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Welcome to the February 29, 2016, edition of the HML Post. A service to the members of the Horace Mann League of the USA.
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Dr. David Berliner, the Regents' Professor Emeritus and former dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University, awards the 2015 Bunkum Award for Shoddy Education Research.
There are education awards and then there are education awards.
But nobody in education genuinely likes winning the Bunkum Award. Presented annually by the
National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, it is given for what presenters say is "shoddy" educational research based on weak data, questionable analysis and overblown recommendations.
The award gets its name from Buncombe County, N.C., where, in 1820, Rep. Felix Walker delivered "a speech for Buncombe" on whether Missouri should be admitted to the United States as a free or slave state, and he rambled on so much that his colleagues yelled at him to stop. From then on, "bunkum" came to mean long-winded nonsense.
The 2015 winner was just announced, and it was the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. It was announced by David Berliner, the regents' professor emeritus and former dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University.
 What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. Conversely, teams that failed at one thing seemed to fail at everything. The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ''good'' teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group's collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright.
But what was confusing was that not all the good teams appeared to behave in the same ways. ''Some teams had a bunch of smart people who figured out how to break up work evenly,'' said Anita Woolley, the study's lead author. ''Other groups had pretty average members, but they came up with ways to take advantage of everyone's relative strengths. Some groups had one strong leader. Others were more fluid, and everyone took a leadership role.'' (
Read more.)
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"We take an untraditional approach to giving. We don't simply write checks to charities. Instead we practice "venture philanthropy." And we expect a return on our investment." -Eli Broad
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The Broad Foundation was established in 1999 and Eli Broad wasted no time in providing funds to school systems around the country including Seattle.
In 2000, the Broad Foundation provided the Seattle Public School system with $800,000 for "teacher training" by way of the Alliance for Education.
In 2001 the Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, Joseph Olfchefske, participated in the
New Schools Venture Fund Summit and spoke on the subject of Convergence of the Sectors: Public, Private, and Non Profit. The moderators included Tom Vander Ark, Executive Director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dan Katzir, Director of Program Development at the Broad Foundation along with Wendy Kopp, Founder and President of Teach for America and an assortment of representatives from KIPP and Aspire charter schools. (
Read more.)
 HERE'S an apparent paradox: Most Americans have taken high school mathematics, including geometry and algebra, yet a national survey found that 82 percent of adults could not compute the cost of a carpet when told its dimensions and square-yard price.
Typical questions involved odometer readings and produce sell-by tags. The United States ended an embarrassing 22nd, behind Estonia and Cyprus. We should be doing better. Is more mathematics the answer?
In fact, what's needed is a different kind of proficiency, one that is hardly taught at all. The Mathematical Association of America calls it "quantitative literacy." I prefer the O.E.C.D.'s "numeracy," suggesting an affinity with reading and writing.
Calculus and higher math have a place, of course, but it's not in most people's everyday lives. What citizens do need is to be comfortable reading graphs and charts and adept at calculating simple figures in their heads. Ours has become a quantitative century, and we must master its language. Decimals and ratios are now as crucial as nouns and verbs. (
Read more.)
 Immediately cease advocacy efforts in support of the Delaware PTA Position Statement on Parent Opt Out HB50 including but not limited to website promotion, action alerts, e-newsletters, media interview and information flyers.
Per National PTA SOA Policy, if you are unable to comply with the SOA requirements by April 26, 2016 (60 days from this notification), a support team will be assigned to Delaware PTA to help create and implement a plan to move your PTA back into compliance.
Unbelievable! It's one thing to say you don't agree with someone for doing something. But then you force them to take a position on it? And if they don't you will make sure they do? I say the Delaware PTA renames itself and kicks National PTA to the curb! Who do they think they are? What a bunch of arrogant jerks! It is the PARENT-Teacher Association. Not the "we got more money from Bill Gates so we are going to force our state PTAs to shut up about opt-out" Association. What a bunch of sell-outs! (Read more.)
 Teens, like the rest of us need to LOVE, to PLAY and to feel NECESSARY. As parents we all try as hard as we can to make our kids feel loved even though they don't always seem to receive our well-intentioned feelings that way, right? And, yes we love to see our kids laughing,having friends and having some play time. You agree with that one as well, right? Well I have a big concern about another equally important aspect of their young lives. As a clinical psychologist who works with teens all week long and as a mother and a friend I believe strongly that we often forget to make our kids feel necessary. Let me explain on several levels. First, we all need to wake up feeling that there are people who are counting on us and therefore have a reason to start the day. Two, it is no secret that individuals are less likely to feel irrelevant and even get depressed if they feel that they are needed and counted upon. And three, parents in their effort not to put too much on their teens' plate often give them little responsibility in the home and in the family. That is a problem. It is a big problem. There is always room on our kids' plates for a little side dish of helping out in the family. (
Read more.)
Give Late Blooming Children the Time They Need by Jessica Lahey on the New York Times site.
 "Relax," the psychologist and former teacher
Michele Borba reminds me when I email to fret about the swim coach's observation that Finn's "a sinker," or Ben's inability to ride a bike well into his tweens. "Einstein didn't say his first word until he was 4. Stop rubbernecking on the playground, Jess; childhood is not a race. Stay calm and support your child. If you are really worried, talk to his teacher or pediatrician, but kids bloom at their own rate, in their own sweet time."
She is right, of course. A big part of my job as a middle-school teacher was to prepare my students for the complex demands of high school.
 The world doesn't need obedient and compliant factory workers anymore. The world needs artists, creatives, hackers, and innovators. We're done with apathetically living out our lives in school and at our 9-to-5 jobs. We're sick of it. We're done with it.
So with this backdrop, we can now examine why C students are generally better off than their A and B counterparts. C students in this article are defined as Creative students, focusing more on their approach than their actual grades. A and B students are defined as the unquestioned status-quo. (
Read more.)
 There were two pivotal events that led me to become interested in a career in engineering education. First, at age nine in the third grade, my teacher asked me to tutor a classmate who was struggling with math, but whose family did not have the wherewithal to help her with third grade math nor the financial means to hire a tutor. I accepted the task with enthusiasm and some trepidation, and was successful in helping her improve her grades significantly. This was a most gratifying experience, giving me the opportunity to taste the joy of imparting knowledge to others and raising my self-confidence about my ability to teach.
 Leaders here began to notice trends about a decade ago that were bound to change the economic makeup of their 23,000-student
district.
Some blue-collar-job providers like Del Monte, Alcoa, and Union Carbide had left the city, and explosive growth in neighboring Portland, Ore., was trickling into Vancouver, driving up housing prices and making it harder for lower-income residents to find supportive services.
Rather than waiting to see how those changes would affect their schools, the district set out in 2008 to incorporate a bold vision into its strategic plan: Vancouver would create an "opportunity zone" where schools would focus on addressing the impact of poverty that can affect students' classroom performance. (
Read more.)
Gold!
There's gold in them thar schools!
Don't believe me?
Washington State has been ground zero in the fight over charter schools this past year, and misinformation abounds.
Over the last several years
Bill Gates and the
Waltons of Walmart
poured millions of dollars into Washington to establish charter schools in the state.
Why all the flurry of activity over charter schools in our state? It's the money, of course. (
Read more.)
by Marcie Maxwell on the HML Blog site.
 Thank you Madam chair and committee members. My name is Marcie Maxwell. My perspectives on this bill are wide - as a former Renton School Board Director in one of this state's most economically and ethnically diverse school districts; as a legislator who served here on your committee; as a Policy Advisor to the Governor on education who visited schools throughout our state and worked with a wide variety of stakeholders; as a parent and now grandparent of kids in our K-12 public schools; and as a 26 year real estate business owner who understands the importance of neighborhood public schools to families, home values and economic vitality. (Read more.)
 Schools and states have poured millions of dollars into overhauling teacher evaluation systems, rotating staff members and collecting and analyzing data, all with the goal of helping to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students and lift the performance of struggling pupils.
But in doing so, many schools may have overlooked a proven educational innovation: school integration.
 Parents are often guilty of helping their child a bit too much with their homework. Sometimes the homework battle can be made that little bit easier if you just tell your child what to do, or simply
do it for them. At least it's been done, you think.
Teachers have spoken of parents
writing their children's assignments, taking on the homework responsibility and
emailing teachers out of hours, or, as in one case, turning up at a teacher's home on the weekend to ask about the homework that was set.
News site.
 Rural schools face unique challenges that other schools don't, and for that reason many struggle with graduating students who are well-prepared to succeed beyond high school and help ignite the often already struggling economies in their rural communities.
But when it comes to policy recommendations and state and federal programs, rural schools are often overlooked despite the fact that 29 percent of all public schools in the U.S. are located in rural areas - more than in cities or towns, according to the
National Center for Education Statistics.
However, the idea of rural collaboratives - groups of rural school districts or groups of states with large numbers of rural schools that pool resources and research - could help schools tackle many of their challenges. (
Read more.)
Sponsor a Professional Colleague for membership in the Horace Mann League.
Click here to download the "Sponsor a Colleague" form.
Starting the week off with a cartoon.
A gift for your Community Leaders:
On the Art of Teaching
by Horace Mann.
The book,
On The Art of Teaching by Horace Mann has been presented to new teachers as a welcome gift by a number of schools district. For orders of 50 or more, the district's name is printed on the front cover.
Ordering Information
Cost per copy: $12.50
Orders of 50 to 99: $11.00
Orders of 100 or more: $10.00
Send orders to: (include name of district, P.O. #, and address)
The Horace Mann League of the USA
560 Rainier Lane
Port Ludlow, WA 98365
FAX (866) 389 0740
To
download the full or summary report,
To
view in an electronic magazine format,
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A Few Political Cartoons for the Week
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Horace Mann Prints
The 11 * 18 inch print is available for individual or bulk purchase. Individual prints are $4.00. Discount with orders of 50 or more.
For additional information about this or other prints, please
check here
.
 In 1840 Mann wrote On the Art of Teaching. Some of HML members present
On the Art of Teaching to new teachers as part of their orientation program. On the inside cover, some write a personal welcome message to the recipient. Other HML members present the book to school board members and parental organizations as a token of appreciation for becoming involved in their schools. The book cover can be designed with the organization's name. For more information, contact the HML (
Jack McKay)
All the past issues of the HML Posts are available for review and search purposes.
Finally, 7 links that may be of interest to you.
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About Us
The
Horace Mann League
of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.
Officers:
President: Dr. Christine Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
President-elect: Dr. Martha Bruckner, Superintendent, Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
Vice President: Dr. Eric King, Superintendent, (ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Past President: Dr. Charles Fowler, Exec. Director, Suburban School Administrators, Exeter, HN
Directors:
Dr. Ruben Alejandro, Supt. of Schools, Weslaco, TX
Dr. Laurie Barron, Supt. of Schools, Evergreen School District, Kalispell , MT
Dr. Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Mr. Jeffery Charbonneau, Science Coordinator, ESD 105 and Zillah HS, WA
Dr. Carol Choye, Instructor, (ret.) Superintendent, Scotch Plains Schools, NJ
Dr. Brent Clark, Executive Director, Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Dr. Ember Conley, Supt. of Schools, Park City, UT
Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Dr. James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Dr. Steven Ladd, Superintendent, (ret.) Elk Grove Unified School District, Elk Grove, CA
Dr. Kevin Maxwell, CEO, Prince George's County Schools, Upper Marlboro, MD
Dr. Stan Olson, President, Silverback Learning, (former supt. of Boise Schools, ID)
Dr. Steven Webb, Supt. of Schools, Vancouver School District, WA
Executive Director:
Dr. Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha,
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.
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