IDEA Blog

We Are the Present: Why Youth Voices Are Necessary

When we pretend that children are just adults in hatching, waiting to become real participants in the world, we don(tm)t merely take away their agency and lose out on their wisdom; we deny that they are already full participants in the world, on the front lines of the most critical struggles in modern history.

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Evaluating Our Values

Articles are written every year bemoaning the fact that young Americans are woefully ignorant about civics. Here’s a radical theory to consider: Young people don’t know civics because we don’t teach them civics! We made a decision in that moment with those twelve boys that practice with writing a brief constructed response was of higher value than becoming competent, prepared, participatory citizens. Does that decision mesh with your own values?

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My Love/Hate Relationship with Educational Numbers

A few months back, I wrote about how my college was going through the NCATE accreditation process. The outcome of that long event was a report about how we are doing. One area in which we were “dinged” was in our assessments of our graduate programs. This report finding means that as director of one of our biggest graduate programs, I am now under the gun to create quantitative assessments to determine the effect our Master's program has on its students (are we teaching them anything, are their dispositions and behaviors changing toward sought-after ends as a result of our program, etc?).

While such info can certainly be useful in some ways, I cringe at how there is an assumption...

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What will happen to education in 2012?

What can we expect in the world of public education in 2012? (For a good review of what happened in 2011, check out this link.) I’ll start by considering three nagging questions.

1. Will this be the year that some school districts say ‘No mas!” to No Child Left Behind’s harsh rules?

2. Will we have that long-awaited national conversation about the goals of public education?

3. And will political leaders rise up against the excesses of for-profit education, so effectively documented in the New York Times (December 13, 2011), where we learned that the school superintendent of one for-profit charter chain that enrolls 94,000 students is paid $5,000,000 a year? (By contrast, Dennis Walcott, who is responsible for over one million New York City public school students, earns $213,000 a year.)

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That’s What We Do in Pre-K

I do know that responsibilities are not things into which one is commanded or shamed, rewarded or punished: that’s called obedience. Responsibility emerges only from the unalienable right to pursue happiness. I am the parent of a teenager now, not legally an adult, but no longer a child. I’ve noticed that the more rights she assumes, the more responsibly she behaves. That’s what we do in a democracy.

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Gender Bullying in the Classroom

Allison was biologically a girl but felt more comfortable wearing Tony Hawk long-sleeved T-shirts, baggy jeans, and black tennis shoes. Her parents were accepting and supportive. Her mother braided her hair in cornrows because Allie thought it made her look like Will Smith(tm)s son, Trey, in the remake of The Karate Kid. She preferred to be called Allie. The first day of school, children who hadn•€(tm)t been in Allie(tm)s class in kindergarten referred to her as •he.”

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The Independent Project

The Independent Project is an alternative student driven school-within-a-school that was started at Monument Mountain Regional High School by a student. Research by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi on engagement suggested that if students have more control over what they are learning, they will be more engaged,
excited, and committed to their studies.

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The Best and Worst Education News of 2011

Here’s my humble attempt to identify the best and the worst education news that occurred during the past 12 months. I hope you’ll take time to share your own choices in the comment section.

I’ll list the ones I think are the best first, followed by the worst. However, it’s too hard to rank them within those categories, so I’m not listing them in any order.

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Herczog: Social Studies education is key to preparing our next generation

The Arab Spring, Climate Change, Occupy Wall Street, Race to the White House, and the Super Committee. Real challenges in today’s world require great thinkers, innovative problem solvers and engaged citizens of a global community. How do we prepare the next generation to address these complex challenges?

The answer lies with Social Studies education.

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Principals Protest Role of Testing in Evaluations

Through the years there have been many bitter teacher strikes and too many student protests to count. But a principals’ revolt?

Principals don’t revolt, said Bernard Kaplan of Great Neck North High School on Long Island, who has been one for 20 years. “Principals want to go along with the system and do what they’re told.”

But President Obama and his signature education program, Race to the Top, along with John B. King Jr., the New York State commissioner of education, deserve credit for spurring what is believed to be the first principals’ revolt in history.

As of last night, 658 principals around the state had signed a letter •€” 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began ” protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.

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