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Welcome to the HML POST
(Editorials and research articles are selected by
Jack McKay, Executive director of the HML.
Topics are selected to provoke a discussion about the importance of strong public schools. McKay is Professor Emeritus from the University of Nebraska-Omaha in the Department of Educational Administration and a former superintendent in Washington state.) Feedback is always appreciated.
The HML website, Click
here.
The HML Flipboard magazine, Click
here to read and follow more articles.
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The HML Horace Mann Quotes on Pinterest, Click
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What does it take to do more with less? How can you do better than before, or better than others? How do you turn losses into wins, or near-bankruptcy into strong profitability, or abject failure into stellar success?
The power of uplift enables any organization to do more with less, beat the competition, and perform better than ever. Leaders who uplift their employees' passions, intellects, and commitments produce remarkable results. Andy Hargreaves is selected to receive of the Horace Mann League "Outstanding Friend of Public Education" Award for 2016.
Gene Glass is a Research Professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Regents' Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. Having made substantial contributions to education statistics and educational policy research, his work as a pioneer of meta-analysis has been recognized as one of 40 scholarly contributions that have changed psychology. As past president of the American Educational Research Association and the author of more than a dozen books and nearly two hundred scholarly articles, Dr. Glass now advocates for the expansion of open access to scholarship through free, online publications. Gene Glass is selected to receive the Horace Mann League's "Outstanding Public Educator" award for 2016.
Both Glass and Hargreaves will be honored at the Annual Meeting of the Horace Mann League on Friday, February 12, 2016, held in Phoenix.
Dr. David Berliner, the Regents' Professor Emeritus and former dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University, awards the 2014 Bunkum Awards for Shoddy Education Research.
 As schools reopen this fall, I thought it would be interesting to put together a brief history of education in the United States. One thing that stands out to me is that education is never either an independent force in American society or a principle agent for social change. It is a reflection of the basic debates talking place in the broader society.
During the colonial era literacy was to promote religious orthodoxy. In the revolutionary era when colonials overthrew monarchy and established a new republic leaders were concerned with building an educated citizenry, though their vision was limited to White male property-holders. In the early industrial era the expansion of public education was a response to the transformation of society from agricultural to industrial and urban. In this era and in the age of mass Eastern and Southern European immigration from 1880 to 1924 education was also about the assimilation or Americanization of new groups. (
Read more.)
Bad students often hate school.
Not exactly shocking, I know.
But perhaps more surprising is the pattern of low, sloppy or inconsistent academic achievement by so many of those adults who consider themselves education reformers, particularly
corporate school reformers
.
Our ideas of school are certainly formed during our years in it. Those working so diligently
to destroy the public school system
and
reshape it to resemble the business model
are so often people who didn't fit in. They earned low grades or only excelled in subjects they really liked. Perhaps school failed them or perhaps they failed school. There's no way to know for sure since school records are almost always kept private. But details do trickle through and display a clear pattern - a pattern that certainly gives the appearance of an ulterior motive. (
Read more.)
 Old-line independent schools scramble for new ways to fill seats, make money.
Catholic schools like this one have exceptional records of success; almost all of their graduates do, in fact, go on to college. But that hasn't been enough to keep them from hemorrhaging students.
 The debate over public schools in Arkansas has been, for decades, ongoing and often fraught. In 1957, the Arkansas school year began with white mobs viciously attacking nine black teenagers as they attempted to desegregate Little Rock's Central High following Brown vs. Board of Education
, shining a national spotlight on the state and forcing President Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne Division. This past January, nearly 60 years after Arkansas' first desegregation efforts, the state board of education dissolved Little Rock's democratically elected local school board, the most racially inclusive and representative of its majority-black constituency in nearly a decade. (Read more.)
 Twelve community activists on the south side of Chicago are capturing national attention by putting their health on the line to save their school. It is their third week of a hunger strike designed to force Chicago's Rahm Emanuel to keep Dyett High School open.
Dyett serves the community of Bronzeville on Chicago's south side. Bronzeville was the cultural hub for African Americans who fled the south during the Great Migration. The school's significance in the community runs deep.
The struggle to save the school is part of the growing pushback against neighborhood school closures both within and beyond Chicago-closures that slam poor communities who find beloved institutions shuttered and yanked away. In just one evening, (
Read more.)
 Summertime is winding down and vacations are coming to an end, signaling that back-to-school time is here. It's a time that many children eagerly anticipate - catching up with old friends and making new ones, and settling into a new daily routine. Parents and children alike scan newspapers and websites looking for sales on a multitude of school supplies and the latest clothing fads and essentials. This edition of Facts for Features
highlights the many statistics associated with the return to classrooms by our nation's students and teachers.
78 million:
The number of children and adults enrolled in school throughout the country in October 2013 - from nursery school to college. They comprised 25.9 percent of the entire population age 3 and older. (Read more.)
Remember when the biggest test in kindergarten was not crying on the first day? Remember when kindergarten teachers had time to let kids play; to observe them and get to know their little quirks and personalities? Remember Robert Fulgham's words on that once omnipresent poster claiming Everything You Need to Know You Learned in Kindergarten? (
Read more.)
 A new law making vaccinations mandatory has sparked an uptick in the number of parents exploring the home school option.
With the passage of a new law this summer mandating vaccines for schoolkids in
California, home school advocates and organizations say they are seeing surging interest in off-campus education options that would exempt them from the requirement.
The controversial mandate, co-authored by state Senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician backed by the California Medical Association, requires any student in public or private school to have 10 vaccinations as an attendance requirement, with some exceptions for medical conditions.
En route to passage, the proposal sparked scathing controversy on both sides of the issue, with opponents (wearing red to symbolize children who have been harmed by vaccines and often with their own kids in tow) regularly flooding hearings at the state capitol to protest. (
Read more.)
 Last year, Microsoft reported making a record profit of $23 billion on $70 billion in sales. Had Microsoft paid their fair share of State taxes, they would have paid 1.5 Percent times $70 billion - or one billion dollars in State taxes. This still would have left Microsoft a record profit of $22 billion - and they could have deducted the one billion in State taxes from their federal taxes. Instead, despite $23 billion in record profits, Microsoft paid next to nothing in State taxes! (Read more.)
 Charter schools will be accountable when they are just as transparent as public schools. Now it might happen.
The recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Washington state that charter schools are unconstitutional because they aren't really public schools has sent advocates for these schools into a fit. But their often over-the-top criticisms of the decision are reflective of what is most often misunderstood about the charter school sector and what that industry has come to represent in the political debate about public schools.
First, about the ruling: As Emma Brown of
the Washington Post reports, "Washington state's Supreme Court has become the first in the nation to decide that taxpayer-funded charter schools are unconstitutional, reasoning that charters are not truly public schools because they aren't governed by elected boards and therefore not accountable to voters." (
Read more.)
 Washington state's Supreme Court has become the first in the nation to decide that taxpayer-funded charter schools are unconstitutional, reasoning that charters are not truly public schools because they aren't governed by elected boards and therefore not accountable to voters.
The
opinion, released Friday, weeks after the school year began, breaks with high courts in several other states that had faced similar cases challenging charter schools' legality. It means the future is uncertain for the state's nine charter schools and the 1,200 students who attend them.
But the ruling also highlights a question that has
spurred much debate in education circles as charter schools - which are funded with taxpayer dollars, but run by independent organizations - have expanded rapidly during the past two decades: What makes a public school public? (
Read more.)
 Teachers work for free in a school district bled by charter schools and state government neglect.
As schools across Pennsylvania open their doors for the new school year, there's one district in the state where teachers will be hard at work even though they're not likely to get paid.
The teachers are actually already on the job, having reported for work a week early as originally expected. But when the district's administration announced it could not meet a scheduled payroll on September 9, a week after classes start, the teachers - along with janitors, nurses, and other school personnel - held an impromptu meeting and voted to temporarily forego pay.
The teachers are employed by the financially strapped school district of Chester Upland, located about 20 miles west of Philadelphia. Years of deliberate under-funding by the state, coupled with policies that favor the rapid expansion of publicly funded but privately operated charter schools, are bleeding the district. (
Read more.)
 Something unusual happened in Washington state late last week. Charter schools came out on the losing end of a lawsuit. In fact, charter schools, as they are currently defined, funded and organized, were actually ruled unconstitutional by that state's Supreme Court. And the basis of that decision was surprisingly simple. The charter school law that narrowly passed Washington in 2012 was found to be in violation of the state's constitution precisely because charter schools have private boards.
(
Read more.
)
 The charter school movement has been expelled from Washington state's public education system, with a Supreme Court ruling late Friday that the privately run schools are not public schools under the state's constitution. Meanwhile, the quick fix for that sizeable hurdle sought by the state's charter school proponents-a special legislative session-does not appear likely because Washington's public education sector is embroiled in more controversial and larger battles.
 Christians are urging Christian parents to take their children out of public schools because Common Core, a new curriculum intended to standardize what children learn nationwide, is "progressive" brainwashing.
Chaplain E. Ray Moore, who heads an effort called the "Exodus Mandate," told Christian website
WorldNetDaily
on Monday that rather than try and reform public schools, Christians should simply drop out of the system.
"We don't believe that government, even at the state level, has any role in K-12 education, and the Scriptures are clear and explicit on this. There's no wiggle room," he told WND. (Read more.)
Remember Robert Fulgham's words on that once omnipresent poster claiming Everything You Need to Know You Learned in Kindergarten?
In case you've forgotten, here are few of the things kids used to learn:
- Share everything.
- Play fair.
- Don't hit people.
- Put things back where you found them.
- Clean up your own mess.
- Don't take things that aren't yours.
- Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
- Wash your hands before you eat.
- Live a balanced life.
- Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
- Take a nap every afternoon.
- When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
- Be aware of wonder.
 In America, education was long seen as the great equalizer, but that has become mostly myth. So, over the past decade, there has been a vigorous effort to fortify and rebuild our schools, and in this there is a recognition that we have failed our children, especially those living in poverty, those for whom education could - and should - be transformational. From Chicago to New Orleans, school reform has been engineered by the well heeled and well connected - from hedge fund managers to corporate heads to directors of foundations - who believe that with the right kind of teachers and pedagogy, and with a business-like administration, schooling can trump the daily burdens and indignities of growing up poor. "No excuses" has become the rallying cry of the reformers. (Read more.)
A gift for your New Teachers: 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,
-------------------------------------------
A Few Political Cartoons for the Week
-------------------------------------
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. Charles Fowler, Exec. Director, Suburban School Administrators, Exeter, HN
President-elect: Dr. Christine Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
Vice President: Dr. Martha Bruckner, Superintendent, Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
1st Past President: Mr. Gary Marx, President for Public Outreach, Vienna, VA
2nd Past President: Dr. Joe Hairston, President, Vision Unlimited, Reisterstown, MD
Directors:
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. Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Dr. James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Dr. Eric King, Superintendent, (ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Dr. Steven Ladd, Superintendent, (ret.) Elk Grove Unified School District, Elk Grove, CA
Dr. Barry Lynn, Exec. Dir., Americans United, Washington, DC
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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Today's kindergarteners are tested more than most of us were in high school.
