Weekly Web-Reads Round-Up

by Clay Burell

Published January 24, 2009 @ 06:35AM PT

For your enjoyment, a miscellany of noteworthy reads around the web:

Chuckles from inaugural history: From the Winter 2005 American Scholar comes Ted Widmer's tasty survey of the weird world of inaugural addresses, called "So Help Me God." A joy for fans of writing and history, Widmer's essay lauds the high moments of presidential oratory and, as deliciously, has fun with

the curious awkwardness that bedeviled past presidents at the precise moment of their elevation, as if the dizzying height to which they had climbed also deprived them of much-needed oxygen.

There are so many to choose from. Why did John Adams, sailing along smoothly, suddenly embark on an interminable single sentence that took up approximately a quarter of his address and required 732 words to complete? (Yes, I counted.) Why did Martin Van Buren include an exclamation point—the only one in inaugural-address history—after a sentence that was neither funny nor shocking? What inner child in George H. W. Bush forced him to say “freedom is like a beautiful kite that can go higher and higher with the breeze”? Was Warren Harding reading skin-care ads when he urged Americans to free themselves “from the great blotches of distressed poverty”? Why did John F. Kennedy, usually so smart, wonder if “a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion”? What was Nixon thinking when he ripped off Kennedy by saying, “Let each of us ask—not just what will government do for me, but what can I do for myself?” Was Reagan daydreaming of Mitch Miller with his odd paean to “the American Sound”? (Full essay here, and h/t to my Australian buddy MiddleClassGirl for the share.)

"Little Brother is Watching You": Gotham Schools reports on a fascinating development in a NYC school: An anonymous teacher-blogger kicks ass and takes names - and publicly blogs them - of what s/he alleges are inept and abusive administrators at his/her school. It's a Brave New Web out there, and one in which administrators are no longer as safe from their teachers as in the past. Gnarly:

The rising tide of transparency seems to have infected a South Bronx schoolteacher. Since last August, the teacher has been skewering Department of Education policies on his blog, South Bronx School. He reserves the harshest words for his school administrators, whom he nicknamed “Numb Nuts” and “John Deacon,” and whom he recently accused of committing corporal punishment, in a complaint he says he sent to the Special Commissioner of Investigations.

Yesterday, for reasons that aren’t explained on his blog, the teacher revealed the name of his school, PS 154 in the Bronx, and his administrators’ real names. (Full post here.)

Darling-Hammond Watch: Another chestnut from Gotham Schools, this post reports on Linda Darling-Hammond's speech at a panel in NYC last week on school reform:

At the panel, she quickly made it clear how dramatically accountability regimes would change if she is given a major role in the Obama administration. (Of course, that’s a big if: Though Darling-Hammond chaired the education policy team for Obama’s transition, it’s looking like those who have the ear of new Education Secretary Arne Duncan come from a different set. She didn’t comment on this yesterday.)

Darling-Hammond laid out a dramatic picture of how she hopes Obama will change American schools, one that (for the most part) differed substantially from the vision currently in vogue, the “idealocrat” program Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has pushed. Darling-Hammond’s big idea is to move America away from a factory model of education, where teachers are seen as trade workers, and toward a model that treats teachers as just as important as doctors or lawyers. The change, as she sees it, requires that teachers are given better and more extensive training, and that the federal government change the way it evaluates their work, moving from No Child Left Behind’s standardized test-based system into one based on sensitive open-ended assessments that schools might create themselves. (Full post here.)

"Mediocre teachers should be fired": Sheesh, I don't mean for this post to be a love-fest for the Gotham Schools blog, but it's on fire with good reads. This post about a charter school teacher who was fired and out of the building in a day - apparently a near-impossiblity for unionized traditional public schools - gets its heat from the comment thread debate. A snippet:

Some people become lawyers, open restaurants, work in a corporate environment, whatever for a few years and they just aren’t that great at what they do, and they get fired and move on to other things. Why are people so worried when it happens to a teacher? I DON’T think MM should go work in a public school–why?? why not try something that she might be better at, something that would make her happier? And sure, some teachers get hassled by principals who are ageist, racist, whatever. But WAY more teachers are mediocre (or worse) and allowed to stay in the system because firing them is too cumbersome to principals who are already overwhelmed by the magnitude of their jobs. I think MM’s situation seems to be in the best interest of her and her students. (Full post here.)

Free teacher professional development on ASCD blog: Fellow English teacher Dina Strasser, whom I've known and enjoyed around the edublogosphere (horrible word!) for a good while, begins a series of posts on the ASCD Inservice blog about Robert Marzano's book, The Art and Science of Teaching. Marzano is replying to each chapter-by-chapter post in what promises to be an interesting dialogue. (Administrators take note: In the world of web 2.0, it's so worth asking if you need to sink money into bringing "experts" into your school for one-day "spray-and-pray" professional development workshops when so many sustained, at-your-convenience, free alternatives exist on the web. Another smart way to cut your budget without losing anything.)

On Change.gov, EdSec Duncan drops hoops to play softball: I recently asked if the White-House-meets-YouTube "transparency" campaign would be toothed or toothless. The jury's still out, of course, but Arne Duncan's first outing was an underwhelming exercise in choosing, from the slew of gnarly challenges he faces and decisions he has to make, the slowest of under-hand gopher-balls to knock out of the kiddie-park. [Update: Talking Points Memo posts a glowing report from a DoE staffer on how Duncan's leadership style has boosted morale there. Money quote:

I know this isn't anything earthshattering, but the change in the atmosphere at the Department over the last week has been really astounding. In the past, we all knew that the Secretary had an agenda that she was going to follow, and that we were only there to affirm that her way was best. We really feel that Arne wants to know the truth, whether it fits with his agenda or not. (h/t to the wonderful Kate Tabor for the link.)

I hope that's true. Still, here's the YouTube. Judge for yourself:

That's it for this week. Feel free to drop links to any reads you found worth sharing in the thread.

And Happy New Year, by the way - Lunar New Year, that is, which the billions of people in Asia recognize as a holiday. I'll be kow-towing to my wife's ancestors at my father-in-law's place for the next three days, and that septagenarian has no internet, slay me, so I'll do my best to slip out to a wireless cafe and check in.

Image by williac on Flickr.