This is the October 3rd Issue of the Carnival of Education.

The next Carnival of Education will be hosted at The Tempered Radical. Please submit your posts by October 9th, 6:00 PM Eastern Time, using the Carnival Submission Form or by emailing to wferriter at hotmail dot com.

I’ve divided the very large number of excellent submissions to this carnival into a number of appropriate categories. Also note that we have a special section this issue that will be of interest to teachers who would like funding for their efforts. Look for it down below!

The structure of the system

Assistive Principles . . .
Missed It By THAT Much . .
A comment on the modern meaning and origins of administration and administrators

Bellringers
No Child Left Behind & My Rather Large Behind
Bellringers gets to “thinking about the similarities between the No Child Left Behind law and my rather large behind–which, by the way, I truly would like to leave behind.” Turns out that they are pretty much the same thing.

Education Notes Online (Commentary on the educational/political scene in New York City and beyond)
Broad Jumping II - From The Wave
The Broad (pronunced “brood”) prize. “Broad has simple answers to complex questions.”

American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (Dave)
Disconnected
“We are from Washington and we are here to help - that line always gets a chuckle out in the various state leaders I visit. The chuckle comes from a belief that people in Washington couldn’t possibly know what is needed in their state.”

The Perils of Advising, and Interacting with Students

Bellringers
Deadlines, Al Sharpton & Dress Codes
Bellringers needs to check the air quality in the school newspaper’s office.

Frumteacher
Bouquet
How teachers click, or not, as a matter of matching character and experience.

Politics

Right on the Left Coast: Views from a conservative teacher
Teachers, Blogging, the First Amendment, and Professionalism
“Ed Code Section 44932, which discusses dismissal of teachers on “immoral or unprofessional conduct” grounds, may be interpreted by a court as a reasonable limitation on First Amendment rights regarding blogging.”

The Twinkies
Avery Doninger, the First Amendment and Some ‘Douchbags’
The story of Avery Doninger, censured by her school for something she wrote on her blog, supported by her fellow students, and the law suit that went against her.

Consent Of The Governed
Do You Know Who Has Your Student’s Information?
“More and more states are establishing databases with all sorts of information about children attending public and private schools, as well as homeschools too! What they do with the data is anybody’s guess. But every time you fill out a form or provide information to anyone, that data goes somewhere and sometimes it can end up being sold.”

HorseSense and Nonsense
Novels a No-No
“Southern California’s Riverside Unified School District (RUSD), which at the beginning of the 2002-03 academic year instituted a “no novels” policy for lower level English classes grades 7-12, has now upped the stakes. As of Fall 2007-08, even Honors courses are bound by the policy, demanding that teachers stick to the letter of the Holt, Rhinehart & Winston textbook and curriculum planning map and avoid primary sources of literature.”

Evolution … not “just a theory” anymore
Slapdown at the Bell: Post Game Analysis
Do we “frame” science or do we enhance science education? Maybe both.

Professional Development (and sanity)

Going to the Mat (Wrestling with Issues and Ideas in politics, the law, education, and other stuff)
Teacher Developed Merit Pay Proposal
Another in a series of blogospheric exchanges about merit pay and pay for performance.

The Tempered Radical
Drinking the Kook-Aid: Part Deux
“My page views have nearly tripled since posting recently on why professional learning communities are a staff development initiative worth supporting! … I figured the time was right to tackle the kinds of specific actions necessary for sustaining momentum in learning communities.”

So you want to teach?
25 Tips for Less Stress
… including “Kill your TV”

change therapy
change and transformation
“what i will offer you here is based to a good degree on jack mezirow’s ideas. it is an excerpt from my master’s thesis, which was about transformative learning in distance education. in the next little while, i’d like to share with you what i’ve learned in my research about the “before and after” process of transformative learning.”

In the Classroom (or not, as the case may be)

Learn Me Good … I teach, therefore I am … poor.
A bad seed?
The Perils and Produce of Open Book Testing … “A bird can eat the seed and can poopoo in another place.”

JD2718
Enjoying class too much
“I like my students. The longer I teach, the truer this seems to get. I remember terms when there was a class or two I dreaded. But not for a long time.”

Global Citizenship in a Virtual World
What if schools treated students like Google treats it engineers?
“Maybe we’re trying too hard to make education meaningful, when people left to their own devices will naturally seek to learn things that are meaningful to them.”

Scenes From The Battleground
Post details: Excuses, Excuses: Part 1
“The students I teach seem largely unable to take responsibility for their own misdeeds. They have never done anything wrong, they never have anything to apologise for, and they are the victims of the perpetual injustice of being punished for nothing. Sometimes their parents will even write a letter to point this out. Over the next few entries I will list the twelve most common excuses I encounter…”

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL
Extraordinary Research Site
“ZIPskinny is an amazing research site. All you have to do is type in a zip code for anywhere in the United States, and you immediately get information from the 2000 Census, along with a map of the area.”

My Wealth Builder
The Education of Our Daughter
“While I am not a certified teacher or educator, I sometimes think about the type of education that would best prepare my daughter for the the working world.”

Day by Day Homeschooling
See-Through Frog
“It neatly skirts the moral implications of killing and cutting up a living creature simply so a 15 year old can see it’s inner workings. Of course it completely glosses over the moral implications of designing a see-through creature simply so a 15 year old can see it’s inner workings. Somehow the fact that it’s still alive is a reason to pat ourselves on the back? … But the thing is, it turns out the frog is still dead…”

Notes From A Homeschooling Mom
This is why kids need cellphones
“I am not even going to get into the hostage situation… except this is a lose-lose situation… kids either live in a police state or in constant danger….My concern is that some schools do not allow cell phones. I know I don’t send my kids out of the house without them… even to homeschool co-op classes.”

Life Without School
“I Could Never Home School”
“Let’s face it … any way you slice it, parenting is WORK. Whether your kids learn through public school, private school, home schooling, or unschooling … parenting is work. It’s responsibility. It often requires more tenacity and patience than any of us believe we have. … I love being with my kids full-time, and helping them learn on their own terms. That’s all the motivation we need.”

Bluebird’s Classroom
What? You Mean We Actually Get an Aide?
Teacher’s Aide and at-risk kids.

Line 46
Teacher Voodoo
“They cannot teach you this stuff in credential courses. You learn it the hard way, by listening to and observing your master teachers, your colleagues, and by practicing it yourself — finessing it, fumbling it, finding it and then losing it.”

The Jose Vilson
We Can Work It Out
Building on the book How Much Is A Million, by David M. Schwartz (illustrations by Steven Kellogg.

3σ → Left (An urban, high school IB mathematics teacher rambles on about his day)
“Honors” Party
Making a party work, and a useful knock-knowck joke.

Siobhan Curious (Classroom as microcosm)
another cheating story: part one
“To continue the discussion of cheating - as it always seems to get people going - I thought I’d share a specific incident from a few semesters ago and some analysis of its underpinnings.”

Homework

Janice Campbell
Homework Insanity- This Emperor has No Clothes
Commentary on Jeff Opdyke’s column on homework in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal (How Homework Is Hurting Our Family, September 30, 2007)

Buckhorn Road
Another parental encounter
“A mother wanted to know why her student was failing. Quite simple really: he didn’t turn in any homework, or produce any homework when I checked it at the students’ desks, as I am known to often do….It turns out that her son did do a lot of the work for which he received no credit. That’s what happens when you do the homework, and then fail to turn it in or show it to me. I will always be mystified by that sub-group of students who do their work and then just don’t manage to get it to the teacher. What a waste.”

Testing … and the broader implications of rankings, comparison, etc.

ADDED:
Right Wing Nation
Shennanigans
“… when I saw EdWonk’s post about the most recent NCES report, of course I had to go download the data and do my own analysis. Trust, but verify, and all that….”

The Eclectic Linda
Crowing about test results
Why are we ignoring the learning gap when comparing testing results across disparate regions?

Teacher in a Strange Land
HUSTLE — and FLOW
“When school folks say that Alfie Kohn is interesting, but doesn’t live in the real world, I usually mention the intense Japanese focus, in elementary education, on cohesive and cooperative groups. Since Japan is not only in the real world, but one of our chief national competitors, this is a conversation-stopper.”

What It’s Like on the Inside
Teaching to the Test
“I have a love-hate relationship with the phrase “teaching to the test.” On one hand, I don’t see a problem. If I’m teaching kids things which are different from what they will be tested on, what the heck am I doing? Shouldn’t I be using class time to help kids learn the concepts I expect them to know when we get to the test? … It’s the use of the phrase within the context of state-level exams that gets my goat.”

The Education Wonks
The Spellings Report: Pushing NCLB
The nation’s report card has just come out and Queen of All Testing, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, is positively giddy over the news…Naturally enough, these results will provide useful ammunition for those who are battling for the reauthorization of NCLB.

Eduwonkette
NCLB I: Do accountability systems improve test scores, and for whom?
“Part 1 of 3 of “NCLB glass half full (….with poison?)” Here are my thoughts on three questions related to the title of this post…”

Technology

Joanne Jacobs
Calculators=40
Pros and cons of the 40 year old calculator.

Let’s play math!
Play this anti-phishing game
“Do your students know how to protect themselves from email scams? Can they recognize fraudulent websites? Can you? Test your online security savvy by playing this educational game from Carnegie Mellon University…”

Class Size

ms_teacher
Class size numbers
GATE classes, unions, and class sizes discussed.

Poignant Commentary

Patricide (No regrets, just rugrats)
Never pass by
“About a block away from where my children used to have day care is a post that flashes a crossing warning for school kids. … The post was covered with plastic flowers, ribbons, photos, small toys and teddy bears piled up at its base. About four feet up was a piece of cardboard about 2 foot square with a picture of a young girl, … Scrawled around her photo in a deliberate, pained script were phrases of love and sorrow, beliefs of a better world and the certainty of an ache that would never go away. One cold morning, the horizon tinged with scattered hues of autumn, I stood reading those words…”

Briannica Blog
Failing Our Geniuses
“[It has been suggested] that gifted students … don’t need special schools; they just need to be able to accelerate. This shows a clear misunderstanding of the problem. Our top students nowadays usually are accelerated in school. And they’re still bored and underserved.”

Britannica Blog
What’s Really Being Taught in that College Classroom?
“Some suggest that college professors are doing just fine in teaching your children; some say the college classroom is host to rampant indoctrination by left-wing radical professors; and some don’t find it that important one way or the other. Let me provide a brief sense of each.”

Scheiss Weekly
Peanut Butter and Jelly and Bread, Oh Mice…
“Most of the students knew about the food stash; often, a kid who just plain forgot his/her lunch money or disliked the cafeteria menu for the day would come in and make a sandwich. No, it wasn’t from the students that I kept the food hidden in the bookcase by my desk.”

Adjustments, Ailments, Accommodations

The Elementary Educator
Why Does the Whole World Have ADD?
“I sometimes find myself puzzled by the many new ailments which plague our children much more frequently than they did even one generation ago. Asthma has grown exponentially, peanut allergies are downright trendy, and kids being diagnosed as bipolar has increased by a factor of 40 in less than a decade. … The most prevalent diagnosis of all, however, is Attention Deficit Disorder. ”

Scheiss Weekly
My Child Can’t Have This So Neither Can Yours
“…it is the person with the problem who has to do most of the adjusting to it. If that means sitting to the side in the cafeteria, bringing a home-packed lunch daily instead of eating cafeteria food, or even eating lunch in a separate room, perhaps with a friend or two, then so be it. Life is hard sometimes. But that is no reason to make life hard for everyone else, too.”

College: Costs, choices

ask the CareerCounselor
Can Studying What You Love Kill Your Career?
“we do live in a world that often rewards business people much better than it does the artsy types. The reality is that you may find it harder to gain employment in the creative sector because the barriers to entry are much higher than in other fields. Regardless, my personal opinion is: you must follow you heart and allow your passion to come out in what you do.”

Campus Grotto
The Most Expensive Colleges
“Tuition rates have been rising an average of 6% a year. This rate has been out pacing inflation at a much faster rate for decades.”

David B. Bohl
Most Popular Class at Harvard University? Happiness!
“Positive Psychology is the most popular class at Harvard University, having enrolled 855 students last semester.”

After-Grad.com
M.S. In U.S. In 9 Easy Steps

Great College Advice
College Navigator Assists College Search Process
“A new website from the US Department of Education was unveiled recently to help students in their college search process.”

College and Finance
Biggest College Ripoffs — And How to Avoid Them
“For some reason, college students seem to get scammed quite a bit. Unfortunately, all of the scams and rip-offs cannot be avoided, but there are some good ways to help ease the pain.”

Doris Goes Shopping
Educational Travel Tour

Online College Blog
10 Online colleges offering credit for life experience

Finance Is Personal.com
Getting a Degree Online: How to Get a Valuable Education and Not Get Ripped Off
“Being able to pursue a college education has become much easier in the last few years as schools such as the University of Phoenix Online and others have created college curriculums that you can complete without ever stepping foot inside of a classroom.”

Debt Free
College Consolidation Loans — You could be paying too much.
“In the decade between 1993 and 2003, student loan debt increased 137%, and that’s adjusted for inflation!”

Money for your Classroom

The good people at Scienceblogs.com are making a great effort to dry to enhance and encourage Donors Choice.org’s “Choose a Classroom Project to Fund” project. The following posts from Adventures in Ethics can orient you to this project:

• Raising money for classroom projects to create a more scientifically literate society (DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2007)
• Six Apart encourages your philanthropy with gift certificates.
• Special incentives for your donation to my DonorsChoose challenge.
• Another ScienceBlogger enters the Blogger Challenge!
• Other bloggers offer (better?) incentives for Blogger Challenge donors.

If you are a teacher, you ought to consider submitting a proposal!