"Wall Street" Meg Whitman $25K a Plate Fundraiser Protest

Rahm, Penny and the IEA. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Rahm, Penny and the IEA. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Rahm, Penny and the IEA.

OCTOBER 29, 2010

tags: Barack Obama, Hyatt, Penny Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel

by Fred Klonsky

Rahm.

The IEA’s state convention, which is held in March, usually takes place at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare.

That property is managed and owned by the Pritzker family, including Penny Pritzker, who was Obama’s fund-raising chair in 2008.

Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotel Corporation is the target of Unite Here. The union wants a fair and decent contract for

D.C. teachers hit dead end in court challenge to layoffs

D.C. teachers hit dead end in court challenge to layoffs

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By Bill Turque

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 29, 2010; 9:06 PM

The Washington Teachers' Union's legal challenge tothe layoff of 266 educators in October 2009 effectively ended Friday, when a union attorney told a D.C. Superior Court judge that it could find no evidence that Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee contrived a budget crunch to justify the job cuts.

"We didn't find anything that would warrant further briefing," attorney Brenda C. Zwack told Judge Judith Bartnoff.

Last November, Bartnoff denied the union's bid for a preliminary injunction barring the District from firing the 266 educators. She said the union had failed to

Police arrest civil rights leaders after school board takeover - Education - NewsObserver.com

Police arrest civil rights leaders after school board takeover<br> - Education - NewsObserver.com

Police arrest civil rights leaders after school board takeover

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ROBERT WILLETT - RWILLETT@NEWSOBSERVER.COM

NAACP President Rev. William Barber is escorted from the board room in handcuffs by Raleigh Police after he was arrested for staging a sit-in with three other activists during a recess by the Wake school board during their meeting on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at the Wake County School's headquarters on Wake Forest Road in Raleigh

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BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH AND T. KEUNG HUI - STAFF WRITERS

RALEIGH -- Police arrested four civil rights protesters, including state NAACP head Rev. William Barber and author Tim Tyson, after they refused to leave tonight's Wake County school board meeting. The arrests started about an hour-and-a-half after the biracial group disrupted the meeting, speaking and singing to empty seats when the board recessed, then taking over the elective body's own seats.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/15/534690/police-arrest-civil-rights-leaders.html#ixzz13njUjcmW

Just What Our Schools Need — A Second Appalling Manifesto

Just What Our Schools Need — A Second Appalling Manifesto

Just What Our Schools Need — A Second Appalling Manifesto

Filed under school reform

Fresh on the heels of the appalling “manifesto” written by a group of superintendents and published in The Washington Post earlier this month (see The Best Posts About The Appalling Teacher-Bashing Column Superintendents Wrote In The Washington Post), former Washington, D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee and soon-to-be-former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty have written another one titled The Education Manifesto that has just been published by The Wall Street Journal.

Here’s an excerpt:

We believe that the people in D.C. who want change were, and still are, the majority. But they face special interests—unions, administrators and opportunistic politicians—who are vocal and committed. These organized

How to Overhaul the U.S. Education System - WSJ.com

How to Overhaul the U.S. Education System - WSJ.com

The Education Manifesto

Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty on what they learned while pushing to reform D.C.'s failing public schools.

By MICHELLE RHEE and ADRIAN FENTY

Getty Images

Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty tour an elementary school in June 2007.

Our time in office and in charge of the school system of Washington, D.C., is quickly drawing to an end. Monday is Michelle's last day as schools chancellor, and Mayor Fenty failed to win the Democratic primary last month. A new mayor will be elected next week.

During our nearly four years in office we pressed forward an aggressive educational reform agenda. We were determined to turn around D.C.'s public schools and to put children above the political fray, no matter what the ramifications might be for ourselves or other public officials. As both of us embark on the next stages of our careers, we believe it is important to explain what we did in Washington, to share the lessons of our experience, and to offer some thoughts on what the rest of the country might learn from our successes and our mistakes.

The D.C. Timeline

• JUNE 2007: Mayor Adrian Fenty appoints Michelle Rhee schools chancellor. Over the next year, she closes a number of schools, fires principals and central office employees, and offers buyouts to low-performing teachers.
• JULY 2008: D.C. test scores on reading and math rise across the board.
• JUNE 2010: After nearly three years of negotiation, the D.C. teachers union accepts a groundbreaking contract that institutes pay for performance and ends tenure.
• JULY 2010: Ms. Rhee fires 241 teachers and puts 737 on notice for being rated "minimally effective."
• SEPT. 2010: Mr. Fenty, who campaigned on a record of education reform, loses the Democratic primary.
• OCT. 2010: Ms. Rhee resigns.

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Susana Raab

Students at AIM Academy, a Washington, D.C., charter school.

Public education in America, particularly in our most troubled urban neighborhoods, has been broken for a long time, and nowhere more so than in our nation's capital. When we took control of the public schools in 2007, the D.C. system was widely considered the lowest-performing and most dysfunctional in the country. Schools regularly failed to open on time for the new school year, due to leaking roofs and broken plumbing. Textbooks and supplies arrived months after

Remainders: Michelle Rhee’s bids adieu to D.C. schools | GothamSchools

Remainders: Michelle Rhee’s bids adieu to D.C. schools | GothamSchools

Remainders: Michelle Rhee’s bids adieu to D.C. schools - Today was Michelle Rhee’s last day as Washington, D.C.’s schools chancellor. (GOOD) - D.C.’s teachers union conceded that Rhee didn’t make up the budget gap. (WaPo) - One of a teacher’s top students is struggling in her other, ...

City official and biggest critic find slivers of common ground Put the Department of Education’s Deputy Chancellor for Accountability Shael Polakow-Suransky in a room with Diane Ravitch, one of the city’s most outspoken critics, and you might reasonably expect sparks to fly. But when NYU’s Wagner Education ...

Who enrolls in a troubled school? Meet four Columbus freshmen Infuriated by the union’s success in barring the closure of 19 public schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg wondered to reporters last month why any parent would send their children to a “failing school.” At Christopher

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: IN THE MAILBOX

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: IN THE MAILBOX

IN THE MAILBOX

by Mike Klonsky

Letter from the National Council of Churches to the President and Congress

I write today to share a pastoral letter adopted on May 18 by the 69 member Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, and sent yesterday to the President and Congress.

The National Council of Churches is a community of 36 Christian communions with a combined membership of 45 million persons in more than 100,000 congregations across the U.S. The members of the NCC’s Governing Board are listed at the end of the letter.

The pastoral letter speaks particularly to issues in Race to the Top:

• the role of public education, “publicly funded, universally available, and accountable to the public”;

Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures - The Educator's PLN

Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures - The Educator's PLN

Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures

• Added by Thomas Whitby on April 18, 2010 at 4:03am
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From a Post byJoe Bower

NYC Public School Parents: Gates-funded project leaves parents off the list of key stakeholders, once again

NYC Public School Parents: Gates-funded project leaves parents off the list of key stakeholders, once again

Gates-funded project leaves parents off the list of key stakeholders, once again

by Leonie Haimson

The research organization AIR was funded by the Gates Foundation to commission a series of papers on the Bloomberg/Klein education reforms, and to “convene a working conference….to inform future educational improvement efforts in the city.”

Reportedly, the papers will be published in a collection by Harvard University Press.

On November 10, they are holding an “invitation-only” forum at the downtown Hyatt hotel to discuss the results of their findings in what has been described as “an opportunity for dialogue and conversation among NYC stakeholders, DOE staff, and researchers…” (see invitation below.)

Yet the only NYC public school parents who have been invited to participate in this “dialogue and conversation” of stakeholders are the five borough-appointed members of the Panel for Educational Policy.

This exclusion of parents is reminiscent of the definition of stakeholders put forward by Secretary Arne Duncan

Looking busy vs. creating positive change � Failing Schools

Looking busy vs. creating positive change � Failing Schools

Looking busy vs. creating positive change

OCTOBER 29, 2010

by Sabrina

**Be sure to check out this article & video at EdNews Colorado: Montbello Students Speak Up

Photo from www.ednewscolorado.org.

I’ve been talking a lot about the problemswith the process and approach Denver Public Schools has proposed to “turn around” six Far Northeast Denver schools. People are justifiably apprehensive about the impact the changes will have on long-standing school-community relationships. And many of the community members’ questions have gone unanswered by district representatives, especially this one (which resonates nationwide):

You’ve been changing everything all the time, every year. Has anything been given a chance to work, and why should we believe THIS will?

Each time this question emerges, in some form or other, district representatives utter some kind of assurance that they “hear those concerns,” and then they proceed to repeat how bad the test