Saturday, January 22, 2011

School Tech Connect: Unfinished Business-- With Miguel del Valle in Andersonville

School Tech Connect: Unfinished Business-- With Miguel del Valle in Andersonville

Unfinished Business-- With Miguel del Valle in Andersonville

by effacethefacade@yahoo.com (Tim)
Because Steven Spielberg neglected to send me $50,000 this month, I decided to ride the bus rather than jet down to Andersonville, the northside neighborhood where Miguel del Valle was spending some time today. We had a great day, walking around meeting the locals.

I’m in this race because the whole ed reform drama is being played out in Chicago. On the one hand, we have Rahm Emanuel, who in interviews tends to downplay the fact that he’s utterly and completely in Bill Gates’ pocket on the question of public education. On the other hand we have Miguel del Valle, whose view of public education is more democratic and more nuanced and not driven by inappropriate, market analogies that frankly have no place in the discussion. You might read here for an idea of what I’m talking about.

Anyway, here’s a little bit of video from the day. You’re going to see a little bit of Andersonville from the bus, and
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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Future of Rhode Island Students

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Future of Rhode Island Students
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PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: California Budget Crisis-Today

PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: California Budget Crisis-Today

California Budget Crisis-Today

by Duane Campbell

I just returned fro a Town Hall with Senator Darrell Steinberg held about the state budget crisis at the Belle Cooledge library in Sacramento. As you know, Senator Steinberg in the Senate Pro Tem ( Democratic Leader) of the Senate, thus he has one of the major inputs on the budget.
Senator Steinberg started with a general view of the budget and the political situation of the coming votes. Essentially Governor Brown and the Democrats are proposing 12.5 Billion in budget cuts and proposing passing a special initiative to extend the current ( temporary ) tax increases for 5 more years to recover 12.5 billion in revenue.
The room was packed to overflow with persons some of whom agreed with the Senators argument that these cuts were necessary and others who disagreed and argued that these cuts were destructive to life and opportunity. Advocates for the disabled, for child care workers, teachers, and others made their case.
California can continue the current process of cuts and reductions. The fiscal
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Queens Teacher: Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

Queens Teacher: Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

by Queens Teacher
Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools
By Joanne Barkan

The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy—where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision—investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12
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Schools Matter: The State of the Union's Schools

Schools Matter: The State of the Union's Schools

The State of the Union's Schools

by Jim Horn
While everyone knows that Barack Obama's State of the Union speech is likely to continue to push for the agenda that we've been facing in Race to the Top — privatization, more testing and test based "accountability," Arne Duncan's meanderings, more charter schools, and the other policies that have taken the nation's public schools further towards ruin than anything imagined when George W. Bush was President — we can at least try an imaginary alternative. Hence, the following wording from a State of the Union speech that we won't hear (at least not from the current President of the United States). --George Schmidt, Editor, Substance News

The State of the Union’s Schools: That Part of Mr. Obama’s Speech We Would Like to Hear But Won’t
Jim Horn

. . . . And now I would like to turn to a subject that all of us, including myself, love
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Compton School District Tries to Force 'Parent Trigger' Signers to Declare Discontent Face-to-Face With School Officials - Los Angeles News - The Informer

Compton School District Tries to Force 'Parent Trigger' Signers to Declare Discontent Face-to-Face With School Officials - Los Angeles News - The Informer

Compton School District Tries to Force 'Parent Trigger' Signers to Declare Discontent Face-to-Face With School Officials

By Simone Wilson, Thu., Jan. 20 2011 @ 2:30PM
Comments (1)
Categories: Education

mckinleyfront5722494.28.jpg
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Compton parents who want to switch McKinley Elementary into different hands will have to tell that to district higher-ups next week
​At an unannounced Compton Unified School District meeting last night, district officials demanded that McKinley Elementary School parents -- over 60 percent of whom petitioned in December to turn their children's campus into a charter school -- come to campus and verify their signatures next week.

The attempted takeover was made possible by a highly disputed new law called Parent Trigger, which allows half-or-more of parents at any failing school (as designated by the U.S. Department of Education) to make major decisions about its future.

Ismenia Guzman, a Parent Trigger supporter who attended last night's meeting, says the 30 or 40 parents in attendance were given a

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Seattle Public Schools community blog: Under the Category of Why?

Seattle Public Schools community blog: Under the Category of Why?

Under the Category of Why?

by Melissa Westbrook
So SPS:
  • Why is there no news and information on the News and Calendar page for 2011? Not one item. Also, no new SPS Schoolbeat e-newsletter since December 2, 2010? (Update: so on a hunch, I went and checked the new SPS website and lo and behold, there was calendar information for Jan. 2011. So now, until the old website is gone, we get to check TWO websites for information. I thought the link to the new one was just for observational/input, not that it would have information not available at the old one. It would be nice if the district had told people this.)
  • In the job description for the new communications director, there is mention of a "School Board communications point person." Who is that?
  • Why doesn't the job description for the new communications director mention something like "effectively
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Ruining careers for $475/month (18 month term) « JD2718

Ruining careers for $475/month (18 month term) « JD2718

Ruining careers for $475/month (18 month term)

by jd2718

Iris Blige will pay a fine, less than 5% of her salary, for ruining the careers of good teachers, of developing new teachers (and of APs). She tried to ruin even more careers.

Iris Blige’s Fordham HS for the Arts was my model for the kind of school a new teacher should avoid. Do Not Apply, I wrote, this school ends careers. It was true.

Two years ago hundreds of high school teachers from across the Bronx protested yet another instance of baseless discipline against a teacher. In that instance, Blige took advantage of the teacher’s immigration status to try to get her deported.

Finally OSI found this August that what we already knew was true: that Blige ordered APs to U teachers without any attempt to evaluate them, that she chose to go after, and found reasons afterwards.

The penalty? Iris Blige and Elena Papaliberios signed a stipulation just after Thanksgiving, agreeing to a $7500

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Did You Know? Watch NJ teachers speak out against Chris Christie's education agenda!

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Saturday coffee. « Fred Klonsky's blog

Saturday coffee. « Fred Klonsky's blog
10:13 AM (14 minutes ago)

Saturday coffee.

by Fred Klonsky

This morning in Chicago we are waiting for Sunday.

Tomorrow afternoon there won’t be a lot of traffic on the streets.

First of all, the temperature will not get above the 20 degree mark.

Anyone who is not working at that hour will more than likel

Old school.

by Fred Klonsky

The Weavers.


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The Answer Sheet - What Rhee’s comments about her children say about her

The Answer Sheet - What Rhee’s comments about her children say about her

What Rhee’s comments about her children say about her

Suddenly parenting styles are in the news, thanks to Yale law professor Amy Chua’s new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” which espouses Chinese traditions of child rearing that, in Chua’s case, included rejecting her kids’ homemade birthday cards for their lousy quality and forcing one of her daughters to do 2,000 math problems a night after she came in second in a math competition. (Why didn’t you and I think of that?) Now we hear from Michelle Rhee, former D.C. schools chancellor and rock-star school reformer, who recently said the following about her two children and aptitude for soccer:
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My Kids Can’t Wait! | Connected Principals

My Kids Can’t Wait! | Connected Principals

My Kids Can’t Wait!

by Brian Nichols


“If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it.

You have an obligation to change it.

You just do it one step at a time.”

– Marian Edelman

#Edreform is one of the hashtags that I follow closely on twitter. There are some amazing people who post about the need for reform in education. I also spend a lot of time reading, thinking, and speaking about next steps in the field of education. I’m a strong advocate for reform and I believe that we need to make some major changes in the way we approach both learning and leading. While I believe that change needs to occur; my kids can’t wait for it to happen on a national level.

As a teacher and a leader I have an obligation to make it happen today. After all, it is the only day we are guaranteed. We need to make it happen locally while we grow it nationally. The most significant changes in regards to teaching and learning in your school or district began as an idea in someone’s classroom.

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Twitter Fountain Is Fun Way To Search & Display Tweets | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Twitter Fountain Is Fun Way To Search & Display Tweets | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Twitter Fountain Is Fun Way To Search & Display Tweets

Filed under twitter

Twitter Fountain lets you type in a search word and display tweets in an engaging display. It offers a fair amount more than that, and you can read

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twitterfountain

twitterfountain



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If it doesn’t work, don’t do it! CAP’s ROI « School Finance 101

If it doesn’t work, don’t do it! CAP’s ROI « School Finance 101

If it doesn’t work, don’t do it! CAP’s ROI

Posted on January 22, 2011 by schoolfinance101

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The Center for American Progress released its new Return on Investment (ROI) Index for K-12 public school districts of greater than 250 students this week. I should note in advance that I had the opportunity to provide advice on this project early on, and occasionally thereafter and I do believe that at least some involved had and still have the best intentions in coming up with a useful way to represent the information at hand. I’ll get back to the validity of the information at hand in a moment.

First, I need to point out that the policy implications and proposals, or even general findings presented in the report cannot be supported by the analysis (however well or poorly done). The suggestion that billions of dollars might be saved nationally (little more than a back-of-the-napkin extrapolation) at no loss to performance outcomes, based on the models estimated is a huge,

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Jamie Oliver Fights L.A. School District with a Bus Full of "Sugar" | Sustainable Food | Change.org

Jamie Oliver Fights L.A. School District with a Bus Full of "Sugar" | Sustainable Food | Change.org

Jamie Oliver Fights L.A. School District with a Bus Full of "Sugar"

by Jessica Belsky

Jamie Oliver is certainly not giving up on L.A.

After being completely blocked from entering any Los Angeles Unified School District(LAUSD) cafeterias to cover school lunch reform on his second season of Food Revolution, Oliver tried to get more momentum behind his cause with a stunt earlier this week involving a school bus. Oliver and his crew dumped 57 tons of white sand into a retired, parked school bus to represent the amount of sugar LAUSD students consume in one week from the sweetened, flavored milk that comes with their school lunches. According to LAWeekly, Oliver said that up to 80 percent of the milk in LAUSD lunches is flavored, and the amount of sugar in these flavored milks rivals that

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Venue shopping in education… | Reflections on Teaching

Venue shopping in education… | Reflections on Teaching

Venue shopping in education…

by alicemercer

For those unfamiliar with education “reform” issues in Sacramento, let me introduce the setting and players:

Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD): A school district made up of parts of the city of Sacramento and parts of the county of Sacramento that are not incorporated. Not all of the city is in this district, and not all of the district is city.

Kevin Johnson: The mayor of our city, Sacramento. He is also the fiance of Michelle Rhee. His non-profit, St.

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New Posts on Parents 4 democratic Schools 1-22-11 Get Involved- Read Education News

New Posts on Parents 4 democratic Schools


Get Involved- Read Education News


Parents 4 democratic Schools

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