Schools News Around the Blogosphere

Are You a Bully?
A Connecticut school administrator, commenting on his district's decision to include teacher behavior in its anti-bullying policy, complained that it would be difficult to distinguish between bullying behavior and classroom management strategies. What about you? Can you tell the difference between behavior management and bullying?

Standing Up for Average Students
Teacher/coach Tom Krause worries that real learning and the average student's needs are getting lost in the pressures of greater accountability and assessments.

Another Edison Schools achievement claim falls apart under scrutiny
The Examiner
Caroline Grannan
The minor flurry of news about the failed for-profit school manager Edison Schools - and an indignant post here by an Edison supporter or employee - spurred a longtime Edison critic who is an indefatigable number-cruncher to take a close look at Edison's newest claims about achievement in its Philadelphia schools.

Math Scores Show No Gap for Girls, Study Finds
New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN
A study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests.

Math IS harder for girls . . . and also, it seems, for the New York Times.
By Heather MacDonald
The New York Times is determined to show that women are discriminated against in the sciences; too bad the facts say otherwise. A new study has "found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests," claims a July 25 article by Tamar Lewin-thus, the underrepresentation of women on science faculties must result from bias. Actually, the study, summarized in the July 25 issue of Science, shows something quite different: while boys' and girls' average scores are similar, boys outnumber girls among students in both the highest and the lowest score ranges.

People in leadership roles are ubiquitous, but leaders are in short supply.
Hayes Mizell
Guest Columnist EducationNews.org
Introductory remarks of Hayes Mizell on July 14, 2008 before moderating Session B01 at the National Staff Development Council's Summer Conference, held at the Marriott World Center Resort in Orlando, FL.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
EdNews
by Nicholas Carr
Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?" So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial

For Many Student Athletes, Game Over
New York Times
By WINNIE HU
As cash-strapped school districts across the nation scale back sports programs, some fear that the tradition of the scholar athlete is at risk.

Teaching Life Lessons Through Sports
Organized athletics originally were viewed as mechanisms for teaching social values and selflessness, but society has changed and so have sports. Mitch Lyons suggests that athletics still can be a springboard for valuable lessons, if the approach is changed.