Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed State Laws Are All Connected - Nancy Scola - Politics - The Atlantic
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Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed State Laws Are All Connected - Nancy Scola - Politics - The Atlantic: Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed State Laws Are All ConnectedAPR 14 2012, 8:00 AM ET110A shadowy organization uses corporate contributions to sell prepackaged conservative bills -- such as Florida's Stand Your Ground statute -- to legislatures across the country.ReutersThe recent blowing up of the Invisible Children viral video might have some of us thinking that Malcolm Gladwell was onto something with hisbiting critiqueof online ... more »
Teacher: Step-by-step guide to how ‘reform’ is harming public schools - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post
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Teacher: Step-by-step guide to how ‘reform’ is harming public schools - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post: Teacher: Step-by-step guide to how ‘reform’ is harming public schoolsbyValerie StraussThiswas written by Elizabeth Walters, a proud graduate of Central Columbia High School in Bloomsburg, PA, Smith College, and the teacher-certification program of the University of New Orleans. Walters is a journalist and a teacher at Chalmette High School in St. Bernard Parish, LA. This wasoriginally publishedinCounterPunch, a provocative political newsletter and ... more »
Daily Kos: Who Controls the Table Wins
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Daily Kos: Who Controls the Table Wins: Who Controls the Table WinsbyplthomasEdDFollowShare2PERMALINKplthomasEdDFollowRSSDaily Kos1COMMENTInher discussion of science fiction, Margaret Atwood examines and confronts the nuances among sci-fi, speculative fiction, fantasy, and utopian/dystopian fiction, and throughout, she highlights the power of these overlapping genres to explore the "What if?" by blending dramatizations of human history with human possibility. These genres have the power as well to force us to re-seenowin the imagined context ofothertimes and places.So in the spirit ... more »
Grumpy Educators: Florida Charter School "Boom": Warning Signs
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Grumpy Educators: Florida Charter School "Boom": Warning Signs: Florida Charter School "Boom": Warning SignsbySandraThere is a charter boom going on with too many oddities:1) 15 of 30 "F" schools in Florida are charters. "Then last year in Florida, charter schools received 15 out of 31 of all the failing FCAT grades that went to public schools. Charter elementary and middle schools were seven times more likely to get an F than traditional public schools."Read full articlehere.2) VP Joe Biden's brother ... more »
NYC Public School Parents: Nightline on test prep & the gifted exams: more "choices" for parents or magnifying social inequities?
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NYC Public School Parents: Nightline on test prep the gifted exams: more "choices" for parents or magnifying social inequities?: Nightline on test prep the gifted exams: more "choices" for parents or magnifying social inequities?byLeonie HaimsonThe results of the Gifted and Talented exams are in, andaccording to the NY Times, more than half of the children tested in wealthier districts like District 2 and District 3 were found to be "gifted", while only six children made the grade in District 7 ... more »
Schools Matter: Read and Endorse the Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers
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Schools Matter: Read and Endorse the Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers: Read and Endorse the Declaration of Professional Conscience for TeachersbyJim HornSign the Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers:In 1990 Ken Goodman published “A Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers” as a front piece of the bookThe Whole Language Catalog, edited with Yetta Goodman and Lois Bridges. Two decades later we encouraged Ken to take another look at the Declaration and to add an addendum. The work of teachers ... more »
Jersey Jazzman: The Values of Vouchers
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Jersey Jazzman: The Values of Vouchers: The Values of VouchersbyDukeTheStar-Ledgerhas a pair of very disturbing pieces in its op-ed section today: both are about the coercion women feel in the Orthodox Jewish community to conform to values that keep them oppressed. First, here'sFraidy Reiss:Where I come from, girls are married off as teenagers to men they barely know and are expected to spend their lives caring for their husband and children. They are required to cover their hair and nearly ... more »
Arts in education? Tell Obama, “No Duncan in a second term.” « Fred Klonsky
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Arts in education? Tell Obama, “No Duncan in a second term.” « Fred Klonsky: Arts in education? Tell Obama, “No Duncan in a second term.”byFred KlonskyLast week we received an email from my department chair with a link to aspeechEducation Secretary Arne Duncan gave at a Washington DC elementary school on April 2nd.It is deeply disturbing that all students do not have access to arts education today.These survey findings suggest that more than 1.3 million students in elementary school fail ... more »
With A Brooklyn Accent: Education Reformers and "The New Jim Crow"
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With A Brooklyn Accent: Education Reformers and "The New Jim Crow": Education Reformers and "The New Jim Crow"If somebody told me, 15 years ago, when I was spending many of my days working with community groups in the Bronx and East New York dealing with the consequences of the crack epidemic, that you could solve the problems of neighborhoods under siege by insulating students in local schools from the conditions surrounding them, and devoting every ounce of teachers energies to ... more »
DID SOMEONE SAY #EDREFORM -Bain, Teach For America, Sylvan, Broad Foundation and Dan Katzir
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Broad Team - The Broad Foundation - Education:Dan Katzir Senior AdvisorThe Eli and Edythe Broad FoundationKatzir is senior advisor at The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, a national venturephilanthropy dedicated to dramatically improving K-12 urban public education throughbetter governance, management, labor relations and competition. He worked with EliBroad in 1999 to develop the vision for the foundation’s education work. One of thenation’s leading education reform and philanthropy experts, Katzir has more than twodecades of experience in improving the efficiency and ... more »
School Tech Connect: Don't Listen To These People
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School Tech Connect: Don't Listen To These People: Don't Listen To These Peoplebynoreply@blogger.com (Tim Furman)They work in the schools--- they can't possibly know what they're talking about.Another clip fromThe Schools Chicago's Students Deserve:It would cost CPS approximately $170 million to lower class sizes in kindergarten through third grade from 28 to 20.12That is about half the amount CPS budgeted this year for the Office of New Schools, which supports the creation of more charter and“turnaround” schools. Instead of experimenting with ... more »
The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation AKA The Broad Foundation 2009 Form 990-PF
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The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation AKA The Broad Foundation 2009 Form 990-PF: The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation AKA The Broad Foundation 2009 Form 990-PFxx
Best day | Ideas and Thoughts
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Best day | Ideas and Thoughts: Best daybyDean ShareskiRemember when people used to post videos they liked on their blog? Now we just tweet or post them to Facebook which is fine I suppose.This video is one I'm sure many of seen as it is destined to go viral if it already hasn't. I first saw it on twitter and since have watched it at least 7 times showing it to all members of my family who each watch with ... more »
Real Reform versus Fake Reformy Distractions: More Implications from NJ & MA for CT! « School Finance 101
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Real Reform versus Fake Reformy Distractions: More Implications from NJ MA for CT! « School Finance 101: Real Reform versus Fake Reformy Distractions: More Implications from NJ MA for CT!byschoolfinance101Recently, I responded to an absurd and downright disturbingOp-Ed by a Connecticut education reform organizationthat claimed that Connecticut needed to move quickly to adopt teacher evaluation/tenure reforms and expand charter schooling because a) Connecticut has a larger achievement gap and lower outcomes for low income students than Massachusetts or New Jersey ... more »
Get Rid of Teachers or Encourage them To Stay -- What is Best for our Schools? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher
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Get Rid of Teachers or Encourage them To Stay -- What is Best for our Schools? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: Get Rid of Teachers or Encourage them To Stay -- What is Best for our Schools?byAnthony CodyGuest post by Mark Simon.After over a decade of "corporate reform" strategies in many places, we have a chance to compare the results of two drastically different approaches to improving public schools. In some places, such as Washington, DC, we ... more »
Letters to the Reading DCAS(Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System):My Students Write How They Feel! « Diary of a Public School Teacher!
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Letters to the Reading DCAS(Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System):My Students Write How They Feel! « Diary of a Public School Teacher!: Letters to the Reading DCAS(Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System):My Students Write How They Feel!byOldschoolteachWhen my kids were done their DCAS Reading test last month, I had them write letters to the test. I am posting some of the letters they wrote.Dear Reading DCAS,Why do you have to be hard? I know I do your tests in the beginning, middle, and end ... more »
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Inslee's Plan for Better Educational Outcomes
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Seattle Schools Community Forum: Inslee's Plan for Better Educational Outcomes: Inslee's Plan for Better Educational OutcomesbyMelissa WestbrookI attended a Renton event a couple of weeks ago where Jay Inslee rolled out his ideas for public education. It was held at Talbot Hill Elementary school where they have a student-based governance system and the school's leaders were front and center. (And they were well-behaved and truly seemed to be listening.)It was smallish, held right in the front lobby of the school, ... more »
Did Mavericks Charter School in Palm Beach Ask Teachers to Falsify Grades? | Scathing Purple Musings
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Did Mavericks Charter School in Palm Beach Ask Teachers to Falsify Grades? | Scathing Purple Musings: Did Mavericks Charter School in Palm Beach Ask Teachers to Falsify Grades?byBob SikesAccording toanother lawsuitfiled by one of three whistle-blowers they did. FromPalm Beach Postreporter Allison Ross-Ferrelli:A former teacher at the new Mavericks High School in Palm Springs has filed a lawsuit alleging that the school falsifies enrollment records and fabricates student grades in classes the students did not take.The lawsuit, filed by Angenora ... more »
Some Inconvenient History for a Teach for America Alum, Jeb Bush and Parent Trigger Advocates | Scathing Purple Musings
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Some Inconvenient History for a Teach for America Alum, Jeb Bush and Parent Trigger Advocates | Scathing Purple Musings: Some Inconvenient History for a Teach for America Alum, Jeb Bush and Parent Trigger AdvocatesbyBob SikesMatt Minnickwasn’t alone in being less than forthcoming about who he was when he testified before the Florida Senate Budget Committee’sMarch 3rdhearing on SB 1718. An AFL-CIO lobbyist wasn’t either. The one-time Teach for America corps member turned legislative aid for Jeb Bush’s foundation tried to ... more »
New York Teacher Ratings Renew Evaluation Debate : NPR
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New York Teacher Ratings Renew Evaluation Debate : NPR: New York Teacher Ratings Renew Evaluation DebatebyBETH FERTIGHow do you measure who is an effective teacher?More states are wrestling with that question, now that the Obama administration is encouraging schools to evaluate teachers with a combination of student test scores and classroom observations.The question of whether teacher evaluations are reliable indicators for teacher effectiveness has long been controversial. But New York City reignited the debate when it rated thousands of teachers ... more »
