In 2050, most public schools in the U.S. will be serving poor kids. (Currently, a  little over half  of the kids in public schools are poor, but as everyone knows, economic inequity is rising fast.) Reformers will discover, again, that our administrators have been providing those vulnerable children with rigorous instruction on how to "do school" - answer multiple-choice questions that measure isolated skills in a narrow range of subjects (mostly reading and math) that school leaders are sure will be on standardized tests.  Researchers will uncover the disquieting fact that although test scores show that students can read, their schools don't require them to tackle full works of literature, speak in compound sentences, or express complex ideas in writing. Math will be presented as a series of recipes to somehow memorize, follow, and forget.  ( Read more. )

Superintendents leaving schools in 'unprecedented numbers'  by 

 Elizabeth Behrman on the TribLive site. 

The Superintendent Search Committee has narrowed down the field of applicants and you have made the first cut.  In preparation for the interview with the community and board search committees, you might want to do some homework.  

1. Investigate the school district via the local and regional newspapers, the school district's website and social media in order to get a perspective of the strengths, weaknesses, historical issues or challenges, and the school board members.  Based on your findings, develop a list of your own questions about the district. 

2. Compare your skills and qualifications to the job requirements. What is the school board and community looking for and how does your background match the qualifications? 

3. There is only one first impressions.  Dress in casual business, but if in doubt, error on the side of formal. 

4. Be aware of nonverbal behaviors, project confidence, smile, eye contact and a firm handshake. And, finally, be yourself.

5. Follow this link to 37 possible interview questions that you may be asked - formally or informally- during your visit.   When looking over the questions, think about why these questions might be asked.  For example, if they asked about your typical day, they may have heard the axiom - "tell me what you do each day and I tell you what you value."    ( The interview questions .)

A useful app called the Job Interview is at:  https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/successful-job-interview/id411666658?mt=8 

Good questions and excellent responses.

  

Children who don't go to playgroup fall behind at school   by  Cosima Marriner on the Sydney Morning Herald site.

Children who don't attend playgroup are twice as likely to be developmentally behind those  who do by the time they start school, new research shows.

Using data from the Australian Early Development Census, researchers from the Telethon Kids Institute found that, after controlling for demographic and socio-economic factors, children who didn't attend playgroup were more than twice as likely to struggle with literacy, numeracy, communications skills and general knowledge when they reach kindergarten.   This was a bigger difference than that observed in children's social skills and emotional maturity. "Given that playgroups involve play-based activities, the biggest impacts on children's development might be expected in their social skills," researchers said.  ( Read more. )

Six essential steps to present data persuasively by Adam Singer on the ClickZ site.

"The graphic method has considerable superiority for the exposition of statistical facts over the tabular. A heavy bank of figures is grievously wearisome to the eye, and the popular mind is as incapable of drawing any useful lessons from it as of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers." 

If you follow the following six steps, your next meeting with a boss or client will not only go smoother, you will have much higher odds of influencing that person to take the action you want.

1. Before you get into the data, set up the situation   Never just start presenting to a group by throwing charts and graphs on a screen.
2. Have one clear takeaway per slide, fix broken, confusing or misleading visualizations.  Never have a slide with more than one chart. 

3. Present data as simply & cleanly as possible (now let's see some good examples)

Just plot the data in a simple line graph with labels, sources and titles.  ( Read more.)

 

The California Charter School Fiasco   by Thomas Ultican on the Tultican site.

 

In 1992, California became the second US state to pass a charter school law. Today,  twelve percent  of all schools in California are charter schools with 9% of all state supported students attending charter schools. In these more than two decades; charter schools have enriched some people - have harmed public schools - have not improved publicly financed education - have increased segregation - have increased the cost of publicly financed education - have paid foreign based entities to operate schools in California - have generated massive fraud.

The California charter school experiment should be ended and these undemocratic publicly financed institutions should be carefully transitioned into the public schools system.  ( Read more.)

 

Three Trends for the Next 50 Years by  James Altucher on the Medium.com site.

CXO Advisory Group has analyzed the predictions of hundreds of pundits. Are the talking heads on TV right or wrong? You know, the ones who say Ebola will end the world, or the ones who said Enron was just having accounting problems.

It turns out the pundits' predictions are right only 47% of the time. I think they are being nice to the pundits. I would say pundits are right about 12% of the time. But I pulled that number out of a hat, and they did a statistical study, so who knows?

But there's a great way to evaluate whether a prediction is true or not. It involves a simple phrase we all know: "This time things will be different." We know that phrase is always wrong. We know that things stay the same.      (Read more.)

 

Charter Schools Are Suspending Kids More Than Other Schools, And That's A Problem  by   Rebecca Klein on the Huffington Post site.

Success Academy, a chain of high-performing charter schools, came under fire in October 2015 after revelations emerged that one of its principals had drawn up and distributed a  "got to go" list of problematic students. Nine of the 16 students on the list eventually left the school after facing continuous suspensions and harsh punishments. The incident sparked a federal complaint against the New York-based charter network, and fueled concerns from critics that it was pushing out its most vulnerable students.

Success Academy is just one example of a charter school network that has been dogged with controversies over methods of discipline. However, its practices raise questions about whether charter schools - institutions that are publicly funded but independently operated - punish students more harshly than traditional public schools.  A new report released Wednesday  from the UCLA Civil Rights Project seeks to answer these questions.  ( Read More.)

 Why Emotion Will Usually Outweigh Logic In The Audience's Brains on the HML Blog site.

Many people like to think that business is all about logic, and that customers behave having rationally analysed all available data, considered the various pros and cons of different courses of action and come to a logical conclusion.
Although it's very difficult for very logical people to understand (e.g. accountants, engineers, IT professionals), this could not be further from the truth.
The reality is that a high percentage of the time people make decisions based purely on emotion. They may well rationalise that decision afterwards by using logic, but the decision itself is made on emotion. Logic plays only a secondary role.
We don't realise this is happening, because rarely think about how our emotions. We just feel them.   (Read more.)

Beware of "turnaround"school districts by P.L. Thomas on the Post and Courier site.

In the next three months, an appeals court will rule in the landmark Vergara vs. California case, which could upend many union job protections for public schoolteachers in the state. If the appellate justices agree with L.A. County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, teachers will no longer get tenure after only two years in the classroom, and they will no longer be laid off on the basis of "last in, first out," the so-called LIFO rule that forces out new teachers regardless of how well they are doing their jobs. In 2014 Treu ruled that these and other employment practices endanger students' constitutional right to an education.   Vergara will set California law, but it is also a national test case for what has become a central strategy for improving teacher quality in America: Sending ineffective educators packing.   When it comes to teachers, America has an unhealthy fixation on the extremes: the "hero" and the "zero."  ( Read more. )

  

"When we look at education as if it were a consumer good that we purchase to get something else, we're thinking of it as a private benefit rather than a public good," said Burns, who earned the Distinguished Research in Teacher Education Award from the Association of Teacher Educators due to his work on "Countering the Essentialized Discourse of Teacher Education." The work was published recently in the  Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education.

According to the study, policy makers have instituted a wave of educational standards and increased standardized testing across the board since the 1970s, leaving little room for students and teachers to do anything other than follow prescribed lessons that have reframed education as workforce training.  ( Read more.)

The sound is the thud of a hammer pounding the final nails in the coffin of our state's free and equitable public education system.

We already know that the Governor is strongly in support of ESAs after going on record during her State of the State Speech stating she supported the legislation 100% and would sign it as soon as it reached her desk.

This voucher legislation will begin the final dismantling of our schools. By providing some parents with the ability to use public funds to support their child's private or home-school education, our state will  begin the descent down the slippery slope towards the inevitable "vouchers for all"-the true aim of the power brokers behind these bills.  ( Read more.)

Holding Teacher Preparation Accountable: A Review of Claims and Evidence    by  Marilyn Cochran-Smith ,  Rebecca Stern ,  Juan Gabriel Sánchez ,  Andrew Miller ,  Elizabeth Stringer Keefe ,  M. Beatriz Fernández ,  Wen-Chia Chang ,  Molly Cummings Carney ,  Stephani Burton ,  Megina Baker on the NEPC site.

The World in 2025: 8 Predictions for the Next 10 Years   by Peter Diamandis on the Singularity Hub site.

I n 2025, in accordance with Moore's Law, we'll see an acceleration in the rate of change as we move closer to a world of true abundance. Here are eight areas where we'll see extraordinary transformation in the next decade: 

1. A $1,000 Human Brain.   In 2025, $1,000 should buy you a computer able to calculate at 10^16 cycles per second (10,000 trillion cycles per second), the equivalent processing speed of the human brain.
2. A Trillion-Sensor Economy.   The Internet of Everything describes the networked connections between devices, people, processes and data. 
3. Perfect Knowledge.   We're heading towards a world of perfect knowledge. 
4. 8 Billion Hyper-Connected People.   Facebook (Internet.org), SpaceX, Google (Project Loon), Qualcomm and Virgin (OneWeb) are planning to provide global connectivity to every human on Earth at speeds exceeding one megabit per second.
5. Disruption of Healthcare.   Existing healthcare institutions will be crushed as new business models with better and more efficient care emerge. 
6. Augmented and Virtual Reality.   The screen as we know it - on your phone, your computer and your TV - will disappear and be replaced by eyewear. 
7. Early Days of JARVIS.   Artificial intelligence research will make strides in the next decade. 
8. Blockchain.   The real innovation is the blockchain itself, a protocol that allows for secure, direct (without a middleman), digital transfers of value and assets (think money, contracts, stocks, IP). 
Bottom Line: We Live in the Most Exciting Time Ever.   We are living toward incredible times where the only constant is change, and the rate of change is increasing.  ( Read the details. )