Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Small doses of education can make a big difference for parents with sick children - latimes.com

Small doses of education can make a big difference for parents with sick children

A program trains low-income parents to use basic tools such as reference books and digital thermometers to avoid unnecessary visits to ERs. A Los Angeles-area school district is offering the training, which had previously been confined to Head Start.

Kendy Espinoza and her son Emmanuel look through the book "What to Do When Your Child Gets Sick" at Moffett Elementary School. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times / October 9, 2010)

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Photos: No parent left behind

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

October 20, 2010

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Spanish-speaking parents filled the cafeteria at Moffett Elementary School in Lennox earlier this month to watch Lorena Marin, a parent coordinator and literacy coach, demonstrate how to use a digital thermometer and liquid-medicine dispenser.

"What do you do when your child is choking?" Marin asked the crowd of about 50, some toting babies.

Get them to hold their arms up or look at a bird in the sky, parents said. Marin pointed to a section in

Free Orchards Elementary in Cornelius named Washington County community school | OregonLive.com

Free Orchards Elementary in Cornelius named Washington County community school

Published: Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 5:30 PM Updated: Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 5:50 PM

Wendy Owen, The Oregonian
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Free Orchards Elementary School in Cornelius will become the first full-service community school in Washington County, coordinating free health, educational, social and basic needs services for students, their families and the community.

A kickoff celebration and health and safety fair will take place at the school October 26 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. with more than a dozen area providers on hand to connect families with services, including on-site dental and vision screenings. Families will also receive a free meal. Free Orchards Elementary is located at 2499 S. Beech St. in Cornelius.

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"We are fortunate for this amazing opportunity to expand our role in the community for the benefit of our students and their families," said Free Orchards Principal Patti Wiemer.

Camp Fire USA, Portland Metro Council is spearheading the effort in collaboration with Free Orchards, Hillsboro School District and dozens of Washington County agencies and service

Teachers Union Files Lawsuit To Suppress Release Of Educators' Grades - NY1.com

Teachers Union Files Lawsuit To Suppress Release Of Educators' Grades

By: Lindsey Christ

The United Federation of Teachers is filing a lawsuit to prevent the Department of Education from releasing internal report cards on more than 12,000 city teachers.

For three years, the DOE has confidentially assigned ratings to teachers, and today the city planned

Emanuel Calls for Longer School Days / Chicago News Cooperative

Emanuel Calls for Longer School Days

by DAN MIHALOPOULOS

Mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel called for longer school days in Chicago schools during a visit Wednesday to a charter school on the Southwest Side.

In a stop at the UNO Veterans Memorial High School on 47th Street, Emanuel lauded the year-old charter school as an improvement over neighborhood schools. The school is run by the United Neighborhood Organization, which has received copious amounts of public money — including a $98 million grant from the state last year to build more charter schools.

“Their hours are from 8 [a.m] to 5 [p.m], which is why their test scores are so much better,” Emanuel said after briefly touring classrooms with UNO’s leader, Juan Rangel.

Retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley has long said Chicago Public Schools should extend classroom hours, noting

“Threats to school reform … are within school reform” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

“Threats to school reform … are within school reform” Threats to school reform … are within school reform is an excellent guest post in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog. It’s by Mike Rose. Here’s an excerpt: *As someone who has lived through several periods of educational reform and has studied ...

Joliprint Is A Great Way To Print-Out Webpages If you want to print out a webpage, or an article from a website, just paste the url address into Joliprint and you will get a very, very nice-looking PDF document that’s laid-out a lot cleaner and in a more accessible than anything you’ll get by ...

“Data-Driven…Off a Cliff” Data-Driven…Off a Cliff is the title of an excellent post by Robert Pondiscio. It’s a nice commentary on what can happen by being “data-driven” instead of being “data-informed.”

Will New York City Make Teacher’s “Value-Added” Scores Public On Friday? Thanks to the Los Angeles Times’ irresponsible decision to publicize the so-called “value-added” scores of teachers (see The Best Posts About The LA Times Article On “Value-Added” Teacher Ratings), it appears that New York City is hoping to do the ...

Broad Prize winner fights charters — Joanne Jacobs

Broad Prize winner fights charters

by Joanne

Everyone was talking up education reform when Gwinnett County (Georgia) Public Schools accepted this year’sBroad Prize winner, writes Rick Hess. But Gwinnett is trying to squelch charter schools in Georgia; it’s one of several districts suing the Georgia Charter Schools Commission to stop authorization and funding of charter schools.

This is especially awkward in the case of charters like Ivy Preparatory Academy, an all-girls

Google 'Code-In' Calls on K-12 Students To Become Open Source Developers -- THE Journal

Google 'Code-In' Calls on K-12 Students To Become Open Source Developers

By John K. Waters
10/20/10

Google wants to get middle and high school students interested in open source software, and the company is betting that a new "outreach contest" that includes cash prizes and a grand-prize trip to the Googleplex in California will appeal to budding programmers.

Google's new "Code-In" competition, which gets underway Nov. 22, presents 13- to 18-year-olds with eight tasks, ranging from refactoring code and interface design to such not-so-techie jobs as writing and editing software documentation and developing marketing materials. For every three tasks they complete, the students earn $100, up to a maximum of $500. Ten grand prize winners will get an all-expenses-paid trip with a family member to Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters. The trip includes a tour of the sprawling Googleplex facility and meetings with some of the company's engineers.

The contest is designed to introduce K-12 students to "the many kinds of contributions that make open source software development possible," Google said on the contest Web site. Carol Smith, program

Top U.S. Education Leader Stops in Rockford

Education Reform Tour Stops in Rockford.

STATELINE (WIFR) -- Superintendents, community members, and teachers from all over the Stateline are giving their opinions on education reform.

Nine years after the 'No Child Left Behind' act was established, top educators want to hear how it can be improved. A nationwide tour stopped in Rockford giving local teachers and leaders their chance to speak up on our school's challenges.

"People complain that 'No Child Left Behind' narrowed the curriculum with too much emphasis on the tested subjects. They complain it mislabeled, they complain the AYP process was unrealistic," Peter Cunningham with the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Communication and Outreach.

The act is currently being revised by the federal government. In 2001, it set higher standards for children in grade school in an effort to close gaps. And while some progress was made in the years after, the Obama administration said test results could be better if there's more competition for federal dollars.

"We are proposing to get rid of AYP. We're proposing a new system that gives a lot more flexibility from all schools and a system that also builds in rewards," Cunningham said.

Cunningham said this could mean more oversight

Obama must do better on charters - Rock The Schoolhouse's blog - Boston.com

Obama must do better on charters

E-mail|Link|Comments (3)Posted by Jim Stergios October 19, 2010 04:46 AM

It looks like voters across the country, and in a number of races possibly even in Massachusetts, may be voting out congressional leaders who breathed life into many of President Obama’s signature laws. In education, many of his priorities will likely be affected, but polling from Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance suggests that his support for charter schools is not at all affected by his plummeting

City’s data release could be first time some teachers see scores | GothamSchools

City’s data release could be first time some teachers see scores

by Maura Walz

If the city releases individual teachers’ effectiveness ratings this week, some teachers could see their own scores for the first time in the media.

Nearly 45 percent of the teachers who received teacher data reports this year have not yet downloaded them, a Department of Education spokesman said today. But some teachers told GothamSchools today that there has been confusion about how they could access their reports.

The city originally told teachers that the reports would be kept confidential between themselves and their

Michelle Rhee Offers No Comment on New Jersey Education Post, Says She Prefers Local Job - Metropolis - WSJ

Rhee Appears Unlikely for New Jersey Education Post

By Stephanie Banchero

: Getty Images; Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee announced her resignation last Wednesday.

Outgoing Washington D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said Wednesday she prefers that her next job be at a district rather than state level while declining to comment on whether she’s been offered New Jersey’s top education post.

“I want to go where I will have the most impact and, to me, the most radical changes can happen at the local level,” Rhee said in a brief interview. “That’s why I am strongly considering possibilities in other districts” outside Washington, D.C.

Rumors have swirled this week that Rhee is considering an offer from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to take over as the state’s education commissioner. In the interview, Rhee said she is considering job offers in both the private and public sectors but did not say if she had been

Critical Pedagogy: One of Many Educational Paths | Lefty Parent

Critical Pedagogy: One of Many Educational Paths

by Cooper Zale

I was introduced to the educational path known as “Critical Pedagogy” by my fellow Alternative Education Resource Organization member John Harris Loflin, an activist for educational alternatives, particularly for urban, at-risk minority communities. John argues persuasively that a mostly white, privileged, middle-class alternative education movement would be benefited by finding common ground and allying with efforts in urban minority communities to challenge the conventional approach to schooling in those communities. The focus of that challenge is a curriculum, plus methods for teaching and learning known as “Critical Pedagogy”, that is designed to deconstruct the inferior position of the minority community relative to the dominant culture and identify ways to take action to change that power differential.

UFT to Sue to Prevent N.Y.C. Teacher-Rating Release - Teacher Beat - Education Week

UFT to Sue to Prevent N.Y.C. Teacher-Rating Release

by Stephen Sawchuk

The United Federation of Teachers plans to sue to prevent the New York City school district from releasing information on teachers' "value added" scores to reporters, the union said in a statement.

The GothamSchools news service reported today on its website that the district would this week provide the ratings to reporters who filed open-records requests. The news service said the district is still debating the details, such as whether it will redact individual teachers' names to the ratings, which are based on growth on student tests over a year or more.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew had some tough words abouts the district's plans.

"First, after years of boasting by the Department of Education about our kids' progress, the state declares that