Richard Dawkins’ Candid Opinion On Religion And Truth
Posted on January 5, 2012 in Videos
How Forbes Gets Poverty Wrong
Posted on January 4, 2012 in Articles
The Article: An Ode to a ‘Poor Black Kid’ I Never Knew: How Forbes Gets Poverty Wrong
The Text: One of the best parts about being an educator’s son is getting to hear all the crazy things your parent has to deal with courtesy of the “bad kids.” I was a relatively mild-mannered student, thanks in large part to the fact that my mother, a teacher turned school administrator, had raised me to be. Even when she wasn’t verbally doling out conduct lessons, I saw how an interaction with a mean or violent student would leave her frazzled at the end of a long day, and I knew I never wanted to inflict the same kind of torment on anyone else’s mom or dad. Nevertheless, a gut instinct of youthful rebellion underpinned by hip-hop and Propagandhi always led me to inquire about the wild kids at my mom’s schools, the ones who didn’t just listen to punk, but who acted it as well.
It was in pursuit of one of these vicarious thrills that I asked my mom why she was so upset one day when I was about 12 years old. “Just something from today with a student,” she said. I pestered her for more details, and she told me the story. A kid at her school—a primarily low-income, high-minority middle school serving sixth- through eighth-graders—was acting out. His outbursts were not normal, especially considering how young he was: He was rude, aggressive, destructive, foulmouthed, so angry. I remember my mom saying she was amazed at how much rage could fit into such a tiny body.
At first, the student’s teachers tried putting him in timeout. When that didn’t work, they escalated to trips to the principal’s office. When those didn’t work, he got detention after school. And when that didn’t work either, they started sending him home. But when he’d return from a couple of days at home and immediately start tearing his classrooms apart, the suspensions grew to a week, two weeks.
Once Burned, Twice Shunned
Posted on January 4, 2012 in Videos
Sun of a Gun by Oh Land off of Oh Land.
What America Can Learn From Finland’s Education System
Posted on January 3, 2012 in Articles
The Article: Finnish Education Safety Net Is Wide, Strong by Erin Richards in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.
The Text: If it weren’t tucked into a forest more than 4,000 miles from Wisconsin, Vesala Comprehensive School could stand in for a public school in Milwaukee.
The industrial-looking building from the 1960s serves 365 students, most of whom live in nearby public housing projects. More than half come from single-parent households, and 70% are low-income. Twenty-two percent qualify for special-education services.
About 30% are immigrants or students who speak a first language other than the official languages of Finnish and Swedish.
But unlike in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, where the achievement level of a school can generally be predicted by its ZIP code and student poverty rate, Vesala is part of a national system where the performance gap between the lowest and highest achieving students is one of the narrowest among developed countries, according to a respected international exam.
Contrast that with Wisconsin, where the achievement gap between the lowest performing schools in Milwaukee and the average school in the state – or the average school in the suburbs – is dramatic.
Finland’s homogenous population and generous welfare system help contribute to its high overall student achievement. But some schools around Helsinki do serve a more diverse population of students in economically depressed communities. When faced with some of the same challenges as low-income schools in America, the Finnish system seems to redouble its efforts to make sure resources are shared and teachers and staff have the ability to work with small groups of students.
