Blog Interview: The Ed Wonks

In keeiping with my blogger New Year's Resolutions, This is the fourth installment of my "weekly" series of blog reviews/interviews. Previous interviews are linked to the left.

This week, the purveyors of the ultra-fine, always-readable, and darn-near-mandatory weekly post, The Carnival of Education, have kindly submitted to be this week's victim, er, volunteer for the blog review/interview. If you could care less about my opinion, scroll down to the interview.

But if you want a one-stop shop for education related links, check out the Ed Wonks. Even if the writing the Wonks generate was not worth the electrons is it printed on (and believe it is), the blog roll itself is fantastic. But the content you find on the Wonks page is a veritable roundtable of ideas. On a given week, and I chose last week, you can find posts relating to other ed blogs, class size, racism and the achievement gap, school sports, even rights of students and on and on.

While the Wonks often include a lot of links to other stories, it is the commentary that makes the site fun. Whether the commentary is substantive reflections on the value (or lack thereof) of topic discussed in the story, or a quick, pithy little statement dripping with sarcasm or disbelief, you can't go wrong and often get a little chuckle.

The entries that I like most often take the form of a questioning of the mental health/capacity of the school district smart enough to employ the Wonks, but surely rueing the day they did so. Take a post from today:

Some computer-generated reports needed in order to give grades for all first period classes were only distributed to teachers Monday morning.

So why on earth did our school's office mandate that grades for some 900 students must be turned in Monday afternoon, just 30 minutes after the students went home?

Where's the logic in that? Where's the rhyme or reason?

I can remember when teachers here in our part of California's "Imperial" Valley used to be considered as "professionals" and had about a week to generate their grades rather than one weekend.

In fact, many of the Ed Wonks screeds against California's "Imperial Valley" ask the very question, what happened to treating teachers like professionals.

Since I have cut this post a little short, I will, in the interests of your time, move right to the interview.


In 25 words or less, what is your blog about?

The Education Wonks is all about the Free Exchange of Thoughts and Ideas, especially those that pertain to the education of our young people.

What prompted you to begin blogging?

As is the case with many practicing classroom teachers, I rarely have the opportunity to participate in frank and candid discussions about issues pertaining to public education policy, reform, and various aspects of The Teaching Life. The Education Wonks is our "Window to the Outside World."

Is there a particular posting you have made in the past three months of which you are particularly proud? If so, please provide a link.

It has been said that, "Pride goeth before the fall." Having said that, I do like this post: The NEA: Where's The Democracy And Accountability?

Congratulations on the approaching one year anniversary of the Carnival of Education. What prompted you to begin the Carnival? Did you think it would be as successful as it has become? In year two, what would you like to do differently, if anything? (I know, that is three questions in one, but they are all related—see?)

As a method of encouraging the Free Exchange of Thoughts and Ideas, we began the Carnival because we sought to bring as many different educational viewpoints and voices together in one easy-to-access post. Credit for the success of The Carnival Of Education does not, however, belong to us; it’s the contributors and readers who continue to make the Carnival effort both worthwhile and rewarding.

You have posted a few items recently called Censorchimps, which I have always found amusing and alarming. In your opinion, how do or should schools justify the teaching of civil liberties with the mixed message of censoring certain, otherwise, protected speech just because schools can?

Certainly schools should encourage students to express their political viewpoints. But this must be done in such a context as to not cause disruption of the educational process or learning environment. That’s why we strongly support the right of students to freely distribute their own newspapers, petition school administration for redress of their concerns, and peacefully gather before and/or after the school day for the purpose of rallying community support.

But we are not supportive of those students who choose to disrupt the educational day with such maneuvers as walking out of class.

In short, no student has the right to deny any other student their right to receive instruction in a safe and orderly school environment each and every school day.

As a teacher, with a teen-wonk in residence, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing parents and students in the coming decade? How would you suggest we as a nation address these problems.

The WifeWonk and I feel that the most daunting challenge facing busy parents today is finding more time to spend with their children. With more Americans working longer hours to make ends meet, time is at more of a premium than ever before. In all too many cases, parents don’t spend as much time with their kids as their kids would like to spend with them.

As most educators will tell you, children who have caring and involved parents are more likely to avoid many of the problems and pitfalls of a society that often communicates (though a variety of media) very mixed messages to kids regarding parents, education, sex, and the traditional American work ethic.

You have been posting for a roughly a year and a half. Realizing that change is generally slow, what you do think has been the biggest positive change in education policy/edusphere and the biggest negative change?

The biggest positive change has been in the number and variety of voices that are out there in the EduSphere. It seems as though I’m learning of new and interesting sites every day. The discussion and debate in the EduSphere continues to rapidly increase in both quantity and quality.

The chief area of concern that I have regarding the EduSphere is that I can sense some polarization among those who write education-related sites. In the future, it’s conceivable that the EduSphere could come to resemble the larger blogosphere in that personal attacks upon writers by other bloggers and commenters could become all too commonplace.

Pie in the sky times. You are named to be the secretary of education of your state, California, by the governator, and a carte blanche to do what you want, what would be your first three priorities as Secretary of Education.

1. California has an extremely bloated, redundant, and ineffective educracy with many well-paid administrators doing little more than marking-time, planning the next remodel of their office space, attending conferences all over the country, and hiring additional staff in order to justify their own jobs.

The amount of badly-needed funds being wasted by these parasites educrats is simply staggering. Little of what goes on in these educracies has little positive effect in the public school classroom.

As many classroom teaching positions have been “downsized” in districts around the state, more than a few state, county, and local EduCrats need to be downsized as well.

Let’s spend the money in the classroom, not in the administrative suites.

2. Classroom teachers who choose to work in tough inner-city schools (and other hard-to-staff campuses) should be given a financial incentive to do so. This could take many forms such as bonuses or tax-credits.

3. There is an urgent need for a statewide competency examination for school administrators. None exists at the moment. All too many times administrative jobs are given-out by well-entrenched district superintendents like so much Halloween candy. A standardized criterion-referenced test would at least give some objective benchmark for the ranking of administrative job applicants. The areas measured could include, but not be limited to: (in no particular order)

a. Teaching methods and strategies.
b. Child psychology
c. Personnel policies and procedures
d. Finance
e. Compliance with state and federal mandates
f. Data analysis
g. Fundamentals of leadership and group dynamics

With the caveat that as the editor of my own blog and I choose the interviewees, is there a blog that you like which you would like to see interviewed in this space? Please provide a link to the blog and an email if you know one (email addresses are not published unless the address is already on the blog page)

Jenny D

My Thanks to the Wonks. Get over and check it out, if you have even the vaguest interest in educational policy and practice--get them on your blogroll!!!

Ed Note: Pursuant to a policy on the blog interviews, all comments and responses by the interviewee are posted verbatim. The only editing that is done is to make the links appear and to verify that the links are still active.