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Kids' Letters to President Obama Would you like to see your letter to President Barack Obama published in a book? If you are between the ages of 5 and 15, you can write a letter to President Obama that will be published in a book by Random House. The book is Kids' Letters to President Obama, edited by Bill Adler.

Obama Works is an independent grassroots organization that helps Obama supporters in neighborhoods across the country to organize community service events. The group was founded in early 2008 by a group of Yale students who were inspired by Barack Obama and felt that the energy surrounding his campaign could be channeled to do more than generate votes.

Please help show Obama YOUR SUPPORT for education by voting for this important cause! The top causes will be presented to the new Obama administration at the Inauguration in January.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

This just in my inbox: "On September 8, 2009 at 12:00 p.m., Eastern Time (ET), President Barack Obama will deliver a national address to the students of America. (Please note that this is a change from the originally scheduled time.) During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation's children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. The U.S. Department of Education encourages students of all ages, teachers, and administrators to participate in this historic moment by watching the president deliver the address, which will be broadcast live on the White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/) and on C-SPAN at 12:00 p.m., ET. We also encourage educators to use this moment to help students get focused and inspired to begin the new academic year." Take this chance to set up your school (particularly US public schools) to have President Obama encourage your kids to do well in school. It is very important. There is also a facebook discussion about this event.

Obama will do a "Presidential Hangout Roadtrip" as he has a "virtual whistlestop tour" - wondering if Skype will howl at this one. ;-) One thing is for sure, more people will activate their Google Plus handles trying to get in on the action.

n his memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama describes an incident in which he, as a young boy, "came across the picture in Life magazine of the black man who had tried to peel off his skin" (51). Seeing the devastating effect negative messages about being African American had on this man, Obama "began to notice that [Bill] Cosby never got the girl on I Spy, that the black man on Mission Impossible spent all his time underground. [He] noticed that there was nobody like [him] in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog ... and that Santa was a white man" (52).

Toilets on the Shuttle! Should we be "teaching to the test"? U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says that "no teacher should have to teach to the test." Then why is Obama spending $360 million to developing new assessments to go along with standards adopted by almost all states? Read more: http://www.hertzfurniture.com/school-matters/toilets-shuttle

The current plan from the White House on education. Read it and share your annotations.

Read the education plan from the new White House for the US. Some good things here and some things that may be hard to implement. What do you think? Join diigo and mark up the page - there are already quite a few annotations.

Obama's Education Plan annotated

Little girl's letter to president Obama

44 US Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama morphed to the music Boléro by Ravel.

US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media

President Obama's newly proposed education agency - ARPA-ED.

"Published on Sep 24, 2011 by whitehouse President Obama explains that states will have greater flexibility to find innovative ways of improving the education system, so that we can raise standards in our classrooms and prepare the next generation to succeed in the global economy." With captions and interactive transcript

"The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release September 24, 2011 WEEKLY ADDRESS: Strengthening the American Education System WASHINGTON-In this week's address, President Obama told the American people that it is time to raise the standards of our education system so that every classroom is a place of high expectations and high performance. On Friday, the President announced that states will have greater flexibility to find innovative ways of improving the quality of learning and teaching, so that we can strengthen performance in our classrooms and ensure that teachers are helping students learn rather than teaching to the test. By modernizing our schools and improving the education system, the United States can continue building an economy that lasts into the future and prepare the next generation to succeed in the global economy."

""the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice." Of course, the American people already had such a voice. They exercised it in 2012 when they re-elected Barack Obama to the Presidency, a position which -- on this issue -- comes with a written job description -- called the Constitution -- entitling the holder to nominate justices to the Supreme"

Testing students over material that is NOT in the curriculum is not fair. I think that states should have a way to mark things not covered and just take the hits across the board for not having it in their curriculum instead of causing children to suffer through feeling ignorant. Common Core may be great, however, if it isn't in the curriculum it is unfair and shouldn't be done. What can we do? Do we cause children to stress out unfairly because adults can't get their act together or it takes time to change the curriculum? I don't know the answers, but the thought of a child looking at a test and knowing that some things didn't happen in the classroom and the impact of "feeling dumb" that will happen just turns my stomach, literally.  From the NEw York Times. " And they are likely to cover at least some material that has yet to make its way into the curriculum. The new tests, given to third through eighth graders, are intended to align with Common Core standards, a set of unified academic guidelines adopted by almost every state and goaded by grant money offered by the Obama administration. They set more rigorous classroom goals for American students, with a focus on critical thinking skills, abstract reasoning in math and reading comprehension."

Photo =gallery from the science fair at the White House. Science teachers should peruse these. I wish every student had to do a science fair project and we'd elevate project based activities to the "status" of doing well on an SAT or other test. I think these require a  lot more higher order thinking and problem solving. "President Obama hosts the White House Science Fair to celebrate the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. He met students in the East Garden of the White House, and they explained their science projects and experiments to him. Marvin Joseph / The Washington Post"

Great article on US news about initiatives in the US that have started but of special interest is the request that students and educators tweet. The biggest issues I've had with the town hall meetings is that most of them are in the middle of the day when everyone is teaching. On Thursday at 3 pm there is a chat about rural education. It is nice that they're having these meetings but if they REALLY want teachers to participate it will be when teachers are able to focus on the conversation. You can't have teachers teaching and Tweeting. It doesn't work. If you see me tweet during the day, most of the tweets are scheduled or I'm on break or lunch break. "February has been a busy month for K-12 education. On February 1, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan kicked it off by announcing that all U.S. schools should transition to digital textbooks within the next five years. On the 9th, President Obama waived 10 states from No Child Left Behind. And last week, the president proposed a 2013 budget that includes a $1.7 funding increase for education." Although these federal policy decisions may not seem directly connected to day-to-day classroom activities, the Department of Education is using Twitter to encourage teachers, administrators, parents, and students to play a more active role.