The CEA Blog

The blogosphere has been awash recently with posts about the 25th anniversary of “A Nation At Risk” (ANAR). For the uninitiated, ANAR was a report received by President Ronald Reagan that American schools were lacking compared to other nation’s educational systems. Without reform, the report said, American students would be in a race– for the bottom.

The CEA Blog has been fortunate enough to acquire a slightly used Flux Capacitor and retrofit a union-made car for the trip of a lifetime. We asked a number of edu-bloggers the question “What would the American educational landscape be like today if A Nation At Risk were never released?” and loaned them the time machine. Their trips produced interesting posts; they’ll begin popping up next week.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) recently released “Sizing Up State Standards 2008″, a report that analyzes the content standards written by individual states. Ohio’s K-12 Math and Science standards were ranked as “model” standards, but English and Social Studies weren’t ranked. You can read what AFT wrote about it on their blog, or download (PDF) the whole report.

Welcome to the Carnival of Education! This is the 167th carnival, and the second time The CEA Blog has hosted this wonderful collection of rantings, musings, quotations, ideas, thoughts, inspirations, realizations and the like. The 168th edition will be hosted by the Education Wonks; email them at owlshome {at} earthlink {dot} net, or use this handy submission form. Yes, for those of you wondering, the picture is a snapshot of our fair city. Without further ado, click on the jump below and…. let’s Carnival!

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Grammy award winning musical jack-of-all-trades Tom Chapin and songwriting partner John Forster aim their guitar and songwriting skills at satirizing No Child Left Behind and the testing mania that has engulfed the nation. “Not On The Test” is available for free download with the lyrics here.

 Check out the embedded video after the jump.

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The CEA Blog would like to wish everyone a happy, safe and restful spring break. Some recent highlights from around the edu-blogosphere: merit pay for wardens at prisons, students engaging in civil disobedience, using mixed numbers in real life, and the achievement gap between college basketball teams participating in March Madness.

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Read the full story here.

This letter to the editor appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on Saturday, March 8th.

As a middle-school Pre-Algebra and Algebra I teacher, I strongly agree with the teachers’ concerns expressed in the Feb. 13 Dispatch article “Teachers disgruntled over volume of tests.” However, some of the information was incomplete or inaccurate.

Not only elementary but also middle-school students were subjected to taking the full-length (2.5 hours per subject) practice Ohio Achievement Tests to prepare for the real tests in April. They had already done a week of half-length practice tests in September.

In January, eighth-graders were required to take tests in all four academic areas, immediately after completing a week of quarterly assessments in the same subjects. When I informed my homeroom of this Columbus City School District requirement, one young man pleaded, “Don’t they know we’re tired of taking tests?”

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The Columbus Board of Education passed a resolution at their most recent meeting that designates Linmoor Middle and Indianola and Medary Elementary schools as swing spaces and leases Kent, Linden Park and Second Avenue elementary schools to third parties which include two charters. The resolution also slates Pinecrest and Scioto Trail elementary schools for demolition and designates Wayne Elementary School for district storage.

Brentnell will be leased to the Charles School at Ohio Dominican University for $62,594.00 per year for a term of ten years. The rent will be capped so that it does not increase more that 13.5% as compared to increases in the consumer price index. Linden Park Elementary will be leased to the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) for $55,345.50 per year under the same terms. Both entities are responsible for capital improvements, maintenance and utilities for the properties in addition to the yearly lease amounts.

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