Results tagged “education”

• Mass. Maritime 2, Pirates 0. [Boston Globe]

• While Governor Deval Patrick and Speaker Robert A. DeLeo bicker, the fate of an education bill, not to mention $250 million in federal stimulus funds, is up in the air. [Boston Herald]

• According to the University of Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, corporate use of social media - Twitter, Facebook, etc. - has increased greatly in the past three years. []

The recession has hit, and hard. more ›

Do you want your children taught by people who are not certified teachers? Are five weeks sufficient to learn how to command classrooms full of troubled kids? Should inexperienced, uncertified teachers be paid the same as those with years of training and experience? Teach for America says yes; Boston Public Schools says no. In an apparently controversial decision, BPS has refused to employ Teach for America recruits, asserting that the district already has enough qualified, experienced teachers. Teach for America is a somewhat ironic endeavor: the organization's own literature lauds the superior power of experienced teachers, yet the two-year program involves no certification, no experience, and often does little more than Ivy League grads something to do for two years between college and graduate school. The corps members may be educated, but that doesn't mean they can educate, and throwing them into a classroom for a brief amount of time does a disservice both to the corps members and their students. Additionally, Teach for America does nothing to solve the troubling problem of insufficient teacher training in America; it's merely a band-aid that falls off when its corps members move on. BPS is right to hold its ground and stand out for teachers who will commit to a career of education, not a brief stopover on the way to "better" things. more ›

Those 14 percent T raises be damned—teachers are what's costing us money! And at least 400 of them may have to be fired to make room for budget cuts. (Compare that with the 400+ T workers who earned over $100,000 last year—we're betting that most teacher salaries are not quite at six figures.) 500 other jobs need to be eliminated in the process of whittling our education budget down by 5.5%. The transportation budget is cited as a big portion of costs. We say make those kids walk to school—we did it uphill both ways in the snow back in the day. If you've got a problem with the budget cuts, there's a budget hearing tonight at Blackstone Elementary School, and several others coming up as well. To prepare, you can read the superintendent's budget proposal (Word doc). more ›

Yesterday, the Globe spoke with a woman--let's call her Belinda Snotskill, married to Thurston Snotskill the Fourth--who is upset at the prospect of the state funding all-day kindergarten. more ›

The Globe reports that many Massachusetts high school graduates are going on to take remedial classes in college, which may be contributing to high college dropout rates. These assertions are based on a multiyear study from the Massachusetts Department of Education. The study followed nearly 20,000 students who graduated from Massachusetts high schools and went on to study at public colleges and universities in the state. Out of all the Massachusetts high schools surveyed, 27 saw over 60% of their students enroll in remedial courses in college. Overall, 37% of students in the study took at least one remedial college course. more ›

More reason for cash-starved college students, especially those in the UMass system, to cultivate the taste for ramen. WBZ reports, "The university's trustees finance panel approved a 3.1 percent increase in fees Wednesday." more ›

Whatever your thoughts on presidential candidate/political rock star Barack Obama borrowing a few points of Deval Patrick's rhetoric, you have to think it's good for the Governor. He's getting nation-wide press and it's not his fault that his speeches are so catchy and profound that Obama can't help copying them. more ›

With over 20 million accounts, Second Life has become a pop culture phenomenon. An Internet-based virtual world, the metaverse in which we can be the person we've always wanted to be (without putting in the hard-work of exercise or educational training) have very few competitors. Currently, there is an exhibition going on in Boston called Mixed Realities - an exploration of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks. more ›

We can't forget the porn 'stache Patriots receiver Wes Welker tried to rock earlier this season, much as we'd love to. We know it was a fashion failure and we have to hope that Welker knows it too -- and never tries to pull that look off again. Ever. more ›

Governor Deval Patrick testified this morning at the State House about his plan to create an Executive Office of Education. This would consolidate authority and responsibility for the commonwealth's education system from pre-kindergarten to higher education to one cabinet-level position in the State House. more ›

--Yet another explanation for why you should have a sinking feeling in your tummy any time you go over a bridge in Massachusetts. [Boston Herald] more ›

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is fighting off accusations that its practice of skin-shocking children with serious psychological issues is barbaric. Yet those accusations seem justified after several JRC staff members at a home in Stoughton listened to a prank caller and shocked one of its residents 77 times, sending that student to the hospital for first-degree burns. more ›

Those responsible for giving two students skin-shocks--one 77 times and another 29 times--at the request of a prank caller at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC) in August have been fired. The AP reports that seven people are out, including a video surveillance worker. more ›

Two people received skin-shock treatments at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC) in Canton after a former student made a prank phone call requesting the treatments. The incidents happened in August but are being reported now. more ›

Evolution is on trial again. A former postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has sued the Cape Cod research center, claiming his 2004 dismissal resulted from his religious beliefs. Nathaniel Abraham was dismissed from Mark Hahn's research lab after refusing to work on the "evolutionary aspects" of his assigned project, according to the Globe. Hahn is a senior research scientist known for studying the effects of toxins on aquatic animals, using a hybrid... more ›

With Boston as perhaps the world’s foremost college town, a large part of our population is staring down Fall Semester’s final exams. For some, this period is little more than another opportunity to display a sharp mind. For others, however, exam period is one of struggle, frustration, and pain. To this latter group we suggest an alternative: Just go back to high school. It’s been done before… A twenty-five-year old Kenneth Lickiss took a Greyhound... more ›

In October, Boston University threw down the gauntlet and declared plans to expand. Now, Boston College is one-upping BU with expansion plans of its own. BC's expansion plan rivals that of BU. BU said it would put in $1.8 billion, and BC has announced that it will spend $1.6 billion. The BC Heights reports that the money will go to construction and renovation, and 100 new faculty members will be hired. The rest will go... more ›

--Screenwriters, get your pens. A boy finagled his way into becoming an exchange student at the all-female Wellesley College. Ready … set … go! [Boston Globe] --Barack Obama and his supporters didn't let the weather stop their gathering at the Park Plaza Castle. He joked that "the name of my cousin, Dick Cheney, will not be on the ballot.” Now when's Oprah coming? [WCVB, Harvard Crimson] --Dr. Ruth was in town. Laurel Sweet describes her... more ›

Boston University is willing to spend big bucks--$1.8 billion, to be exact--to be an academic powerhouse. Linda Wertheimer at the Globe reported Thursday that BU wants to "add 150 professors, dramatically lower the school's student-faculty ratio, and pour money into salaries to allow BU to vie for the nation's top professors." Not bad. You go, BU. President Robert Brown has visions of US News & World Report college rankings dancing in his head. However, if... more ›

Nothing's better than a good college crime blotter because college students are so free with the booze. And they're creative. (Northeastern, you get an A-plus!) That's all well and good as long as the college kids aren't in your backyard. The Globe ran a story about Somerville residents who are fed up with students "screaming in the streets in the wee hours, jumping on cars, and urinating and vomiting in residents' yards." One resident complained... more ›

Keggers and CliffsNotes Grub Street Headquarters 160 Boylston Street Sunday, September 23, 7:00-9:00 pm More info Sunday night: a time for football, Extreme Home Makeover, and staying in, right? You couldn't be more wrong. Sunday night--at least this Sunday night--is a time to don your favorite college sweatshirt, put on your thinking and drinking caps, and head out to Keggers and CliffsNotes, the latest installment in the Dirty Water Reading Series. Co-hosted by Redivider, Quick... more ›

"Authorial Intent" is Bostonist's attempt to bring you the best readings in the area, all tied up with a shiny bow. Diane Ackerman, Wednesday, September 19, 7:00 pm, Harvard Book Store. More info. In The Zookeeper's Wife, fiction writer, nonfiction writer, and poet Ackerman returns with the true story of zookeepers in Poland during World War II who hid Jews from the Nazis. The LA Times calls the novel "a shining book beyond category." Jonathan... more ›

John Kerry just can't catch a break. First there was that whole losing the presidency to G.W. thing, then the lack of education lands you in Iraq comment, and now this. A local Florida news station is reporting that a University of Florida student was tasered after asking John Kerry possibly controversial questions that included whether Kerry was in the "Skull and Crossbones" society with George W. Bush. That's the short story. Upon reviewing the... more ›

It's college-ranking time. Of course, these rankings are about as scientific as a game of pin the tail on the donkey, but schools have a lot of fun learning about how other campuses see them. For example, the University of New Hampshire was named one of the top party schools. UNH is no West Virginia University, which appears to have abandoned the pretense of higher education altogether, but UNH was number seven on the party-hearty... more ›

No, not that kind of hedge. Harvard lost $350 million by investing in a hedge fund. Maybe they thought the hedge fund would rake in the cash because it was run by a man who used to manage Harvard's foreign stock holdings. They were wrong. When Jeffrey Larson left the confines of Harvard to run his own firm, Harvard gave him a parting gift of $500 million. Larson lost the $350 from that and sold... more ›

Former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney is in a full-scale Battle Royale with former Harvard hotshot Democrat presidential aspirant Barack Obama about the subject of sex. In the Atlantic piece Obama, Romney, and Sex, Sex, Sex, which appears to be titled for maximum search-engine optimization, Marc Ambinder writes about Romney's "shock" at Obama's proposal to teach sex-ed in kindergarten. Romney said, "I heard a quote today from Sen. Barack Obama which puzzled... more ›