NewsTrust - Primary School - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Class Breaks in Tokyo More Suited for Children

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ednews.org - By Erin Irving - Feb. 06 (Editorial) - As the bell rang ending my first forty-five minute English lesson I expected the Japanese teacher to switch to the next lesson as would typically happen in an American elementary school. Instead, the third graders I was teaching immediately packed their notebooks into their desks, stood up, slid their chairs under their desks and scrambled down the stairs to the outdoor field as fast as they could. The teacher stayed in his desk and continued grading papers. I was confused. Could it be time for recess at 9:30 am? I followed the children outside to find that most of the 800 students in the school in urban Tokyo were running around completely rampant, jumping rope, playing soccer, climbing on the jungle gym and walking on stilts. Six teachers stood at designated places around the playground watching the children for injuries, but otherwise hundreds of kids ran around freely. Fifteen minutes into playtime, another bell rang. The kids hung the jump ropes and the stilts, threw the balls back into bins and ran back to class.

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The Guy with 'The Best Job in Public Education'

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

voiceofsandiego.org - By Emily Alpert - Jan. 30 (Interview) - Despite being the son of a principal and a schoolteacher, Jed Wallace says he stumbled into teaching to pay the bills. But what started as just a job at a massive Los Angeles elementary school became a passion and eventually convinced him that solutions lay outside school districts in charters: publicly funded schools that are independently run and free from the rules that gird school districts. The idea germinated after Wallace helped Hooper Avenue Elementary School boost its test scores "overnight" simply by clamping down on teacher and student turnover. Teachers agreed to stick it out at the school instead of climbing the career ladder to more comfortable schools; an area superintendent allowed Hooper to keep enrolling students who had moved a few schools away when a parent got sick or lost a job. But then a new leader came into the school district and parents were told they had to go back to their home schools. Wallace found himself standing outside the school facing furious families. He calls it one of the worst days in his professional career. "I said, 'I will not put myself in a situation where I do not have greater control over my professional destiny,'" Wallace recalled. "And it was clear to me that the charter school movement was in fact that place." Fifteen years later he has seen charters from nearly every angle: as a classroom teacher and charter founder, as a San Diego Unified manager overseeing charters, and as the executive director and later the chief operating officer of High Tech High, a lauded system of charter schools that use projects to engage students in their classes and now trains its own teachers. He was tapped in December to lead the California Charter Schools Association, a group that advocates for quality charters statewide.

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Disposable Youth in a Suspect Society

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Henry A. Giroux - Nov. 25 (Comment) - behind these grave statistics lies a series of decisions that favor economically those already advantaged at the expense of the young. savage cuts to education, nutritional assistance for impoverished mothers, veterans' medical care and basic scientific research, are often cynically administered to help fund tax cuts for the already inordinately rich.

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Gay marriage opposition uses public schools as a reason for Prop 8

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

realisticlies.wordpress.com - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - Recently, the majority of commercials saying, “Yes on Prop 8,” are also saying that the reason to vote “yes” is because of our public schools. One of the big reasons homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to get married is because teachers in public schools might mention it.

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Appreciative Inquiry and Strengths: Positive Psychology in the Special Education Process

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Positive Psychology News Daily - By Sherri Fisher - Apr. 06 (Opinion) - Lindy is in third grade. She has recently participated in neuropsychological, cognitive and achievement testing to help her family and school understand whether she has a disability which is at the root of her seeming inability to complete school work. Homework plus completing leftover work at recess and at home takes all of the time Lindy would otherwise have to play with friends, learn hip-hop dance, or take an art class, all things she misses terribly. Her parents, believing that they are doing what is in the best interest for their child's education, diligently take turns sitting with her at the kitchen table to be sure the work is completed, even if it means family stress and staying up until very late very often. Because of a labyrinthine set of special education laws designed to keep her in the general classroom and working through a standardized curriculum, in order to get help, Lindy will need this "disabled" labeling.

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Congress Aims to Dumb Down History,Pushes Fiction of Christian Nation in Public Schools

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - Jan. 15 (Press Release) - "The "whereas" paragraphs in this resolution are dishonest: they deliberately confuse the personal religious beliefs of our nation's political leaders with their public actions; they ignore the fact that our Founders (many of whom were deists anyway) checked their religion at the door when they wrote the Constitution.

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The Myth of Pre-K

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:08:01 -0700

Cato Unbound - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - From the Washington Post comes another shoddy mainstream media report on the magical benefits of pre-kindergarten. The only controversy reported in the piece is between those who want universal pre-K and those who just want the program to target the poor. I guess the reporter couldn't imagine someone having a reasonable argument against government provision of pre-K.

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The Desegregation, Not Integration Mantra

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:57:34 -0700

Balkinization - By Jack Balkin - Jun. 29 (Opinion) - As soon as the Court delivered its opinions in Brown I and Brown II a debate began whether or not Brown required merely desegregation-- i.e., an end to official legal assignment of students based on their race, or integration-- that is, affirmative steps to break down racial barriers and to integrate public functions and public life. Southern critics of Brown, hoping to preserve the status quo, argued that Brown meant at most "desegregation, not integration." They followed a often cited statement by Judge John Parker in the Fourth Circuit (see Mark Tushnet's post below). Parker had personally rejected massive resistance but decided to read Brown in the narrowest way possible

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The Declining Quality of Mathematics Education in the US

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:13:46 -0800

Kuro5hin - By Coryoth - Jan. 26 (Opinion) - It turns out that mathematics education, at least in the US, is now subject to a new trend, and it doesn't appear to be a good one. the individuals writing these new math programs have lost sight of the core skills that early math education should be instilling. In the drive to make the material "relevant to the student", what is being taught has become too applied. In the new programs there is a a focus, almost to the point of exclusivity, on teaching mathematics via real world stories using pictures, blocks, etc.

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