Loserville!

Posted by on Apr 21, 2007 in dish | 1 comment You can tell it’s near the end of the school year. The teachers have spring fever as bad as the kids. Hence, no blog posts for quite some time. Not even about hot men on Fridays. Yikes.Fear not, there’s something going on in the cortex. It’s just not coming out. And since we took the kids to Disney’s Grad Nite last night and I’m working on about 3 hours of sleep...
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Bye, Bye FCAT

Posted by on Mar 8, 2007 in dish | 0 comments Testing season is officially over. The boxes are loaded and on their way back to Tallahassee. This means two things:We can let out the breath we’ve been holding and take another so we can hold it until the infernal school grades come out in June.The students will assume that they have nothing left to do for the school year.One problem with high-stakes testing is that the chatter over the...
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Told Ya So.

Posted by on Feb 21, 2007 in dish | 0 comments HB 941 was withdrawn before introduction today. Its companion bill in the Florida Senate, SB 334 was tabled by the Education Pre-K-12 Committee with a tied vote (3 Yeas, 3 Nays).Could they talk to some teachers before ruling by fiat? Or is that just too much to expect from our so-called “representatives”?Bastards.
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Not Something SENSIBLE

Posted by on Feb 20, 2007 in dish | 0 comments So I stumble across the text of a bill filed in the Florida House today, and discover that someone (namely, Rep. Heller) has finally seen the light. Or something.It’s the Public School Education bill, HB 941. This one, though, does away with the onerous and bass-ackwards A through F school grades and instead would group schools into performance categories: Improving, Maintaining, and...
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Classroom Saviors

Posted by on Jan 20, 2007 in dish | 0 comments Lots to think about in this article from the New York Times, entitled “Classroom Distinctions.” In it, author Tom Moore, who is himself a teacher in the Bronx, discusses Hollywood’s take on teachers. According to Moore, the Hollywood version of good teaching encompasses three tasks:Assemble a rough, multicultural groups of misfits Assign said misfits one idealistic young...
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