Cathleen Black Is Out as City Schools Chancellor

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/cathie-black-is-out-as-chancellor/?emc=na

Cathleen Black Is Out as City Schools Chancellor was an article in the New York Times.  It was very interesting to read because we were talking about the chancellor of Washington D.C. and about how educators need to be there for the students and not for themselves in class this week.  Cathleen Black was the chancellor of the New York Schools and is being replaced by Joel I. Klein.  It seems to me from this article that Black wasn’t a very good chancellor.  She had offended many people throughout her work.  Her popularity was down to 17 percent when she was done.  She also didn’t have much experience in the area of education.  In contrast, Klein, the man that is replacing her, has done a lot with education.  He has attended public meetings about schools, has been an educator for many of years and has many other qualifications.  I thought it was interesting to read in the article that Black was more about herself and not for the students.  It said that she was asked how she felt and she said that she felt good.  I’m not sure how she can feel good knowing that she wasn’t doing a very good job.  It kind of shows where her priorities were.  Overall, it was an excellent article and I recommend others to read it like some one recommended it to me.   

studentsfirst.org

      We were asked in class to write about the website studentsfirst.org.  This is a non-profit organization.  It’s a movement to transform education.  Also, this site wants people to come together to save great teachers because usually the teachers that are the last ones hired are the first ones to leave, even if they are great. The site is led by Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of Washington D.C.  Here is the mission of the website, “Our mission is to build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform, so that America has the best education system in the world.”  I think that this is a great thing that Rhee is doing.  We need more people like the ones that are associated with this site if we want our education system to improve.  

Group 6 Presentation

            Group 6 presentation talked about chapter 9.  This chapter was about governance, finance, choices and how schools are funded.  They touched on school funding sources, school districts, school boards, and the jobs of the superintendent and principal. They did a great job! The information that they talked about was very interesting.  I liked how they gave us information other then the stuff that was just in the book.  I know the basics on how schools are funded, but it was nice to learn more about it.  Since I want to become a teacher, it is essential to know this stuff.  The videos that this group showed us was an excellent way to reinforce the information. Overall, I thought this group did a great job!

Waiting for Superman

            Today in class we finished watching the movie Waiting for Superman.  It was partially about charter schools in Washington D.C. and about the education system in the United States.  There were so many interesting points in this film.  Here is a bunch of the statistics that the film provided that I thought was interesting.  Since 1971, reading and math scores have flat lined.  40% of students that don’t graduate on time from a school are known as dropout factories and there are about 2,000 factories in the United States.  It costs 132,000 dollars to send a person to prison for four years and 107,900 to send a student to a private school.  Our country could have sent them to a private school for less cost.  Also, in almost everything, the U.S. is far behind other developing countries.  Tenure isn’t allowing schools to get ride of the bad teachers in schools.  This is known as passing the lemons because schools can’t get rid of their bad teachers so they just pass them around from school to school.  

We then were asked in class what affected us the most in the video.  I said that it was hard to see such young students so sad when they weren’t called for the lottery in charter schools.  These students are so excited to learn but your educational system isn’t allowing many of them too learn.  There are many factors that contribute to this but one of them is because our schools haven’t been changing while the world is.  Taken as a whole, this movie was really great and I’m really thankful that we got to watch it in class.

Chapter 8 Presentation

In class, the next group presented chapter eight, The Organization of American Schools.  There were many topics in the chapter that they covered.  For example, what is a school, school personnel and the physical plant.  I really thought it was interesting to learn about the different kinds of schools and the pros and cons to each.  The videos did an immense job pulling the information together for a better understanding.  The group also talked about some of the characteristics that are needed in order to have an effective school. Overall, this group did a great job presenting chapter eight in our text.

How was my school organized?

How was my high school organized?  First off, I went to Eden Valley- Watkins High School.  We went to school 5 days a week and had school from 8:30a.m.too 3:12 p.m.  I wish that our school would have gone year around but it didn’t.  There are so many benefits if our schools would go year around.  This originated from when most kids lived on farms and their parents needed them in the summer.  We aren’t like that anymore, three months is to long for a summer break.  My junior high and senior high school students were in the same building.  So, many of the teachers that taught junior high students also had classes that were for the senior high students.  Block scheduling was not in our school and I wish that it had been.  I really liked my school but I wish that there were some changes.  For example, the block scheduling would have been a great idea, school going year around, and our school was a little larger.  I know that the last example a person can’t fix, but our school would have been able to offer more classes in different areas.  There are some other little things I would like to change but the ones that I listed were the more important to me. 

Education Nation- Chapter 5

Chapter five in Education Nation, is called the Co-Teaching Edge. It mainly talks about how teachers, experts and parents need to work together as coeducators.  Yes, it’s true that teachers are a very important factor in a child’s education but parents are also just as important.  Here are the five main points that I feel were the most important in Chapter five.

1.                            “Teachers are prisoners of time.”  Our system doesn’t allow teachers to learn new teaching styles that are needed for the twenty-first century. 

2.                            Co-teaching with other subjects can be very effective.  The book used the example of using opera to help students write. 

3.                            Parents need to become involved in their students academics.  They’re the third leg of a three legged stool.  Where one leg is the teachers and the other leg are students. 

4.                            The internet should link school and home.  So parents know what’s going on at school.  Teachers can post information about assignments and other activities on the internet for parents and students.

5.                            Superintendents are important in schools.  Those that are effective are the ones that are true leaders of their schools. 

“The Co-Teaching Edge is about forming closer partnerships between the adults in children’s lives: their teachers, parents, caregivers, and others in the community.”