Parents ‘n Schools

Rule #27 in Alan Webber’s new “Rules of Thumb” book articulates three “rules” for how we all need to be in business (“all”, I have to believe, would include the schooling business). He attributes these three rules to Megan Smith, Google’s director of new business development and strategy. I’m guessing here… but I think it’s […]

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Picked up this summer the legendary book by John F. Kennedy, written when he was a Senator in the mid-50’s recuperating from surgery — the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Profiles in Courage”. In the opening chapter he describes in blunt and revealing terms the reality of life for a politician and the forces acting upon them in […]

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(August 2009 — GLO — Saw some data up on the website Education Intelligence Agency listing the percentage amount of government school operations funding that goes to schooler salaries in states across the U.S. The highest was about 96%, and the average across the nation was 90%. That leaves just 4 to 10 cents on […]

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Came across this blog recently, which was “retired” by its creator this past spring (you can do that? you can stop? nobody told me you can stop? how do you stop?)
The author is Dennis Fermoyle, and he authored a book titled “In the Trenches”, describing his schooling career and offering reasonable defences for public education. […]

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(GLO — August 2009 — Look back in September 2008 archives for this first of a three-part series of entries discussing the challenges of fundraising by parents on behalf of government schools, and the challenges regarding how that type of involvement in school funding is structured and how well, or unwell, that structure protects and […]

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“Things are such that they fit together in remarkable ways that are only discovered by rude creatures, who poke their noses into other peoples’ business. I suggest that you keep your eyes open for things you are not supposed to know about. You may have something to contribute.” — Kary B. Mullis, Nobel Chemist (listen […]

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(GLO — August 2009 — This from a year ago draws to mind another comparison that I’ve drawn elsewhere related to “class size”. If schoolers were granted the share of resources that their parent “partners” were granted — i.e., if the roles were reversed — it would be like working with a class size of […]

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A book I read recently full of essays in answer to the title question “What Have You Changed Your Mind About?” (Edited by John Brockman, 2009) prompted me to ask what, in my volunteer parent career in K-12 schooling, have I changed my mind about.
I think it would be the oft-heard schooling phrase “parents as […]

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(GLO — August 2009 — Detroit’s products consistently won “Car of the Year” and other recognition over the past decades. But the market didn’t buy it, and they couldn’t produce them sustainably anyway. Perhaps the only rankings that matter in schooling is completion rates… the ratio of students who actually complete their defined course of […]

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An essay by Danish science writer Tor Norretranders describes the constantly changing atoms in our bodies:
“[Your body] is more like… a river…. Matter is flowing through it all the time. The constituents are being replaced over and over again.
A chair or a table is stable because the atoms stay where they are. The stability of […]

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