The Carnival of Educators, hosted by Andrea Hermitt, is up. Janice Campbell is hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling, which reminds us that November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. Read Full Story

In The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools, Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch argues that schools must teach our shared heritage and language to prepare children of many ethnicities to grow into “competent and civic-minded Americans who can function in the public sphere.” Our nation’s founders strongly supported education to mold citizens, Hirsch writes. They were less concerned with “the development of personal talent and individuality” in the privat... Read Full Story

Teacher ratings “in most districts are as discerning as peewee soccer award night, with everyone getting a trophy,” writes Jay Mathews in the Washington Post.  Less than one percent of teachers were rated unsatisfactory in a New Teacher Project study of 12 districts,  including Chicago, Denver, Cincinnati and Little Rock. . . .  99.8 percent satisfactory evaluation rates are ridiculous. Stop wasting time and money on them. Instead, emulate those schools — mostly public chart... Read Full Story

In giving President Obama an A+ for school reform ideas and for “getting it,”  columnist Ruben Navarette Jr. charges that “edu-crats” ignore and insult low-income black parents, then blame them for not participating in that “hostile environment.” It’s been my experience that many teachers don’t really care whether parents go to the PTA or help their kids with homework. They just want a constant foil, someone to blame when students flounder and t... Read Full Story

Hip-hop is going to school as a teaching tool, reports Teacher Magazine. “Pencil and paper and worksheets and reading from a book isn’t going to cut it now days,” said Kelli Charles, a fifth-grade teacher at Irwin Intermediate School on Fort Bragg. “Especially with all the technology, Xboxes and video games.” Charles worked for months to bring FMA Live!, a NASA endorsed hip-hop based science show to her school last week. The five-year-old show taught fifth- and s... Read Full Story

Today’s hyper-social teens are compulsive communicators, writes Jeffrey Zaslow in the Wall Street Journal. A 17-year-old boy, caught sending text messages in class, was recently sent to the vice principal’s office at Millwood High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The vice principal, Steve Gallagher, told the boy he needed to focus on the teacher, not his cellphone. The boy listened politely and nodded, and that’s when Mr. Gallagher noticed the student’s fingers moving o... Read Full Story

The number of teaching jobs increased last month, even while unemployment topped 10 percent, notes ABCTE blog.  Stimulus money enabled districts to add 10,700 jobs. Read Full Story

A Detroit charter school is funding the first year of college for 124 students, if they fulfill a senior-year contract calling for good grades, completed homework, extra reading and taking college readiness and study skills classes. University Preparatory High School, which serves low-income black students, is offering “tuition, room and board, books and fees at any public Michigan university — and a $5,000 scholarship to any senior who attends a private or out-of-state school.... Read Full Story

In a study in India, teachers hired as test graders gave higher scores when the student was identified as high caste, lower scores to low-caste students, reports Inside School Research. The Harvard study tested elementary and middle-school students in mathematics, language and art. The tests, however, were randomly assigned different student characteristics. One student, for instance, would be listed on a cover sheet as a member of the Brahmin caste, the highest of India’s four social... Read Full Story

With women earning 58 percent of bachelor’s degrees, some private liberal arts colleges are practicing affirmative action for male applicants to preserve a gender balance in enrollment. Private colleges have the legal right to discriminate against women, but don’t like to publicize it.  Now the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether the practice is widespread. From Inside Higher Education: . . . the Civil Rights Commission’s inquiry is based on concerns abo... Read Full Story