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Really nice STEM Tumblr.
ACT NOW: Tell President Obama to Save Pell Grant Funding
Students struggling to afford higher education are at risk of being among the first victims of Washington’s current budget battle.
One GOP leader recently called Pell Grants “the welfare of the 21st century.” Another top Republican called this critical financial-aid program “unsustainable” and blamed it for the skyrocketing cost of college — despite both empirical evidence and common sense.
Poor and working-class students have already contributed to deficit reduction. With the elimination of the summer Pell program earlier this year, they “contributed” $4 billion per year to debt reduction. Enough is enough!
We need to make it clear to President Obama that protecting Pell Grant funding is non-negotiable. He needs to know that we must not sacrifice even a single dollar of support for hard-working, poor and working-class students.
Follow, and do likewise.
“Poverty is a more powerful influence on test scores than value added by teachers and schools.” University of Texas physics Prof. Michael Marden’s visualization of the correlation between low SAT scores, poverty, and race.
via visualturn:
This is such a crucial point that is completely ignored by all the education reformers who say that everything would be fine if we could just fire all those bad teachers.
“What, exactly, is the Guido?”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398.html
via TAP, “California Prison Academy: Better Than a Harvard Degree”:
As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he’s not even the highest paid.
Sure, Harvard grads working in the private sector get bonuses, too, but only if they’re good at what they do. Prison guards receive a $1,560 “fitness” bonus just for getting an annual check-up.
Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they’re often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they’re too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There’s no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.
This grave injustice against Harvard grads MUST NOT STAND. DOWN WITH CALIFORNIA PRISON GUARDS.
(nb: There probably is a really interesting discussion to be had about Cailfornia’s prison-industrial complex, employment rates, and the work situation of prison guards. Too bad that discussion wasn’t even hinted at. WEEP FOR THE HARVARD GRADS.)
THere are a lot of things wrong with this piece, for sure, but its the underlying assumption, that Harvard grads are somehow providing more worth to society than prison guards, that’s the most troubling.
Because, honestly, why shouldn’t prison guards make a lot of money? It’s not a particularly pleasant or rewarding job, and yet, as long as our society insists on locking up every drug offender (from the lower economic classes, anyway) it can find, it’s a necessary one.
“Just as big a danger, however, is the company’s near-total reliance on Title IV. In 2010, Kaplan University reported that 91.7 percent of its revenue came from Title IV loans, higher than the 90 percent ceiling. (The industry leader, Apollo, has almost identical figures.) Kaplan avoided exceeding federal limits only because of “temporary relief” provided by 2008 legislation, according to an SEC filing. The figure would have been slightly higher, except The Post Co. itself lent $18 million to students. Initially it charged them a 15 percent interest rate, according to congressional investigators. The Post Co. said that in the summer of 2010 it cut the rate to 6.8 percent for new and existing loans.”
The trials of Kaplan Higher Ed and the education of The Washington Post Co. - The Washington Post
This whole story is pretty amazing, but that last part really stands out. How a company can say that they are doing God’s work by providing opportunity to low-income students, and then charge them a 15 percent loan rate, is beyond me.
Too Cool for School
Amidst all the fuss of new Tumblrs (Britney! Beasties! State!) over the past few days, we’d like to point another, ongoing effort that’s really great: Tumblr Teachers. The brainchild of Girl with a Lesson Plan, Tumblr Teachers is a self-reported listing of the hundreds of teachers and education students who use Tumblr every day, and as a listing of great Tumblrs in that field it’s second to none. Check it out, and if Tumblr should be on the list, submit it here!
“We received pies this year, two from the same person. We didn’t take her, but we ate the pies.”
F-Bombs and ‘Jorts’: Craziest Reasons Kids Were Not Accepted into College - The Daily Beast
The latest from the Mrs.
Elizabeth Green: Building a Better Teacher
Can educators be educated about how to educate?
The New York Times Magazine || March 2, 2011
This was actually March 2, 2010, and it’s really, really great. This and the Diane Ravitch NYRP piece on charter schools were the best things written about education last year.
(via thenewrepublic)
Teach for America is giving its teachers mini-headsets so that they can get a classroom assist when the going gets tough. Pretend we made a football joke.
Teachers-in-training will have their very own personal angel to discreetly coach them through new lesson plans, with the same ear-bud wiring that feeds live information to NFL coaches. Teach for America is hoping that private coaching will speed up the painstakingly slow process of teacher development, allowing teachers to get both tailored instruction and the experience of being at the head of the classroom, without risking a disaster for students.
“Once a teacher understands what it feels like to be successful, it takes root immediately,” Monica Jordan, coordinator of teacher professional development in Memphis City Schools,told Education Week.
The experimental group of teachers is willing, if hesitant. “I thought, what if they say something in my ear and I lose my train of thought?” said algebra teacher Cynthia Law. “And then I thought, so what if I lose my train of thought, I’ll figure it out,” Law continued, confidently, “I’m not a play-it-safe person. I’m willing for my kids’ sake to look foolish.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded technology is currently just used with an expert companion in a nearby room, but could easily be done from anywhere in the world.
Conceivably, the technology could allow even more exciting (and controversial) applications. For instance, Indian PhDs could one day be remote coaching AP calculus teachers, especially in cash-strapped schools forced to fill classes with unprepared teachers. This is especially likely since American educators have long wanted to use the successful math curricula of South Asian countries but lack the proper training.
Honestly, I don’t think they should be able to do this in the NFL either; it’s totally cheating.
