Dust from the Book Fairy

Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Problems with Merit Pay

Posted by: eiela on: 28 May 2009

So I found this video on Joanne Jacob’s website. It’s a great explanation of the problems with merit pay.
In my area, teachers do get value added scores. So much depends on the group of kids you start with, how well you get them to do their work, the backup you get from parents and [...]

Nonfiction topics–are there taboos?

Posted by: eiela on: 15 December 2008

This post from I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids), along with something else I saw today, in the Des Moines Register via LM_Net, along with a parent asking me to pull books about a family member’s death for her child today, got me thinking.  Are there topics that just can’t be written about for children?  Not [...]

Okay, this is a bit political, which I thought I’d try to stay away from here, but I couldn’t help it. NYC Educator is on my feed reader, and a recent entry had this very interesting graph from the Washington Post. If this is accurate, McCain’s tax cuts are almost entirely for the [...]