News Nuggets

NCLB Bites the Young: Swapping KiddieLand for High-Stakes, Test-Savvy Kindergarten Expectations

Don't let sloth overcome our five year olds. If we hold high expectations for them, we can rid our schools of productivity-wasting, no-payback activities such as nap time, story time, art, music and recess. Maybe the dipping of tiny digits in finger paint smells like the onset of brain rot to the NCLB Police.

"Out of Sight, Out of Mind" and NCLB

Subtitle: "How soon we forget"

The election is three weeks in the past and we have moved a sufficient cognitive distance away from caring. This enables us to forget about the election returns and move on to issues that are more important.

Student Honest and Ethical Behavior: The Road to Politics (Perdition) or Spin City?

A recent survey raises the possibility that our nation's young people lie and cheat and steal in greater numbers, now, more than ever before.

Our States are Falling Behind in Employing High-Quality Teachers!

Subtitle: The Sky is Falling

Everyone knows that our nation has high quality, highly motivated, industrious and over-working teachers who over-deliver student achievement results. Teachers who work under low compensation and even lower appreciation, teachers who work for bureaucracies that under-fund and and under-support instruction...while these same bureaucracies clamor for test score improvements.

Research Shows what we have Known All Along: Public Schools are as Good as Private Schools!

In fact, many public schools are better than many private schools.

Money is not the necessary or sufficient condition that produces highly positive student outcomes.

Texas Strategy for Solving the "Poor Kids' Obesity Problem" | "Don't Feed them During the Summer"

The San Antonio Express News (tree-based news), July 16, 2006, Pages 3B and 7B alerted me to this strategy.

This newspaper column cites a study by the Food Research and Action Center entitled, "No Texas child deserves to go hungry."

Commercialization of Lesson Planning

Have you thought that your lessons were good enough that other teachers would pay for them?

Maybe you are right

School Busses are Dangerous for our Children

What's going on that the air inside our school busses is worse than the air outside the bus (if the bus windows are closed)?

Congress wants to Ban Junk Food in Schools

The obesity rate of students jumped four percent, from 14% to 18%, in four years, according to the Centers for Disease Control. (No need to document this, we all see for ourselves that this is true. But, here is the supporting link.)

http://tinyurl.com/hazdz

Federal Reserve Board develops Kids Page

You can check out this free resource at:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/kids/default.htm