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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Diane in the Evening 1-20-13 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

File Under “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up”








What is Behind the Cost of School Busing in NYC?

Juan Gonzalez says that Mayor Bloomberg wants to drive down the cost of bus drivers’ salaries, but they are not the reason that the city spends more than $1 billion on school buses. Bus drivers are paid about $40,000 a year.
Read his analysis here.

How Do You Answer This Teacher’s Question?

I am a strong supporter of the public schools and opposed to the “reform” movement attempting to privatize education. I didn’t find your article divisive. But, I do have a question that keeps coming up for me about some of the reasons why charters gain traction.
Charters benefit from the real and perceived impact of heterogeneous grouping upon the achievement of more prepared students. Similarly, they score points because public schools are less able to address and remove disruptive children. For these reasons, a diverse district with students from all socio-economic backgrounds is at risk for charter take over.
We complain that charters are skimming the top, we have to take all comers and we can’t cherrypick; we can’t 


Is This the Broad Academy Playlist?

A reader offered this comment in response to the post about school closings in Sacramento:
A “Broad” superintendent who follows its “play-list” to “capture” the school board and privatize the district as much as possible:
– Convinced the board of education to turn all the power over to the superintendent.
– Keeps secret all the contracts and consultants hired by the superintendent. In fact, it’s been said that the 

File Under “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up”

A security guard at a charter school in Michigan left his gun in a student bathroom.
He forgot it.
Fortunately, the weapon was unloaded.
What kind of security does he provide with an unloaded weapon?
What would he do if an intruder had an assault weapon?
A new thought experiment among teachers and principals: Which staff member do you NOT want to see armed?



LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 1-20-13 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 1 hour ago
Diane Ravitch's blog: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] NYC: Better Than Buffalo? by dianerav Jersey Jazzman continues his series of posts in which he closely examines the record of Joel Klein’s tenure as chancellor. One of the claims of that era was: “Look at our scores. We are better than the upstate cities.” Oregon Accuses Online Charter Founders of $20 million Scam by dianerav The state of Oregon accuses two en of scamming the taxpayers by inflating enrollment figures in their online charter schools. The schools–at least ten of them–were opened in conjunc... more »