Granby01033

This is a follow up to the next post down. I cross-posted and was frontpaged on Blue Mass Group. The comments led me to write what follows. I've yet to see any evidence that suggests the South Hadley High School administration addressed bullying effectively.
High school students can and do commit suicide in spite of school [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

 In the last 10 years, my high school has had one suicide. It was the worst experience I've had in the last 17 years of teaching. A ethnic Italian with a close circle of friends and relatives, Franco's death had emotional ripples throughout the community. The morning after his death I looked on as his normally happy, [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

At ELHS, we work hard to prevent to prevent bullying. Teachers are required to stand in the hallway during passing time. Complaints are seriously considered and dealt with. We administer a yearly survey to gauge the degree of bullying that is happening. We really work on it. I don't think the same can be said for the amateur hour [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

Granby is lucky in an ironic sort of way. Because we're small and spend very little above the state's mandatory minimum on education, we've got less we can cut. There may eventually be cuts in store for our schools (I don't really know), but other schools across the Commonwealth are feeling the effects of the [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

"If you want to be treated like a partner in school-improvement efforts, you have to show that you're a willing partner."
--The Globe Editors
Patently anti-teacher union and ignorant of the difference between research and data, the editors of the Boston Globe are fossils of the old education reform movement of 15-20 years ago.
Their underlying assumption: [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

After the recent release of an MTA report demonstrating a high rate of attrition for Boston charter schools, I got into an extended discussion of charter schools on Blue Mass Group. It was fun and edifying and required some serious reading.
Charter schools, if you don't know, are public schools run by groups not accountable to [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

In education policy, politics reigns supreme. Not only is educational expertise unrequired, it’s often unpreferred. Ideology stands on equal footing with research. Management is regarded as problem-solving, labor as the problem. The rationale for charter schools is a case in point. Intended as innovators to provide a good example to and healthy competition for public [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

Charter schools have long skated by on the lack of research about their efficacy. Lacking a critical mass of empirical evidence, a neo-liberal, free market ideology has sufficed to justify their existence. By competing with, and presumably doing better than, public schools, charter schools were intended to "provide models for replication in other public schools." Innovation [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

The rationale of charter schools was that their "innovation" would provide competition for public schools, which would improve in order to keep from losing customers students. Freed from the iron fist of teacher unions, charter schools could put into effect the changes public schools were unable to implement.
Charter schools followed a form of business model. Schools [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

The Boston Globe editors never pass up the opportunity to bash unions, particularly teacher unions. Their commitment to the neo-liberal model that believes education would improve if it ran more like the private sector, that poor teaching is due to poor incentives, and that the issues with urban education can all be addressed with more accountability and [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

Back when Marty O'Shea and I were coaching debate and sharing a bus with our respective teams, we talked briefly about becoming school administrators. I had no desire to become a principal, never mind a superintendent. Marty felt differently, and a few years later, he was an assistant principal at Longmeadow High School. It wasn't [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

When it comes to Gov. Deval Patrick, I've had to hold my nose a lot.
Politically speaking, Patrick's a walking disaster. From his curtains and Cadillac to leaving casino supporters in the lurch while he signed a book deal. 
In spite of his frequent missteps and occasional self-centeredness, I've always thought he was generally well-meaning and trying to deal [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

Who ever said MCAS was good for nothing?
Texting during an MCAS exam got a 17-year-old Silver Lake High School student arrested and suspended this week. Administrators who confiscated his cellphone said they found details about an alleged drug deal instead of the cheating they suspected.
Cory A. Bannerman of Kingston was released on his own recognizance [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

The last math course I took was in high school. And I failed the second half of it. I'd fare better today, I think, but I don't know if I'd be part of the 63% of the people who failed the MTEL's new math test. 
Testing fundamentalists will decry the poor achievement level of teacher candidates today, [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

Thou shalt not steal?
Just plain weird...

MONSON - The School Department filed suit Monday against School Committee member Karen A. Patenaude and her husband, saying the couple wrongly accepted $14,381 to transport their son daily to a private school in Hardwick when he was actually in Utah.
The suit asks that the Patenaudes pay $14,381 back to [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

We all have people in our past that we wish never to forget...  These are the people who know our secrets, who prop us up in the tough times, who share the joy and laughter and own a piece of our heart and soul.
--Crazy Fortunes
This is what happens in undesirable school systems: you get [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

The New Leadership Charter School's leadership looks nothing like new leadership to me. In fact, it doesn't much look like leadership at all. In a school of 500 students, school leaders should have been well-aware of the degree of bullying facing 12 year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and taken more steps to protect him.
People, even children, commit suicide; however, my guess [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

"Nobody wants these jobs. It's a very difficult job - especially in a regional district where you've got three school committees, four towns, a very contentious atmosphere and a lot of people who are very smart and very vocal."
--Amherst School Committee Chair
Being the superintendent of schools is a thankless job, and fewer people are doing [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

Conservative education scholar Diane Ravitch writes, "Obama has given Bush a third term in education policy.”
What she doesn't write is the fact that education policy has been remarkably coherent since she was serving as Assistant Secretary of Education. What's happening now is nothing less than the extension of the Reagan Presidency's educational policy and the major educational report [...] Read more »

[Read more →]

It's hard for me to read about the suicide of a 6th grade boy without some nausea. We lost one student to suicide in my years as a high school teacher, and the day we learned one of our kids had taken his life was the worst day I've ever experienced.
It's tempting to pass judgement on the New [...] Read more »

[Read more →]