Group items tagged

Facebook, Twitter, texting. An article in The Times this weekend explored the treacherous terrain of social media which, on the one hand, can be effective at organizing and teaching students. On the other hand, though, they can be seriously abused. While teachers, and their bosses, are grappling with establishing policies on conduct and privacy, Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, an expert on sexual misconduct by teachers, offers some guidelines.

Russo's underhanded dig is followed up with his suggestion that billionaire funded astroturf groups like StudentsFirst, Stand For Children, and TeachPlus have the potential to correct what he perceives as an "imbalance." For Russo, the corporate education reform astroturf need to step up and post comments under articles, use twitter, blog, and avail themselves of social media. It simply isn't enough to be funded by the likes of the wealthiest one percent including names like Walton, DeVos, Broad, Bradley, Gates, Koch, Hastings, Dell, Powell-Jobs, Scaife, Tilson, et al. It's not enough to have the unwavering support of a bipartisan neoliberal consensus at every level of government including the most anti-public education administration and Department of Education of all time. It isn't sufficient to have the unquestioning editorial support of every mainstream media outlet-not to mention Rupert Murdoch's vast propaganda empire-all of which spew a nonstop stream of privatization propaganda with nary a dissenting note. This last point is of paramount importance, since it's often forgotten that outside the realm of privilege that has regular access to the Internet, there's a majority that obtains their information from more traditional sources.

The billboard, featuring a woman exposing a lot of cleavage combined with an attack on teacher unions may have baffled some. But it pissed off enough people that Kenneth Cole, the sponsor of the sign, is taking it down.

Faced with scandals and complaints involving teachers who misuse social media, school districts across the country are imposing strict new guidelines that ban private conversations between teachers and their students on cellphones and online platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Journalists play an essential role in our society. They are charged with informing the public, a vital function in a representative democracy. Yet, year after year, large pockets of the electorate remain poorly-informed on both foreign and domestic affairs. For a long time, commentators have blamed any number of different culprits for this problem, including poverty, education, increasing work hours and the rapid proliferation of entertainment media. There is no doubt that these and other factors matter a great deal. Recently, however, there is growing evidence that the factors shaping the degree to which people are informed about current events include not only social and economic conditions, but journalist quality as well. Put simply, better journalists produce better stories, which in turn attract more readers. On the whole, the U.S. journalist community is world class. But there is, as always, a tremendous amount of underlying variation. It's likely that improving the overall quality of reporters would not only result in higher quality information, but it would also bring in more readers. Both outcomes would contribute to a better-informed, more active electorate. We at the Shanker Institute feel that it is time to start a public conversation about this issue. We have requested and received datasets documenting the story-by-story readership of the websites of U.S. newspapers, large and small. We are using these data in statistical models that we call "Readers-Added Models," or "RAMs."

"The problem with this fight is that it drains the system of energy - energy that should be spent on the teaching and learning process. This very visible fight, often fought through the media, is a significant distraction from the work that needs to occur in schools. What's worse, however, is that the battle is over the wrong things. The problem is that the battle lines are all over a misplaced emphasis on human capital over social capital."

Recently, there's been controversy over the motion picture "The Hunger Games" and the casting choice for Rue, a character that the book's author, Suzanne Collins, intended to be dark-skinned at the very least. Amandla Stenberg, a young black actress, plays Rue in a cast that also includes rocker Lenny Kravitz and actress Kimiko Gelman. Some fans expressed disappointment all over social media that they didn't think the character should be black and that they hadn't envisioned a black child as this character to whom they gravitated to so ardently in print. One search on Twitter for Rue leads to a set of tweets ranging from subtly questionable to strangely racist. Teens are the predominant target group for this movie. At some point, don't we as a society have to step in and question what we're teaching our children about race?

Unless you live under a rock (or if you don't track education policy matters through social media - same thing), you know about the "big" study about teacher effects that was conducted by Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff, disseminated through NBER and reported in multiple outlets, most notably the New York Times. This is an important study for at least a couple of reasons. First, methodologically, the study is massive and novel in some important ways. Second, from a policy perspective, even if the authors overreach in their interpretation, the study adds to the growing body of literature on teacher effectiveness and value-added measures. The more empirical evidence we have, the better; that's the nature of scientific research.

That Facebook is hugely distracting is hardly stop-the-presses kind of news, but parents might be dismayed to learn that the social-media site can hobble learning and make kids less healthy and more depressed. 

An increasingly nasty fight over private school vouchers in Oklahoma is playing out in the courts-and via social media. The furor stems from a lawsuit filed by a pair of Oklahoma school districts that challenges a law that provides private-school aid to students with disabilities, a measure the districts say violates the state's constitution.

"I see a lot of arguments in social media and blogs and editorial pages and elsewhere along these lines: "American education is a disaster! We must do something! And you can't prove that my proposed reforms won't work!" This argument makes no sense for at least three reasons"

Late this Friday afternoon, only 4 days before the law was scheduled to go into effect, word came that a judge in Missouri has issued an injunction against implementation of the Missouri anti-social networking (Facebook) law between teachers and students. Here is a local story on it (thanks to my good friend Dave Doty @canyonsdave). Also, thanks to the Missouri State Teachers' Association, who filed the suit, for following up on twitter with their press release.  First, this is just a preliminary injunction. This is not a final judgment and the matter is still to be decided. 

Since the early 1970s, the rich, corporate power brokers and right-wing cultural warriors realized that education was central to creating a viable populist movement that served their interests. Over the last 40 years, the financial elites and their wealthy accomplices have not only mobilized an educational anti-reform movement in the name of "reform" to dismantle public education and turn it over to hedge-fund managers and billionaires; they have also taken a lesson from the muckrakers, critical public intellectuals, left-wing journals, progressive newspapers and educational institutions of the mid-20th century and developed their own cultural apparatuses, talk shows, anti-public intellectuals, think tanks and grassroots organizations. As the left slid into organizing around mostly single-issue movements since the 1980s, the right moved in a different direction, mobilizing a range of educational forces and wider cultural apparatuses as a way of addressing broader ideas that appealed to a wider public and issues that resonated with their everyday lives. Tax reform, the role of government, the crisis of education, family values and the economy, to name a few issues, were wrenched out of their progressive legacy and inserted into a context defined by the values of the free market, an unbridled notion of freedom and individualism and a growing hatred for the social contract.

What builds a solid teacher? The right setting, a sense of calling, a zeal for learning, and a renewable energy source.

If you're a parent, you've probably experienced a certain degree of fear at some point or another about your kids using the Internet. Maybe you peer over their shoulders while they check their Facebook pages, or try to catch glimpses of IM conversations they have with their friends. But do you worry about how they communicate online with their teachers? A new Missouri state law makes the case that you should.