NPR features Barr.
The Green Dot publicity machine has been pretty quiet since the announcement of the collaborative efforts of NY’s UFT and Steve Barr’s Green Dot last Fall. But a long story by NPR’s Claudio Sanchez ran last night.
It was a major, and pretty standard by now, puff piece on Barr. The report also painted a pretty bleak but accurate story of the sorry state of the LAUSD. A Locke teacher is quoted by Sanchez as accusing Barr of having a strategy to privatize LA’s schools, but that and a critical voice of an LA Board of Ed member were the only negatives about Green Dot in the 8 minute story.
Listen to it here.
Missing the forest for the trees.
The Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey so misses the forest for the trees in his little tirade against The Washington Post for getting their math wrong.
See, the Post claimed that some schools were reducing their art and music instructional time by half in order meet NCLB proficiency goals.
Carey said:
According to the report, the districts surveyed devoted 110 minutes per week to art and music in 2007. Districts that reduced time for art music reported an average reduction of 57 minutes. 110 minutes is not “about half” of 167 minutes, it’s 65.8%, a hair below two-thirds.
Much more importantly, only 16 percent of districts reported reducing time for art and music at all. Needless to say, this is a hugely important distinction. The plain meaning of the sentence printed in the Post is that NCLB has caused a 50% reduction in the total time spent teaching art and music. The report suggests that the actual number is closer to five percent (.34 X .16). In other words, the story is wrong by as much as an order of magnitude.
110 minutes for art and music a week. And that’s OK with Carey because it’s not less.
My elementary district, where the Arts are considered well supported, has kids in school 1675 instructional minutes a week. 45 for art and 60 for music. That’s 105 minutes. And that’s with no reduction following NCLB. That’s about 6% of the instructional time per week. And that’s OK with Carey because it’s not less.
As Billy Preston once said, “Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’.” What’s the order of that magnitude?
