Singer’s Clips (5-6-14)

Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:

 

Almost half the students attending public schools are minorities, yet fewer than 1 in 5 of their teachers is nonwhite. (ABC News)

 

My high school U.S. history teacher, Al Ladendorff, turned his classroom into a laboratory for critical thinking. He even asked us to tell him where the textbook was wrong. My wife Linda’s English and history teacher, Bill Goodfellow, required each student to write a research paper every year, some of them thousands of words long. (Washington Post)

 

Among cyclists, there is a joke that “I had the right of way” makes a good epitaph. The point is obvious: being right is cold comfort if you’re dead. (Education Gadfly)

 

Recently the PBS NewsHour deployed some student reporters to ask teachers how the common core has changed their classroom practices. The teachers are quite diplomatic, as the commenters on the website point out, and for the most part steer clear of the good/bad common-core debate. (The one teacher who does address whether the common core is positive or negative for instruction is from Texas—a non-adopter of the standards. She also manages to say it’s a bit of both.) (Education Week)

 

There was no snarling at City Hall when Mayor Bill de Blasio and the teachers’ union announced a very significant labor agreement on Thursday. Dispensing with the unproductive tension that tarnished the Bloomberg administration, the two sides showed that real progress can be made — on both the fiscal and the educational sides of the contract — when there is good will instead of disdain. On the whole, the agreement represents a good deal for the city and its students, though there were several missed opportunities and unanswered questions. (New York Times)

 

Members of school committees from across the state had to put on their thinking caps Saturday morning as they learned more about key issues facing Rhode Island’s school districts — particularly the implementation of new Common Core educational standards. (Providence Journal)