Education is the fault of the teacher

We received this blurb in our daily bulletin. It’s from an opinion piece disagreeing with another teacher who said that too many students are being pushed into AP courses when really that type of work may be too hard for the student.

 Columnist: The average student can handle AP work
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews rejects the view of high school teacher and Post contributor Patrick Welsh who wrote in a USA Today Op-Ed that too many average students are being pushed into AP courses, where they find themselves over their heads. Through data analysis and a chat with the AP coordinator from a school near Welsh’s that enjoys higher exam participation and better passing rates, Mathews concludes that children can do AP work if they’re properly supported.   The Washington Post ( http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eyAMfEoyBndotApKau ) (free registration)(9/26) ( http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eyAMfEoyBndouumUXk )

And I’m interested in this stuff because as a school (as others seem to be doing) we are moving toward encouraging more students to take the AP route.

The only real reason why students won’t succeed in an AP course (for the average student) is because the teacher wasn’t good enough…or wasn’t PROFESSIONAL enough…or, and this is my favorite, they didn’t believe that all students can do well on the AP exam.

What was ever so bad that educators have a realistic view on some topics. For some reason if a teacher talks reality, suddenly they don’t believe in their students. Even more worse, as in the case of this “rebuttal,” when educators write or speak, others only want to hear what they want to hear. The original Op-Ed piece in the USA today is about the bigger picture of where all of this “push” is coming from and where it’s heading and by golly, just trying to be honest about the system. (And I won’t insert a subtle comment here about who’s getting all of this money, either).

Take a moment and read the opinion piece and also the USA Today piece (be sure to read the reader comments also…you get the feeling that some folk are patting themselves on the back without acknowledge that the writer is a pretty good educator himself).

Until then, make your mark heavy and dark.

Where there is money, there is greed: Lessons in Education

Maybe you missed it, but where there’s $1 Billion, why wouldn’t there be greed?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A $1 billion reading program that is a key part of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind education law was mismanaged and rife with conflicts of interest, according to an internal audit released on Friday.

For the rest of the story, here’s the current link.

Lake City Marathon: Second PR

The results from last Saturday’s marathon were posted today, and I actually did better than I thought. Here’s the stuff:

Time: 3:53:38 (17th Place overall… 74 finishers).

As it stands, the RD is unsure about the race next year, which is kind of a bummer because I think it is at a great time in the season (one of the first in the region before the October flood of marathons).

Anyway, the long run this morning went well….looking toward a 2-hour run next weekend (Lori is doing her 20-miler next weekend also).

First run after Lake City in the rain

Decided to start the training for Columbus today, so I had a 3-miler in the rain. Legs were stiff and sore at first, but by the time I crossed Main by the college, things felt fine.

Hal has some things to say about running more that one marathon in a year and I think the interim training should go fairly well (kind of stiff on the writing this morning, though). I’ll pick up another short run tomorrow and then run about an hour Saturday.

Mile 17, but the race is done

Lake City Marathon was a nice race…got to see a lot of Warsaw that I didn’t know existed (though I lived in the area for 5 years). My 1/2 marathon split was around 1:45 and then Mile 17 hit (my leg, that is) and I ran/walked for the next 6 miles until I decided to make a run for it and the leg held up okay (I think it was that ol’ ITB thingy from my first year of running).

Anyway, I think my time was around 3:55ish and I was happy to have my second best time (a little bummed about not getting the PR, but that’s fine). I met a lot of nice folks on the race path (kudos to the Grace College students helping out in the first part of the race) and folks at the end while we waiting around for the awards ceremony (which I left early because I stank and because, well, I wanted to get home, see the boys and Lori, and take a shower).

Pictures and other info coming later. Until then, I’ve got about 5 weeks until Columbus!

Nice Supper folks!

We’re watching What No to Wear and getting ready for bed after a really pleasant pasta dinner from the folk of the Lake City Marathon (the boys really liked the cake). Starting time is 7 a.m. and I hope to write nice things about the race.

Peace.

Playing your Video iPod stuff on the tv

In case you didn’t find it elsewhere (and you have a video iPod), you can play video content (and your pictures) on your television with a regular video camera single jack to television cord. The key is in the color match up: Red goes to the video input on your television and the other two RCA jacks plug in audio in. I found this out tonight on Mac Development section of the OReilly sites. (Thanks to Erica Sadun for writing a step-by-step user guide for this).

Should I dump .Mac for other services that I can get for free?

I just got my email from Apple saying that in 30 days my account will automatically renew. This has been a year of Mac diehards getting a bit testy (and perhaps that number was small, but quite digged). So, should I pay the $99 for the email address (I do really like it: cjudson), the homepage feature (which I use flickr now anyway) and the iDisk space?

I’m having a hard time justifying the money for services that are available for free (or, for a nominal cost for more features).

BTW, the bandwagon to dump all things Apple is not where I am headed; it seems that I use different platforms for different purposes. At home, I will continue to use my Mac (and when the ol’ eMac gives way, we’ll get another); at school, I will continue to endure the silly Dells and their Win XP OS (which works fine for my purposes); I will continue to play with Linux (and the Darwin core in OS X) because I can.

Last long run in the books; Last swim of the season

Saturday’s 8 miles went without incident…listened to Wait, wait…don’t tell me and the beginning of This American Life “Americans in Paris” (starts with a piece about David Sedaris). Nice weather and really not much to write about. So, now it’s time to gear up for Saturday’s 26.2 miles and honestly, I haven’t the foggiest idear of how it will go. I put myself down for a target time of 3:50 … I’ll just enjoy the week of 3-4-2 mile runs (no speed work on Wednesday, though.

Today, Labor Day, marked the last swim of the season…sort of a sad time, but we all jumped in the pool together (at a mild 80 degrees … folks, that’s really cold for us).

Also, accomplished today was finishing the painting of the kitchen and downstairs bathroom (let me see if I can get some color swatches here…okay, the kitchen looks like the walls in the top picture on this page and go a shade darker for the bathroom area).

Last long run; First two weeks

In the “catch-up-after-a-few-weeks” department of excuses:

Last week’s 12-miler went fine; did the CR32 to CR11 and back route and the run was nice. No, “oops, I pulled it again” business this time. This week I ran twice: a 3-miler and some Lassos (3 bookended by mile there and back). Tomorrow is 8 miles and I’ll probably play it safe and do the loop once (all flat surfaces).

Today marks the end of the first two weeks of school and thus far there’s nothing to complain too much about. In fact, I’m finding that I thinking of trying some new stuff. First thing is playing with yet another organizational road…this time, I’ve gone with the GTD (Getting things done) crowd. I stumbled across GTD when I found a cool little Unix utility called Remind. The site was 43 Folders and I found the stuff that I was reading hit a chord. (I’m also playing with a shell script called ToDoTxt because I like the idea of stripping back the coding and the GUI and going with pure plain text). I’ll write another post or two regarding how I’m doing my lesson planning this year.

This holiday weekend is about priming and painting the kitchen and grading some summer reading essays. Oh yes, I think I’ll close the pool too. Besides that, Lego time with the boys and Netflix with Lori (we’re working through the Brit comedy, Cold Feet).

BTW, I think I’ll start a myspace account for my newspaper students. More about that later.