Obama has selected Jeanne Century to be his education adviser.
Check her out here:
http://cemse.uchicago.edu/node/43
She holds a K-8 teaching certificate, an undergraduate degree in general science, and a masters and doctorate in Science Education Curriculum and Teaching.
{That is a common background for many who bring forth reform math and push it. Check your local school district office.... the PhD may be missing but the lack of High School experience and the lack of a Degree in a high level math intensive field is often the case.}
She worked with NSF grants for inquiry based science curricula.
Century's past work includes her role as a curriculum writer on two NSF-funded comprehensive inquiry-based curricula, one focusing on K-6 (currently published as Insights) and the other focusing on middle level.
CEMSE is U of Chicago's front for math and science education "research" and grants.
Andy Isaacs is one of the co-directors of CEMSE.
He is also one of the developers of Everyday Math.
Notice that on the page that describes Ms. Century on the right side appears this:
Project Sites
* Everyday Mathematics
* Fidelity of Implementation
* Sustainability of Reform
News
* CEMSE participates in Science in the City 2007
* Everyday Mathematics Restructuring School Project enters its second year
---------------------
It appears another Federally produced disaster is in the making.....
Remember Inquiry = Cognitive Curriculum
and the Graph HERE from Project Follow Through
I have to agree - there look like two groups of reformists - one republican and one democrat. I don't think either party is consistent, so you can't tell them apart. The reforms take a long time to fester before the effects are felt. San diego is still getting over Bersin (Republican).
ReplyDeleteThe connection to Isaacs, Univ. of chicago and the NSF is alarming from a curriculum point of view.
Right ... once again we may have the choice of picking from two bad choices..
ReplyDeleteI do not know what McCain has planned ... but these days .... I am not very hopeful.
Century was for twenty years, a Senior Project Director and Senior Research Associate in the Center for Science Education at Education Development Center (EDC), Inc. in Newton, MA.
ReplyDeleteCentury’s past work includes her role as a curriculum writer on two NSF-funded comprehensive inquiry-based curricula, one focusing on K-6 (currently published as Insights) and the other focusing on middle school level.
So this is not going to lead us any further than where we are right now. Insights is exactly what we have in schools now and its not working - so we end up with curriculum writers defending their work for a decade with a mountain of excuses and no research to back up their claims.
My question why didn't Obama choose Milgram, Wu, or Askey? They'd cut through the BS in no time. That would be reform. Century represents status quo, there's nothing special about EDC if they can't do honest research.
Education has long been used to brainwash our kids into Marxism so what did you expect with the country's #1 Marxist?
ReplyDeleteI'm horrified that Obama is working with Jeanne Century. There's no excuse for it; the Democratic Party is filled with serious education people.
ReplyDeleteE.D. Hirsch is a Democrat; American Educator Magazine, published by the AFT, is a staunch supporter of a content-rich education in the liberal arts. Most liberal arts professors - the vast majority of whom loathe content-free, constructivist K-12 programs - are Democrats.
Here's Jeanne Century advising administrators on how to deal with teachers who persist in teaching math via a coherent curriculum, direct instruction, and distributed practice:
B. Try to Convert the Resistant, but Focus on Those who are Most Ready
You may have teachers in your school who are not at all interested in exploring ways to change their practice. If you have such resisters, it is important to do everything you can to persuade them to participate. Listen to their concerns, give them the professional development and materials necessary, and provide them with encouragement. There will always be people who are simply shut down to change. But the change can happen without them. Don’t focus too much of your energy on these individuals, for you don’t want to neglect those who are ready and willing. The reluctant ones will eventually need to come on board but at the beginning it is
more important to make sure support is available for those who want it.
Still, if you think resistant teachers are going to actively undermine your progress, you may
wish to consider exploring ways to remove them from your school. You may find that the teacher is just as happy to leave the school as you may be to see him/her go. Since changes in culture are likely to co-evolve with those in practice, teachers who “fit in” before may become less and less comfortable as the reform continues. In the long run, if these teachers move, it may mean that everyone is happier.
At the same time that successful principals are working to relocate staff, they are keeping their eyes open for new individuals who can assist in shepherding the effort. Good prospects may include student teachers who will be looking for teaching assignments in the coming year, teachers who are actively leading or participating in professional development elsewhere in the district, or simply people who have some kind of personal connection with you or others in your school. Ultimately, the goal is to have as many “like-minded” people in the school as possible.
The Principals of Education: Supporting Mathematics and Science Teaching in Your School: A Handbook for Elementary and Middle School Principals to be displayed Mark St. John, Jeanne Century, Costanza Eggers-Pierola, Nina Houghton, Sybillyn Jennings, Felisa Tibbitts (pdf file)
"This work was supported by the National Science Foundation as part of the New York State Systemic Initiative: NSF Grant #OSR-9350033"
Her passage on recruiting students to neutralize their parents' objections is even more chilling:
Students should:
1. Communicate with their parents.
Many parents learned mathematics and science in a traditional, text-based manner and may not understand the strategies and materials used in standards-based instruction. In addition to your teachers communicating with parents, your students also should
communicate with their families about what they are doing in science or mathematics and why. This can help begin to educate and hopefully engage the parents early on in the process.
Here is McCain's advisor, Lisa Graham Keegan:
What Is Public Education?
(City Journal)
edspresso post on Lisa Graham Keegan
ASCD report on Century & Keegan:
Obama & McCain Ed. Advisors at AEP
Transforming American Education (Manhattan Institute)
I agree the last person Obama should be getting advice from is a curriculum writer from EDC.
ReplyDeleteKeegan sounds pretty typical. At least with a Republican you know what your getting. I've decided that Republicans must lead the most complicated lives of any persons on this planet. I just can't fathom how one person can cause so much trouble in one life time. Leave it to a former superintendent, like Keegan, to be in the top ten. Don't Republicans bother looking at the polls anymore?
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4PRN/is_2008_April_7/ai_n25129285/print?tag=artBody;col1
Other questions remain:
1. What happened with the audit investigation at the Education Leadership Counsel, which implicated Keegan in the mismanagement of federal funds?
2. What is her current role in soliciting federal funds through grants and NCLB (No Child Left Behind) funding? Does it have something to do with her role as McCain's education advisor?
3. Why did Keegan publicly deny any connection with Education 2020, when she was a Director of this corporation in 2005?
4. What is she doing with New Way? Why the push for NCA accreditation at this time having previously stated that NCA was unnecessary? Does it have something to do with online school accreditation?
5. Is New Way a stepping stone for the development of E-Learning and Education 2020 for a narrow range of special needs students.
I feel like I'm a journalist just trying to keep up with all the Bozos.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteThere must be some comparison year by year what students learn in Singapore as opposed to US education.
Headlines:
Obama nationalizes US exemplary curriculum and keeps NCTM Standards
Everyday Math
Connected Math
Core Plus
Haha! What a Q-O-K-E!!
I especially found this interesting from the above comments...
ReplyDelete--------
Still, if you think resistant teachers are going to actively undermine your progress, you may wish to consider exploring ways to remove them from your school. You may find that the teacher is just as happy to leave the school as you may be to see him/her go.
---------
Help Stamp out math teachers...
Support the current Standards based Math Curriculum movement....
first we had bc,
ReplyDeletethen ad,
and now its edc.
hey ms. century, I learned a new way to say my abc's - its e,d,c,b,a,k,q,m,...
edc is ez (look ms. century, no hands and no brains)
edc announces new breakthrough -disposable textbooks reduced to comic books.
every
diploma
counts
every
duck
cuacks
eggs
done
cooked
If its a book and it quacks then its probably everyday math. Most undeserved textbook of the year.
I brought one of these textbooks to an adoption meeting and everybody laughed when I held it up and I believe someone called it 'wimpy'. Way to go Gail, you show em.
The reaction I get is - first, what is it?
Second, Its a textwhat?
Third, O'my.
American education may be coming to this - Spellings is getting a bit feisty lately.
ReplyDeleteHe may be the Chhattisgarh school education minister, but Ajay Chandrakar apparently thinks nothing of brushing off the state’s role in education. “Has the government produced these children?” he is reported to have asked. While Chandrakar says his statement has been distorted, opposition parties have been quick to seize upon the controversy.
Milwaukee 1995
"LAMAR ALEXANDER, Dole/Kemp Adviser: (Nashville) Well, let's do this right here with Mr. Shanker here. Why doesn't he join me and Sen. Dole in taking the Milwaukee experiment, which has given thousands of poor children, black kids, Hispanic kids from the inner city a chance to go to the school of their choice. And a Harvard study now shows that in the third or fourth year they're making real substantial gains in learning, that they're in safe schools. Let's expand that experiment to ten urban areas around the country, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and give those poor kids a chance to go to some of the same schools that my children and the President's children and the Vice President's children have a chance to go to. And Mr. Shanker will join me in that. That will give us a good indication that Sen. Dole and I are wrong."
Milwaukee 2006
http://www.weac.org/News/2005-06/june06/voucherschool.htm
State kicks school out of voucher program
Citing possible fraud in student applications, state officials this week (June 2, 2006) kicked another one of Milwaukee's troubled private voucher schools out of the program.
The school - Sa'Rai and Zigler Excellerated Academy - has received about $700,000 in voucher payments from the state over the last two years, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Last year, the newspaper featured the school in a series of articles about troubles in the Milwaukee private school voucher program.
This is one of many voucher schools that have been accused of or suspected of misusing state funds. In January, the state terminated Northside High School from the program, and last October the Ida B. Wells Academy was kicked out. In January 2005, Academic Solutions Center for Learning was ordered out of the controversial program, and many other schools have either been kicked out or excluded from participating over the last few years.
Milwaukee 2008
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=739213&format=print
Enrollment in the schools you first think of when you think of Milwaukee Public Schools is expected to shrink another 4.7% by September, Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said Monday as he released a $1.2 billion budget proposal for the coming school year.
That means the number of students in the main roster of MPS schools - elementary, middle and high schools staffed by teachers employed by MPS - will be 20% smaller than it was 10 years earlier and will be below 80,000 for the first time in decades. Half of that decline of more than 19,000 students will have come between fall 2005 and fall 2008, if the forecast is correct.
The number of students enrolled in alternative schools and charter schools that contract with the Milwaukee School Board but are not staffed by MPS employees will total 6,255, an increase of more than 60% from a decade ago.
And more than 5,000 students are attending publicly funded schools in the city chartered outside MPS -by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or Milwaukee city government. A decade ago, that number was also zero.
I'm laughing because there is no more tears to shed over this mess, its been going on for so long that I think its just about over... for public education that is - the system is rotten to the core. Thank you, to all the fine professors at MSU, EDC, and Chicago for doing a fabulous job. Not.
Here's some recent news from Portland and their terrific programs - gee did anyone think it might be the curriculum. Nope.
Portland schools among the worst with dropout rates
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1207799703233020.xml&coll=7#continue
BizTech, a small school with a business and technology curriculum at Marshall High School, posted the lowest graduation rate in Portland Public Schools at 44 percent. The second-lowest rate was the Arts, Communication and Technology school within Roosevelt High. Only 45 percent of the students who were supposed to graduate last spring got diplomas.
This has nothing to do with parents, teachers, or students - its curriculum and the nonsense you hear pouring out from professors mouths (please don't take our grants away) foolish wabbits, Mark Twain (a smart guy) said: Honesty is the best policy when there's money in it.
And you aint taking our money, no more, no more.
How many schools in Washington have a graduation rate less than 45%? Hmmm....
ReplyDeleteHow about less than 20%? Why are they still operating and notworking?
Does anyone know how many high school dropouts there are in Washington?
(2006) Colorado had around 34,000 dropouts.