Saturday, August 7, 2010

Pasadena school dogs chronic dropouts - Boston.com

Pasadena school dogs chronic dropouts

In this July 21, 2010 photo, Anthony Morris, 27, top, a chaser and security guard at the Learning Works! Charter School, and Edgar Rodriguez, 17-year-old high school dropout, joke around during their lunch break in Pasadena, Calif. The school was founded two years ago by Mikala Rahn to serve Pasadena’s highest risk youth, gangbangers, teen mothers, parolees, with one goal in mind, to get them to graduate high school. The school employs former dropouts as "chasers." The chasers round up the students, covering every excuse they use to not attend school. They will bring them to school, take them to planned parenthood appointments, to see parents in jail, to attend court hearings and even pick them up from juvenile hall and police stations. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

By Christina Hoag

Associated Press Writer / August 7, 2010

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PASADENA, Calif.—School has long since started for the day when Jose Ramirez pulls up to a small bungalow and yells out to a tardy student. Anthony Gonzalez limps to the door, shirtless with a head of bed-tousled hair.

"It's after nine, man, you got to be in school," Ramirez tells the 19-year-old, who dropped out of school after a gang shooting four years ago left him paralyzed on one side. Ramirez helps pull a T-shirt over Gonzale's frozen arm and playfully scolds him.

"I got to dress you, too, sleeping beauty? The day you graduate I'm going to let you sleep in." Gonzalez smiles sheepishly, grabs his cane and gets in the car.

It's part of Ramirez's job as a "chaser" at Learning Works! Charter School, which pushes Pasadena's most hardened dropouts back to school by using former

NYC Public School Parents: What’s in a Name?

Public School Parents

Independent voices of New York City public school parents

NYC Public School Parents: What’s in a Name?

What’s in a Name?

by Gary Babad

August 7, 2010 (GBN News): A controversial Huffington Post articlecriticizing the noted educational historian Diane Ravitch has caused quite a stir in the educational community. The article, by Natalie Ravitz, has reminded many readers of the recent treatment of Shirley Sherrod, in that statements made over three years ago by Dr. Ravitch were seemingly mischaracterized and taken entirely out of context.

A number of readers have wondered, who is Natalie Ravitz, and why was she hired by the DOE? GBN News investigative reporters have learned that the general lack of knowledge about this particular DOE employee may actually be intentional.

Ms. Ravitz recently replaced the departing David Cantor as Director of Communications for the NY City

The lone school board race, a West Oakland charter and other board news The Education Report

The Education Report

The lone school board race, a West Oakland charter and other board news

By Katy Murphy
Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 7:25 pm in School board news
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At the City Clerk’s Office today, I learned that a handful of people are running for Oakland school board after all!

But it’s not a big day for democracy: Few Oaklanders, it seems, want a piece of the board’s renewed governing power and responsibility. Only one of the three incumbents — Gary Yee, in District 4 — will be challenged in November. Ben Visnick, the previous Oakland teacher union president, is taking him on.

That means David Kakishiba (District 2), who almost stepped down last fall because of a conflict-of-interest ruling by the school district’s general counsel, and Chris Dobbins (District 6), who was censured by his fellow board members in 2007

Serious math

By Katy Murphy
Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 6:46 pm in Algebra/Math, students
11 Comments »

Over the years, I feel like I’ve come to know you — your political leanings and life experiences, your writing style, sense of humor and average snark level. But what about your math skills?

For example: Can you (or any high school student you know) do this?

Show that there are only finitely many triples (x, y, z) of positive integers satisfying the equation abc = 2009(a + b + c).

Or this?

Read the rest of this entry »

More choices alter college textbook landscape

BY ERIC GORSKI, AP Education Writer

Saturday, August 7, 2010

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Damian Dovarganes / AP

In this photo taken July 26, 2010, Brittany Wolfe, a University of California Los Angeles Applied Mathematics 2010 graduate checks old text books at the UCLA Powell Library Building, in Los Angeles. Wolfe had to play an infuriating game of checking out books on reserve to avoid having to buy them herself. Now she is working as an orientation counselor for new students and part of that is giving advice on textbooks.

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(08-07) 09:15 PDT (AP) --
On Friday afternoons between work and rugby practice, Brittany Wolfe would rush to the campus library hoping copies of her advanced algebra textbook had not all been checked out by like-minded classmates.
It was part of the math major's routine last quarter at the University of California, Los Angeles: Stand in line at the reserve desk in the library's closing hours with the goal of borrowing a copy for the weekend.
The alternative was to buy a $120 book and sell it back for far less. If she could sell it back at all.
"It's like this terrible game of catch your books when you can," said Wolfe, a new graduate who estimates she saved $800 a year using books on reserve and who now shares textbook tips as a counselor to incoming UCLA students. "It's frustrating when you're already stressed about school. Being stressed about textbooks

School Tech Connect: How Did I Miss This Book?

How Did I Miss This Book?

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

What could possibly go wrong?

"In the meantime, the U.S. has been trying hard to implement what China has been trying to be rid of. An increasing number of states and the federal government have begun to dictate what students should learn, when they should learn it, and

We're A Mean, Mean Country

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)

Is there anything more emblematic of the kind of nation we're becoming than this nonstop drumbeat forvengeance layoffs? There's this whole army of people out there that want to use the recession to fire veteran teachers. They're under the impression that there's this horrifically lazy, ineffective veteran teaching force out there that should just be let go based on some formula for determining effectiveness.

The sky-is-falling people have whipped up such animosity toward teachers that this concept is actually received in civilized company.

I was RIFFed twice in my career, and the first time in particular I thought that I was surely a better teacher

Eduwonk � Blog Archive � Great Oakland Public Schools??

Great Oakland Public Schools??

by smead

Guest post by Hae Sin Thomas, Great Oakland Public Schools
I have been an educator and education advocate in Oakland, California for almost two decades, and I have spent those decades working towards the achievement of those four words. In California, an Academic Performance Index of 800 is the minimum score for a school to be considered good. In 1999, Oakland operated 42 “red” schools, schools with API scores of less than 500. 38 of those “red” schools sat firmly in what we call the “flatlands” of Oakland, the area occupied by predominantly low-income communities of color. At that time, there was only one charter public school, struggling as well. In 1999, Oakland Unified was widely considered one of the worst school districts in the country.
In response to this crisis, families across the flatlands mobilized to demand reforms that supported small, autonomous, new schools and more rigorous curriculum in all schools. New and bold leadership responded to

Schools Lose Out on Innovation Grant

Education

Schools Lose Out on Innovation Grant

San Diego Unified didn't get a $5 million federal innovation grant that would have helped it revamp the way it analyzes data. The grant, which would have spanned from three to five years, would have helped the school district amp up its existing efforts to better track and review data to see what programs are working and how well, bringing financial, staffing and student achievement data together.

Data trouble has been a frequent complaint in San Diego Unified and other school districts: It can be hard to discern whether instructional programs really work because of a lack of

Summer Schoolers’ Poetry in Motion

In my story today, I focused on a group of teens who are trying to improve their English at Mira Mesa High this summer -- and wrote some pretty amazing poetry in the process. Last night, I got to check out poems and prose from all six San Diego Unified high schools that hosted summer schools for English learners last night, at a showcase event at Centro Cultura de la Raza in Balboa Park.

There was Ugandan dancing that would make you dizzy, a heartfelt rendition of "Freedom" on guitar, and lots of poetry. I captured a little bit of the event on my phone before it went

Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite by Gary North

Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite

by Gary North
by Gary North
Recently by Gary North: The Ron Paul Curriculum: A New Way to Educate Americans Free of Charge

Ruling elites as recently as 1600 appealed to God to justify their continuing rule. This was called the divine right of kings: rulership beyond any earthly court of appeal. That began to be undermined in the second half of the seventeenth century. A century later, Enlightenment democratic theory had replaced the divine right of kings. The divine right of Parliament or the divine right of the People replaced it.

This forced a major strategic change on the ruling elite. The ruling elite has to pretend that it does not exist. It formally acknowledged the legitimacy of the People as the final court of appeal. This involved training and screening the judges.

Basic to maintaining this deception has been control over the media. Also vital has been control over the schools – compulsory attendance laws, teacher certification, tax funding, and school accreditation. Above all has been control over textbooks.

This control is ending in the area of printed media, especially newspapers, which are dying. Control over TV news is fading. Digits are killing them. Now control over education is about to be undermined. Same reason: digits.

COMPETING DIGITAL CURRICULA

I have recommended to Ron Paul that he hire a director of curriculum development in one of his educational organizations. The director should then contract with

Lewis: An education in 'boiler-room' tactics universities tapping taxpayers - The Denver Post

Lewis: An education in 'boiler-room' tactics universities tapping taxpayers

By Al Lewis
Dow Jones Newswires

POSTED: 08/07/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Joshua Pruyn had one of those jobs where you get on the phone with sales prospects and lie to them all day long.

From November 2007 to May 2008, he was an admissions counselor at Westwood College, a for-profit school with an online division and 17 campuses nationwide.

Westwood is owned by privately held Alta Colleges Inc. in Denver and its admissions process is conducted on what Pruyn called "a boiler-room sales floor."

"Enrolling a student was a psychological game," Pruyn said. "Lying was encouraged. The most appalling example was when the assistant director of admissions on my team was presented with a 'Best Liar' award at a team celebration."

Pruyn made these accusations Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor,

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Saturday, August 7, 2010