Selections from Carnival of Education - week 47

This week's Carnival of Education is back over at The EducationWonk. There is a nice selection of twenty five posts. Here are some of the ones I found especially interesting:


At Going to the Mat, Matt Johnston does a great job of taking apart the NEA's argument that teachers with equal credentials should get equal pay. He makes the issue clear in pointing out that an expert chief can take the same ingredients as a poor chef, but make a much better pie. For education the issue is further complicated by each children being different. Teachers are not given the same ingredients. Matt's point is valid, especially with this complication.

At News, the Universe, and Everything, Quincy comments on a fascinating situation down in Arizona. Neil Manzenberg, a retired music professor, decided he is bored and offers to teach music at a local high school. They won't let him, because he hasn't taken some class. It is a class he taught at Indiana University and Purdue for nine years. Joanne Jacobs noticed this last week and links to this article. As Quincy says, if Manzenberg is teaching next year it will show that Arizona is serious about education. If Manzenberg isn't teaching, it will show that Arizona cares more about bureaucracy. Just the fact that this is an issue is a sign of some of the problems in public education.

At The EdWahoo Elliot Haspel has a post about a steep decline over the last ten years in the percentage of college graduates who have a basic ability to comprehend written instructions. The post had this line: "What to make of the decline? First, it's clear yet again that our K-12 education system is not providing an appropriate curriculum nor appropriate pedagogy if one in two students who successfully graduate high school do so at best able to perform tasks on the level of parsing through TV Guide (pg. 3)."

Bruno Behrend at Extreme Wisdom is trying to start a debate about Are Public Schools Unconstitutional? His focus is on how often public schools are involved in religious issues. From reading the constitution it appears to me that the Federal Government has no place being involved with education.

At Right on the Left Coast Darren has the break down on where his union dues go. Not surprising a lot goes to non education related issues.