Swine Flu in St Paul Schools! Everybody Panic!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to school, a student at St Paul’s Benjamin Mays Elementary comes down with H1N1 flu (Pioneer Press).  As it turns out, just because we media-types have stopped talking about Swine Flu doesn’t mean that the disease that kills fewer people than seasonal flu has disappeared.  

For comparison, H1N1 has infected 10,053 and killed 17 in the US this year, according to the CDC.  This afternoon, the CDC’s media office told me that, while they don’t aggregate and post the total number of seasonal flu cases and deaths for any seasonal flu, swine flu is “acting very much like a normal seasonal flu virus.  The attack rates are the same, the mortality rates are the same.”

Filed under: St Paul, Education, St Paul Public Schools, Swine Flu

Take that, Larry Summers!

Those of you with no ties to the Boston area probably missed former Harvard President (now Obama Economic adviser) Larry Summers’ epic, sexist case of foot-in-mouth a few years ago.  Women don’t succeed in math and science careers, he said in 2005, because they are naturally worse at math and science.   Nothing to do with culture or work environments.  Absolutely not, he said.  For all of us who wanted to sock it to ‘em after that speech, here’s some more vindication, via Jezebel: culture and societal issues are at the heart of math inequities, not gender or biology.

Filed under: National, Education, Larry Summers, Math

High-Stakes testing officially dead — for this year

Education policy folks and Minnesota’s high school juniors can stop holding their breath about this year’s math graduation test:  with the stroke of his pen, Governor Tim Pawlenty has turned the once-high-stakes test into a dead letter.  A compromise solution was reached earlier this year by the Governor, and both houses of the state legislature, that would permit students to retake the test three times, prior to graduation.  Pass or fail, though, no-one is barred from graduation.   Legislators were concerned that, since the test results come back a few weeks into summer vacation, high school Juniors wouldn’t have much time to take remedial courses and retake the test before they have to start studying for finals, or graduate.  

According to the Strib’s Emily Johns, though, the real reason is that the test is too hard.  

Filed under: Minneapolis, Minnesota, Achievement Gap, Education, Education Policy, GRAD test, Minneapolis Public Schools, Minnesota, Testing, Tim Pawlenty