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Jay Greene reports that Indiana has approved a modest tax credit scholarship program.
This means that more Indiana families can find the education of choice for their children. Would that Ontario took note.
Here’s a book tip for people who yearn to become really, really good at something. You can achieve your dream - but only if you work your butt off! The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how. by Daniel Coyle reveals that world-class performance - in any sphere, from music to sports to math to chess - is the result of a huge amount of dedicated, purposeful practice. Filled with fascinating examples and anecdotes, the book painlessly conveys important information about the learning process - information that every teacher and coach should have at his fingertips. Far from depending on inborn talent or genius, excellence is the result of personal motivation, good teaching, and purposeful practice.
This article in the Vancouver Sun discusses the Toronto School Board’s attempts to stem its enrollment hemorrhage (about 5,000 students every year). The board has become so desperate that it is offering more and more specialty schools - arts, sports, science and technology, Africentric, transgendered, the list goes on. Oddly, though, you still won’t find any “traditional schools” (teacher-directed, structured, uniforms, academic orientation, high standards) even though this is probably the most popular option with parents. School for Thought guesses that times are still not sufficiently desperate for THAT.
Kitchen Table Math is an excellent source of information about good teaching methods and materials. This entry discusses the question of what percentage of reading disabilities are created by schools, estimating that it’s around 70 percent. At School for Thought, we think it’s a lot higher - maybe 95 percent!
Click here for a list of free materials for teaching language, math, science, music, and art. The comments and the threads at the bottom contain additional tips.
Frequently educators shrug their shoulders when asked about their students’ poor results and say nothing can be done because students from poor backgrounds just can’t learn very well. But the success of some American schools proves that this excuse is baseless. Take, for example, Knowledge is Power (KIPP) schools. The vast majority of KIPP students are low-income and black or hispanic. KIPP students are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Yet more than 80 percent of KIPP grade 8 graduates go on to matriculate from a college or university. If 66 KIPP schools serving more than 16,000 students can do it, then other schools can do it too.
And, by the way, KIPP schools are free.
Kate Tennier has an interesting op-ed in the National Post today that takes a critical look at all-day kindergarden.
She asks whether this Ontario policy decision is just a move to fill emptying classrooms caused by declining enrolments in the province. She also questions whether it is beneficial to kids in the long term.
The article suggests that parents be given a choice of how to educate their children either at home or in school.
Not the kind of parental engagement that most of us think of. Does the Ontario Education Ministry have a Parent Reaching Out Grant for this??
Here’s a fun activity that will provide a bit of practice for you and your kids with adding and subtracting. As well, it may give you a bit of a shock. The principle behind this seeming magic is an interesting bit of arithmetic. If you can’t figure it out, leave a comment and we’ll enlighten you.
The latest Harris-Decima poll reveals that almost half of Canadians say that the country’s public education systems are inadequate. Even though provincial governments have been making strenuous efforts to solve their education problems for years, including throwing huge amounts of money at them, things are if anything getting worse. Why Canadian Education Isn’t Improving explains why this is so, and then provides the way forward.