Thanks so much for visiting me here on my newly revised website. Along with an altogether new look, the changes allow me to more readily offer you timely, informative articles, websites to visit, and even quotes to use in your teaching. There’s also, of course, my free, monthly The School-Wise Newsletter, keeping readers up-to-date on all that’s happening in education.
Meanwhile, I’m hoping you’ll check out my blog from time-to-time and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Be sure to visit me on examiner.com, too, where you’ll find numerous articles on education, parenting, and family life. You’ll also find me at bizymoms and ezinearticles.
To contact me, simply click here. You’ll hear back from me right away—or close to it. Promise.
20/05/2013 | No Comments »
- “Kids are in school for six hours a day. The rest of the time, they’re at home. And unless parents work in concert with their children’s teachers, their children will never be able to reach their true potential. Over the summer, it’s entirely possible for a kid, if that kid does not read, to drop as much as half a year in reading ability. There are a million ways in which parents could be doing a better job with their children, and we don’t talk about that.” ~ Brook Berger, U.S. News & World Report
- “The schools are not failing our students. Bad parenting is failing our schools. There is a reason why predominantly low socioeconomic schools do poorly. It is not because they all have bad teachers. I am sick of the phrase ‘failing schools.’ I could send my children to the school with the lowest test scores, and they would still do fine because they have parents who care and are involved. How do you expect teachers to fix 18 hours of crap with five to six hours of education? Stop saying failing schools and start a conversation about what to do with failing parents.” ~ McKinley Insurance Services
- “Many people might assume that the spelling whizzes [National Spelling Bee finalists] have a genetic advantage, but Ms. Duckwork [University of Pennsylvania psych professor] found a more important trait: tenacity. The finalists are willing to forgo the immediate gratification of watching TV or texting friends, so they can spend hours and do the tedious and merciless grunt work. They write out thousands of flashcards with words and definitions and memorize them. It is an unusual child who can do this while being constantly bombarded by popular culture’s seductive images. But it also takes strong parents willing to guide the child and demand hours of difficult work.” ~ Warren Kozak, Wall Street Journal
Tags: Parenting, Spelling Bee Prep, The Fallacy of Failing Schools, The Parent-School Connection
Posted in Quotable Quotes
16/05/2013 | No Comments »
- Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget boosts Education Department funding to $71.2 billion in a $3.8 trillion budget. That’s $3.1 billion more than it received in 2012–despite the sequester.
- Although Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicted that the Common Core Standards assessments–set to be given starting in 2014-15–would be “an absolute game changer” and were funded to the tune of $360 million. Comes news, though, that “design constraints, money, and timing” make that prediction almost moot.
- One million students across the country will participate in the first large-scale trial of the Common Core Smarter Balance Assessments–an online-only test that measures academic growth via adaptive questions. The pilot, though, will lack the adaptive feature and grades won’t be issued.
- 26 states have now committed to considering the new 71-page Next Generation Science Standards intended to stem science ignorance, standardize science education, and raise the number of grads who choose STEM majors.
- The 16 Race to the Top-District winners received $400 million in federal grants aimed at personalized learning, which includes individual plans for students, personalized learning coaches for teachers, and data dashboards to store all student data.
Tags: Arne Duncan, Common Core Standards Push Back, Next Generation Science Standards, Obama's Fiscal 2014 budget, Race to the Top-D, Science education, Smarter Balance Assessments, U.S. Education Department Funding
Posted in In The News
