Ultimate Fighting Curricula

The front page of yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle showcased the current debate over whether or not California should abandon the curricula that has earned high marks from the Thomas B. Fordham institute in favor of the Obama administration’s Common Core standards. The Common Core attempts to unify curricula across the states, some of which have been escaping the dire penalties of No Child Left Behind by assessing students according to fairly simple standards (which, naturally, inflates test scores).

First Visit to the Village

This entry is not about the health care system, but after walking into the pediatric care room at Valley Medical Center, I may have found the Achilles’ heel of the American education system.

I opened the door to the waiting room – an overflowing harbor of families. A Latina mother sat in the hub of nearly every cluster of children. The ambient din pulsed with the ritmo of español. In the foreground, a familiar face swung into view just as I turned the stroller past the doorway. “Antonio” had just graduated from the high school where I teach, and he was a student in my very first SDAIE English class.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

The United States of America became an independent nation on what date?

September 3, 1783.

The Treaty of Paris officially converted thirteen of the British colonies in America into an autonomous collective dubbed the United States. France and Spain were also parties to the treaty with negotiations resembling an imperialist version of a four-team trade in the NBA. (Florida to Britain, Louisiana to Spain, France gets half the Caribbean, and Pennsylvania gets an expansion franchise.)