Saint Lucia Water Sector Reform

The Architect: Radical Education Reform for the 21st Century featuring Jeb Bush

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:26:32 +0000

Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor and founder of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, addressed the dramatically changing landscape of K–12 education, and discussed how the Notre Dame community can play a vital role in providing vision and leadership in crafting a vibrant education sector for all children as part of the 2011-12 Notre Dame Forum. The 2011-12 Notre Dame Forum, “Reimagining School: To Nurture the Soul of a Nation,” is a yearlong discussion to explore the profound and challenging questions that shape the national debate about K–12 education, which has a dramatic impact on the future of American civil society. Established by Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC in 2005, the Notre Dame Forum has brought leading authorities to campus to discuss substantive issues of the day. Past forum topics have included immigration, sustainability, global health, and the role of religious faith in a plural world.

New guidelines for teacher evaluations

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:22:36 +0000

Illinois educators will be tested on a new set of guidelines in the coming months. “This is cutting edge reform. Illinois is leading the entire nation on this education reform. There’s a lot of eyes on it. I think everyone, whether they’re a teacher, administrator or parent wants the best teachers in front of their kids,” Quincy School Superintendent Lonny Lemon said. The performance-based evaluations will take effect in the Quincy School District in March. It includes guidelines passed in the General Assembly last year. Staying in the classroom will then depend on the teacher’s performance, not how long her or she has taught there.

February 14, 2011 Governor’s Update : Education Reform & Job Growth

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:32:17 +0000

Yvette Martinez: In Governor Haslam’s first month on the job his administration has hit the ground running looking for ways to make government more efficient and more effective. During a Tennessee Press Association event on February 10th in Nashville, the governor summarized his ideas for education reform and provided a blueprint for connecting campuses to high quality jobs through private and public partnership. Governor Haslam: We have the resources in place to connect our high schools, the technical centers that we have, the community colleges, and our four year schools with businesses across the state. To tighten that link there to encourage job growth. Number one, get the very best people in the position, and then number two, free them up to do their job. As you know I was in the retail business before that and we quickly found out that that was the two keys. One, get a great manager on site. Number two, let him or her do their job and not be totally bogged down with the things that we gave them to do from the central office. I think the exact same thing is true in education everybody in this room, if we broke up and said “I’m going to send everybody here to a different public school that’s within ten miles and I’m going to ask you to be back here in one hour. I guarantee you, in one hour you could come back and tell me if the principal of that school was a good principal, and if the teacher whose class you visited was a good teacher. When tenure happens after three …

Landmark Indiana Education Reform Becomes Law

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:24:21 +0000

School choice legislation was signed in Indiana by Gov. Mitch Daniels. State Superintendent Tony Bennett led the charge to increase teacher quality, restrict collective bargaining, increase charter schools and enact the broadest school voucher program in the country.

The Elephant on Campus | An Ornery Moment in Higher Education

admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:25:53 +0000

a teaser video for my work-in-progress feature documentary about the need for higher education reform in america. www.elephantoncampus.com

International Lessons in Education Reform: Sir Michael Barber

admin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:24:21 +0000

Watch Sir Michael Barber’s introduction, as he emphasizes the importance of addressing “the other achievement gap” between US education and the rest of the world. Visit the Network for Innovative Education website at sites.google.com for more information.

Chinese Education reform 1/3 Eng Sub

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:40:50 +0000

With all this hoopla about education in China generated by the PISA exam, here is what China is thinking about talking about it’s own education system. the very first part of the video focus on stop math Olympics used for middle school entrance, rest of the video is about reform rural schools. Which Chengdu is setup as experiential area. (In broad sense, Chengdu is also an experiential area to urban-rural integration as well magazine.caijing.com.cn

Brazil: Creating and Nurturing a Laboratory of Innovation and Best Practices

admin — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:34:27 +0000

In a decentralized system dogged by uneven teacher quality, poor infrastructure, and low student commitment, Brazil is using benchmarking to identify problems and drive reform. pearsonfoundation.org

Diane Ravitch on Corporate Education Reform

admin — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:23:27 +0000

Education historian and professor Diane Ravitch appeared on KALW’s Your Call on February 24, 2011: yourcallradio.org. Ravitch served as assistant secretary of education under George HW Bush and is the author of the bestselling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Based on her experience and recent shift in thinking, she’s the perfect interview, yet she’s only done a few television interviews. Why won’t the corporate media include Diane Ravitch in their many conversations and debates about education reform? When the HW Bush administration asked Ravitch to join them, she happily climbed “aboard the bandwagon” of conservative ideologies around school reform. She supported the idea that teachers whose students scored higher on tests should be paid more. She supported comprehensive standardized testing. She was affiliated with conservative think tanks. And when George W. Bush laid out his plan for No Child Left Behind ten years later, she was a supporter. She believed these measures would end bureaucracy, give attention to neglected children, empower poor families, and close the achievement gap. “I, too, had drunk deeply of the elixir that promised a quick fix to intractable problems,” she writes. That elixir recently wore off. She is now an outspoken critic of No Child Left Behind and is equally critical of President Obama’s “Race to the Top,” a set of policies she says do will nothing to turn around the train wreck of the prior administration …

Stanford Professor: Big Labor is why years & $billions have failed to fix Education

admin — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:27:51 +0000

(www.CEAFU.org) As students head back to school, it is a good time to reflect on why education is failing and continues to fail. Terry Moe, Chairman of the Political Science department at Stanford, provides a dispassionate and extensively researched book, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, which should become a useful and effective tool for any passionate education reformers. Dr. Moe states and backs it up with 500 pages of text that teacher unions are the biggest impediment to permanent and effective education reform. Dr. Moe’s research unquestionably shows that America’s children are risk because of their very own teachers’ allegiance to the NEA and AFT unions rather than education. And, until Big Labor’s influence over education is diminished, reform remains elusive. In his presentation at the Concerned Educators Against Forced Unionism’s (CEAFU) 36th Annual Conference, Dr. Moe stated that his research concludes that it is impossible for any effective education reform to occur with teacher unions as partners in reform. He said that unions have been and will inherently remain the well-financed opposition to education reform. Professor Moe added that in our political system it is easier to block reform than to bring about reform, giving teachers unions an additional edge in preventing changes. Professor Moe said that collective bargaining, the source of teacher union power, and teachers’ job interests, which collective bargaining enshrines …