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29 Aug 09

Pressure-cooker kindergarten - The Boston Globe

  • Anthony Colannino, principal of the MacArthur School in Waltham, objected this spring when the state began requiring schools to administer a standardized test to kindergartners whose first language isn’t English. “If you gave this test to the general population, people would be beating down doors,” he says. “There would be an outcry. If they gave it to my kid, I would say, ‘Tell me what day you are giving it, and he will be absent.’ ”

    In fact, Colannino has a 5-year-old son who is about to enter kindergarten in Woburn. He says that his son, like many 5-year-old boys, is spontaneous and active. And since children are now expected to sit quietly for at least part of the day in many kindergarten classes, Colannino is more than a little worried. “He is curious and asks a lot of questions, and my wife and I are concerned,” he says.

21 Jan 09

Hebrew School for All? - Forward.com

  • Our instincts tell us to reject separate schools for their damage to diversity. The fight for an open society has served us well.


    But these are extraordinary times. America has become a nation of tribes, self-segregating in separate neighborhoods by income, political views and lifestyle as well as by race or religion. The Internet is turning casual encounters at the bookstore and post office into a thing of the past. We don’t even hear the same news. These changes are bigger than ideology, and they won’t disappear any time soon.


    In this new world, chasing after an elusive civic republican utopia may be a fool’s errand. Whatever damage we fear the Hebrew charter school might inflict on the American mosaic — or what’s left of it — could be outweighed by its promise to the Jewish future.

23 May 08

MacArthur drops plan for more hours - Waltham, MA - The Daily News Tribune

"One of the members of our (Expanded Learning Time) design team is Dr. Patrick Proctor, an assistant professor at Boston College at the Lynch School of Education. He's going to be analyzing the data," she said. "Once we have all this information collected the design team can determine if this is a good fit."

www.dailynewstribune.com/...thur-drops-plan-for-more-hours - Preview

waltham school schoolreform

10 Feb 08

Language Log: No Spanish on the School Bus

  • The motivation for the school district's ban on Spanish is interesting. If we take
    Mr. Aumaugher at his word, he has no dislike for the Spanish language or for Spanish-speakers.
    His action was, he says, triggered by learning that in Nevada, while 75% of "white" high school
    students graduate, only 55% of Spanish-speakers do. Surmising that this disparity is due to
    the inferior English skills of Spanish-speakers, he decided to ban the use of Spanish
    on school buses in order to force Spanish-speakers to get additional practice in English.
  • In sum, the Esmeralda County schools took an offensive and unconstitutional
    action on the basis of the dubious assumption that Spanish-speakers necessarily
    have poor English skills and that this is the reason for lower graduation rates, as well as
    the further questionable assumption that Spanish-speakers whose English skills remained
    inadequate in spite of attendance at an English-speaking high school would be brought up
    to par by additional practice on the school bus. The English-only movement is certainly
    driven in part by xenophobia and a desire for cultural and linguistic homogeneity,
    but this example shows how even in the apparent absence of such factors, policies are
    all too often formed in cavalier ignorance of the facts.
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