Susan Ohanian summarizes the Atlanta test scoring scandal at: http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1020
I found the links and commentary extremely disturbing. The lack of moral leadership by our school leaders is appalling. In addition the leadership style of some of these school leaders is from the dark ages. The authoritarian leadership style exhibited in this case and in too many school systems I visit should not be tolerated. It makes me want to be Howard Beale in the1976 film Network where actor Peter Finch plays a news announcer who gets fed up and starts yelling, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." His followers go to the windows of their homes and apartments and start yelling the same phrase.

I think it is time to go to your windows folks.

Today we had facilitator training for the Constructivist Conference here at St. Lawrence University. It was a long but fascinating day. The constructivist conference is a unique conference unlike any I had previously experienced. Teams (of mostly educators) attend the conference with a specific task in mind. (For examples of the tasks click here.) The conference provides facilitators to facilitate the teams in clarifying and completing their task. It is based on constructivist learning theory and there is a specific philosophy and method in facilitating the process. This year 30 teams are coming from across North America. I have been attending the conference for nearly ten years and find it a fascinating and richly rewarding experience. I’ll be blogging from here as time permits. Today I led an ice breaker for the facilitators and took part in a number of fun discussions about creating a rubric to assess the conference's effectiveness. Tomorrow my team arrives. Their  task is to create a webpage for teachers and parents to have access to materials, ideas, forms, and information about RTI and AIS.