Finding the balance between phony self-esteem and ‘Tiger Mom’

19 Jan

Moi really didn’t want to touch that “Tiger Mom” kerfuffle because having read some selected passages culled from excerpts of Amy Chua’s “memoirs” of raising her daughters moi’s first thought was that girlfriend possibly needed her medication adjusted. Annie Murphy Paul provides a more balanced approach to Ms. Chua’s biography in the Time article, “Tiger Moms’, Is Tough Parenting Really the Answer?

Most surprising of all to Chua’s detractors may be the fact that many elements of her approach are supported by research in psychology and cognitive science. Take, for example, her assertion that American parents go too far in insulating their children from discomfort and distress. Chinese parents, by contrast, she writes, “assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.” In the 2008 book A Nation of Wimps, author Hara Estroff Marano, editor-at-large of Psychology Today magazine, marshals evidence that shows Chua
is correct. “Research demonstrates that children who are protected from grappling with difficult tasks don’t develop what psychologists call ‘mastery experiences,’ ” Marano explains. “Kids who have this well-earned sense of mastery are more optimistic and decisive; they’ve learned that they’re capable of overcoming adversity and achieving goals.” Children who have never had to test their abilities, says Marano, grow into “emotionally brittle” young adults who are more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.

Another parenting practice with which Chua takes issue is Americans’ habit, as she puts it, of “slathering praise on their kids for the lowest of tasks — drawing a squiggle or waving a stick.” Westerners often laud their children as “talented” or “gifted,” she says, while Asian parents highlight the importance of hard work. And in fact, research performed by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has found that the way parents offer approval affects the way children perform, even the way they feel about themselves.

Dweck has conducted studies with hundreds of students, mostly early adolescents, in which experimenters gave the subjects a set of difficult problems from an IQ test. Afterward, some of the young people were praised for their ability: “You must be smart at this.” Others were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.” The kids who were complimented on their intelligence were much more likely to turn down the opportunity to do a challenging new task that they could learn from. “They didn’t want to do anything that could expose their deficiencies and call into question their talent,” Dweck says. Ninety percent of the kids who were praised for their hard work, however, were eager to take on the demanding new exercise.

Still, some of Chua’s comments to her daughters are very hard to take and border on abusive in moi’s opinion. Paul reports that Chua is turning the dial back a degree.

Bonnie Rochman has written the provocative Time article, Take This, Tiger Mom!

It’s been a year since the “Tiger mom” roared onto the scene, sharing how she compelled her kids to practice the piano for hours sans potty breaks and denied them frivolous activities like playdates.

In her best-selling book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Yale professor Amy Chua made the case that overly indulgent parents — you know who you are: maybe you let your kids play the occasional video game or allow them to spend the night at a friend’s house — can beget only spoiled and unmotivated children.

Now a fellow academic — and Chinese mother — is refuting that tough-as-nails approach, urging parents to let kids be kids. Girls, it turns out, just wanna have fun. And so do boys.

Happiness is actually pretty important for children, says Desiree Baolian Qin, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University.

In two upcoming papers accepted for publication, Qin and her co-authors have looked at the experiences of Chinese-American children and found that high-achieving Chinese students were more depressed and anxious than white children.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/17/take-this-tiger-mom/#ixzz1jsm3NUFu

The question is how to find a balance between “Tiger Mom” and phony self-esteem.

In No one is perfect: People sometimes fail, moi said:

The Child Development Institute has a good article about how to help your child develop healthy self esteem. A discussion of values is often difficult, but the question the stage parent, over the top little league father, or out of control soccer mom should ask of themselves is what do you really and truly value? What is more important, your child’s happiness and self esteem or your fulfilling an unfinished part of your life through your child? Joe Jackson, the winner of the most heinous stage parent award saw his dreams fulfilled with the price of the destruction of his children’s lives. Most people with a healthy dose of self esteem and sanity would say this is too high a price.

Letting Go

Sarah Mahoney wrote a good article at Parents.Com about four ways to let go of your kids and she describes her four steps, which she calls Independence Day. Newsweek also has an article on the fine art of letting go Remember it is your child’s life and they should be allowed to realize their dreams, not yours. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/no-one-is-perfect-people-sometimes-fail/

The goal should be:

A healthy child in a healthy family who attends a healthy school in a healthy neighborhood ©

tiger.mothers.should.tame.parenting.approach

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: 'Tiger Mom', 'Tiger mothers' should tame parenting approach, Amy Chu, Desiree Baolian Qin, Self Esteem

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

Is the self-esteem movement just another education fad?

18 Jan

Education is prone to fads and the next “new, new thing.” Many are beginning to question the self-esteem movement which put the emphasis on children feeling good about themselves. The question is whether the emphasis should be put on acquiring skills and focusing on helping children to achieve success in areas where they have shown both an interest and some competence. One of the best definitions of self-esteem comes from the Canadian Mental Health Association and the article Children and Self-Esteem which is posted at their site.

Self-esteem is the value we place on ourselves. It is the feeling we have about all the things we see ourselves to be. It is the knowledge that we are lovable, we are capable, and we are unique. Good self-esteem means:

having a healthy view of yourself,

having a quiet sense of self-worth,

having a positive outlook,

feeling satisfied with yourself most of the time,

setting realistic goals.

Both adults and children benefit from good relationships, experiences and positive thinking. Many of the steps necessary for building a child’s self-esteem will also help you in developing and maintaining your own. http://www.acsm.ca/bins/content_page.asp?cid=2-29-68

Moi feels that good schools are relentless about the basics.

A 1999 Los Angeles Times article, Losing Faith in Self-Esteem Movement by Richard Lee Colvin was raising caution flags:

At Loren Miller Elementary School in Los Angeles, a school struggling to raise test scores that are barely in double digits, children last year spent part of each day working on . . . their self-esteem.

In daily “I Love Me” lessons, they completed the phrase “I am . . . ” with words such as beautiful, lovable, respectable, kind or gifted. Then they memorized the sentences to make them sink in.

No more. The daily “I Love Me” lessons will soon be replaced by rapid-fire drills and constant testing of kids’ skills.

With the pressure to raise test scores building nationally, schools are rethinking their decades-long love affair with self-esteem.

Self-esteem, which burst into the national consciousness in the late 1980s with help from a California task force, has long endured attacks from cultural conservatives. What’s new today is that the criticism is being heard from deans at such education bastions as Columbia University’s Teacher’s College and in prestigious venues such as the Harvard Mental Health Letter.

“The false belief in self-esteem as a force for social good can be not just potentially but actually harmful,” wrote Carnegie Mellon University psychology professor Robyn M. Dawes in that publication in October.

Having high self-esteem certainly feels good, psychologists say. But, contrary to intuition, it doesn’t necessarily pay off in greater academic achievement, less drug abuse, less crime or much of anything else. Or, if it does pay off, 10,000 or more research studies have yet to find proof.

With researchers growing increasingly negative about being positive, a switch from tenderness to tough love is in vogue now among social commentators, politicians and educators.

Fretting about students’ feelings has become an unhealthy classroom obsession, researchers declare in academic journals and elsewhere. Better, they say, to spend more time on something children can justly be proud of–acing algebra or becoming a super speller.

“There’s nothing that boosts self-concept more than being able to do something–it doesn’t matter if it’s reading or something on the monkey bars your brother can’t do,” said Robert J. Stevens, a professor of educational psychology at Penn State University.

That is the lesson teachers at Bessemer School in Pueblo, Colo., learned this year. Teachers there were stunned a year ago when only 12% of their fourth-graders were reading at grade level.

Out went the three hours they spent weekly on counseling and self-esteem classes. In came more attention to the basics. Up went test scores. Last fall, 64% of the students passed. And self-esteem soared.

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/jan/25/news/mn-1505

Moi would posit that true self-esteem comes from the accomplishment of acquiring a skill or successfully performing a task.

Michael Alison Chandler reports in the Washington Post article, In schools, self-esteem boosting is losing favor to rigor, finer-tuned praise:

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains.

Now, an increasing number of teachers are weaning themselves from what some call empty praise. Drawing on psychology and brain research, these educators aim to articulate a more precise, and scientific, vocabulary for praise that will push children to work through mistakes and take on more challenging assignments. Consider teacher Shar Hellie’s new approach in Montgomery County….

A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and “resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm feelings.

“We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a platter,” Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck said. “That has backfired.”

Dweck’s studies, embraced in Montgomery schools and elsewhere, have found that praising children for intelligence — “You’re so clever!” — also backfires. In study after study, children rewarded for being smart become more likely to shy away from hard assignments that might tarnish their star reputations.

But children praised for trying hard or taking risks tend to enjoy challenges and find greater success. Children also perform better in the long term when they believe that their intellect is not a birthright but something that grows and develops as they learn new things. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-schools-self-esteem-boosting-is-losing-favor-to-rigor-finer-tuned-praise/2012/01/11/gIQAXFnF1P_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

There were critics of the self-esteem concept in education at the beginning of the movement.

Alfie Kohn wrote the 1994 article, The Truth About Self-Esteem for PHI DELTA KAPPAN which critiqued the concept. Among Kohn’s many concerns were:

Putting aside for a moment the questions of what statements are included and how they are scored, the point to be emphasized here is that self-esteem ratings are almost always based on what subjects say about themselves, and self- report measures are rather problematic. They may tell us more about how someone wishes to appear than about his or her “true” state (assuming this can ever be known). In fact, some of the most respected researchers in the area have argued that people designated as having high self-esteem are simply those who demonstrate a “willingness to endorse favorable statements about the self” as a result of “an ambitious, aggressive, self-aggrandizing style of presenting themselves.(2)

As if this fact were not disturbing enough, something on the order of 200 instruments for measuring self-esteem are now in use. Many of them haven’t been properly validated (to use a popular self-esteem term in a different way) and are of questionable value. More important, even if every single test was top- notch, there is no reason to think that any two of them are comparable. It’s difficult to generalize about research findings if self-esteem has been measured — and, indeed, conceptualized — differently in the various studies that have been cited.(3)

One result common to almost all measures, though, is that very few people who fill out self-esteem surveys wind up with scores near the bottom of the scale. When a researcher talks about subjects with “low” self-esteem, he or she means this only relative to other subjects; in absolute terms, the responses of these individuals put them somewhere in the middle range of possible scores. In other words, people classified as having low self-esteem are typically not so much down on themselves as simply “neutral in their self-descriptions.”(4) This suggests that it may be necessary to reconsider all those sweeping conclusions about what distinguishes people who love themselves from people who hate themselves. Moreover, the very fact of defining low self-esteem in relative terms means that no intervention can ever make any headway; half the population will, of course, always fall below the median on any scale.

But let us assume for the sake of the argument that we find none of these facts — or any other methodological criticisms that have been offered of the field(5) — particularly troubling. Let us assume that all the self-esteem studies to date, all 10,000 of them, can be taken at face value. Even so, the findings that emerge from this literature are not especially encouraging for those who would like to believe that feeling good about oneself brings about a variety of benefits. (I am ignoring here the vast number of studies that have treated self-esteem as a dependent rather than an independent variable — that is, those that have tried to figure out what causes self-esteem to go up or down rather than investigating whether such fluctuation affects other things….)

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/tase.htm

Another article which is critical of the self-esteem movement is Can Your Teen Have Too Much Self-Esteem? from Aspen Education Group:

Back in the 1970s, many school districts became enamored with the idea that if you raised children’s self-esteem they would do better in school. Although this so-called “self-esteem movement” proved to be ill conceived, many people still believe the canard that high self-esteem is the root of all achievement. Since that time many researchers have studied the topic of self-esteem, and the findings have been pretty consistent: high self-esteem for the sake of personal validation, meaning self-esteem that is not based on actual personal achievement or positive behavior, is not necessarily a healthy thing.

Dr. Jean Twenge recently published the book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – And More Miserable than Ever Before,” in which she documents the failures of the self-esteem movement in schools. Her research makes clear that phony self-esteem can be a very self-destructive thing. Her conclusion is that self-control is a much more accurate predictor of success than self-esteem.

A recent article in the Harvard Mental Health Letter (June 2007) also suggests that encouraging self-esteem as a primary goal is not healthy and could in fact remove any incentives to improve behavior. If you are supposed to feel good about yourself just because you exist, why study hard, work hard, treat others well, or take any actions to earn these feelings? While it is certainly beneficial to encourage young people to feel good about real accomplishments, encouraging self-esteem for its own sake is not healthy. http://www.aspeneducation.com/Article-too-much-self-esteem.html#.TxOAfgDkqkE.email

It is crucial for low-income children and children of color to be firmly grounded in acquiring reading, math, and writing skills. They will feel better about themselves when they know that they can compete and yes, moi did use the word compete with other children.

Good schools are relentless about the basics.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: finer-tuned praise:, In schools, K-12 Curriculum, K-12 Education, Losing Faith in Self-Esteem Movement, Self Esteem, self-esteem boosting is losing favor to rigor, The Truth About Self-Esteem

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

Reading is a key component of learning

18 Jan

The goal of parents, teachers, students, and society should be that all children succeed in obtaining a good basic education. In order to achieve this goal, children must come to school ready to learn. See, Illiteracy in America https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/illiteracy-in-america/

The University of Michigan Health Center explains why reading is important in the article, Reading, Literacy and Your Child:

What is literacy?

Literacy means being able to read and write.

Why is reading important?

A child’s reading skills are important to their success in school and work. In addition, reading can be a fun and imaginative activity for children, which opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for them. Reading and writing are important ways we use language to communicate.

How do reading and language skills develop?

For an answer to this question, check out the following link:

Language and Literacy Development from birth to three years—this helpful brochure tells you what to expect and how to help.

Research has identified five early reading skills that are all essential. They are [1]:

Phonemic awareness—Being able to hear, identify, and play with individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.

Phonics—Being able to connect the letters of written language with the sounds of spoken language.

Vocabulary—The words kids need to know to communicate effectively.

Reading comprehension—Being able to understand and get meaning from what has been read.

Fluency (oral reading)—Being able to read text accurately and quickly.

How can we make reading part of our family’s lifestyle?
Parents play a critical role in helping their children develop not only the ability to read, but also an enjoyment of reading.

Turn off the tube. Start by limiting your family’s television viewing time.

Teach by example. If you have books, newspapers and magazines around your house, and your child sees you reading, then your child will learn that you value reading. You can’t over-estimate the value of modeling.

Read together. Reading with your child is a great activity. It not only teaches your child that reading is important to you, but it also offers a chance to talk about the book, and often other issues will come up. Books can really open the lines of communication between parent and child.

Hit the library. Try finding library books about current issues or interests in your family’s or child’s life, and then reading them together. For example, read a book about going to the dentist prior to your child’s next dental exam, or get some books about seashore life after a trip to the coast. If your child is obsessed with dragons, ask your librarian to recommend a good dragon novel for your child.

There are many ways to include reading in your child’s life, starting in babyhood, and continuing through the teen years. Focus on literacy activities that your child enjoys, so that reading is a treat, not a chore. http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/reading.htm

Reading skills are particularly important in academic success because of “Common Core Standards Initiative.” The “Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/english-language-arts-standards

Reading “Common Core Standards” are described as follows:

English Language Arts Standards » Reading: Foundational Skills » Introduction

These standards are directed toward fostering students’ understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines. Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention. http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/english-language-arts-standards/reading-foundational-skills/introduction/

As more schools use “Common Core” standards, parents must also work at home to prepare their children.

Regan Mc Mahon of Common Sense Media has written the article, How to Raise a Reader which gives the following advice:

Read aloud: This comes naturally to lots of new parents, but it’s important to keep it up. Kids will enjoy it longer than you think. For babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and kids in early grade school, it’s wonderful to have a kid on your lap, snuggled next to you on the couch, or drifting off to sleep in bed as you enjoy picture books together. You may have to read your kid’s favorite a hundred times, but just go with it. Your kid will remember the closeness as well as the story. And try nonfiction for those who are curious about pirates, Vikings, robots, castles, history, sports, biography, animals, whatever. For second through fifth graders, read those rich and meaty books that might be missed otherwise, maybe classics like Treasure Island or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Many parents think that as soon as their kids learn to read on their own, they no longer need to be read to. But kids still love it and benefit from it as they hear the rhythm of the language, learn correct pronunciation, and get to relax and just take it all in. Kids will get the idea that there’s something worthwhile in books and that there’s something special about time spent with a parent.

Savor the series: It’s common for kids to become book lovers for life after getting hooked on a series. And there are lots of good ones that keep kids hungry for the next installment. Some reliable prospects: Ivy and Bean, Judy Moodyfor beginning readers; Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the Percy Jackson series for middle graders; and Hunger Games, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Twilight (unless you think vampires are too creepy) for older kids.

Grab onto a genre: Kids go through phases of genres they’re passionate about, from girl detectives to science fiction and fantasy. Don’t get hung up on whether it’s considered great literature (although some genre books are). Be happy that your kid is devouring books one after the other.

Feed the favorite-author addiction: Once your kids finds a writer they love, they may want to read all of his or her books — a great excuse for a trip to the library or an opportunity for book swapping among friends and classmates. Here are some good bets for favorites. Younger kids: Dav Pilkey (The Adventures of Captain Underpants), Beverly Cleary (Beezus and Ramona). Middle grade: Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie), Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book). Tweens and teens: Judy Blume (Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret) and Sarah Dessen (Just Listen).

Count on the Classics: Books are called classics because they continue to engage readers generation after generation. There are no guarantees, but you could try introducing your kids to books you loved as a kid and see which ones click. Some good ones to try are the Dr. Seuss and Narnia books, Charlotte’s Web, and The Secret Garden. Check out our Classic Books for Kids list to find more.

Find Books About the Things Your Kid Loves: If your kid adores horses, try Black Beauty or any of the titles on our list of best Horse Books. If he’s wild about cars, trucks and trains, check out our list of Vehicle Books. Librarians, booksellers, and Internet searches will help you find books on any favorite topic.

Funny Is Fine: Some parents wrestle with letting their kids read Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and other edgy humor books about kids getting in trouble. Talk to your kids about the content, but keep in mind that kids like these books not because they want to imitate the characters’ actions but because they can live vicariously through their bad behavior. Humor is a great pathway to book loving.

Comics Are OK: Graphic novels are among the hottest trends in children’s publishing, and they can get kids hooked on reading. Kids may start with Squish and Babymouse and move on to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But these series can also lead to more sophisticated fare such as Marzi and American Born Chinese. Find other titles in our list of best Graphic Novels.

Make Reading a Family Value: Actions speak louder than words. Take your kids to the library once a week or once a month to get new books, make regular outings to your local bookstore, hunt for low-cost books at used bookstores or second-hand shops, and show kids that finding a good book is like a treasure hunt.

Fit reading into your family lifestyle. Set aside time for reading only — turning off the TV, computer, and cell phone. Encourage focused reading time, either for independent reading or reading aloud. Take preschoolers to story time hours at libraries and bookstores. For older kids, a parent-kid book club can be fun. Read to kids at bedtime. Provide time and space for your kids to read for pleasure in the car (if they don’t get car sick!), on vacation, after homework is done, on their own before bed. Warning: It could be habit-forming!

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/new/how-raise-reader?utm_source=newsletter01.12.12&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=feature1

Education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), the teacher(s), and the school. All parts of the partnership must be active and involved. Parents are an important part because they enforce lessons learned at school by reading to their children and taking their children for regular library time.

Resources:

US Department Of Education Helping Series which are a number of pamphlets to help parents and caregivers

How Parents Can Help Their Child Prepare for School Assignments

The ABCs of Ready to Learn

Getting Young Children Ready to Learn

Ebony Magazine’s How to Prepare Your Child for Success

General Tips for Preparing for Kindergarten

Louise Hajjar Diamond in an article for the American School Counselor Association writes about preparing a child for middle school

Getting Your Child Ready to Learn

Classroom Strategies to Get Boys Reading

Me Read? A Practical Guide to Improving Boys Literacy Skills

Understanding Gender Differences: Strategies To Support Girls and Boys

Helping Underachieving Boys Read Well and Often

Boys and Reading Strategies for Success

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: Common Sense Media, Comon Core Standards, Literacy, Reading, University of Michigan Health Department

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Dr Wilda

U.S. Supreme Court will not accept cyberbullying case

17 Jan

There are frequent media reports about children and school kids who are the victims of cyberbullying. Occasionally adults become the victims of cyberbullying. Bullying Is Everybody’s Business is a great article by Liz Perle at Common Sense Media.

Cyberbulling Is a Complex System

With the statistics piling up, it has become increasingly clear that the cruelties inflicted by cyberbullying have become a devastating reality for the majority of tweens and teens.

While bullying is nothing new, when it takes place in the digital world, it’s like public humiliation on steroids. Photos, cruel comments, taunts, and threats travel in an instant and can be seen, revisited, reposted, linked to, and shared by a huge audience….

The U.S. Supreme Court has not agreed to hear the issue of cyberbullying in an education setting.

David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times has written the article, U.S. Supreme Court takes on cyberbullying which was republished in the Seattle Times.

A middle-school principal in northeastern Pennsylvania was shocked to see his photo online along with a description of him as a “hairy sex addict” and a “pervert” who liked “hitting on students” in his office.

A high-school principal north of Pittsburgh saw a MySpace profile of himself that used an anti-gay slur and called him a “whore” and a drug user. And in West Virginia, a school principal found out that a girl had created an online site to maliciously mock another girl as a “slut” with herpes.

All three students were suspended from school and filed suits against the principal and the school districts. They argued the First Amendment protected them from being punished for postings from their home computers. And in the two Pennsylvania cases, they won.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide for the first time on the dividing line between the rights of students to freely use their own computers and the authority of school officials to prevent online harassment of other students and the staff. The court may act as early as Tuesday.

The Internet and social media have wiped out the line between what is public and private as well as the distinction between on-campus and off-campus conduct at schools. A posting on Facebook makes its way around the student body far faster than old-fashioned gossip.

School principals say they are caught between the new technology and outdated, confusing legal rules.

“They need to tell us what we can and cannot do. This affects every educator in this country,” said James McGonigle, principal at Blue Mountain Middle School in Orwigsburg, Pa., near Allentown, who was portrayed as a “hairy sex addict” by an eighth-grade girl.

He imposed a 10-day suspension. A week later, the girl’s parents sued him in federal court.

McGonigle learned of the MySpace profile from students and teachers who said they found it disturbing. He agreed when he saw a photocopy. It included mockeries of his wife and children.

“It made me out as a pedophile. If any of those accusations were taken seriously, I would have been put through a wrenching investigation,” he said in an interview. The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of Terry and Steven Snyder, the girl’s parents. Their lawyers said the fake profile of the principal was “juvenile humor” that should be ignored.

The parents lost before a federal judge, who called the posting “vulgar and lewd.” But last summer, they won before the full 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The 8-6 majority said that the posting “caused no substantial disruption” at the school and that the courts did not “allow schools to punish students for off-campus speech.” Doing so, the majority said, threatens “dangerously broad censorship” of students.

If the Supreme Court turns down the appeal in Blue Mountain School District v. Snyder, the district will be required to pay damages to the parents as well as legal fees to the ACLU.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017250088_cyberbullying16.html

People can be devastated by thoughtless, mean, and unkind comments posted on the web. Some of the comments may be based upon rumor and may even be untrue. The effect on a particular can be devastating. Two recent articles discuss the effects on social networking on teen relationships. In the first article, Antisocial Networking?, Hillary Stout writes in the New York Times about the effects of social networking sites on teens.

Hans Villarica has an excellent article in Time, Dealing With Cyberbullying: 5 Essential Parenting Tips

Make sure your kids know cyberbullying is wrong. Many kids don’t understand that when they write down and disseminate feelings of frustration, jealousy or anger toward others online, it can quickly escalate into problems in the real world. They also tend to think that what happens digitally “doesn’t count” and that digital abuse doesn’t hurt, especially since parents usually focus on their kids’ behavior in person…. (More on Time.com: Lessons on Cyberbullying: Is Rebecca Black a Victim? Experts Weigh In)

Take an interest in your kids’ online behavior. Kids tend to think their parents don’t know or care about their online lives. They fear that their parents, in not understanding, will simply take away their cell phone or computer if anything goes wrong….. (More on Time.com: The Tricky Politics of Tween Bullying)

Check school policies on cyberbullying. Contact your child’s teacher or a school social worker or administrator and find out whether there is an official policy on cyberbullying. If there is one, read it and discuss it with your kids.

If there isn’t a written policy in place, ask about how cyberbullying is handled and whether there are any plans to create an official policy. Better yet, step up and join — or push to create — a committee to set the standards…. (More on Time.com: Cyberbullying? Homophobia? Tyler Clementi’s Death Highlights Online Lawlessness)

Set guidelines about cell-phone use. Many parents give their kids cell phones, so they can stay in closer contact with them. But that’s typically not the reason kids want cell phones. Rather, kids use them to surf the Web, send text messages to friends, update their social-networking status, and share pictures and videos.

Review with your children the laws that could affect their cell phone use, including limitations on where and when they can legally take photos or videos, and how you expect them to handle text messaging or Internet use. If you choose to monitor what’s on your kids’ phones, be aware that more than 70% of kids delete messages or photos before giving their parents their phones for checks, according to research from the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center. (More on Time.com: A Glimmer of Hope in a Bad-News Survey About Bullying)

Help your children respond appropriately if they are cyberbullied. First, talk with your children about what happened and how they feel about it. Be supportive. Remember that your kids feel that they are under attack. Second, report the abuse to the website on which it occurred. This can often be done via an “abuse” or “report” button or link on the site. Lastly, report the bullying to school administrators and ask them to look after your children.

Parents must monitor their child’s use of technology.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: Bullying, Bullying Is Everbody's Business, Children and Families, Cyberbullying, Dealing With Cyberbullying: 5 Essential Parenting Tips, Digital World, U.S. Supreme Court

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

Could ‘open source’ textbooks be cheaper than traditional textbooks?

17 Jan

Open-source textbooks are another option in the calculation of the most cost effective option for obtaining needed textbooks. Information Age Education has a lot of information about the “open source” movement:

We are all used to the idea of free public lending libraries. Benjamin Franklin helped to get this idea started in the United States well over 200 years ago. Moreover, the idea of free public schools for all is well accepted.

Thus, it is not too great a leap to have a vision of education and educational materials being made available free to people of all ages throughout the world. Free education could (should) be a birthright for all.

Of course, we have a very long way to go in achieving such a vision. The countries of the world vary considerably in how well they embrace and work to achieve this vision.

The Internet and rapidly improving telecommunications access and facilities throughout the world have brought a new dimension to the idea of universal, free education. A great many people are willing and able to create educationally sound materials and make them available free on the Web. It is within the world’s capabilities to provide a very broad range of free distance education-based curriculum on the Web.

Of course, we have to think more carefully about the meaning of “free.” You know, of course, that someone has to pay to have free public libraries. Similarly, the Internet is not free. However, the Internet is paid for by a very large number of organizations and institutions, so the cost is widely distributed.

In addition, it costs to access the Internet. However, there are many places (such as public libraries, schools, many restaurants, and so on) where this cost is not directly charged to the people using the service. We are seeing a trend toward entire cities providing free WiFi access.

Finally, there is the cost of the devices people use to access the Internet. These have declined in price so that it is now feasible to provide them free to every student. How rapidly this is occurring or will occur varies considerably from country to country. In the United States, the cost of public education (in 2011) is approximately $10,000 per student per year. It does not take a very large stretch of the imagination to believe that two or three percent of this amount might be used to put a mobile computing device in the hands of every student.

http://iae-pedia.org/Open_Source_Textbooks

The question is whether “free” is really “free.”

Education News is reporting in the article, Teacher-Written Digital Textbooks: A Cheaper Alternative?

Tired of constantly replacing their outdated — and expensive — statistics textbooks, officials in the Anoka Hennepin School District have let their teachers write their own digital textbooks instead , writes Abigail Wood at the Heartlander.

“The teachers thought we could do a better job writing our own book that ﬁt our state standards and the needs of our students,” said high school math teacher Michael Engelhaupt, who helped write the digital textbook.

Three teachers were asked to create the book and were paid $10,000 each. The whole project saved a total of about $175,000.

“I think the biggest impact [comes with] giving students a book that exactly covers what they need to know,” Engelhaupt said.

“Also, the potential for saving school districts tons of money is unbelievable.”Engelhaupt believes that the fact they’re easier to update makes them more adaptable and gives the teachers more of a sense of ownership.

However, Nicole Allen, textbook advocate for Student Public Interest Research Groups, doesn’t believe that the transition from print to digital is happening as fast as it could, despite the advantages.

Digital textbooks are becoming more reﬁned, incorporating better note-taking, application, and interactive tools, yet 75 percent of students, according to a 2010 survey, would rather use print than digital. Maybe believe that’s because digital textbooks can be perceived as boring, but that’s about to change.

“Publishers are still making a ton of money on print textbooks, so they are not in a hurry to start undermining that with digital sales,” Allen said.

“But they still know that digital is the future and see a lot of potential for it.”Looking to the future, Cornell and Brown universities have recently begun the transition towards making all of their assigned textbooks digital.

http://www.educationnews.org/technology/teacher-written-digital-textbooks-a-cheaper-alternative/

The push for “open source” textbooks has been around for a couple of years.

Ashley Vance writes in the 2010 New York Times article, $200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math.

Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same.

“Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says.

Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course material that he spearheaded six years ago.

“We are spending $8 billion to $15 billion per year on textbooks” in the United States, Mr. McNealy says. “It seems to me we could put that all online for free.”

The nonprofit Curriki fits into an ever-expanding list of organizations that seek to bring the blunt force of Internet economics to bear on the education market. Even the traditional textbook publishers agree that the days of tweaking a few pages in a book just to sell a new edition are coming to an end.

“Today, we are engaged in a very different dialogue with our customers,” says Wendy Colby, a senior vice president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “Our customers are asking us to look at different ways to experiment and to look at different value-based pricing models.”

Mr. McNealy had his own encounter with value-based pricing models while running Sun. The company had thrived as a result of its specialized, pricey technology. And then, in what seemed liked a flash, Sun’s business came undone as a wave of cheaper computers and free, open-source software proved good enough to handle many tasks once done by Sun computers.

At first, Sun fought the open-source set, and then it joined the party by making the source code to its most valuable software available to anyone.

Too little, too late. Sun’s sales continued to decline, making it vulnerable to a takeover.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and other top textbook publishers now face their, forgive me, moment in the sun.

Over the last few years, groups nationwide have adopted the open-source mantra of the software world and started financing open-source books. Experts — often retired teachers or groups of teachers — write these books and allow anyone to distribute them in digital, printed or audio formats. Schools can rearrange the contents of the books to suit their needs and requirements.

But progress with these open-source texts has been slow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/technology/01ping.html?emc=eta1

Whether the “open source” movement will evolve into the way that textbooks are sourced remains to be seen.

Resources:

California Open Source Textbook Project

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

Open-Source Textbooks a Mixed Bag in California

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=open-source-textbooks-mixed-bag-california

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: Anoka Hennepin School District, California Open Source Textbook Project, Curriki, Digital Books, Information Age Education, Open Source Textbook, Scott McNealy

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Dr Wilda

New Jersey may eliminate teacher tenure

16 Jan

People become teachers for many reasons. Among the top ten reasons to become a teacher are:

1. Student Potential

2. Student Successes

3. Teaching a Subject Helps You Learn a Subject

4. Daily Humor

5. Affecting the Future

6. Staying Younger

7. Autonomy in the Classroom

8. Conducive to Family Life

9. Job Security

10. Summers Off

Because of the recession, many are turning to teaching as a career that might have employment possibilities. Although there may be job cuts as states and some locales cope with diminishing tax revenue, the education sector still looks good in comparison with other sectors. Information about teaching requirements can be found at Education Week Career Community

The issue of teacher tenure is important because:

There is no shortage of data that show a significant percentage of teachers leave just when they are becoming consistently effective. However, at the same time, too many teachers who have not become consistently effective achieve permanent status, also referred to as tenure.

The question surrounding teacher tenure is how to protect quality teachers from unfair termination?

What is Teacher Tenure?

A good basic description of teacher tenure as found at teacher tenure. James gives the following definition:

WHAT IS TENURE?

Tenure is a form of job security for teachers who have successfully completed a probationary period. Its primary purpose is to protect competent teachers from arbitrary nonrenewal of contract for reasons unrelated to the educational process — personal beliefs, personality conflicts with administrators or school board members, and the like.

WHAT PROTECTION DOES TENURE OFFER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER?

The type and amount of protection vary from state to state and — depending on agreements with teachers’ unions — may even vary from school district to school district. In general, a tenured teacher is entitled to due process when he or she is threatened with dismissal or nonrenewal of contract for cause: that is, for failure to maintain some clearly defined standard that serves an educational purpose.

Time has a good summary of the history of teacher tenure at A Brief History of Tenure

Education News is reporting in the article, Christie’s Reforms May End Teacher Tenure in New Jersey:

Under Governor Chris Christie’s proposed education reforms, New Jersey may soon see the end of teacher tenure. Administrative and legislative officials confirm that much of Christie’s reforms could become law in the first half of 2012, writes Jason Method at the Statehouse Bureau.

Christie is also looking for more charter schools or private-public schools in urban areas.

State Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz, head of the Senate Education Committee, believes there is growing momentum for an assortment of reform measures as many school districts could see an end to annual budget votes.

“It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, as a union rep, from the principal’s association or a teacher, we’re all talking about what needs to get done to ensure we have great student outcomes,” Ruiz said.Christie declared 2011 as the Year of Education Reform. The governor said the kinds of reforms he wants have been heralded by President Obama and U.S. Education secretary Arne Duncan.

http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/christie%e2%80%99s-reforms-may-end-teacher-tenure-in-new-jersey/

What are the Pros and Cons of Teacher Tenure?

One of the best concise defenses of K-12 teacher tenure is from Cleolaf’s blog at Why K12 Teachers Need Tenure The reasons are:

A) The teacher shortage is not evenly distributed. High performing schools don’t have the same problems attracting teacher. High paying district don’t have the same problems attracting teachers….

B) This really comes down to the question of why principals might want to be rid of a teacher. I would suggest that any manager would want to be rid of any employee who makes his/her job or life harder. Ideally, this would only be low performing teachers, but that is a fantasy view.

Any kind of rabble rouser can make a principal’s job harder. …Obviously, union activists are already protected by other labor laws.

C) Academic freedom in K12 is not like in higher education, that’s true. But it is still an issue.

A teacher who tries to raise the bar in his/her classes can create no end of problems for a principal. If standards in school have been too low, and a teacher demands more than students are accustomed to, students and their parents can demand enormous amounts of principal’s time. This is a different form of rocking the boat, but can still be enough for a principal to wish to be rid of the teacher.

Principals cannot be experts on everything. Once, when teaching high school English, my principal as a former middle school math teacher. He insisted that I as an English teacher, “not worry about critical and analytical thinking” and “just teach English.” Though he had no training or experience with high school English, he had ideas about what it meant. He did not approve of the fact that I was spending as much time on teaching my student how to reason as on the mechanics of writing. …

Another principal might be an old school traditionalist and insist that English classes only be about books. He might not approve of using film or video to teach about theme, plot, symbolism, character development, story arcs, allegory and any of the rest. But a teacher might feel that this would be the best way for students to learn these lessons….

No, we don’t need tenure if principals can be counted on to make good decisions in the best interests of children. But they are human, and therefore often make decisions in their own interests. Moreover, we have a real shortage of high quality principals, even as we are breaking up large schools into multiple small schools and opening up charter schools….

I do not suggest that there are not problems with our tenure system. A lot falls to principals, perhaps too much. Teacher observation and evaluation is not easy, and the tenure process in dependent on principals making good decisions about teachers during those first three years. …And that is why we still need tenure. It takes a series of bad decisions over a number of years for a poor teacher to get tenure. But without tenure, it only takes one bad decision for a good to be dismissed.

Cleolaf points toward insufficient teacher assessment and evaluation as a prime cause of problems with teacher tenure. Research confirms that good principals are key to high performing schools. Good principals are also the key in Cleolaf’s view to making a tenure system work.

Another view of teacher tenure is found at Teacher Tenure: A Life Sentence for Kids This paper begins with the following case:

In 1986, after school administrators in the El Cajon School District in California

spent years documenting the more than 400 reasons for why high school English teacher

Juliet Ellory was an unfit teacher, the district finally succeeded in firing her. It cost the

district more than $300,000 and eight years of preparing and litigating the case.

According to the overwhelming evidence against her, Ms. Ellory “hardly ever lectured,

gave baffling assignments, belittled students and ignored repeated efforts by the high

school principal to get her to improve.”1 Ellory’s tenure status had protected her from

automatic dismissal. Though stories such as this one do not depict the average K-12

teacher, they are sufficiently widespread to provoke criticism and concern about the state

of our public schools, as well as skepticism regarding the actual benefits of teacher

tenure.

A key component of reforming teacher tenure is an improved evaluation system for teachers, which focuses on improving traits that produce student achievement.

Teacher Evaluation

The Center has produced a report, which focuses on teacher evaluation. Teacher Evaluation Proper evaluation seems to be key to both addressing many problems teacher tenure was developed to protect from faulty evaluation of a teacher and to improve the quality of those in the teaching profession. Evaluation is just one component, however. New teachers need a proper induction into the profession and mentors to help them hone their skills and methods of teaching. If problems emerge, teachers need proper training and coaching to progress.

No matter where a teacher is in their career lifecycle, they will be confronting the issues of elimination of teacher tenure and more rigorous teacher evaluation. Increasingly, one component of teacher evaluation will focus on whether students are showing academic achievement gains. The point of contention, which may provoke disagreement between the evaluator and the teacher is how student achievement is measured.

In times of recession, all jobs become more difficult to find and often job seekers do not have the luxury of finding the perfect job. New teachers may find jobs in schools often considered less desirable or schools led by principals who are not considered to be leaders or supporters of their staff. Not all learning occurs during the academic portion of your life’s journey. If one finds that the first job is not the perfect opportunity, then prepare for the time you will find the perfect opportunity. Look for a teacher(s) you admire and who are successful and model what has made them successful. People who are skilled and become expert at their craft or profession will weather whatever change comes along, whether it is an elimination or modification of tenure and changes to the way evaluations are conducted.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: A Brief History of Tenure, Education Reform, Gove. Christie, Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Quality, Teacher Tenure

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

Amazing Grace: Dr. King’s dream was comprehensive

15 Jan

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute is a treasure trove of information about Dr. King. Among the papers which can be accessed are his I Have a Dream speech.

Table of Contents

In his iconic speech at the Lincoln Memorial for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King urged America to “make real the promises of democracy.” King synthesized portions of his earlier speeches to capture both the necessity for change and the potential for hope in American society.

The text of the speech is found at I have a Dream Speech The Institute provides some background about the era in which Dr. King lived:

In 1950’s America, the equality of man envisioned by the Declaration of Independence was far from a reality. People of color — blacks, Hispanics, Asians — were discriminated against in many ways, both overt and covert. The 1950’s were a turbulent time in America, when racial barriers began to come down due to Supreme Court decisions, like Brown v. Board of Education; and due to an increase in the activism of blacks, fighting for equal rights.

Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, was a driving force in the push for racial equality in the 1950’s and the 1960’s. In 1963, King and his staff focused on Birmingham, Alabama. They marched and protested non-violently, raising the ire of local officials who sicced water cannon and police dogs on the marchers, whose ranks included teenagers and children. The bad publicity and break-down of business forced the white leaders of Birmingham to concede to some anti-segregation demands.

Thrust into the national spotlight in Birmingham, where he was arrested and jailed, King helped organize a massive march on Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. His partners in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom included other religious leaders, labor leaders, and black organizers. The assembled masses marched down the Washington Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, heard songs from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and heard speeches by actor Charlton Heston, NAACP president Roy Wilkins, and future U.S. Representative from Georgia John Lewis.

King’s appearance was the last of the event; the closing speech was carried live on major television networks. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked the name of Lincoln in his “I Have a Dream” speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The text of Dr. King’s spoken speech was transcribed from recordings of the speech.

The following is the exact text of the spoken speech, transcribed from recordings.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Many “tea party” types choose to extract this section out of the entire speech:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

Often, it is used to criticize folks who may be pressing for their Constitutional Rights. I simply say to those folks, read the entire speech. Mark Engler wrote the Nation article, Dr. Martin Luther King’s Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom which examined Dr. King’s economic ideas.

Schooled at Crozer Theological Seminary in the teachings of the Protestant Social Gospel movement, King’s theological vision included an economic critique. In a November 1956 sermon, King presented an imaginary letter from the apostle Paul to American Christians, which stated, “Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes… God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty….

King’s focus on economic justice became even sharper in the last years of his life. A noteworthy part of his critique of the Vietnam War was the idea that aggressive foreign interventionism exacted not only a moral cost but also an economic one: spending on the war was undermining President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. In his famous April 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, King made a damning indictment of a budgetary imbalance that continues to this day: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” he said, “is approaching spiritual death.” http://www.thenation.com/article/dr-martin-luther-kings-economics-through-jobs-freedom

The fight for justice in the 21^st Century is economic, focusing on parity in education funding and job creation. Too bad the current crop of politicians love to mouth the beautiful rhetoric without really examining the meaning of the words.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: 'I Have A Dream', Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Martin Luther King's Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom, Jr. Research and Education Institute, The Martin Luther King

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

Amazing Grace: Dr. King and the guaranteed annual income

15 Jan

Here’s an inconvenient truth, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Christian, a Baptist minister and a deeply spiritual man. What he was not was a deity. He was like all of us a human in need of grace. As a human he attempted to lift not only the spirit, but the human conditions of others. He was human and humane.

Dr. King wrote one final book, which was excerpted on a blog

Few people have heard of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last book. It was called Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

Even fewer people realize that King was an advocate of a guaranteed income. He weighed the issue carefully before drawing conclusions and making the following statement.

Toward the end of Where Do We Go From Here, in a chapter titled “Where We Are Going,” King states his support for the guaranteed income policy, that right-wingers and left-wingers had both been studying. See what he says to us.

This is an excerpt of what Dr. King said in the last chapter of Where Do We Go From Here:Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.

We have come to the point where we must make the nonproducer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution. Though there have been increases in purchasing power, they have lagged behind increases in production. Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white and Negro, the aged and chronically ill, are traditionally unorganized and therefore have little ability to force the necessary growth in their income. They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger society.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.

In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote, in Progress and Poverty:

“The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for their own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.”

We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life and in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he know that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.

Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability.

This proposal is not a “civil rights” program, in the sense that that term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate.

Our nation’s adjustment to a new mode of thinking will be facilitated if we realize that for nearly forty years two groups in our society have already been enjoying a guaranteed income. Indeed, it is a symptom of our confused social values that these two groups turn out to be the richest and the poorest. The wealthy who own securities have always had an assured income; and their polar opposite, the relief client, has been guaranteed an income, however miniscule, through welfare benefits.

John Kenneth Galbraith has estimated that $20 billion a year would effect a guaranteed income, which he describes as “not much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by ‘experts’ in Vietnam.”

Dr. King was not the only leader who proposed the guaranteed annual income. President Richard Nixon’s legacy was tarnished by the paranoia, which led to Watergate. People often forget that no one is perfect and even deeply flawed people can accomplish some good things. PBS has a Nixon background report

Nixon supported the concept of the guaranteed annual income, although he and Daniel Moynihan differed about details. Back in the day, people from different parties could actually work together. Peter Pessell and Leonard Ross reviewed Moynihan’s book The Politics of the Guaranteed Annual Income in the New York Times.

But that proved to be the end of the line. In the summer of 1970 conservatives on the Senate Finance committee riddled H.E.W. Secretary Robert Finch with hostile questions and helped force his resignation. The Administration revised the bill and began losing the liberals. The decisive defeat, on a Finance committee vote of 10-6, united Oklahoma New Populist Fred Harris and liberals Eugene McCarthy, Albert Gore and Clinton Anderson with the most mossy-backed of the reactionaries. For two more years the Administration kept moving the plan to the right at the expense of support from the left. Currently F.A.P. reposes in a state best described as malign neglect.

What went wrong? Most of Moynihan’s eloquent, polemical book is devoted to an exhaustively researched attack on the liberal opposition. To be sure, he does not spare the right (and is impressively blunt in recounting Nixon’s own self-defeating partisanship in 1970–the year of Carswell, Cambodia, Scammon and Wattenberg). But the intriguing question–for the reader as for Moynihan–is why the left helped kill the guaranteed income.

Part of the answer is that it wasn’t much of an income: $1,600 for a family of four plus $800 in food stamps. This was more than a handful of states gave their poor, but much less than 1970 welfare levels in the big Northern states. On the other hand, states would have been able to supplement the F.A.P. minimum payments with the Federal Government picking up part of the tab. A “grandmother” clause would have assured current welfare recipients no reduction in benefits. F.A.P. supporters argued that states traditionally generous would remain so. Liberal opponents feared the outcome of putting the whole system up for grabs at a time of inflation, rising taxes and free-floating disgruntlement.

Aside from money, controversy centered on work requirements and work incentives. Until the mid- sixties, welfare recipients stood to lose at least a dollar of benefits for every dollar they earned working; even more, if they happened go be unlucky enough to just miss the income cutoff for public housing. Welfare legislation in 1967 reduced the direct take-back to two dollars in three, but left in much of the perverse incentive to shun work. A family might still inch its way over a bureaucratically defined poverty line, and thereby lose a thousand dollars in Medicaid benefits.

There were several possible ways of correcting the problem. The Government could lower the rate at which it penalized welfare recipients’ earnings. This would cost money, and would make large numbers of the working poor eligible for the dole–a strategy with political costs as well as advantages, as George McGovern later discovered. Or the law could simply force welfare recipients to work, incentives or no. The difficulty here was that there were very few jobs–especially in an economy with steeply rising unemployment–for untrained welfare mothers. Alternatively, one could create jobs. Congress tried that in 1967 with the “Work Incentive Program” (cheerfully abbreviated as WIN).But by September 1969, only 13,000 welfare recipients had been put to work. Neither local agencies nor Congress has shown much enthusiasm for paying an annual $1,000 or $2,000 per child for day care facilities so that mothers could work off their welfare payments on $3,000-a-year jobs.

Faced with these uncomfortable alternatives, the Nixon Administration chose a bit of each. F.A.P. would cut the penalty rate from two-thirds to one-half of every extra dollar earned by the poor while on welfare; all welfare recipients would be required to register with the United States Employment services for work and would be docked $500 if they refused. New WIN jobs and day-care facilities would be promised.

No one expected the work requirement to work, least of all the President. “I don’t care a damn about the work requirement,” he told Moynihan, “This is the price of getting $1,600.” Again, as McGovern belatedly found out, the only way to promote welfare changes was to call them workfare.

But the price Nixon paid for a vague and unstructured work requirement was to exacerbate liberal fears. Mothers of small children, it was argued, might be ordered to work regardless of the adequacy of day-care facilities or the appropriateness of the job. To make matters worse, hard-won rights of judicial review for welfare recipients would have been curtailed by the Nixon bill.

Evaluating these fears is a problematic task, which Moynihan does not systematically attempt. In a thick, complicated book he finds little space for the detailed arguments raised by the liberal opposition. His focus, instead, is on motives. The liberals, he charges, could not permit fundamental change in the welfare system for they were too beholden to their constituencies of social workers, self-seeking spokesmen for the underprivileged and existing welfare recipients in high-payment states.

A more sympathetic phrasing could be constructed on the same evidence. F.A.P. offered epochal gains for the Southern poor at the price of a change in the rules with uncertain consequences for the mothers and children on welfare in the North. Liberals chose to be strategically conservative.

What lesson is to be learned? Moynihan, though defeated in this instance, draws a happy conclusion. Quoting W.H. Auden, his epigraph states the theme: “In the prison of his days/Teach the free man how to praise.” His opening and closing chapters offer praise for the American political system, which can broach (and, Moynihan trusts, one day accomplish) “fundamental reform” such as the substitution of F.A.P. for welfare. That a Republican President could offer F.A.P. and carry with him a fair portion of conservatives, Moynihan contends, testifies to the system’s remarkable capacity for change. That liberals could help shoot it down is but a regrettable example of the frustration and delay inherent in any great project of revision. [Emphasis Added]

Microcredit and microlending are proven vehicles to raise communities out of poverty. The new struggle is for economic self-sufficiency. This country is in a wrenching moment in history because credit crunch weasels through maneuvers that a skilled Vegas high roller would have avoided, have put this country deep in debt and indebted to others. One can only speculate, but had Dr. King survived he would have probably been leading the fight for jobs, preserving the middle class, and helping more of the poor into the middle class. The new struggle is economic so that people have a roof over their head and can afford a choice of where to live.

Robert J. Samuelson, the economist, wrote an opinion piece which appeared in the Washington Post, which questions the value of credit crunch weasels to this economy and this society. In A Wall Street Pay Puzzle Samuelson says the following:

Why does Wall Street make the big bucks? A nation with 10 percent unemployment is understandably puzzled and outraged when the very people at the center of the financial crisis seem to be the first to recover and are pulling down fabulous pay packages. At Goldman Sachs, the average pay for 2009 has been estimated at nearly $600,000; at J.P. Morgan Chase’s investment bank, it’s been reckoned at slightly below $400,000. These averages conceal multimillion-dollar bonuses for top traders and investment bankers; underlings get smaller sums. Are Wall Street’s leaders that much smarter and more industrious than everyone else?

By their own admission, they’re not. Testifying last week to a congressionally created commission, Wall Street chief executives conceded that their errors directly contributed to the crisis. Wall Street money moguls may be bright and diligent, but they’re not unique. It’s where they work — not who they are — that’s so enriching. A study of Harvard graduates found that those who went into finance “earned three times the income of other graduates with the same grade point average, demographics and college major,” reports Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, the study’s co-author.

Is it possible that what Wall Street does is three times more valuable to society than other well-paid occupations? That’s hard to believe. It’s not that Wall Street is just the vast casino of popular imagination. It helps allocate capital, which — done well — promotes a vibrant economy. In 2007, Wall Street firms enabled businesses to raise $2.7 trillion from the sale of stocks, bonds and other securities. But Wall Street sometimes misallocates capital, as the 1990s “tech bubble” and today’s crisis painfully remind. The huge social costs (high unemployment, lost income) refute the notion that Wall Street consistently creates exceptional economic value that justifies exceptional compensation….

All this provides context to today’s pay controversies. Wall Street may be greedy — who isn’t? — but the explanation for its high compensation is its economic base (wealth, not production). That’s why it’s so hard to control or regulate. Since the 1960s, the industry has changed dramatically. Then, revenue came mainly from commissions on buying stocks and bonds for others. In 1966, commissions were 62 percent of revenue. Now, firms mostly make and manage investments for themselves and others. In 2007, commissions provided only 8 percent of revenue.

The transformation has made Wall Street a greater source of potential economic instability. Some compensation packages exacerbated the crisis by offering big bonuses if big risks paid off. Because government provided a safety net for the whole system, it’s justified in taxing the industry — as President Obama proposed last week — to cover the costs, as Douglas Elliott, a former investment banker now at the Brookings Institution, correctly argues.

A larger issue is: How much should society concentrate on existing wealth as opposed to creating new wealth? Wall Street’s lavish pay packages may attract too many of America’s best and brightest. “It’s bad for the rest of the economy,” says economist Thomas Philippon of New York University, a student of the financial sector. “We also need smart brains outside finance.” If that somehow happens, the crisis may yet have a silver lining.

Hopefully, the pols will take this moment in time to make the structural changes to the economic system, which are necessary to preserve true competition, yet provide true economic stimulus to all parts of the society. Right now, the only people with a guaranteed annual income are credit crunch weasels.

The fight for the dignity of the person continues.

John Newton (1725-1807)
Stanza 6 anon.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we’ve been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

http://constitution.org/col/amazing_grace.htm

Tags: Daniel Moynihan, Dr. Martin Luther King, Guaranteed Annual Income, Jr., Richard Nixon, Where Do We Go From Here:Chaos or Community?

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

A baby changes everything: Rapper Jay-Z gets religion about the ‘B’ word

14 Jan

The culture seems to be sexualizing children at an ever younger age and it becomes more difficult for parents and guardians to allow children to just remain, well children, for a bit longer. Still, parents and guardians must do their part to make sure children are in safe and secure environments. Kristen Russell Dobson, the managing editor of Parent Map, has a great article in Parent Map. In Are Girls Acting Sexy Too Young? Dobson says….

I suppose there are a group of parents who don’t want conflict and give in because “everyone else is doing it.” Remember the everyone else is often the lowest common denominator. Some parents feel they must be their child’s BFF. Wrong. You are supposed to be the parent. Some one has to be in charge. Russell provide some excellent resources for managing the media. Find resources for managing media here.

Young and often impressionable teens think that Hilton and LiLo, and rappers like Jay-Z despite all evidence to the contrary, have it together because of the fame or infamy, the clothes, and the money. It is no wonder that Candace Bushnell of the Sex and the City $$$$$ franchise is laughing all the way to the bank while stepping over the bodies of those who bought into her philosophy. Here is what Lilo said in the Entertainment News article, Lindsay Lohan’s Life Inspired By ‘Sex in the City.’

Lindsay Lohan has hailed seminal sitcom Sex and the City for inspiring her dating philosophy.
Even though Lohan was only 12 years old when the Sarah Jessica Parker-starring comedy started, the Mean Girls star admits she loves having open and casual relationships with men, like Sex and the City characters Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbs, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York.
She says, “Sex and the City changed everything for me, because those girls would just sleep with so many people.”
Lohan admits she has double standards about her open attitude to relationships–she wants to be able to sleep with whomever she chooses, but doesn’t want to share her male companions.

At least one parent is sending caution alerts about the Sex and the City philosophy and young women. Dave Taylor is a father who writes the Attachment Parenting blog. This is what he says in the post, I Don’t Want to Meet Candace Bushell’s Sex and the City Women as Teens

A person would have to be living under a rock to not know that Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce are now parents. Here is an example of the pre-religion Jay-Z from the blog, Classy Black Lady:

Jay Z – Black Woman as a “Double Zero”

Jay Z is yet another rapper who we have countless examples of disrespect of black women and girls. I can distinctly remember “back in the day” when his song “Girls, Girls, Girls” came out and he took the opportunity to attach every negative stereotype he could think of to the black woman in his story. Well I chose another more recent yet more obscure offense instead.

In his video “On to the Next One,” which many people associated with satanic images, there is one image in particular that stood out to me. There is a young black woman with traditional African corn rows in the video, just standing around looking sad with two zeros on her chest.

Here is the video. You first see her right around the 0:24 mark in the video, but she appears throughout.

Now what does this image mean? Is she just a “nappy headed ho” to Jay Z and crew as Don Imus stated in his hatefully notorious comment about the black Rutger’s women’s basketball team? Or is Jay Z and his producers simply telling this black woman that she is not only a ZERO, but a double ZERO and he/black men/the world should be “on to the next one.” Is he saying she is a zero because she won’t move onto the next level of putting weave in her hair, contacts in her eyes and sexing herself up in the way that his wife, Beyonce, has done?

Black women, open your eyes and don’t continue to let subliminal messages like this slide. I sure won’t.

http://blog.classyblacklady.com/2010/12/black-rappers-vs-black-women-5-specific.html

So, moi read with great interest how a baby has changed life for Jay-Z and Beyonce.

Seattle PI.Com is reporting in the article, New dad Jay-Z vows to drop the ‘B’ word from his rhymes:

Rapper Jay-Z has vowed to drop the word ‘b**ch’ from his lyrics after becoming a first-time dad.

The hitmaker’s baby girl Blue Ivy was born in New York last Saturday and she has inspired dad to clean up his rhymes – something that even Oprah Winfrey failed to do while challenging Jay-Z about his questionable lyrics during a 2010 appearance on her show.

In a poem dedicated to his little girl, the “99 Problems” rapper writes, “Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/I didn’t think hard about using the word b**ch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it.”

He continues, “I never realized while on the fast track that I’d give riddance to the word b**ch/To leave her innocence in tact/No man will degrade her, or call her name/I’m so focused on your future, the degradation has passed. http://blog.seattlepi.com/people/2012/01/13/new-dad-jay-z-vows-to-drop-the-%E2%80%98b%E2%80%99-word-from-his-rhymes/

Entertainers like Jay-Z are just one component of the sexualization and demeaning of women and girls.

Joy Sewing of the Houston Chronicle is reporting in the blog post, Walmart Offers Make-Upand Anti-aging Products for 8-Year-Oldsthat Walmart is aiming a line of make-up at “tweens.”

Wal-Mart is going after the tween (ages 8-12) market (and their parents’ wallets) with the new GeoGirl beauty line. That 8-year-olds need lipstick is another debate, but this line will offer colorful cosmetics and “mother approved” makeup products. According to a recent article in Women’s Wear Daily, the formulas are designed for young skin and have natural ingredients like white willow bark to exfoliate, chamomile, lavender and calendula to calm and antioxiodiates to prevent aging. (Sounds a little much for a tweener, but I not a parent to one.)

Good grief! What’s next – in store Botox?

The Walmart execs need to stop hanging out with the Viacom pinheads and sleaze merchants. Parents need to learn how to say NO and put the brakes on out of control execs and slime merchants attempting to rob children of a childhood.

“The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.”

Bill Cosby

“When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Nice. Glad that Jay-Z got religion to protect his child. What about other people’s children who were led astray?

11 Rap Songs to Disrespect Women To http://therapup.net/2009/04/11-rap-songs-to-disrespect-women-to/

Tags: 'bitch', Children and Families, Classy Black Lady blog, demeaning women, Jay-Z, Parent Map, rap music, Sexualization of Children, Sexualization of Women and Girls

Comments 1 Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

New Idaho education law: ‘Students Come First’

12 Jan

High quality teachers are teacher who produce academic achievement in THEIR POPULATION of kids. Kids arrive at school at different points on the ready to learn continuum. High quality teachers are able to work with THEIR POPULATION of children and move them along the continuum of academic achievement. Idaho has passed a new law with the intent of putting more high quality teachers in the classroom. AP is reporting the story, Idaho teacher evaluations to include parent input which was printed in the Idaho Statesman.

At least half of an Idaho teacher’s job evaluation will be based on student achievement starting July 1, and what parents think will count too.

The state Department of Education plans to ask lawmakers Wednesday to clarify when parental involvement will factor into the evaluations of educators and school administrators. The change was part of an education overhaul signed into law last year.

Under the plan introduced by public schools chief Tom Luna, at least 50 percent of all teaching evaluations performed after June 30 will be tied to the academic performance of students. But to some, the law was unclear as to when the parents become involved.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/01/11/1948842/idaho-teacher-evaluations-to-include.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

Parent involvement is just one change in a ambitious new Idaho education law.

The Idaho Department of Education has information about the new law, “Students Come First” at its site.

Among the highlights of the new law, “Students Come First” which can be found at the following Link to Idaho Department of Education: http://www.sde.idaho.gov/ are new

Teacher and Principal Evaluations

We know that the most important factor in a student’s education is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. Why leave this to chance? Students Come First ties at least 50% of a teacher and administrator’s evaluations to growth in student achievement. To read more about Idaho’s framework for teacher evaluation, please click here.

Students Come First also requires parent input on teacher and school-based administrator evaluations.

http://www.sde.idaho.gov/site/teacherEval/

http://www.studentscomefirst.org/evaluations.htm

Teacher Evaluation Forms, Templates and Resources

Daneilson – Interview Protocol for a Postconference

Danielson – Informal Classroom Observations

Danielson – Evaluation Schedule

Danielson – Formal Classroom Observation Form

Danielson – Handout Cover Sheet

Danielson – Identifying the Domains Handout

Danielson – Individual Professional Development Plan

Danielson – Notes from Observation

Danielson – Responsibilities within the Formal Observation Process

Danielson – Sample Evaluator Letter

Danielson – Sample of Artifacts

Danielson – The Placemat Quadrant of Four Domains

Comparison of State Adopted Standards to Danielson’s Framework

There is also a new provision, “Pay for Performance,” which is found at: http://www.studentscomefirst.org/performance.htm

Pay for Performance

Currently, teachers have little or no control over how much money they make each year in the State of Idaho. Teachers are paid based on where they fall on the Instructional Salary Grid, based on their level of education and years of experience. This makes it difficult for Idaho to reward excellence in the classroom or to attract and retain the best and the brightest in the classroom. Now, every teacher has the opportunity to make money above and beyond their base salary.

The goal of the pay-for-performance plan is not to force our current educators to work harder. We already know teachers and principals across Idaho are working hard for students each and every day. The goal is to reward them for the work they already do. Idaho’s pay for performance system would add to the current salary schedule, not replace it.

The pay-for-performance plan was agreed to by all stakeholders in 2009, including the Idaho School Boards Association, Idaho Association of School Administrators, Idaho Education Association, and representatives of the Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence.

Under this pay-for-performance plan, all teachers (including physical education teachers, special education teachers, alternative high school teachers, etc) are eligible to receive performance bonuses in three different areas.

·    Teachers can receive bonuses for working in hard-to-fill positions, as determined at the local level.

·    They can receive bonuses for taking on leadership responsibilities, such as mentoring new teachers or developing curriculum. These are things many teachers already do, but do not get paid for.

·    Teachers and administrators will also receive bonuses for working in schools that meet student growth targets set at both the state and local levels. At the state level, we will distribute bonuses based on academic growth in a whole school. At the local level, districts will have the flexibility to set their own student growth measures. It is important that these academic growth bonuses be awarded to the whole school, rather than individual teachers, because every teacher contributes to a student’s success in the classroom, whether it is in math, physical education, or art. Additionally, it is important that teachers continue to collaborate and share ideas, rather than pitting teacher against teacher.

Why is the student achievement portion of this plan based on academic growth? Because we know education is a process, not a destination. We are never done learning. So we shouldn’t assume that a child who is at grade level is done learning, either. Therefore, we should measure educators in a school based on the growth that the students in that school make in the year they have those students. This is the only fair way to measure academic performance.

·         Local PFP Submission Form and Waiver

·         MEMO PFP submission

·         Pay for Performance Webinar

·         PFP Calculation Template (2)

·         Master Agreement PFP Template – Small District

·         Master Agreement PFP Template – Large District

·         Local PFP Share Awards Template 2011-2012

·         Archived Pay for Performance Webinar

·         Pay-for-Performance Plan Fact Sheet

·         Leadership Awards

·         Student Achievement Measures

The legislation has some very ambitious goals:

What does this bill mean to you?

Students

Every student will have a highly effective teacher every year they are in school.

School will no longer be the least technological part of a student’s day. Classrooms will be interactive and engaging as well as educational.

Every student will have access to high-quality courses no matter where they live in Idaho.

If students meet state graduation requirements early, they can take dual credit courses paid for by state.

Students will take a college entrance exam, such as the SAT, ACT or Compass, free of charge before their senior year.

Student achievement will be a factor in teacher and school administrator performance evaluations.

Parents/Families

Every high school will receive more funding for math and science

The state will make unprecedented investments in effective classroom technology to aid students in the learning process.

High school students can take dual credit courses and earn college credit while still in high school at no cost to parents, if they meet state graduation requirements early.

The state is paying for all students to take college entrance exams, such as the ACT, SAT or Compass, before their senior year.

All parents will have input on teacher and principal performance evaluations.

Student achievement will be a factor in teacher and principal performance evaluations.

Locally elected school boards will have more local control than they have had in decades.

The state will phase out tenure for new teachers.

The state will make unprecedented investments in technology for every classroom, including the implementation of a one-to-one ratio of students to computers in high school over the next five years.

Every Idaho student will have access to high-quality courses no matter where they live in Idaho.

Link to Idaho Department of Education http://www.sde.idaho.gov/

There is no magic bullet or “Holy Grail” in education. There is only what works to produce academic achievement in each population of children. That is why school choice is so important.

Idaho is embarking on a huge education experiment.

Realted:

New Harvard study about impact of teachers https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/new-harvard-study-about-impact-of-teachers/

Tags: ‘Students Come First’, Education Reform, Idaho Education Law, Merit Pay, Parent Involvement, Pay for Performance, Principal Evaluation, Teacher Education, Teacher Evalutaion, Teacher Quality

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Dr Wilda

← Older Entries

Newer Entries →

Search

drwilda

Finding the balance between phony self-esteem and ‘Tiger Mom’

Is the self-esteem movement just another education fad? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/is-the-self-esteem-movement-just-another-education-fad/

‘Tiger mothers’ should tame parenting approach http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/01/10/tiger.mothers.should.tame.parenting.approach

Is the self-esteem movement just another education fad?

Reading is a key component of learning

U.S. Supreme Court will not accept cyberbullying case

Could ‘open source’ textbooks be cheaper than traditional textbooks?

Open-Source Textbooks a Mixed Bag in California

New Jersey may eliminate teacher tenure

Amazing Grace: Dr. King’s dream was comprehensive

Amazing Grace: Dr. King and the guaranteed annual income

A baby changes everything: Rapper Jay-Z gets religion about the ‘B’ word

11 Rap Songs to Disrespect Women To http://therapup.net/2009/04/11-rap-songs-to-disrespect-women-to/

New Idaho education law: ‘Students Come First’

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Follow Blog via Email

Twitter Updates

Meta

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Translate