Ed News Roundup

There are so many truly "must-read" stories I'm going to group them into different threads.

This one?  The "everything but the kitchen sink one."

First up, in New London, Connecticut, the school board has postpone the hiring of one Terrence P. Carter as superintendent.  Why?  Because apparently the search firm they hired managed to miss that he had been using "PhD" and "Dr." for at least five years with no accredited degree.  (He lied about going to Stanford and getting his degree when he never even attended it.  What's weird is that he is completing a Ph.D. from a university and will be awarded it in August.  So why lie?)

The search firm almost missed that he declared bankruptsy twice in the last 15 years.

Some members of their board said they can't just go on what the Internet or newspapers say (and indeed they shouldn't).  But this is not rocket science so why didn't their search firm?  Why don't they look on their own?  Very strange and yet another reason to wonder about superintendent search firms.

Want to give your kids about 15 seconds of U.S. History?  From Slate, an interactive map of all the land that the United States took from Native Americans.

From the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank, a study - district-by-district - of "Return on Educational Investment."  I confess I have not gone deeply into this one but let me know what you think if you look it over.  Highest per pupil spending In WA State? LaConner  School district at $15,645.  Seattle?  $11, 154.  Lowest? Quillayute Valley School District at $6,072.

Thought the use of race in enrollment/admissions was over?  A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the University of Texas, Austin's use of race in consideration of several factors for admission.

North Carolina's governor signed a Common Core repeal bill on July 23rd.  MSNBC is all in a-twitter saying, it's the "destruction" of Common Core because of politics.  I absolutely think there is definitely some politics in there but to ignore ALL the other issues around Common Core is wrong.  But NBC and their "Education Nation" have a definite ed reform slant and this story is no different.

In what is an ever-growing story out of Ohio, the mess that is the charter school system in their state gets worse. 

The State Board of Education ordered an immediate investigation yesterday of a chain of 19 charter schools in response to sweeping allegations of test cheating, attendance tampering, improper sexual conduct and other misdeeds.

From Forbes magazine, the story of a graduating class of college students with the majority being women engineers.  There may be some lessons in here.

A few weeks ago at Harvey Mudd’s annual commencement, we broke a record: we graduated more female engineers than male. In the class of 2014, 56% of students receiving engineering degrees were women. This is certainly the first time in Harvey Mudd’s history that we’ve had a class with more women majoring in engineering than men; as far as we know it’s the first time for any co-ed U.S. college.

Kansas, because of cyberattacks and other computer issues during standardized testing this past spring, will not be issuing a report on how students did nor how districts/schools scored.  If districts aren't  up-to-snuff on their technology, this may be a foretelling for Common Core assessments.

From The Atlantic, "Athletes are More Likely to Finish High School Than Non-Athletes."  

What does it take to get a kid to stay in school and graduate? Sometimes motivation is highly external: New York City has experimented with paying students when they get good grades. Sometimes it’s highly internal: Angela Duckworth’s research focuses on how personality traits like “grit” and perseverance help students persist through hardships at school. Both of these extremes are elusive and hard to implement: Not every city has a wealthy mayor who wants to help bankroll a student-payment system. Not every child has “grit”—and researchers don’t really know how to teach it.

A new study from the University of Kansas suggests that there’s a simpler, more universal way to motivate students: Give them a reason to come to school—even if that reason has nothing to do with academics.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Why even mention it, those so called PHD's are well... as good as the latest C-CRAP

--Michael
There are PhDs and then there are PhDs. Trying to get one online is very different from earning one.

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