I’ve been on the road and missed posting a Public Schools Action Tuesday suggestion last week, so here are two for the price of one from materials prepared for our SOS march workshops:
Action steps for a better ESEA here.
Action steps to fight high-stakes testing here.
And just to give you a hint about at least one place I’ve been, here’s a fine essay about the need to treat
District Deputy Chief of Accountability Fran Newburg discussed the District's review of 2009 PSSA results at a press event Monday.
An internal School District review of suspicious 2009 standardized test score results at 28 city schools has yielded no firm evidence of cheating, officials announced Monday.
Thirteen of the schools had results that warrant more intensive investigation, officials determined. But they declined to identify the schools and said the District is awaiting more data, including any irregularities from subsequent testing years, and requesting further assistance from the Pennsylvania
[We] looked into the school auditorium to discover that the Gabriella Charter School had moved its entire front office into the Logan auditorium. That includes desks, sofas, file cabinets, end tables and
I would like to see school boards targeted for change by all the eager education reformers. People like to say that change should start at the top, and yet the form and structure of most school boards has remained the same for many years.
These are some areas of change that need to happen with school boards.
1. The majority of members must have had at least ten years of actual teaching experience. Retired teachers would make excellent school board members.
2. School board members should have to meet certain minimum requirements in order to run for election. It would be nice if they themselves actually were successful when they were in school. I’ve served under several
For those who have never used the phrase or understood what ‘A Day Late and A Dollar Short’ means, click here because I am trying to keep this post short so that my ire doesn’t increase as I write. Let’s see how I do….
My adventures with the local district last year were….let’s say ‘interesting.’ I wrote about my experiences with the elementary PTA, the lack of servicesprovided to Title I students by the high school, the non-school choice options, etc., etc., etc. Two weeks ago, before I attended the Open House at the elementary school, I promised myself to leave the house with a positive and open attitude. And I did! I don’t usually have issues with the elementary level bureaucracy, as I learned a long time ago to just bypass the principal and go straight to the county office. I even decided to let them slide on the photo mix-up for my two girls last year: One was a 1st grader and the other one was a 4th grader. Their pictures got switched in the yearbook. Granted, they are sisters and they do resemble each other. Oh yeah, the youngest is slightly taller than the oldest. But damn, if a kid tells you that she
Written by ‘Phoenix Woman’ for the Mercury Rising blog. Read the original here.
“Whenever for-profit education deformer (um, I meant “reformer” — no I didn’t) and adviser to Republican governors Michelle Rhee finds herself in trouble — a situation that is increasingly common as the owners of the national media outlets finally get over their bonding with Ms. Rhee over their shared hatred of unions and start noticing the fudging of facts and data, even in her own life history — her reaction of choice is to try to distract with a volley of twenty-seven-tits-for-a-tat attacks. She or her surrogates don’t bother to address the issue — likely since they know that they can’t win on an honest and strictly factual accounting thereof — so instead they play “Kill the Messenger“.
Case in point: The rapid-fire shillery of her chief mouthpiece,
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