A Former KIPP Teacher Shares Her Story
A Former KIPP Teacher Shares Her Story
Jim Horn
Ever since KIPP students were recruited to do a skit at the National Republican Convention in 2000, KIPP has been the darling of venture philanthropists, Wall Street hedge funds, corporate donors like the Fisher family (of Gap fame), and corporate foundations, including the Gates and Walton Foundations. Hundreds of millions of dollars have poured in to the KIPP home office in San Francisco, and tens of millions more are raised each year to support a charter chain that claims to have found the solution to urban schooling, a solution that entirely ignores the exploded lives and oppressive conditions of the people living in
New York Principals Fight Continues
From Sean Feeney and Carol Burris: We thank you for your support and would like to provide you with an update on activities since the end of the 2011-12 school year. As always, the most recent version of the APPR Position paper (with all signatures) is available at: http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/appr-paper. Given that the paper with signatures is over 140 pages long, we have also created a separate link for the four-page paper alone. As of the beginning of this new school year, over 1500 New York State principals have signed the letter: that's nearly one-third of all principals i... more »
Weingarten Patrolling the Web to Urge Patience for Obama/Gates Agenda
This morning Mark Naison posted a thoughtful response to the President's corporate kowtowing and hope-turned-hype speechifying, and who else besides AFT's own CEO, Randi Weingarten, quickly responded with this: Mark- I normally agree w/ you-and as you know even in our endorsement of the President we specifically raised our concerns w/ the national policy's fixation with testing. What I don't get is when the President and the party promotes a platform that at least sounds like they are listening, why not give him the benefit of the doubt. You are so right ant teachers being demoralize... more »
More Tests Don't Make Children Better Prepared for Life or College
From the Chalkface, by Tim Slekar September 6, 2012 by slekar Today, in the *Morning Call *(A newspaper in the Lehigh Valley) an article ran detailing the roll out of the new Keystone exams that 11th graders will be required to take in Pennsylvania this academic year. Students will be required to take Keystones (High Stakes Standardized Tests) in Algebra, Literature, and Biology. Great. New tests to replace the old tests. And why has Pennsylvania decided to get new high stakes tests? According to the spokesman for the Pennsylvania DOE Tim Eller, “We have heard from the higher ed... more »
Bloggers Beware: The Online Bedbugs Want to Hitch a Ride
The fat bedbugs that run the online diploma mill business are unrelenting. They write lengthy friendly comments to blog posts, and just underneath some of the verbiage, they attach their swollen transparent red blood-filled carcasses in hopes that some unsuspecting reader will take their links home. That is how their blood-sucking infestations spread, and once victims have given them an opening, it is too late. Another trick they use on bloggers is to write emails inviting themselves to write articles for your blog on, who knows, how to be happy when covered with bedbugs, or ho... more »
A Child-Centered Nation (Hint: Not the U.S.)
Those of us who are decades into our careers as educators and educational scholars/historians are likely more than exhausted by and deeply skeptical of (if not cynical about) international comparisons. More often than not, international comparisons connected to U.S. public education are oversimplified at best and unforgivably misleading at worst, but our exhaustion, skepticism, and cynicism must be tempered when international comparisons offer authentic and complex evidence of how entire nations are committed to child well-being through their social and educational commitments—espec... more »
Orlando Sentinel reporter responds to a letter I submitted about Pre-K testing but that wasn’t published. I answer back.
On the Orlando Sentinel Education blog, Sentinel reporter Leslie Postal responded to a letter to the editor of the Sentinel that I submitted but that wasn’t published, at least not yet. Her post is below and also at: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_education_edblog/2012/09/fls-new-pre-k-test-set-to-debut-amid-some-complaints.html/comment-page-1#comment-5344 Since Postal did not provide readers with a link to my letter, here it is: Stop treating 4 and 5 year olds like children Sent to the Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 5 Pre-K testing is a step in the right direction (“Time for another ... more »
Rehire Professor Mandeloni
From UOO: On June 7th, 2012, we posted the following: This week United Opt Out National stands in solidarity with the UMass teacher educators and the sixty-sevenstudent teachers at UMass Amherst School of Education who together chose toboycott the Teacher Performance Assessment field test via Pearson. Barbara Madeloni, lecturer at UMass and one of the teacher educators who joined the boycott, has recently been told that her contract will not be renewed. Today we share an interview with Barbara Madeloni as she shares her views on the TPA, Common Core and education activism. *The res... more »
Stop treating 4 and 5 year olds like children
Sent to the Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 5 Pre-K testing is a step in the right direction (“Time for another test — this one for 180,000 pre-K children,” Sept. 3). Required (not “voluntary”) testing is what we need to toughen up pre-school, and make sure it includes a full dose of pre-phonics (phonemic awareness) and math. We should require all children to know the alphabet and be able to spell their names as a condition for entering kindergarten. And let's insist that parents properly prepare their children for pre-school. There is no hope for the US is to compete internationally if we c... more »
Stop treating 4 and 5 year olds like children
Sent to the Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 5 Pre-K testing is a step in the right direction (“Time for another test — this one for 180,000 pre-K children,” Sept. 3). Required (not “voluntary”) testing is what we need to toughen up pre-school, and make sure it includes a full dose of pre-phonics (phonemic awareness) and math. We should require all children to know the alphabet and be able to spell their names as a condition for entering kindergarten. And let's insist that parents properly prepare their children for pre-school. There is no hope for the US is to compete internationally if we c... more »
Investors Seek to Profit from Privatization of Public Schools
From Real News Network
Jane Watson: "Doublethink" is alive and well
Sent to Yakima Herald-Republic (WA) for "Saturday Soapbox" By Jane Watson August 31, 2012 “Doublethink” is alive and well. In 1948, George Orwell wrote 1984. “Big Brother is Watching You” was born. So was “doublethink,” the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them. TVs watch YOU. Language is paradoxical. Less is more. War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. The organization Stand For Children endorses gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna and Charter Schools. Who doesn’t want to Stand For Children? Who wants C... more »
"Who else would title it?": Scripting Students to Death
While it may seem to be little more than semantics to argue about whether teachers are the most important factor in student learning or teachers are the most important *in-school* factor in student learning, there is now little room to debate that how teachers are being mandated to treat students is inexcusable. The rise of "no excuses" assumptions and practices are creating charter and public schools that provide for "other people's children" a culture of shame, but we often fail to recognize as well that the last thirty years of accountability have created schooling as an endless ... more »
