Nite Cap UPDATE
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
Great Reading Part II
Here’s book number two.
Trusting Teachers With School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots, by Kim Farris-Berg, Edward Dirkswager, with Amy Junge. (Rowan and Litlefield)
The authors describe the how-tos at ten schools they view as operating collectively, run by teachers. They take up key practices, one by one and describe different ways these ten have approached teacher autonomy, and why it so vital to do so. Mission Hill is one of the ten—which of course leads me to wish they had referenced In
Trusting Teachers With School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots, by Kim Farris-Berg, Edward Dirkswager, with Amy Junge. (Rowan and Litlefield)
The authors describe the how-tos at ten schools they view as operating collectively, run by teachers. They take up key practices, one by one and describe different ways these ten have approached teacher autonomy, and why it so vital to do so. Mission Hill is one of the ten—which of course leads me to wish they had referenced In
LA High School Fights Against LAUSD’s Scorched-Earth Restructuring
A black, brown, and working class school slated for restructuring. Years of neglect and mismanagement by the central district. A top-down, careerist superintendent. Veteran and outspoken teachers at risk for dismissal. And maybe most importantly, parents, teachers, and students fighting back. This could be describing Oakland but in this case it’s Los Angeles. Right now [...]
What we talk about when we talk about the Common Core
Now the critique has gone main stream; in recent days, it has been written up in Time magazine, the Washington Post, and Salon.
First, this quota was weakly justified by its supporters that it reflects the distribution of questions on the national NAEP exams (which turns out not to be true.) Now, Gene Wilhoit,
The Best Web Tools For Teaching Irregular Verbs & Verb Tenses — Contribute Your Suggestions!
I was prompted to make this list by seeing a wonderful video at Michelle Henry’s site (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — I think it’s one of the best, if not the best, ESL/EFL sites on the Web) about teaching irregular verbs (you’ll see it below).
I thought it would be a good excuse to get a list started and solicit additional
I thought it would be a good excuse to get a list started and solicit additional
To Fight Climate Change, College Students Take Aim at the Endowment Portfolio
Students are demanding that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks in hopes of bringing climate change onto the national political agenda.
Economix Blog: Degree Inflation? Jobs That Newly Require B.A.'s
Employers are increasingly demanding a college education for positions that did not traditionally call for one.
Young Latino Students Don’t See Themselves in Books
Educators say grade-school students develop reading skills better when they are engaged by books full of characters with whom they can identify. For Hispanic children, that’s hard to find
6 Questions On The Overlap Between K-12 and High Ed
Blog:
I don't know much about K-12 education. Beyond the fact that I have two kids (8th and 10th grade) in our local public middle school and high school, and that I spent 12 years in public primary and secondary schools, my knowledge of the sector is embarrassingly skimpy.
Can you point us to any people, resources, articles, blogs, books, or journals that might help us get our heads around the following questions? Perhaps you want to take a shot at answering yourself.
The following questions will reveal the depth of my ignorance about K-12:
1. Organizational Structure? What does the leadership structure and organization of a "typical" primary or
Can you point us to any people, resources, articles, blogs, books, or journals that might help us get our heads around the following questions? Perhaps you want to take a shot at answering yourself.
The following questions will reveal the depth of my ignorance about K-12:
1. Organizational Structure? What does the leadership structure and organization of a "typical" primary or
FERPA: Uses and Abuses, Especially in Emergency Notification Systems
Blog:
In higher education there is no more well-known privacy law than the Family Education Rights Privacy Act, or "FERPA." Established in the 1970s to protect against abuses law enforcement made against students involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements, this early public privacy law fits into type 3 of the five categories I established in earlier blogs. It is a public, federal law. That means that Congress passed it, originally back in 1974. It has been amended on occasion, for example with a new exception under the U.S.A.-Patriot Act that
Democrats propose using Proposition 39 for schools
(AP) — Democratic lawmakers are proposing to spend about $500 million a...
Illinois lawmakers plan new pension proposal
Democratic state Rep. Mike Zalewski of Summit said Tuesday that the proposal
Superintendent of Michigan School District Warns of Corporatization and Privatization of Public Schools
An urgent call to action from Superintendent Rob Glass
Posted: November 28, 2012
Dear Parents and Citizens: This is an urgent call to action affecting your Bloomfield Hills Schools and public education in Michigan. A package of bills designed to corporatize and dismantle public education is being hastily pushed through this current ‘lame duck’ legislative session. If we do not take immediate action, I believe great damage will be done to public education, including our school system. We have just three weeks to take action before it’s too late. The bills are:
Posted: November 28, 2012
Dear Parents and Citizens: This is an urgent call to action affecting your Bloomfield Hills Schools and public education in Michigan. A package of bills designed to corporatize and dismantle public education is being hastily pushed through this current ‘lame duck’ legislative session. If we do not take immediate action, I believe great damage will be done to public education, including our school system. We have just three weeks to take action before it’s too late. The bills are:
- House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358- Would expand a separate and statewide school district (the EAA)
Vulture Capitalism Coming to a School District Near You
Following is an ad for for-profit companies to attend a seminar on ways to make lucrative investments with companies making profits from public school money.
The seminar is chaired by Harold Levy, who was Chancellor of New York City’s public schools. “So 2013, and beyond, will see numerous for-profit companies making inroads into public and non-profit education by taking over large swaths of the market.”
Conference provided by: http://capitalroundtable.com/ – January 15, 2013.
Private Equity Investing in For-Profit Educ
The seminar is chaired by Harold Levy, who was Chancellor of New York City’s public schools. “So 2013, and beyond, will see numerous for-profit companies making inroads into public and non-profit education by taking over large swaths of the market.”
Conference provided by: http://capitalroundtable.com/ – January 15, 2013.
Private Equity Investing in For-Profit Educ
Wisconsin residents: 2-to-1 margin favor education funding over tax cuts
http://www4.uwm.edu/cuir/research/upload/Wisconsin-Economic-Scorecard-Brief-10-29-2012.pdf
Wisconsin Economic Scorecard
The Wisconsin Economic Scorecard is a quarterly poll of Wisconsin residents conducted by the UWM Center for Urban Initiatives and Research (CUIR), in cooperation with Milwaukee public radio station WUWM and WisBusiness.com. This tracking poll measures perceptions of the health of Wisconsin’s economy as well as
In Which I Observe Skedula's Expert Trainer
OBSERVATION REPORT
I observed your training lesson yesterday. The lesson was scheduled to begin at 12:30. You were present at that time, but otherwise occupied, and your lesson did not actually begin until 12:40. At 12:40, you apologized for the fact that many teachers had lost the grades they had entered in your system, blamed the school for it, and promised it would not happen again.
You proceeded to explain how the quarterly marking period grades could be cumulatively averaged. You explained how Skedula could average two numbers in great detail for approximately ten minutes until being stopped
How To Move In A Room Full of Vultures [On Jay-Z, Sabrina Stevens and Child Advocacy]
I do this for my culture
To let them know what a n***a look like when a n***a in a Roadster
Show them how to move in a room full of vultures
Industry is shady, it needs to be taken over
Label owners hate me, I’m raising the status quo up …
To let them know what a n***a look like when a n***a in a Roadster
Show them how to move in a room full of vultures
Industry is shady, it needs to be taken over
Label owners hate me, I’m raising the status quo up …
- Jay-Z, “Izzo (H.O.V.A)
When Sabrina Stevens first sent me this video, I cursed in two languages. First, I said “Right on!” Second, I 
LESS IS MORE
All the groups asking for 300 more hours of class time need to check how much class time students have in the countries that lead the world in test scores. According to the National School Boards Association’s Center for Public Education, pupils in some countries where students tend to perform well on tests – including South Korea, Finland and Japan, actually spend less time in school than most U.S. students.
When I taught in a parochial school on the near west side of Chicago, we probably were in class two full months LESS than our neighboring public schools and yet our students way outperformed the public school kids on
When I taught in a parochial school on the near west side of Chicago, we probably were in class two full months LESS than our neighboring public schools and yet our students way outperformed the public school kids on
LA High School Fights Against LAUSD’s Scorched-Earth Restructuring
A black, brown, and working class school slated for restructuring. Years of neglect and mismanagement by the central district. A top-down, careerist superintendent. Veteran and outspoken teachers at risk for dismissal. And maybe most importantly, parents, teachers, and students fighting back. This could be describing Oakland but in this case it’s Los Angeles. Right now [...]
Oakland Unified to score … everyone
Oakland Unified to score … everyone
Tuesday, December 4th, 2012 at 11:42 am in No Comments
The above matrix of nine elementary and six middle schools — which underwent a pilot School Quality Reviewprocess last school year — is just a sample of the kinds of targets and scoring systems being put in place in Oakland Unified.
At 6 p.m. Wednesday, the OUSD board holds a special meeting to discuss this and other parts of its “Balanced Scorecard,” which sets goals for student achievement, attendance, discipline rates (racial disparities, in