So beautiful! Thank goodness we have students and teachers who care this much.

Nick Nolte starred in a movie called Teachers. It was wonderful. In the last moments of the movie, his fed up principal laments that half the school won't come back after the fire drill. He responds,"but half will". When she says he's crazy, he says, "I'm a teacher!"
Love it.

Richard Allington, past president of International Reading Association warned against this years ago. He predicted that teachers would focus on sounds, phonics, and fluency and never get to comprehension. He was right. He warned that if the next five pillars of reading, which were focused on instruction and making meaning, were not implemented, we would never see true gains. Some districts believed that and refused to be limited by Reading First and moved forward in all areas. Those are the lucky students.

I'm interested in people who say "not all kids can go to college". Are they referring to their own children, or someone else's?

If you want to know more about Rhee, there is a full story in Newsweek, September 1st edition.

I wonder if this is still a "boys will be boys" attitude in play. Perhaps boys think they will grow out of it and things will be okay later in life because we tell them that. Girls might internalize the failure and believe it much more whole-heartedly since there doesn't seem to be a built in excuse for their failure.

I find it interesting that we are capable of understanding that students need to do more than word call when they read, they need to comprehend and manipulate the information to truly be readers. However, we are having trouble understanding that students need to do more than compute numbers, they need to know how to use and manipulate them to truly be mathematicians. Having students explore algebraic concepts in the early elementary grades should be as accepted as having students make inferences in the early grades. Both are high level skills that can be taught in developmentally appropriate ways. Instead, we think everyone should read at a high level and only a few should do math at a high level. Truly sad.

When this report came out, I was a freshman in college and had not yet decided to be an educator. Where were you? What were you doing?

I wonder how many advanced language courses are actually preparing kids for the AP exam, but not offering it as a course. For instance, a student may be enrolled in French IV where the teacher is actively preparing them for the AP exam, but the schedule at the school does not allow for a separate AP French Language course. The "enrollment" may be higher than we think.

I agree that the history of the culture is the most important thing for students to learn. They need to understand how we became what we have become. That will include political and military history, but not exclusively. It is amazing to think about the enormity of the task of trying to decide which pieces of history are the most important ones for students to know.