Weekly Web Roundup, 090201

by Clay Burell

Published February 01, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT

Web roundup for Jan. 31:

• MUST READ: The Nation's 2002 exposé of the origins of NCLB and the Bush bedfellows for education dollars it invited (can you say "McGraw/Hill," for example? Or "ReadingFirst"? Or "billions of dollars for programs that didn't work"?)
• THEN read this update to the same bedfellows kissing their golden handouts goodbye.
• Not only is Linda Darling-Hammond releasing a new report on international teacher professional development practices this Wednesday - she's doing it at an event that Arne Duncan will attend. Will they announce an appointment for her to the DoE?
• The New America Foundation argues - get ready, states' rights enthusiasts - that it's past time to nationalize standards in schools.
• Alexander Russo has the latest speculation on who's in and who's out in Duncan's DoE.
• Minnesota Schools Perform Well by International Standards - Linda Darling-Hammond wouldn't be surprised.
• More from Darling-Hammond: Edutopia publishes new research by Linda Darling-Hammond and Brigid Barron that finds "Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods - Cooperative learning and inquiry-based teaching yield big dividends in the classroom."
• The Tenured Radical has interesting things to say about "the Obama effect," and what it suggests about the theorists behind it - and about the validity of testing in general.
• Education Notes Online gives its view of "the real game behind closing schools" with a short case study of NYC PS 150. (Interesting first comment too.)
• The BBC echoes posts you read here first about Open Source Software as potentially smart budget-cutting solutions for schools - and offers practical advice, caveats, and good links for your administrators.
• Washington's State Superintendent is unilaterally replacing the state assessments with shorter, computerized ones to take up less schooling time, and give faster feedback to teachers, next year.
• New study suggests American youth are more self-professed liberal than anytime in a generation, discuss politics ditto - but don't watch or read political news in the same numbers. What gives?
• Not about education, but for those who value honest, beautiful writing, Joe Bageant's essay on watching the Obama inauguration from a village in Belize is not to be missed. I watched it from Korea, and felt a similar mix of emotions. Don't cheat yourself - read from start to finish.

That's it for this week. Brought to you by the good people at Diigo, who make this task so much easier with their online bookmarking/highlighting/annotating tool. See all my 3,500 online "social bookmarks" on my Diigo account here, and run, don't walk, to sign up yourself. (And come back Monday for a screencast about it.)

Image by williac on Flickr.