By Kristin

You don't have to have a lot of money to have a lot of sense about money.  Say your car is an older car.  If you have good financial sense, you take care of it.  You replace the brakes before you also need to replace the calipers because you know that will save you $500.  You take it into the shop at the first sign of malfunction, because you know that dealing with an early problem is cheaper than dealing with a big problem.  You make sure your tires have tread, because sliding on wet pavement and crashing is expensive.

People with poor money sense end up spending more because they're reluctant to spend.  They go from crisis to crisis, spending more than they can afford and more than they need to.  Our goverment at both the state and federal level is demonstrating a terrifying lack of money sense when it comes to early learning.

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By Tom White

For over half a century the Council of Chief State School
Officers (CCSO) has chosen a National Teacher of the Year from among the state
Teachers of the Year. After meeting the president and getting a large glass
apple, they get to spend the year traveling around the country representing the
teaching profession to large and small audiences.

It’s a huge honor. And even though there’s obviously no way
that anyone could select the very best teacher in the country, given the
enormity of the task, they always seem to find someone who really does
represent the best aspirations and qualities of all of us in the classroom.

This year, for the fourth time since the program started, a
Washington State teacher has been selected. Jeff Charbonneau, a science teacher
from Zillah, joins Andrea Peterson (2007), Johnnie T. Dennis (1970), and Elmon
S. Ousley (1963) as Washington recipients of the top honor.

And it couldn'y happen to a better guy. Jeff teaches chemistry in the same small,
Eastern Washington community from which he graduated, but he does a lot more than that. He designs
on-line college courses, teaches robotics, coaches the baseball team and runs
the drama program. He earned National Board Certification a few years ago and
is also his union’s co-president.

And you thought you were busy?

It’s always fun to see someone from the profession take
center stage for a while; reminding the world of just how unique and important this
profession is. And to have it happen to someone from our state makes it
especially gratifying.

Congratulations, Mr. Charbonneau! You do us proud.

By Mark

When some new idea surfaces in education, it gets acronymized. A general rule: if you want to make a project die, give it a clunky acronym. When the acronym makes a word, it can have subtle positive power (I think of CSTP which comes out as "See-Step"… I look, I move forward) or less subtle negative power (as in the HSPEs–"his pees"–with which everyone has to deal eventually, as opposed to the opposite pronoun which it is best to avoid.) With Common Core on the way the HSPE's expiration date is already set.

That rumination aside, the U.S. Department of Education has released details of its RESPECT initiative which is ostensibly aimed at cultivating teacher leadership, collaboration and potential in an effort to transform the profession and therefore schools themselves. RESPECT is an acronym/acrostic built of the phrases Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching. Cute, a touch contrived, but that's only if you're cynical (which I apparently am, this Saturday morning before coffee).

Let's look at the meat of it. The opening line, "Every child in America deserves a high quality education…" reminded me of the "Don't you care about kids?" question I used to get when I'd vocally oppose our administration's newest trendy initiative. My cynicism started to wear off around page four, and by the end, my gears were turning. 

I see some potential in this. My interest is piqued but any gelling optimism is necessarily cautious. Take a read if you haven't already, (it looks like a 30 page .pdf, but skip the propaganda at the beginning and start around section II…the photos, citations and text boxes bulk up the pagination, so it is actually a fairly quick read).

What do you think? Like my students, I always learn more from the conversation.

By Kristin

Last February a Senator from Tennessee proposed legislation that would reduce welfare benefits-  "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families" (TANF) – by 30% if children weren't performing in school. 

"Performing" was defined by one journalist as “Advancing from one grade to the next and receiving a score of proficient or advanced on required state examinations in the subject areas of mathematics and reading/language arts."

The bill is dead, considered too punitive, misdirected, and begging for judicial action to make it out of the Senate debate, but it raises some interesting issues because I think we all saw this coming.  Everyone is desperate to find a way to help struggling students perform better, and various sticks and carrots are being designed to make that happen.

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By Kristin

Are any of us really surprised by the news that 35 Atlanta Schools district officials and employees, including the Superintendent, were indicted because of cheating on state tests?

Of course we are.  In Washington State we're not so whipped about scores that we can imagine going into a windowless, locked room, being called the "chosen ones," and replacing wrong answers with right. I think it should stay that way.  The line between honorable and desperate isn't so thick we can assume teachers in Washington will never be told to raise their scores no matter what it took – wink wink.  In fact it's already happened.

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By Tom White

Chad Aldeman, an analyst and blogger for the Education
Sector, recently wrote about Washington’s teacher evaluation system. It’s an
interesting read. You can cut to the chase by looking at his blog post here,
or if you’re feeling ambitious, you can tackle the whole article here.

His basic point is that Washington State judges an
overwhelming majority of its teacher as satisfactory, regardless of their
students’ achievement. He calls this the “Evergreen Effect” which is a
reference to “The Widget Effect,” a phenomenon in which education policy-makers
treat teachers as interchangeable “widgets,” ignoring their relative
effectiveness.

I have several reactions to his thoughtful piece.

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