Education Rebel @ Work

This is a great read from Stephen Lazar, a NYC teacher whose Gotham Schools posts I like a lot. 

I am totally borrowing the I Used to Think… and Now I Think structure for a future post on education. 

Interesting chart. Rather than trying to get more people to go into the high paying majors, tuition should be adjusted per major on the front-end.

Amazing. Wish we’d had this when I was in the classroom.

So I think this is awesome. Awesomesauce, in fact. But this quote from Tulane is a little over the top. Really, 10 free slots for well-deserving students and some teacher training is the MOST comprehensive thing that any college/K-12 partnership has ever done in education reform? Really (said as much like Seth Meyers/Amy Poehler as possible)?

Officials on both sides are calling it a first-of-its-kind arrangement. “No one has done anything as comprehensive as what we’re thinking,” Tulane University President Scott Cowen said. “This is one more part of the puzzle of how we can improve education here in our community and for low-income students across the country.” 

More in love the with quote at the end from one of my education heroes, Mike Feinberg. He’s a hero because he understands that education is really about what happens to students AFTER they leave us.

“The ultimate goal for our kids is not to have them pass a state accountability test,” said Mike Feinberg, one of KIPP’s co-founders. “Nor is it getting them in or even through college. It’s that they have the freedom to do what it is in this world that they want to do. College is a ticket to be able to do those things.” 

This caught my attention. Does Duncan not know what power he has on college costs? All he has to do, like Mark Cuban has pointed out, is make it harder to get outsized student loans. Colleges would be forced to adjust their costs to meet the new market.

Rant… Sometimes I am not sure why I still read the National Journal Online Education Experts blog because they don’t let people comment and their experts don’t always say much. Imagine what could be done if a real conversation happened around these issues. 

Must read article on a class of students that were offered guaranteed college scholarships when they were in the sixth grade and what happened to them over 23 years later. This insight from the program director sums up exactly what we must understand about the lure of “college for all” as a measure of “success” in 2011. Right, Mr. Obama?

“What Proctor learned, he says, is that Dreamers’ achievements cannot be defined by a diploma, an attitude that he says Pollin and Cohen eventually embraced. The doctor and the pharmacist are successes, for sure. But so are the UPS driver and the Prince George’s police officer. They may not have college degrees, Proctor says, but they have a sense of purpose and ambition.”

As usual, right sentiment.. worried about context. I meet so many 30-something teachers who are ready for the classroom and am not convinced they should be judged by how they did in school over ten years ago. That being said, they should have to demonstrate their content and that they have academic aptitude before they start their teacher training program. What might that look like that benefits the teacher and is affordable?

This information is alarming: “At UNI, 36 percent of Latino student teachers would be excluded under the proposal, vs. 21 percent of blacks and 18 percent of white students, officials said.”

This is an infographic by Course Hero on the ROI of going abroad. DISAGREE! Most of the career coaching clients I work with who are unable to do what they really want professionally because of student debt accumulated a significant amount of it during their semester abroad. 

I don’t disagree that traveling abroad is certainly an amazing opportunity, but with their ROI arguments. There are lots of ways to gain the experiences detailed in the infographic in your own community.

The popular education blog, Eduwonk, is having a free bootcamp for education bloggers and they are specifically looking for teacher participation. Applications are due first week of January.

I’m not actually a fan of the blog’s writing style, but think he could use having a bunch of teachers go to the workshop and help guide its outcome. 

“We start teaching kids about jobs and professions at an early age. By elementary school, they know what doctors, scientists, farmers and firefighters do… That’s not always the case when it comes to entrepreneurship, even though the skills necessary to build and run one’s own company can be relevant to anyone: financial literacy, responsibility, problem-solving, creative thinking, collaboration and independence.”

Food for thought.