This is clearly an example of inept, incompetent administration. Another example was set over the summer by the trashing of curriculum materials based purely on an arbitrary rule of only one file cabinet per teacher. I'm sure that you are aware that parents, teachers and students have met with at least two school board members. Parents were disappointed with the community engagement meeting on Back to School Night which lacked any parent engagement.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
What's Up ask the Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education
This is clearly an example of inept, incompetent administration. Another example was set over the summer by the trashing of curriculum materials based purely on an arbitrary rule of only one file cabinet per teacher. I'm sure that you are aware that parents, teachers and students have met with at least two school board members. Parents were disappointed with the community engagement meeting on Back to School Night which lacked any parent engagement.
NJ Spotlight | Sloppy Bookkeeping, Errors, Plague School Stimulus Spending
Sloppy Bookkeeping, Errors, Plague School Stimulus SpendingDOE alerts school districts about monitoring results for more than $1.6 billion in federal funds
The 2009 federal stimulus money for schools is almost all spent by now in New Jersey, but it’s still drawing attention from state monitors and raising questions as to how it was spent.
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Acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks last month sent an alert to districts on the findings that have arisen in the state’s monitoring of more than $1.6 billion in federal aid distributed to districts in 2009 - 2010.
The monitoring is ongoing, with the state so far releasing local reports on about half of the more than 80 districts being monitored, including most recently Newark. The selected districts represented about 60 percent of the overall stimulus funds disbursed.
Accounting Errors
And while there appeared few instances so far of any alleged wrongdoing, there were plenty of examples of sloppy bookkeeping and other accounting errors with funds distributed under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), according to Hendricks’ alert.
For instance, one of the centerpieces of the ARRA money was for it to be used to retain school jobs, but Hendricks said nearly half of the districts failed to properly account for which specific jobs
Daley hopes to find new schools chief quickly :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Education
Teaching 9/11, JFK assassination, and ET life as academic critical thinking case studies | Dailycensored.com
Teaching 9/11, JFK assassination, and ET life as academic critical thinking case studies
source: Carl Herman, Examiner.com
The following is my best academic approach for how academic professionals interested in controversial current events and history can teach them. When I teach history courses, I open the conversation with a challenge to students: “If you could know anything in history, if you could learn what really happened, what would you want to know?” I have them think, reflect, and then offer to have supplemental teaching units on whatever the class votes as their topics of greatest interest as a “reward” if their academic progress in the regular curriculum is on-pace and meets our academic target for class GPA success as a class (economics of incentives in action).
The purpose of this assignment is to teach the tools of history of who, did what, when, where, and the approach to learn additional facts of the preceding for students to make their own analysis to respond to the subjective
Life as a Marathon, Not a Short Sprint — The Jose Vilson
Today, my friends Melissa and Paul Melkonian finished 26.2 miles worth of New York City terrain. They’re probably some of the most adventurous and confident people I’ve ever known. Anyone willing to start from Staten Island, across Sunset Park in Brooklyn, around Hunters Point in Queens, through Roosevelt Island, up and down the hilly Upper East Side and Harlem, into the track-laden cement of the South Bronx, and finishing around Central Park in hopeful celebration has to be. Semi-notables like Al Roker and Jared Fogle of Subway fame ran alongside the 30,000 or so participants. Yet, those who participated and finished the race all become celebrities for the day.
These runners teach us a great lesson: life isn’t an short sprint, but a marathon.
Melissa told me this awesome finish wasn’t awesome until it was over. She somehow
Douglas County School District considers starting voucher program - The Denver Post
Douglas County School District considers starting voucher program
The Denver Post
The Douglas County School District is examining starting a voucher program to give students state money to attend private or religious schools.
The school board this summer hired a Colorado Springs lawyer to develop a plan for a voucher system that would give parents 75 percent of state per-pupil funds to attend "nonpublic schools," which could include religious schools.
No other Colorado school district has a voucher program.
A 2003 state law created a voucher pilot program
Read more:Douglas County School District considers starting voucher program - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16528490#ixzz14eOXH4ud
Cuomo sends mixed message on education | pressconnects.com | Press & Sun-Bulletin
Cuomo sends mixed message on education
Lack of detail makes educators, others skeptical about his plan
BY GEORGE BASLER •GBASLER@GANNETT.COM • NOVEMBER 6, 2010, 5:25 PM
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Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo had a message for schools during his campaign: They need to cut costs, operate more efficiently and improve student performance.
But his platform gave few details on how they're supposed to accomplish this, and that leaves school officials wondering what priority education will have in his "to do" list after he takes office in January.
"I think he's going to be an activist governor," said Timothy G. Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.
Kremer thinks Cuomo will push a series of measures that directly affect schools, including a tax cap, changing the way state school aid is distributed and the way schools go about controlling costs.
But other officials noted education was not something Cuomo talked about much during the campaign, so
Left-Libertarianism and a Broader Political Spectrum | Lefty Parent
Left-Libertarianism and a Broader Political Spectrum
November 7th, 2010 at 16:10George Will’s piece, “A Recoil Against Liberalism”, from the November 4 Washington Post seems to me mostly an attempt to add insult to injury to progressives, now that conservatives are in political ascendancy (at least for the moment) based on our recent election. But when Will gets beyond his own “your mother wears army boots” rant and quotes maybe a more thoughtful conservative, now we’re talking some real ideas worth wrestling with. Will quotes George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux who is reacting to Obama’s quote that progressives failed to successfully communicate their
NYC Public School Parents: Diane knocks out Guggenheim from Oscar contention?
Diane knocks out Guggenheim from Oscar contention?
(See David Bellel's inspired illustration to the right; that's the film's director with a bloodied brow, Davis Guggenheim.)
Also check out the review by Shino Tanikawa in this week's Villager, and my take on the film's biases in the Huffington Post called The Blind Side, and what scenes an anti-Superman film would look like.
Parent Advocates - ParentAdvocates.org
New York State is possibly going to see a revolution soon, as the public sees how wide-spread the corruption really is. Alan Hevesi will be sentenced next month for the pension scandal, while his colleague in the theft of pension funds, Hank Morris, already has received his plea deal. Steve Rattner, former founder of Quadrangle Group LLP and very much a part of the scam, has his former supporters - Mike Bloomberg and Hilary Clinton - on the radar screen.
By Kathleen Lucadamo DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU, Thursday, April 23rd 2009, 1:33 PM
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Mayor Bloomberg defended his buddy Steven RattnerThursday, saying he shouldn't give up his federal car czar post while investigators probe his firm's involvement in an exploding pension scandal.
"I can tell you going back a long ways with this guy, he is scrupulously honest and a great public servant," Bloomberg told reporters.
City ethics lawyers last year cleared the way
NYC Public School Parents: NYC parents speak out on school overcrowding crisis
NYC parents speak out on school overcrowding crisis
DOE officials consistently insist that there is only "pocket overcrowding," that their wholly inadequate capital plan is sufficient, and yet refuse to provide accurate overcrowding data or enrollment projections.
The DOE consultants, the Grier Partnership, predicted in 2008 that enrollment increases in elementary and middle schools would not occur until after 2016 -- yet this occurred already in 2009, and is expected to occur
Seattle Public Schools community blog: Signed, Annoyed
Signed, Annoyed
From Annoyed's comments:
The change this year was that MAP testing would determine if students were qualified to take the CogAT, rather than the reverse, where students first take the CogAT, then if they have qualifying scores, they take an achievement test for math and reading.
In recent years, I believe the K-2 kids took the the Woodcock-Johnson test and the older kids took the ITBS test for reading and math achievement.
Now the MAP test is being used as a gatekeeper and preventing many students from taking the CogAT. There may be some justification fo
Big-ticket education deals this week - Hindustan Times
Last Updated: 23:55 IST(7/11/2010)
“Don’t forget that the US, UK and Canada are countries that Indians have traditionally thronged for education. It is indicative of India’s role in the global education scenario today that they are coming to India virtually in back-to-back trips we have never witnessed before,” a senior government official said. “These countries need us as much as we need them.”
Named after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the US President, the Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative will be the cornerstone of the discussions between officials of the two nations on education this Monday. The US also wants to declare an education summit with top Indian officials.
On Thursday, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal will ink a pact for a second phase of th