Life without the U.S. Department of Education!

Just imagine how our lives in the arts would really be impacted if we didn’t have a U.S Department of Education (USDOE). This does not necessarily mean we would not have an ESEA, as the ESEA predates the U.S Department of Education (1965 and 1980 respectively), but they are fundamentally linked. So consider, if the…

http://blog.americansforthearts.org/2015/09/18/life-without-the-us-department-of-education

Restoring the Soul of the World

Life is not designed to be filled with piles of paperwork and endless professional development videos. PDMS anyone?

Creative by Nature

“We have the greatest technological knowledge of any civilization, but we have forgotten what it means to be alive in the world, to be alive in a living universe. Yet without this living connection to the world, our lives become trivial, routine, and mechanical.

Being cut off, we start to wonder about the meaning of life and raise other abstract questions, while meaning itself is an experience of being bonded to the world and others at the very deepest level…

When we experience the deeply moving beauty of the Earth seen from space and intuitively realize that all life is bound together, facing a common fate, we automatically sense ourselves as participants in life’s tapestry, not as disembodied spectators.

The idea that nature possesses a living intelligence is not something of just historical or academic interest; I wrote this book out of my strongly held belief that…

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Kids say the darndest things!

For those of you who know me.  My name is Mrs. Long.  Nothing fancy; just Long.  I have people ask me all the time, “how do you spell that?” Long, just Long.  

Well, I was teaching a kindergarten class, the first time I had saw these students.  One student was looking at me funny.  I said, ” are you okay?”  He said, ” You know, your not very long for being named Mrs.Long.”  With this statement, he gestured up and down vertically with his hands like he was outlining the edges of a piece of lumber.  

I paused and stared. 

I am not very long, 5’7″, but I am not short.  I am most definitely not straight like a board, not the classic hour glass either, but definitely not lumpy and bumby like an oversized caterpillar.  I am thinking of the one on “A Bug’s Life.”  Not him at all.  

I wasn’t sure , but I swear that kid called me fat without using those words.  I smiled holding back my laugh and said, ” yes your right, I am not long.  That just happens to be my name.”  The kid said, ” okay.” And on with class we went.  Kids say the darndest things! 

How Life Self-Organizes, by Joanna Macy

This is how everything works. Why doesn’t DDOE get that?

Creative by Nature

“The greatest revolution of our time is in the way we see the world. The mechanistic paradigm underlying the Industrial Growth Society gives way to the realization that we belong to a living, self-organizing cosmos.

General systems theory, emerging from the life sciences, brings fresh evidence to confirm ancient, indigenous teachings: the Earth is alive, mind is pervasive, all beings are our relations. This realization changes everything. It changes our perceptions of who we are and what we need, and how we can trustfully act together for a decent, noble future.

Each system, from atom to galaxy, is a whole. That means that it is not reducible to its components. Its distinctive nature and capacities derive from the interactive relationships between its parts. This interplay is synergistic, generating “emergent properties” and new possibilities, which are not predictable from the character of the separate parts–just as the wetness of water…

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New Way Of Portraying Educational Results

Also great article about data! I think we all should use the “KC” when completing our evaluations.

kavips

One of the most interesting thing about receiving tons of data, is that it opens ones eyes to inconsistencies and errors in ones old interpretations and previous accounting methods.

For example.  I too was guilty years ago of looking at scores listed in the News Journal each time educational decisions came up and saying “wow, that’s a really good school” or “wow, that’s really terrible… ”

That primarily is because I was full of trust regarding whatever I was told.  I assumed it was done on good authority and that the results were scientifically accurate to within a certain margin of error…  After all… why would anyone, want to skew data to make a bad school look good?  Or a good school look bad?  .. Back then it was inconceivable to think anyone would ever want to do so…

But we had very limited data.  In honesty, we pulled the News Journal page…

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Smarter Balanced Results If Delaware DOE Understood Poverty Matters & Special Education Was Understood

I love the visuals. Data is everything these days and this article is packed with it! This data shows how crazy high stakes tests are and how great, principled leaders are needed at DOE. Teachers need to focus on the children and children need to focus on their futures.

Exceptional Delaware

As Delaware journalists, schools and parents dove into the Smarter Balanced data this week, Delaware Liberal and Those In Favor released two graphs. Both of them showed how low-income and Smarter Balanced results worked against each other fairly consistently in the Red Clay Consolidated and Christina School District.  Did the same hold true for charter schools?  The below information tells the tale.  As well, I went a step further and played with some different weights into what really matters in education data.

Statistically, schools with small amounts of low-income students had higher scores on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  Those with high percentages of low-income students fared worse on the assessment.  Now if our Delaware Department of Education truly cared about factors affecting high-stakes testing, the results would be completely different.  The below chart shows all Delaware charters and their average Smarter Balanced results.  By simply adding ELA & Math and dividing…

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