Posted on August 14, 2011 by kilroysdelaware
A shortage of skilled workers is also driving up demand. Employee-wanted ads, like these in Beijing, now regularly promise benefits like free housing and health insurance.
But Liu is still living month-to-month. Surging along with salaries is the cost of living. Food and housing prices have ballooned. The simple house Liu shares with her husband has TV, but no running water.
Complaints about the rising cost of living are common across China. The government says it’s trying to help workers cope by forcing employers to hand out bigger salaries, but it’s a tricky balancing act: If wages escalate too much, manufacturers might leave China in search of cheaper labor elsewhere.
Wow ! Arne Duncan and Jack Markell talks up China as the leaders in education and America is losing the education race to them.
Hey maybe they’ll outsource some of their manufacturing jobs to America!
Tell me , if America’s schools are so F’ed up why is it the Chinese come here to attend our colleges and universities? Also, here is the big question! How is it Asian-American students can succeed and be at the head of their class is any school in Delaware no matter the school rating? Is there a correlation between one’s culture and morals within that culture and education expectation? How can Delaware’s so-called failing public school teachers teach Asian-American students at the same time as all students and have the Asian-American students outperforming the others? A) Is it Asian-American students know more then their teachers? B) Asian parents are better parents? C) Delaware public school teachers can actually teach when all stakeholders that includes students and parents engage?
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Posted on August 14, 2011 by kilroysdelaware
The point of data coaches is to help teachers make sense of the voluminous data created by all the tests students take. Starting last year, Delaware students began taking the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment, known as the DCAS, multiple times a year. Students also take other assessments, and all of these produce reams of data.
When will we see parent coaches that will train parents to be more engaged and accountable as their child’s first teacher? “Reams of data” only produces the means the skew the data. Nothing is Race to The Top provides discipline intervention.
The Delaware data coaches were hired and trained by Wireless Generation, a company credited with helping New York City schools navigate their data-driven classroom instruction. The cost is about $8 million. It will be paid for with the state’s Race to the Top federal grant. The need for its coaches will only last for the life of the contract — the point of it is to create a self-sustaining program, state officials say
Yea, that’s the ticket let Wall Street Rupert Murdock’s Wireless Generation subsidiary of News Corporation where Joel Klein is Executive Vice President be the Trojan Horse to privatize public education.
What has the University of Delaware and Wilmington University put in place in their education department to prepare teachers for this data driven movement? “Self-sustaining”, what evidence is there that the momentum will carry forward without future funding.
Many blame NCLB flaws as if it were responsible for the failed DSTP that produced previous data. DSTP was state crafted and state mandated. DSTP was the business round-table’s ansewer to reform but yet it failed and the same Delaware business leaders have there noses in this round of reform. Arne Duncan want’s to reset the accountability clock and throw out all the old data. NLCB isn’t really flawed as it is underfunded and not as flexible as needed. The states set their own test and curriculum. Now the federal government wants to set them. How is it possible for students to meet federal standards when they couldn’t meet state standards that appeared to be water-downed? We don’t need more funding but rather “school” flexibility to use current funding.
If our college educated teachers can’t analyze student test data without babysitters we have more serious problems. DCAS will produce a classroom full students with various intervention needs. But where are the triggers that require DEDOE and /or the schools to provide intervention is the way of supplemental services for those students a year below grade level? It’s fair to only hold teachers accountable for growth but a 6th grade student entering with a 4th grade reading level leaving the 6th grade at a 5th grade reading level didn’t do him any real service. Teachers will be held accountable for growth and I want to know who is going to be held accountable for those students failing to meet the standards?
If we want to stop lying to students perhaps we should end social promotion! You don’t pass the 6th grade until you pass a 6th grade exit exam. Every public school should have Saturday classes for students lagging behind and if the student doesn’t like giving up their Saturdays perhaps they can give a little more the other 5 days.
Allowing raw data in the hands of the Delaware Department of Education to manipulate into a desirable self-serving product is another disservice to children. The biggest education lies being told in Delaware comes form the Delaware Department of Education who lacks the capacity to provide real oversight and technical assistance. The Delaware Secretary of Education is nothing more than a political maid to Governor Jack Markell. The secretary’s position should be an elected position not partisan to a governor’s political agenda. From what many tell me, Lowery is a wonderful person who honestly cares. However, her intelligence and independent thinking skill are shackled but Jack Markell who couldn’t last one week in a classroom in a high needs schools.
Makrell supported House Bill 119 in 2009 but yet allows DEDOE to disregard and circumvent it. Delaware requires written yearly charter school reports but yet DEDOE fails to comply and complains they don’t like the process. Perhaps that process requires the truth in which is counterproductive to Markell’s agenda.
The biggest lies be told in the state and country come from government. A federal takeover of local schools and their school boards is a formula for real failure. Markell puts up $700,000.00 of his own money to run for governor and it wasn’t for the love of the people. It was for love of the man in the mirror.
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