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Thursday, January 17, 2013

Special Late Nite Cap UPDATE 1-17-13 #SOSCHAT #EDCHAT #P2


Nite Cap UPDATE

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE



When the teacher is ready, the student will appear

Wait, you say.  Can it be that teacherken is confused about the ancient Buddhist proverb?
Trust me, I know the original is "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
The inversion is deliberate.
Because it tells us something about the nature of teaching.
Teaching is not peeling back the skull of a child and pouring in information.


so I was on Huff Post live

I got contacted this afternoon and asked if I wanted to appear for a discussion about the SC teacher who stomped on the flag.
If you go to Huffington Post Live the segment is called "Stomping on the Flag"
the other participants besides the host were a reporter from SC who is covering the story, an English teacher from NYC, and a Gulf War veteran from WV.
The segment lasts about 29 minutes.
I enjoyed myself a great deal.
If you don't know what I look or sound like


Here’s The Table Of Contents & Link To Pre-Order My Upcoming Book

Eye On Education has just made their page live on my upcoming book, Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies for Student Motivation.
Here’s the Table Of Contents:
Chapter 1: I Still Want to Know: How Do You Motivate Students?
Chapter 2: What Can I Do to Help Students Feel More Positive About School and Learning?
Chapter 3: How Do You Handle Rudeness in Class?
Chapter 4 : How Can You Best Handle Classroom Management?
Chapter 5: I Still Want to Know: How Can You Help Students Develop Higher-Order Thinking Skills?
Chapter 6: How Can I Get My Students More Interested in Reading and Writing?
Chapter 7: How Can You Best Prepare My Students for Standardized Tests While Doing No Harm to Them?

No Deal on New York City Teacher Evaluations; State and Federal Money at Risk

The United Federation of Teachers and the Bloomberg administration blamed each other for talks breaking down even as a midnight deadline approached.

The New Jersey Education Reform Train Wreck

Well done! Promoted by Rosi.
Cross-posted at A New Jersey FarmerOh, the power of the pen. Or keyboard. Whatever.
As the President of the Madison Education Association, I'm going on an adventure to Trenton at the end of January with Madison Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Michael A. Rossi and Madison Board of Education President Lisa Ellis. We're going to meet with Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf and members of his staff about the frustrations we're feeling while trying to implement the new teacher evaluation system (EE4NJ), the Common Core Standards, and PARCC .
How, you ask, did this happen? Because of a letter Dr. Rossi wrote, and testimony he made in front of the State 


As clock winds down, talks continue but wide impasse remains

Almost immediately after UFT President Michael Mulgrew finished ripping Mayor Bloomberg’s characterization of how talks broke down between the two sides this morning, he informed members that there might still be a chance.
“Now they want to talk,” Mulgrew told members at a Delegate Assembly meeting after being handed a sheet of paper, according to several teachers who attended.
In addition to $250 million that’s on the line if a midnight deadline passes, no evaluation plan would also be a black eye for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who devised the law to withhold state funding from districts that failed to 


Justice Sotomayor Will Make History When Administers Oath of Office for VP Biden

Justice Sotomayor Will Make History When Administers Oath of Office for VP BidenSonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, told Efe Thursday that Vice President Joe Biden’s request that she administer the oath of office for his second term is an “improbable” dream and “a tribute to the Latino community.”
Growing up in a poor neighborhood in The Bronx, “they both would have never entered my mind, either one would have been equally improbable,” she said, laughing.
“It is a tribute to the Latino community, to how important we have grown in America that a vice president of the 


Parents demand charter in LAUSD’s first parent trigger campaign

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A high-spirited group of nearly 100 parents descended on the Los Angeles Unified district office Thursday and turned in petitions demanding sweeping changes at their failing school in the first use of the controversial parent trigger law in the city.
But parents at 24th Street Elementary School in the West Adams neighborhood got a strikingly different reception in L.A. Unified than their counterparts did in Compton and the High Desert city of Adelanto, where 


Senior Education Official to Address Financial Aid Administrators for Health Professions

David Bergeron, acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education, will give a “Washington Update” in remarks at the Association of American Medical Colleges’ 2013 Professional Development Conference for Health Professions at 11:30 a.m. PT, on Friday, Jan. 18, in Phoenix, Ariz.


NYC stands to lose $450M if city, teachers union can't reach deal on evaluation plan

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, is at an impasse with a union representing 75,000 teachers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, says a deadline of midnight still stands. David Karp/Sipa USA/Pool NEW YORK — New York City and a...


Attendance Rises Slightly on Day Two of School Bus Strike

The Department of Education said student attendance was a little higher on the second day of the school bus strike, about 90 percent overall. But schools serving students with serious disabilities continue to be hardest hit, because their students rely so heavily on yellow buses.
Attendance at District 75 schools, which serve the most severely disabled students, was less than 50 percent


Poodle of the Plutocrats: Dennis Van Roekel

Platonist D Coleman

Van Roekel has an established record of selling out the membership of NEA (hereherehere, and here), just as Randi Weingarten has done for AFT members.  With an uprising imminent over teacher evaluations based on test scores and more high stakes national testing based on a national curriculum written by arrogant elitist, David Coleman, we wonder how long it will take for Van Roekel and Weingarten to decide to spend more time with their families.  In the clips below, Van Roekel defends his position as the handsomely-paid lap dog of philanthrocapitalists.  Here is part of Dennis's latest defense of the rotted Common Core.
. . .NEA has been working to ensure educator input throughout the development and implementation of 

Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test

Dartmouth is concerned that Advanced Placement courses are not as rigorous as college courses.

Sacramento School District slates closure of 11 schools
News10.net
SACRAMENTO, CA - Eleven schools have been slated to be closed because of under-enrollment in the Sacramento City Unified School District, the school board announced Wednesday afternoon. District Chief Communications Officer Gabe Ross said staff ...


Can the DeKalb school board reinvent itself in 30 days?

This is the digest form of the four-hour state Board of Education hearing today on whether or not to suspend the DeKalb Board of Education. If want all the details, scan my live blog from the hearing.
The DeKalb board is fighting for survival after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools placed the district on probation last month because of board mismanagement, meddling, nepotism and fiscal failings. The General Assembly passed a law in 2011 that gave the governor the legal power to remove errant school boards 


1. Building a professional learning network on Twitter

Added by Thomas Whitby on January 12, 2013




New York City Teacher Evaluation Talks Fail, School Discipline Crisis: Ed Tonight

Deal Or No Deal? This afternoon, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the union was calling it quits on negotiations with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg over teacher evaluations. Shockingly, each side blames the other. What does this mean? The city will lose oh, a couple hundred million dollars in state budget money. Bloomberg says, via Gothamschools, that it's "too soon to tell" whether the loss will necessitate teacher layoffs.

My question: WWAD? (Stands for: What Will Arne Do? Obviously.) I've left the folks at the U.S. Education Department that question and will update when I hear back. But long story short, the adaption of a teacher evaluation framework was among the terms of the state's Race to the Top grant. U.S. Ed Sec. Arne Duncan has promised to be merciless in holding states accountable for their deadlines; already, Maryland and Hawaii have 


“LA Unified parents file petition for school reform”

Though I still believe it’s safe to say that the parent trigger idea has practically no future as a viable strategy to change schools, parents at a school in Los Angeles are giving it a try.
You can read about it in the San Francisco Chronicle article, LA Unified parents file petition for school reform.


Calling it a night, city and union say their eval talks are over

Michael Mulgrew has left UFT headquarters at 52 Broadway and a union official confirmed that any chance that a deal could be salvaged in the final hours tonight are “dead.”
And the other side also appears to have thrown in the towel. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said they “called the UFT a couple of hours ago and tried one last time with a proposal and they rejected it.” She did not say what the specifics of that proposal were.
Micah Lasher, a former aide to Mayor Bloomberg who lobbied hard for the evaluations, was optimistic that a deal 


Parents Across America Are Opting Out

Looks like parents have finally had enough testing too. The Superintendent of Montgomery County Maryland called for a three year moratorium on high stakes standardized testing. The budget squeeze is making it impossible to ignore all the money for testing. The perfect storm.

On January 27 at 1:00 PM PST, 3:00 PM Central and 4:00 PM EST, Parents Across America will be hosting an online seminar on high stakes testing and opting out of such tests.

Our guests will be:
  • Jesse Hagopian, teacher at Garfield High School and part of the MAP test boycott 
  • Shaun Johnson, a former public school teacher, current teacher educator and online radio show co-host of At the Chalk Face who is a founder of United Opt Out National. 
  • Monty Neill, Executive Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). Dr. Neill  authored Implementing Performance Assessments: A Guide to Classroom School and System Reform, and Testing Our Children: A Report Card on State Assessment Systems, the first comprehensive evaluation of all 50 state testing programs.
  • Tim Slekar, a former public school teacher and now an associate professor of teacher education. Dr. Slekar is also co-host of At the Chalk Face and a founder of United Opt Out National.
There will be a discussion on:
  • How high stakes testing got started.
  • Methods to fairly evaluate a teacher in the classroom.
  • Opting your student out of high stakes testing, why and how.
Each guest speaker will have an opportunity to talk about these subjects and then it will be opened up for questions and discussion.

To sign up for this event, go to Eventbrite. You will be notified of instructions on how to sign onto the webinar a few days before the event.

We can accept a maximum of 100 guests