best first step.

Consider alternatives, but don't compromise your ultimate position. It's likely that what you are facing is a situation where there is a placement dispute that you may need to deal with further down the line through additional IEP meetings and due process complaints. In the meantime, you may have to be willing to accept some other alternative so that your child can go to school. Even if it isn't the best case scenario, this may be a situation where something is better than nothing, so you may need to consent to the placement being offered while documenting that you don't believe it is appropriate and you want to have an IEP meeting to discuss placement.

Try to anticipate these disputes. Although school is not in session and timelines for things like holding IEP meetings or conducting assessments may be different, parents can still pursue due process and all of their related rights during the summer. If you can anticipate that there will be a placement problem in the fall, try to resolve it early on. And if you have to file for due process, do so early in the summer so that the issue may be addressed in mediation, and so that you will have time to file for stay put before the school year starts if you have to.

Don't keep the kid out of school unless there is not any other option, or unless the child will be harmed in some way by going to school. Ultimately, it is the parent's choice, not the advocate's / attorney's. Parents have many factors that they have to weigh in these situations. If there is no placement in place, and the District offers something inappropriate for the start of the school year, you have to balance the advantages / disadvantages of keeping your child at home versus advantages / disadvantages of sending your child to an inappropriate placement. These are tough decisions! But ultimately, refusing to allow your child to attend the school at all, barring some clear indication that the child would be harmed, may work against you in later disputes.

2) I just got a call from the school - and they don't have an aide for my child!

This happens more often than you would think. It's the week before school, or even the day before, and parents get a phone call to say "we don't know if your child can start on the first day because we can't find an aide."

Is the aide support called for in your IEP to be provided by District staff or through a Non-Public Agency? If the aide is to be provided through an NPA, you may be able to do some of the "leg-work" yourself. Start calling around to see if any of the NPAs in your area have an aide available, then let the school know what you found out. Sometimes it is just a matter of getting the information to the right people.

Remind the District that compliance with the IEP is mandatory. If the District is saying that your child can't attend school because they don't have an aide (or other support) in place yet, document that statement in writing and also document your concerns regarding the fact that your child will lose educational benefit if he/she doesn't start the school year with all of the other kids.

Show up the first day anyway! Refusing to let your child attend school because they can't comply with the IEP is basically excluding your child from class because he/she has a disability. If school starts and there is still no aide in place, show up the first day with your child and a copy of your child's IEP and remind the District that they are obligated to implement the program called for in the IEP document. If they refuse to let your child attend class, you can follow this up with a letter documenting what happened.

3) My kid's IEP calls for transportation, but no bus showed up this morning to take him to school!

These situations arise when the school district's transportation schedule isn't all worked out before the school year starts. Sometimes, parents find out beforehand that their kid isn't on the bus schedule. Sometimes parents wait and wait the first morning, and no bus shows up. Other transportation mishaps can also happen the first week of school, like the wrong bus picking up the child, or the bus taking the child to the wrong school location.

Be patient and remember that mistakes happen. While you should document your concerns about the failure to implement transportation (which is a related service) pursuant to your IEP, you should also give the district an opportunity to correct this problem. Bus schedules are complicated, and some transportation guru who isn't part of the IEP process is working hard somewhere to map everything out and make sure the schedule covers every kid that is being transported. Make a phone call and let the school and district staff know that this happened, and that you expect the issue to be resolved immediately so that transportation is provided. Get an estimate as to when you can expect your child's bus schedule to be fixed. If multiple days go by, you may want to request that the district reimburse you for transportation you have had to provide yourself when the IEP wasn't being implemented.

4) My child is in general education, and his teacher didn't even know he had an IEP!

The start of the school year involves a lot of planning for school staff and teachers. They are busy getting their classrooms set up, creating lesson plans, studying new curriculum that will be used, organizing supplies, meeting parents, etc. If you find out that your child's teacher doesn't even know your child has an IEP, doesn't know what accommodations must be implemented, etc, it can be a very upsetting discovery! Reserve your frustration for the school district and the administrator involved in your child's IEP, not the teacher. Talk to the teacher frankly about your child's disability and why you think the IEP is important. Then make sure you let the school district know of the problem, and of your concerns regarding the fact that no one made sure the teacher had the IEP so that it could be implemented.


Ultimately, back-to-school can be a busy, stressful time for everyone involved. There are things you can do to prepare, and to help to ensure that everything will be implemented as needed for your child. But that doesn't guarantee that there won't be any back-to-school problems! Remember to stay calm, and to communicate with your child's school about the issues. Patience and persistence will help you get through whatever happens!

And one more thing- if you already have an attorney/advocate, give them a call as soon as you know these kinds of things are happening! All to often we get a phone call after-the-fact, when most likely there may have been something we could have done in the moment to help things get resolved faster! That being said, don't expect miracles! Ultimately, the District has the power to either comply with the IEP or not, to make resources available or not, or to come up with alternatives to ensure the child is educated even if disputes are happening.

The Truth about Charter Schools

Come to a meeting on charter schools, sponsored by Sen. Bill Perkins; Wed. Sept. 2 at 6 PM. More info by clicking on the flyer at the right.

Many schools and students are being deprived of classrooms and equitable conditions because of the forced insertion of charter schools into their buildings.

How should we deal with the growing trend towards privatization that is ripping our communities apart?





Alignment, cohesion, and change

Dionne I. Cross has written an article called Alignment, cohesion, and change: Examining mathematics teachers’ belief structures and their influence on instructional practices. This article was recently published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. Here is the abstract of the article:
This collective case study reports on an investigation into the relationship between mathematics teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices, namely, how they organized their classroom activities, interacted with their students, and assessed their students’ learning. Additionally, the study examined the pervasiveness of their beliefs in the face of efforts to incorporate reform-oriented classroom materials and instructional strategies. The participants were five high school teachers of ninth-grade algebra at different stages in their teaching career. The qualitative analysis of the data revealed that in general beliefs were very influential on the teachers’ daily pedagogical decisions and that their beliefs about the nature of mathematics served as a primary source of their beliefs about pedagogy and student learning. Findings from the analysis concur with previous studies in this area that reveal a clear relationship between these constructs. In addition, the results provide useful insights for the mathematics education community as it shows the diversity among the inservice teachers’ beliefs (presented as hypothesized belief models), the role and influence of beliefs about the nature of mathematics on the belief structure and how the teachers designed their instructional practices to reflect these beliefs. The article concludes with a discussion of implications of teacher education.

Alignment, cohesion, and change

Dionne I. Cross has written an article called Alignment, cohesion, and change: Examining mathematics teachers’ belief structures and their influence on instructional practices. This article was recently published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. Here is the abstract of the article:
This collective case study reports on an investigation into the relationship between mathematics teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices, namely, how they organized their classroom activities, interacted with their students, and assessed their students’ learning. Additionally, the study examined the pervasiveness of their beliefs in the face of efforts to incorporate reform-oriented classroom materials and instructional strategies. The participants were five high school teachers of ninth-grade algebra at different stages in their teaching career. The qualitative analysis of the data revealed that in general beliefs were very influential on the teachers’ daily pedagogical decisions and that their beliefs about the nature of mathematics served as a primary source of their beliefs about pedagogy and student learning. Findings from the analysis concur with previous studies in this area that reveal a clear relationship between these constructs. In addition, the results provide useful insights for the mathematics education community as it shows the diversity among the inservice teachers’ beliefs (presented as hypothesized belief models), the role and influence of beliefs about the nature of mathematics on the belief structure and how the teachers designed their instructional practices to reflect these beliefs. The article concludes with a discussion of implications of teacher education.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Sleepless Nights and Predatory Lending Tales

Well, it's my 7th wedding anniversary, and I'm up reading about predatory lending tales at 1:30 AM.

I'll be filling you all in tomorrow!

In response to readers' requests: who ought I contact to demand for REAL change?



Many of you have asked me whom to write about the student lending crisis.

Here's a list of the people I've reached out to already. Also, I will continue to add to this list. When I do, I'll let everyone know that I've added new names with their contact information, and any relevant links to their role in this movement.

CRYN'S EVER-GROWING AND BEAUTIFUL BUDDING LIST OF CONTACTS

Politicians (city, state, national)

- Jim Sano, Albany City Councilman ( Jsano15@aol.com)

- Delegate David Poisson, 32nd-District, Loudon County, VA ( info@DelegatePoisson.com )
I've corresponded with David Poisson, and he's very sympathetic to this movement, and thanked me for keeping him abreast on things 


- Congressman George Miller, 7th District of California, Chairman, Committee of Labor and Education  

FYI: this guy is a BIG target! His email is a form here . So, I recommend that you also send him (and everyone else) actual letters too (that information can be found on all of their websites)

- Congressman Mike Doyle, 14th District of Pennsylvania. His email is a form version too.

Doyle is on the House subcommittee for oversight and investigations. I wrote to him about Ms. Marjorie Dillon's situation. Given the questions I raised in that letter, which I'll post later, I think it might pique that subcommittee's interest.

-Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, Assistant Majority Leader . Again, fill out the form here.

- Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education . I've had a hard time finding an actual way to contact him.

Here's there page for "General Inquiries." I sent Secretary Duncan a letter by mail, and initially received a generic and dismissive letter back. I replied to that by letter, and then got an email from someone!

NOTE: Sec. Duncan has the power to change things. Don't be deterred if someone at the DOE says otherwise. In my view, Duncan needs to clean up that agency.

-President Barack Obama (!), The White House . Since I'm old-fashioned and basically send all of these people actual letters, I almost never send President Obama an email. I prefer his address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Organizations

President Lauren Asher, The Institute for College Access and Success - their general email is admin@ticas.org. Pay attention to these articles - you'll notice that Asher is quoted in many of them. We would like to appeal to this organization for help.

Tips for those who are thinking about taking legal action . . .

Many of you have written to me and Rob about taking legal action. There is good reason for that. However, lawyers can be costly, so before taking that step, here's what I recommend:

Seek help from your Congressman, from your state's Attorney General, from the U.S. Dept. of Education, or from others who have responsibility to consumers (Congressman Mike Doyle, for instance, who is on the House subcommittee for oversights and investigations and listed above). I'd try these things first, before going to a lawyer. Most lawyers likely do not know how the financial aid system works or the vulnerabilities of schools and Sallie Mae.

If those avenues don't work, then hiring an attorney might be worth exploring.



My advice on how to write letters of appeal


Please remember to be professional in your tone. That doesn't mean you can't raise questions or critique things, but do it with grace. In so doing, you will hopefully appeal to these people and persuade them to respond. Remember, many of the individuals I've listed above are sympathetic to our cause. So courtesy is something I always abide by in my letter writing. But you will ultimately decide how your own letters will sound. I'm just sharing my two cents.

Quick Post - Student Lending Analytics:Tim Ranzetta's sensing a pattern . . .

Do you wonder why?

Not good, friends. NOT good at all.

Pitt Community College Sees Record Enrollment
Cohise College reaching toward record enrollment
Texas Tech expects record enrollment

. . . the list goes on.

I betcha Sallie Mae, Nelnet, etc. are super excited about this news!

Marjorie Dillon - Is there more to her story?



Tim Grant of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a recent piece entitled, "Student loans put college graduate into deep financial hole." It's about a young woman named Marjorie Dillon from Coraopolis, PA. While a few blogs have been somewhat sympathetic toward Ms. Dillon, the story has been recycled by others in hideous ways. I won't even bother providing links, because the recounting of this woman and her problems (whether or not she made "bad" decisions) is beyond vicious at certain sites and the posters are, in my mind, a bunch of brutish sewer dwellers.

Regardless of Ms. Dillon's decisions, I am sympathetic. I also don't think this story adds up, and it's my feeling that the borrower is trying to be blamed instead of other individuals. I wrote an email to Mr. Grant below raising my concerns and questions about the holes I found in this particular article.

My email to Mr. Grant, which was subsequently mailed to Congressman Mike Doyle and President Lauren Asher at the Institute for College Access & Success:

Dear Mr. Grant:



My name is Ms. C. Cryn Johannsen, and I am the promotional writer and marketer for Robert Applebaum's Forgive Student Loan Movement.

I read you article about Marjorie Dillon with great interest (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09210/986936-298.stm). Based upon some of the things you wrote, I had a few questions that I'd like to ask you, and perhaps you'd be interested in seeking answers from the appropriate individuals at Robert Morris University.

At one point you state that
"Ms. Dillon's story also shows the consequences of a lack of financial planning, missing federal aid application deadlines and not meeting academic requirements for federal programs."
 


The article continues, "[i]n this case, the student frequently came into the financial aid office after school had begun and in some cases on the date bills were due and asked what her financing options were," said Mike Frantz, vice president at Robert Morris.

However, I'm suggesting that there might be a chance that the university may be responsible and not the student. The deadline for the FAFSA would not be at the beginning of the school year, but at the end of it. Plus, she may have been eligible for Stafford loans before she got into academic trouble. Did anyone tell her that she may have been eligible for Stafford loans?

It seems safe to assume that she she got herself out of academic trouble. She did, after all, graduate. Therefore lack of satisfactory academic progress may not be a sufficient reason to deny her Stafford loans.

Granted, perhaps she should take the measures the newspapers' expert provides, but the first questions ought to be related to whether she was incorrectly advised about her eligibility for Stafford loans or other forms of aid under the FAFSA.

Moreover, the Sallie Mae private loan is not limited to tuition and fees, but Cost of Attendance minus aid received. This allows for living expenses whether your a campus resident or not.

I have a hunch that someone is trying to paint the borrower as irresponsible for taking out loans beyond tuition and fees.

Also, do you know if Ms. Dillon has contacted Congressman Mike Doyle about her situation? It is my understanding that he has an office in Coraopolis, correct?. I've actually sent him this email at his website here - http://doyle.house.gov/email_mike.shtml.

There are gaps in this story, so I'm just seeking clarification.

Thanks for your help and time.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Respectfully,

Ms. C. Cryn Johannsen
Promotional Writer and Marketer, Robert Applebaum's Forgive Student Loan Debt Movement


Incidentally, I have already reached out to Ms. Dillon and hope to speak to her some time today or early next week. 











Advantages When Students Use High Tech at School

As computer, Internet, and other technologies advance, they are playing a major role in our daily lives. They are now a part of our work lives and we use it at home for financial reasons, acquiring news stories, research and education, and communicating with friends and families. It is playing more of a significant role in our lives.

These high-tech tools are important for children to learn and use. Technology is a doorway to education and job skills. The necessity of learning and understanding emerging technologies has resulted in the need to offer it in schools.

The advantages of using high tech devices and learning in schools include:

1. Because of the internet, students now have an abundance of knowledge at their finger tips. It is no longer textbooks that teach children. The internet offers a host of knowledge resources to help children learn. The Internet also has an abundance of interactive programs that can be downloaded or used online that will help children improve their reading, language, math, science, and other course skills, There are games and exercises appropriate for any age. They can help assess a child's level of learning and understanding as well as identify any learning weaknesses. The high tech tools can also help with memory and hand/eye coordination.

2. There is also an increasingly more of a need for more high school graduates to major in high-technology related fields when they enter college. Many jobs now involve high tech tools. Preparing a child for a productive future will greatly improve the chances of them acquiring a rewarding and lucrative career

3. Students that learn about high-tech tools in a hands-on way will help them overcome any insecurity that they may have about advanced technology. It will show them that high tech is something to be embraced, not feared.

4. New high tech tools in such areas as science provides students with new ways of experimenting and observing in more detailed and graphic ways. For example, this will help improve their overall understanding because the students can remotely control microscopes at laboratories that may be thousands of miles away from the school and they can speak to experts in just about any field. The students will be more compelled to learn.

5. It can improve the skills needed for success on standardized tests. It helps with the development of critical and innovative thinking skills. They will learn not to regurgitate information, but to explain it in a more comprehensive way.

6. Studies have shown that technology-based learning environments have helped at-risk students overcome barriers and have contributed to increased success rates.

7. Technology enhances work projects through such processes as computer word processing, and creating charts, tables, and graphs. It will give them an insight into the work world.

Technology now touches almost every part of our lives, our communities, and our homes. Schools should take advantage of all that technology has to offer students in the areas of teaching and learning. High tech learning will help students acquire the skills they need to flourish in this highly technical knowledge-based economy.


About the author:
Private schools Toronto, offering a balanced curriculum from Pre-Kindergarten, toronto prep school through to University and College entrance.

Education and Architecture


It seems to me that one of the things a teacher can do to "re-enchant" education is draw his students' attention to the world we live in, and to the world we have built around us - the language of form in architecture. We can connect this easily with mathematics, geometry, astronomy, music, and history. An article by philosopher John Haldane in The Catholic Herald for 30 August 2009 even gives us a way to connect it with biology.

The architects of classical antiquity and of renaissance and later neo-classicism were resolute humanists. For them, man and measure go together, either with man being the measure of all things, or else in his measuring cosmic order through his ability to discern mathematical sequences, ratios and parallels.

The principle architectural expression of this abstract ordering is the façade or wall divided into parts: surface and spaces defined by classical geometry. When competently conceived and executed such schemes are undeniably pleasing, like the rhythm of a well-ordered rhyme. But the inspiration is less to do with what is observed in nature than with what is reasoned to through mathematics and philosophy. The Gothic, by contrast, takes its key from the living world of ordered growth. From beneath the earth the germinated seed breaks through, first establishing a stem, then branching, next putting out leaves and buds, then in turn producing flowers and fruits. The order is not one of mathematical design but of organic progression; and it pre-exists invisible but immanent within the seed.

Like plants, Gothic buildings grow out of the earth and are developed upwards, drawing material from below but reaching for the light. They represent a recognition of the order of nature and an identification with it; acknowledging and seeking to imitate divine design.
Of course, the "living world of ordered growth" is itself a mathematical order, and the Gothic masons probably understood it as such. Nevertheless, Haldane is absolutely right that in a Gothic cathedral we easily imagine ourselves "standing beneath the canopy formed in an avenue of over-lapping trees, or imagine the undersides of the leaves of those trees." And it is surely true that "the power of England's Gothic cathedrals to prompt wonder at the order of nature and to encourage speculation about the source of that order is not altogether diminished. Hundreds of years on from their first appearance they remain sources of theological inspiration and reminders of the possibility of integrating intellect, imagination and sense in the embodiment and recognition of religious meanings."

Born in Britain but living in California, the architect Christopher Alexander believes that architecture should be rooted in a profound understanding of the human person as spiritually transcendent, yet intimately related to the cosmos. His book series The Nature of Order (2004) opens with an assault on the mechanistic idea of order, which he traces back to Descartes in the seventeenth century. He argues against this idea that matter and space possess degrees of life, because the elements of which they are made relate to each other as mutually supporting “centers”, making the whole more than the sum of its parts. He illustrates this by means of the patterns in a Turkish carpet and the architectural and decorative features of buildings like the Alhambra and Chartres Cathedral.

Alexander defines fifteen structural features that correlate with degrees of life. This enables him to become quite practical in his recommendations. The examples he chooses are eclectic, ranging from mud huts to palaces, from Shaker furniture to Persian glassware, from electrical discharges to cell walls, from the branches of plants to the cracking of mud and the formation of crystals and feathers. He suggests that his approach offers a way beyond Hume’s fact-value distinction. Our feeling-response to things, properly discerned, is an objective measure of their structural wholeness. The implications of all this for education remain to be explored.

Take a look at the "50 most extraordinary churches in the world" and see if you agree with your friends on which are the most beautiful!

Education and Architecture


It seems to me that one of the things a teacher can do to "re-enchant" education is draw his students' attention to the world we live in, and to the world we have built around us - the language of form in architecture. We can connect this easily with mathematics, geometry, astronomy, music, and history. An article by philosopher John Haldane in The Catholic Herald for 30 August 2009 even gives us a way to connect it with biology.

The architects of classical antiquity and of renaissance and later neo-classicism were resolute humanists. For them, man and measure go together, either with man being the measure of all things, or else in his measuring cosmic order through his ability to discern mathematical sequences, ratios and parallels.

The principle architectural expression of this abstract ordering is the façade or wall divided into parts: surface and spaces defined by classical geometry. When competently conceived and executed such schemes are undeniably pleasing, like the rhythm of a well-ordered rhyme. But the inspiration is less to do with what is observed in nature than with what is reasoned to through mathematics and philosophy. The Gothic, by contrast, takes its key from the living world of ordered growth. From beneath the earth the germinated seed breaks through, first establishing a stem, then branching, next putting out leaves and buds, then in turn producing flowers and fruits. The order is not one of mathematical design but of organic progression; and it pre-exists invisible but immanent within the seed.

Like plants, Gothic buildings grow out of the earth and are developed upwards, drawing material from below but reaching for the light. They represent a recognition of the order of nature and an identification with it; acknowledging and seeking to imitate divine design.
Of course, the "living world of ordered growth" is itself a mathematical order, and the Gothic masons probably understood it as such. Nevertheless, Haldane is absolutely right that in a Gothic cathedral we easily imagine ourselves "standing beneath the canopy formed in an avenue of over-lapping trees, or imagine the undersides of the leaves of those trees." And it is surely true that "the power of England's Gothic cathedrals to prompt wonder at the order of nature and to encourage speculation about the source of that order is not altogether diminished. Hundreds of years on from their first appearance they remain sources of theological inspiration and reminders of the possibility of integrating intellect, imagination and sense in the embodiment and recognition of religious meanings."

Born in Britain but living in California, the architect Christopher Alexander believes that architecture should be rooted in a profound understanding of the human person as spiritually transcendent, yet intimately related to the cosmos. His book series The Nature of Order (2004) opens with an assault on the mechanistic idea of order, which he traces back to Descartes in the seventeenth century. He argues against this idea that matter and space possess degrees of life, because the elements of which they are made relate to each other as mutually supporting “centers”, making the whole more than the sum of its parts. He illustrates this by means of the patterns in a Turkish carpet and the architectural and decorative features of buildings like the Alhambra and Chartres Cathedral.

Alexander defines fifteen structural features that correlate with degrees of life. This enables him to become quite practical in his recommendations. The examples he chooses are eclectic, ranging from mud huts to palaces, from Shaker furniture to Persian glassware, from electrical discharges to cell walls, from the branches of plants to the cracking of mud and the formation of crystals and feathers. He suggests that his approach offers a way beyond Hume’s fact-value distinction. Our feeling-response to things, properly discerned, is an objective measure of their structural wholeness. The implications of all this for education remain to be explored.

Take a look at the "50 most extraordinary churches in the world" and see if you agree with your friends on which are the most beautiful!

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Where are the Voices from the Grass Roots?

One of the purposes of this blog is to promote serious discussion between educational professionals and the general public. In reading much that is printed in the mainstream media like today's editorial in the New York Times - "Accountability in Public Schools," one constantly hears accounts and perspectives from the voices of those who are in power. Where are the voices from the grass roots about their concerns, frustrations, hopes, and challenges to what passes as educational reform in this country. I recently came across a website and a listserv that provides our readers with this alternative perspective. For readers interested in educating themselves on other perspectives, check out the following website and join the listserv of the Education for Liberation Network.

Website: http://www.edliberation.org/

To join the listserv: go to www.edliberation.org/join-us

Description and Purpose: The Education for Liberation Network is a national coalition of teachers, community activists, youth, researchers and parents who believe a good education should teach people - particularly low-income youth and youth of color - to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face.

Teachers may also be interested in their recent publication of a new kind of plan book that is called: Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers 2009-2010. You can find it at: http://www.justiceplanbook.com/. I am told that the first printing is already sold out, but more are being printed.

(Cross-posted on Social Issues)

The hiring crisis in our schools: what brought us to this point?


The Times performs a double whammy today by running an editorial in favor of the Race to the Top proposals; featuring a direct attack on the teachers unions for opposing tying the evaluation of teachers to standardized test scores: Editorial: Accountability in Public Schools.

The paper also features an article, Amid Hiring Freeze, Principals Leave Jobs Empty , about how principals are refusing to hire experienced teachers on ATR (absent teacher reserve) – of which there are nearly 2,000 -- despite 1800 teaching openings. Instead, principals are hiring new teachers as “permanent” substitutes, waiting out the hiring freeze that Klein announced a few months ago. What the article fails to discuss is how this is a crisis entirely of Joel Klein’s making, and represents one of the biggest management blunders of his career.

Klein has continued to pay for Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows program to recruit new candidates long after it was clear that a huge pool of experienced teachers was growing, who are being paid full salary and yet have no regular classroom assignments-- through no fault of their own. In the article, no mention is made of what led to this crisis: how Klein changed the school funding system, under the advice of Sir Michael Barber, a management consultant from McKinsey and Co., whose advice to the Blair administration to impose a similar scheme in the UK had earlier caused massive teacher layoffs and what was described as the most serious educational crisis in that nation’s post-war history.

NYC’s so-called “fair funding” system was specifically designed so that for the first time, principals would have to pay for their own staffing of teachers and for their full salaries, to give them an incentive to hire new, cheaper teachers rather than experienced ones. Many critics warned that given budget cuts to come, the refusal of DOE to fund teachers centrally -- as opposed to say, school achievement facilitators, data inquiry teams or parent coordinators, all of which is directly financed by the administration -- would lead to principals being forced to choose between larger classes and less experienced teachers, and this is exactly what has occurred.

See, for example, our exchange with Robert Gordon, who designed the funding system for Klein, in March 2007, and earlier comments from Noreen Connell and Gordon in a Times article from Jan. 27, 2007, Seeking Equity, School Chief Outlines a Financing Plan:

The expert, Noreen Connell, who leads the Educational Priorities Panel, a nonprofit group, said that the changes would initially make the budget system more complicated, and would be harmful long term by making it overly expensive for schools to retain veteran teachers.
While the new plan would provide money to schools and require principals to cover payroll and other expenses, Ms. Connell said in an interview that she preferred a system that seeks to calculate a school's staffing needs and then provides the dollars to meet them.


''The funding proposals,'' she wrote in commentary posted on the group's Web site, ''have the potential to do lasting damage for decades to come.'' In the interview, Ms. Connell also said the chancellor did not have time to carry out the plan before the end of Mr. Bloomberg's term in 2009. ''They won't be around to suffer the consequences,'' she said.

Robert Gordon, the Education Department's managing director for resource allocation, who is designing the new system, said it would maximize the amount of control that principals have over their budgets, allowing them ''to retain their most experienced teachers if that is what they want to do.''

Why should the school funding system be designed to force principals to choose between hiring or retaining experienced teachers and smaller classes – when these are among the few factors that have been proven to result in better schools ? Do public schools in the suburbs have to choose between these goals, or the private schools to which Klein and Bloomberg sent their kids?
The article also omits its own reporting of the fact that there has been a decrease of 1600 in the number of classroom teachers under this administration, with a concurrent rise in ten thousand out of classroom positions, including two thousand more school secretaries.

The only thing incorrect about Noreen Connell’s predictions in 2007 is that we may be saddled with Chancellor Klein for years to come, because of Bloomberg’s overturning of term limits. Robert Gordon has now moved onto the Obama administration, where he is probably designing similarly destructive funding schemes on a national scale. Sadly, the Educational Priorities Panel, one of the few objective monitors of DOE’s spending practices, is gone, apparently because the NYC foundation world didn’t see the point in supporting the sort of expert analysis that EPP was able to provide.

Sticky Notes on the Stats - Robert Applebaum's Facebook Page


First, we have a drum roll (!!), followed by New Year's eve sounds - corks from champagne bottles go POP!, silly horns go BEEP!, cheering crowds say HOORAH! - and then all is quiet.

Cryn steps up to the microphone. The room's ceiling holds nets of balloons.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I say. The microphone squeals for a moment, but I quickly fix it to spare your already bleeding ears.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I say again. No squealing this time.

"As of August 29, 2009 at 10:16 A.M. (EST) Robert Applebaum's Forgive Student Loan Movement 
membership is at . . . 226,885!"

Balloons fall, more champagne bottles are opened, and we all celebrate the holiday!

However, I interrupt all of you for a moment. This large crowd filled with so many of you out there (!!) - students (over the age of 21), waiters, bartenders, lawyers, artists, accountants, biologists, automotive mechanics, historians, economics, and so on - somehow quiet down.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I will allow you to resume your celebrating this evening. But there is still much work to be done. I hereby challenge all of you to recruit at least one if not two people to join our cause! It is our goal to reach 500,000 members within 3 weeks. Can we do this? Can we recruit?"

In unison you all yell: "YES!"

Let's DO IT!

PhD Taxi Driver in Singapore

Wow, this blows my mind. I don't even know how to categorize this!

Friday, August 28, 2009

Hons 1st year Admission 2011-12 form available at Rajshahi University.

1st year (Hons) admission 2011-12 form can becollected from Rajshahi University.Admission form can be collected from website www.ru.ac.bd students self responsibility. Complete application submit in the appropriate department. Admission fee cash pay in the appropriate department. Primary requirement: average GPA 7.5 for science group and must have GPA 3.5 separately in SSC and HSC exam. Average 6.5 for Humanities group and must have GPA 3.00 separately in SSC and HSC exam. Average GPA 7.00 for Commerce group and must have GPA 3.5 separately in SSC and HSC exam. Students who want to admission in others department they have ad 0.5 point with average point.
Source: Prothom-alo

1st year Hon's admission form available at Islamic University

Admission form is available in website of Islamic University(address of the website will be leter informed).
Admission test will be held in MCQ system
Requirement: Applicant's must have minimum GPA 3.0 in SSC/HSC exam and average GPA 6.5 for Science, minimum GPA 2.5 in SSC/HSC and average GPA 5.5 for Commerce & Humanities group. From this year Statistics under 'Uma' and Finance & Banking under "Cha" are open. Total 265 seats are increases in this year.
Source: Daily Prothom Alo I

1st year Hon's admission form available at University of Chittagong

Applicantion form available at University of Chittagong


Application form can be collected cash pay  from Agroni Bank, University Branch, Chakbazar, New Market.


KA (Science) JA (Baiology) Unit Applicant’s must have average GPA 7.0 (SSC+HSC)

KHA (Fine), GHA (Social Science), UMAH (Law) unit GPA 5.5, GA (Commerce) 6.5

Source: Daily Janakantha

National University 2nd year final result published.

Bangla, English, History, Islamic History & Culture, Philosophy, Islamic Studies, Arabic, Political Science, Social Science and Social Work result  published.

For detail about result visit: Click here
Source: Daily Inqilab

Admission form will be available at Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University

The Admission  form of Kabi Nazrul University, Trishal, Mymensingh  can be collected at Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University. Result of admission test will be published in the website. The admission test will be held under 6 units to take admission into six departments: Computer Science and Engineering, Bengali Language and Literature, English Language and Literaute, Music, Accounting and Information System, and Economics department. To know more click on www.jkkniu.edu.bd
Source: AHM Kamal, Assistant Professor (CSE), Mob: 8801732226402

Dhaka University 1st year Hon's Admission form available at Dhaka University

Dhaka University Admission form will be available  for 1st year hons. For this year admission requirement for KHA unit is change to GPA 7.0 but all others remain same. Admission form of KA unit is available in Agroni Bank, Karjan Hall Branch KHA and GHA unit is Janata Bank, TSC Branch, GA unit is Sonali Bank, National Museum Branch, MA unit is Agroni Bank, Bangla Academi Branch.


Source: Daily Jugantor

1st year Hon's Admission form available at Jahangirnagar University



1st year Hon's admission form will be available at Jahangirnagar University. Admission test will be written exam & MCQ
Source: Daily Amardesh

Let us not forget the messages of Teddy Kennedy - The Fight Goes on; The Cause Endures; The Hope Still Lives


On this late night in Washington, D.C., I want to remind all of you that the Honorable Senator Ted Kennedy would have been sympathetic to our struggles. He was always an advocate for education, and he will be sorely missed.

But as this picture of signs filled with solid lines of resolute kindness and surrounded by the powerful glow of candlelight shows: Kennedy's mission to represent those American voices that are so often ignored, suffocated, or unethically silenced still lives on . . . it is now our responsibility to pick up where he left off.

May you rest in peace, Senator Kennedy. Watch over us, guide us, as we continue your fight and abide by your mission - to push for justice FOR all. That includes the new indentured educated class.

Strengthening Student Support: A Sensible Proposal with What Results?

Cross-posted from Brainstorm

Anyone who's taken a hard look at the reasons why more students drop out of community college realizes it's got to have at least something to do with their need for more frequent, higher-quality advising. After all, in many cases these are students who are juggling multiple responsibilities, only one of which is attending college, and they need to figure out a lot of details-- how to take the right courses to fit their particular program (especially if they hope to later transfer credits), how to get the best financial aid package, how to work out a daily schedule that can maximize their learning, etc. It's fairly easy to figure that in fact community college students would likely stand to benefit more from good advising than their counterparts at many 4-year institutions.

Except high-quality advising isn't what they get. Counselor-student ratios are on average 1000:1. That's right-- one counselor for a population the size of a decent high school. In elementary and secondary schools the ratio is 479:1. There's a pay disparity as well-- in k-12 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median annual earnings for a counselor in 2006 was nearly $54,000. For counselors at community colleges it was $48,000 (and for those at other colleges it was $42,000). Now, perhaps the salary differentials reflect the different work load, and assumptions about it being easier to counsel adults. But I tend to think this is offbase-- these are outdated notions of who community college students are and what they need.

So what would happen if we reduced the counselor/student ratio at community colleges to a standard even better than the national average in k-12? And at the same time ramped up the intensity of the counseling? Theory would suggest we should see some meaningful results. Many studies, including my own, point toward a persistent relationship between parental education and college outcomes that's indicative of the importance of information-- and information (plus motivation) is what counseling provides. So, putting more counselors into a community college and increasing the quality of what they provide should work-- if students actually go and see them.

To test these hypotheses, MDRC (a terrific NYC-based evaluation firm) recently conducted a randomized program evaluation in two Ohio community colleges. In a nutshell, at college A students in the treatment group were assigned (at random) to receive services from a full-time counselor serving only 81 students, while at college B students in the treatment group had a counselor serving 157 students. In both cases, the control group students saw counselors serving more than 1,000 students each. In addition to serving far fewer students than is typical, these counselors were instructed to provide services that were "more intensive, comprehensive, and personalized." In practice, students in the treatment group did see their counselors more often. The "treatment" lasted two semesters.

The students in this study are Midwesterners, predominantly (75%) women, predominantly white (54%), with an average age of 24, half living below the poverty line and half are working while in school. I think it's also worth pointing out that while all applied for financial aid, these were not folks who were overwhelming facing circumstances of deprivation-- 88% had access to a working car, and 64% had a working computer in their home. And 98% were U.S. citizens.

The results indicate only modest results. After one semester of program implementation, the biggest effects occured-- students in the treatment group were 7 percentage points more likely to register for another semester (65 vs. 58%). But those differences quickly disappeared, and no notable differences in outcomes like the number of credits taken and other academic outcomes occured. Moreover, the researchers didn't find other kinds of effects you might expect--such as changes in students' educational goals, feelings of connection to the college, or measured ability to cope with struggles.

So what's going on? The folks at MDRC suggest 3 possibilities: (1) the program didn't last long enough to generate impacts, (2) the services weren't comprehensive enough, (3) advising may need to be linked to other supports--including more substantial financial aid--in order to generate effects. I think these are reasonable hypotheses, but I'd like to add some more to this list.

First and foremost, there's a selection problem. MDRC tested an effect of enhanced advising on a population of students already more likely to seek advice-- those who signed up for a study and more services. Now, of course this is a common problem in research and it doesn't compromise the internal validity of the results (e.g. I'm not saying that they mis-estimated the size of the effect). And, MDRC did better than usual in using a list of qualified students (all of whom, by the way had to have completed a FAFSA) and actively recruiting them into the study-- rather than simply selecting participants from folks who showed up to a sign-up table and agreed to enter a study. But, in the end they are testing the effects of advising on a group that was responsive to the study intake efforts of college staff. And we're not provided with any data on how that group differed from the group who weren't responsive to those efforts--not even on the measures included on the FAFSA (which it seems the researchers have access to). Assuming participants are different from non-participants (and they almost always are), I'm betting the participants have characteristics that make them more likely to seek help-- and therefore are perhaps less likely to accrue the biggest benefits from enhanced advising. I wish we had survey measures to test this hypotheses-- for example we could look at the expectations of participants at baseline and compare them to those of more typical students-- but the first survey wasn't administered until a full year after the treatment began. To sum, up, this issue doesn't compromise the internal validity of the results, but it may help explain why such small effects were observed-- there are often heterogeneous effects of programs, and those students for whom you might anticipate the bigger effects weren't in the study at all.

A second issue: we just don't know nearly enough about the counterfactual in this case-- specifically, what services students in the control group received. (We know a bit more about differences in what they were offered, e.g. from Table 3.3, but not in terms of what they received,) We are provided comparisons in services received by treatment status only for one measure-- services received 3+ times during the first year of the study (Appendix Table c.3), but not for the full range of services such as those shown in Appendix Table C.1. For example we don't know that students in the control and treatment groups didn't have similar chances of contacting a counselor 1 or 2 times, only the incidence of 3+ contacts. If the bar was rather high, it may have been tougher to clear (e.g. the treatment would've needed to have a bigger impact to be significant).

Having raised those issues, I want to note that these are fairly common problems in evaluation research (not knowing much about either study non-participants or about services received by the control group), and they don't affect MDRC's interpretations of findings. But these problems may help us understand a little bit more about why more substantial effects weren't observed.

Before wrapping up, I want to give MDRC credit for paying attention to more than simply academic outcomes in this study-- they tested for social and health effects as well, including effects on stress (but didn't find any). As I've written here before, we need to bring the study of student health and stress into educational research in a more systematic way, and I'm very glad to see MDRC doing that.

So, in the end, what have we learned? I have no doubt that the costs of changing these advising ratios are substantial, and the impacts in this case were clearly low. Right now, that doesn't lend too much credence to increasing spending on student services. But, this doesn't mean that more targeted advising might not be more effective. Perhaps it can really help men of color (who are largely absent from this study). Clearly, (drumroll/eye-rolling please), more research is needed.

RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness

My colleagues and I at the New Teacher Center have offered up what I believe to be a balanced and thoughtful series of recommendations to strengthen the teacher and principal effectiveness provisions in the U.S. Department of Education's proposed Race to the Top regulations. You can find the NTC's initial public comments -- submitted on August 21 -- here. And you find an addendum -- filed yesterday -- offering recommendations for specific language additions, here.

Generally, we are supportive of the overall direction of Race to the Top. But we feel that its focus on teacher effectiveness is too narrowly about measuring individual teacher impact at the exclusion of supporting all educators to strengthen their teaching and leadership skills and attending to teaching and learning conditions within schools that impact student success.

Here is a brief summary of our recommendations:
Improving Teacher Effectiveness and Achieving Equity in Teacher Distribution
• The RttT guidelines should include a definition of teacher effectiveness that acknowledges and
supports the development of teacher and principal practice, especially during the early years.
New teachers and principals, who disproportionately work in struggling schools, need strong
mentoring and support to become effective.

• The RttT guidelines should define ‘effective principal’ more expansively, drawing upon
additional measures of student success and data on teaching and learning conditions to fully
reflect the impact of teachers, school leaders, and school environment on student learning.

• The RttT guidelines should require states to address school leadership development and teaching and learning conditions in their strategies to improve teacher effectiveness and the equitable distribution of quality teachers.

Improving Collection and Use of Data
• RttT guidelines should specifically include teaching and learning conditions data gathered from
practitioners to help schools, districts and states better understand supports and barriers to
teacher effectiveness and equitable teacher distribution, and to incorporate this information into
their longitudinal P-20 data systems.
And here is some selected language that provides insight into our thinking around teacher effectiveness and teacher development:
Teacher effectiveness in the proposed RttT guidelines focuses exclusively on value-added student assessments. While value-added student achievement data can be used to reward and recognize certain achievements by educators, it should not be the sole method by which teachers are evaluated, observed, rewarded, and deemed “effective.” Firing the least effective teachers and rewarding the most effective alone is short-sighted and ignores the vast majority of teachers in the middle who can achieve greater success if given access to high-quality induction and professional development, strong and supportive school administrators, and opportunities for collaboration and leadership. Great teachers are made – not born. Teachers need professional support and opportunities to develop their practice, including focused induction during their initial years in the profession. It is important to measure teacher impact on student learning, but measuring impact without providing the means to help educators strengthen their practice will ultimately fail our schools.

If RttT is to be an effective reform strategy, it needs to recognize teacher development as a primary means to maximize classroom effectiveness. RttT should require states not merely to identify the best teachers, but see that their successes form the building blocks of a better understanding of effective teaching practice that can be replicated in classrooms across America.
And on teaching and learning conditions:
In order for school leaders to attract and retain quality teachers, research shows the need for school leaders to make decisions based on data that incorporate the perspective of classroom teachers. Teacher survey data can provide insight into the school culture, how decisions are made, and the use of instructional and planning time for teachers. Such contextual data may explain differences in teacher effectiveness between schools and districts. NTC has worked with over 300,000 educators in 10 states, and collected teaching and learning conditions data from over 8,000 schools to utilize in school improvement plans. In North Carolina, the State Board of Education now requires schools to utilize the data from the biennial working conditions survey to inform annual improvement plans and strategies.

Quality teachers will seek out and stay with strong supportive school leaders; therefore, using RttT funds for salary bonuses in hard-to-staff schools would not be the most effective approach. RttT should encourage states to show how they are using data from teachers, along with student achievement and other relevant data, to develop policies for these schools, strengthen school leadership, and ensure that they are settings where the most effective teachers want to work and can succeed.
The RttT public comment period closes today and a spate of organizations have submitted comments just under the wire. They range from narrow to broad, supportive to critical, and offer everything from research-based suggested line edits to what basically look like press releases buttering up Secretary Duncan.

Visit here to review all of the public comments submitted.