Poor Elijah’s Almanack Newsreel: Second place

Schools may be on summer hiatus, but the education world never sleeps. Here’s this week’s achievements.

Schools may be on summer hiatus, but the education world never sleeps. Here’s a cavalcade of this week’s achievements.

“Professional development” is what happens on those random days when your children stay home and their teachers attend workshops conducted by experts who wouldn’t know what to do with themselves in front of a classroom of real students.

Officials and experts view professional development as so vital that federal grants commonly require spending millions paying expert “consultants” to tell teachers how to teach and prohibit schools from spending the money to hire actual teachers for struggling students and crowded classrooms.

This fondness for professional development doubtless has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that battalions of education experts get paid thousands of dollars a day sharing what they don’t know and peddling their latest bandwagon method.

Now a technology professor has documented the “benefits” of online professional development. His endorsement is doubtless unrelated to technology advocates’ characteristic faith in all things silicon. It also doubtless has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it would allow battalions of education experts to get paid thousands of dollars a day without having to travel from school to school.

According to the study, online professional development “has the same effect on student learning and teacher behavior as more traditional face-to-face models.” Given the merits and benefits of standard teacher workshops, this is a lot like recommending an anvil for a drowning man because it’s no less helpful than throwing him a traditional anchor.

In national news briefs, an Ohio district approved a policy authorizing “designated” staff members to “convey deadly weapons.” Participants will “undergo an extensive three-day” training. Officials hope that arming unidentified teachers after a long weekend of preparation will “provide that extra last margin of safety.”

In 2009, the federal government appropriated $3 billion to “turn around the lowest performing schools.” After three years accumulating data, the Department of Education’s analysis of test scores shows the program “appeared to help in some schools,” but that “others actually got worse.” Education secretary Arne Duncan is unfazed, maintaining that other “leading indicators” besides test scores “say just as much about whether or not a school is on a path to improvement.” This is the same Duncan who remains adamant that teachers be judged by their students’ test scores after only one year of data.

Superintendents nationwide are publicly cheerleading for the Common Core, America’s latest school improvement mandate guaranteed to deliver “21st century learning.” Privately, they aren’t so optimistic. In a recent Gallup survey, 38 percent predict the Common Core will “have no effect” or “decrease the quality of education.” Don’t expect the same response from your superintendent, unless you ask him five years from now when the Common Core has proven to be as successful as No Child Left Behind.

Meanwhile, technology enthusiasts met for their annual International Society for Technology in Education convention. ISTE, alongside the Common Core, is one of the driving forces masterminding education reform. The keynote speech was delivered by an “educational gaming guru.” She opened with the “good news” that more than a billion people, including over 90 percent of school children, now play Internet games for at least an hour a day.

She next cited Gallup results in which the number of students who “report feeling engaged at school” decreases from 76 percent in elementary grades to 44 percent of high schoolers.

The guru concluded that in order to “engage” students, teachers must “incorporate” games in class. That way schools can deliver “10 positive emotions,” including “joy, relief, love, surprise, pride, curiosity,” “awe and wonder,” that “gamers report feeling while playing video games.”

It’s worth noting that humans have for millenniums reported feeling these emotions without video games. It’s also worth noting that emotions aren’t the reason we send children to school.

There may be some connection between the 70 percent of American workers unengaged in their work and the growing sentiment, even among American workers, that we’re headed for second place behind China. As for American students, if they’re hungering for curiosity, they might consider learning more about all the things they know less and less about. If they’re lacking pride, they can find pride in achievement. There’s also the joy and relief of one day providing for the family that you love.

JOHN MINCHILLO — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Nacala Spiegler-Frederick with her mother, Jinnie Spiegler, talks about the new Common Core standards that replace a hodgepodge of education goals that varied wildly from state to state.