Philosophy Without A Home

Reinvestment I was speaking with a person the other day and she mentioned a time when she was in front of a school board laying out a budget for technology. When she finished one of the board members asked her if she would be be back in three years or so asking for more money. "Of course!" she said, "In your business do you buy computers and networking equipment once and forget about it? No, you buy it then in a few years you upgrade some of it then buy some more. It's and on going process." Not an exact quote, but never mind the use of quotation marks, the point is the same. Why would anyone in their right mind think schools are any different than businesses in this matter. Actually the trend lately is to try and make schools businesses. People with no training what-so-ever are running some of the largest school districts in the country. Time and again I hear people complain about the amount of money teachers make and the lack of results they have to show f

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Business model for Education I’ve read “ The World is Flat ” by Terry Friedman, and next on my list is “ Disrupting Class; How Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns ” by Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson and Michael Horn . I’ve listened to and argued with those who think education is failing. I’ve watched the respect for the education profession sink to new lows. I’ve seen education move from educators researching how students learn and attempting to meet those needs to schools giving themselves ulcers trying to pass some silly test. I once even had a principal blanch when I told her I

Back to Education After being out of work for so long it is great to be earning money again. Around Thanksgiving I started working at a temporary Christmas store then switched to a temporary office job with a construction company, finally in January I secured a permanent job with a school district. The differences are startling. The retail work of course was a lot of standing around and helping individual, with the occasional cashier work thrown in, I suspect I overcharged someone $700, because my boss made sure I was put on bagging and not the cash register after the first week. No real big deal the person got her money back and I didn't get fired. At the office I was consulted many times on computer and basic desktop publishing issues. As a relative computer expert I showed the full time employees a few tricks and tips. The permanent employees were convinced that their office was 20 years behind in most technology. They were convinced that if the owners would loosen up the purse

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Science June 10, 2008 – 6:06 am by Brendan Another month another report telling us how bad our students our. The National Center for Education Statistics has released it report on the condition of Science Literacy in the United States. The National Science Teachers Association has reviewed the report. It is what you expected, the U.S. Is below average in science literacy. Of course most of this information was taken from the Program for International Student Assessment ( PISA ), which was last taken in 2006 and will again be taken in 2009, where the focus will be on Reading. What you don’t expect to

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Real Science vs Creationism August 14, 2008 – 12:00 pm by Brendan I’ve written about it before, but I’m sure there will always be a controversy about teaching the origins of man . Personally, I don’t understand the problem with being descendants of monkeys. When my wife calls me a slob I can just point to my ancestors and say, “Well at least I don’t fling poo.” Be that as it may a guy by the name of Charles Darwin noticed that many animals on the secluded isle of Canary were very much different than their mainland relatives. Thus the idea for evolution began. Almost 200 years later this theory of evolu

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Real World Math Doesn’t Work May 2, 2008 – 6:12 am by Brendan According to this article research done at Ohio State University , using real world examples of mathematics in action hurts more than it helps. To tell the truth I can understand where this might come from. It is a very messy business extracting math concepts from the math we use in the real world. My favorite textbook for teaching Mathematics is Connected Math , written by Michigan State University . Connected Math is a research based math program, meaning they spent money and time learning how children learn and retain math concepts and th

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Rising Test Scores July 22, 2008 – 5:06 am by Brendan Would you complain if your child finally passed the state standardized tests? Public schools across New York have shown an increase in the percentage of children who have figured out how to pass standardized tests. Some folks of course are claiming it a huge success while others are looking for any excuse to call it a fluke . Richard Mills, New York state education commissioner, finds the results encouraging and exciting. He also claims the gains are the result of schools doing more to monitor improvement throughout the year. Mayor Bloomberg, New Y

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Public or Private School June 4, 2008 – 3:41 am by Brendan For most of us the debate about public or private school was mostly about how much money are you willing to spend on education. There was no question that private schools were better, sometimes much better, at educating our students. Would you believe me if I told you that assumption was wrong? Like someone somewhere once said when you assume you make an ‘a–’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. According to the article “What Do We Know About School Effectiveness?” in the May 2008 issue of Phi Delta Kappan – The Journal For Education , an evaluation of data co

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Public Perception of Education There are some places where it is often easy to get the impression that teachers are the most lazy, money grubbing, good for nothing, bums. Just read some of the comments at the end of this article . Meanwhile, the other paper in the same county writes positive articles on the exact same school district and there is only one comment. Last month Phi Delta Kappan The Journal for Education published the results of their latest Gallup Poll. Thankfully, not everyone in America hates teachers. Some highlights of the poll. · Almost 80% of Americans think the next pre

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ New Math vs Old Math August 12, 2008 – 6:12 am by Brendan There are those who would classify the debate between new math and old math as a debate between teaching basic math skills and teaching concepts. While there is a certain amount of merit to that opinion there is also a larger debate of which new math and old math are just a small part. Old math people are those who would rather students be able to do the algorithms for computations that have been around for thousands of years. That is memorizing addition and subtraction facts, as well as multiplication and division facts, and many formulas for s

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ No Child Left Behind: Strengthened April 23, 2008 – 6:13 am by Brendan I don’t know many teachers who support NCLB. Most good teachers assess their students informally everyday, with activities like warm-up, and class discussions. We then use formative testing in the form of quizzes or tests as often as every week. To have a year or more of education be crammed into one week of testing then use those scores to determine the fate of a school is enough to make one feel like the Department of Education has no respect for the profession of teaching. I will say one good thing about the NCLB act, it has focu

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Poetry August 19, 2008 – 5:45 am by Brendan I’m not much good at poetry. I did teach it to fourth graders in Illinois. Why, because even though I’m not very good at creating it I can still be moved by good poetry. The only rule I ever had when asking 4th graders to write poetry was that they were not allowed to rhyme. Now I generally prefer my rules to be positive. (Something I learned from Dr. Wong ) However, the negative rule is usually easier because people as authority figures generally think in terms of what we don’t want rather than what we do. (In general the best leaders lead by asking us to do

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Prom June 12, 2008 – 5:50 am by Brendan I never went to prom. I’m a guy I didn’t get into those things. The fact that I’m ugly and never had a date in high school didn’t really figure into things. So it constantly amazes me the extravagance and importance that many people put onto this one night. So when I saw an article about proms on NPR I just had to check it out. With all the importance and extra stress that people put on this high school event I figured the story would be good. It wasn’t, it was actually pretty boring. The most excitement I could find were in the comments. The lack of a story mig

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Kyle Orton and Da Bears If you are not a Chicago Bears fan I will let you know a little secret, we cannot find a decent quarterback. Sid Luckman is our claim to fame. He played quarterback in the 1940’s and won 3 championships. Since then we won the championship in 1963, won the super bowl in 1985, and lost the super bowl in 2006. Billy Wade the quarterback in 1963 had a passer rating of 74 that year 2 points above his career stats of 72.2. He went 2-8 the next year was benched the second year and retired three years after winning the championship. Jim McMahon, quarterback in 1985, had a passer ra

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/ Leadership in Education August 5, 2008 – 4:15 am by Brendan If you are reading my blog and you like it you should read this one also . Chris Lehmann is the principal at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia PA. While I cannot personally attest to his ability as a principal He does seem to have a quality resume. I have been reading his blog for a few months now and I have to say it usually impresses me. Friday he posted about NCLB. I have mentioned NCLB many a time ( 1 , 2 , 3 )and I’m sure that every education blogger has written about it several times in the past few years. I have also sa