Nite Cap UPDATE
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
CORPORATE ED REFORM
More trouble for UNO
It keeps getting worse and worse for the UNO charter hustlers. Now that Gov. Quinn has turned off the $98 million spigot, the construction company and its workers have walked off the job, demanding to be paid. UNO's shiny new charter school has been stalled in mid-stream.
According to the Sun-Times:
Patrick Cermak, the president of general contractor Wight & Co. of Darien, cited unspecified past-due payments in a letter
Please, Keep Writing and Teaching [Kick More Ass]
Iron Man 3
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you’re a blogger writing about education and a whole mess of other stuff that permeates the experiences you have as an educator looking inward and outward, trying to seek solutions to complex and amorphous situations.
Let’s say you decided to look at the landscape of writing about education through this lens. You see messages and e-mails asking you why you put your name out there, no pseudonym, in a land where central district offices want to block and fire teachers with dissenting opinions, follow and interrogate teachers who pose hard questions on Twitter, or only highlight the teachers who please corporate sponsors and / or proffer ed-tech solutions. While the rhetoric sounds supportive of the “best” teachers, the policies themselves call worsening working (and learning) conditions. Congress and the White House continue to bundle the social safety net of America and prepare it on a cutting board, directly affecting the works of educators for everyone except the most privileged.
Your last message asks you if the person should keep her blog around in an environment like this. Your answer is hell yes.
As writers in the education field, we have a right, a privilege, and for many of us, a responsibility to tell the truth
Am I A Conspiracy Theorist ? Maybe !
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I had lunch with a friend last week.
He said he had been cleaning out his filing cabinet and found this!
I found it both shocking and depressing. I have underlined some of the purported returns of the 1998 TPAF.
I am a frequent viewer of the TV show"American Greed" on CNBC. Many of the shows are about Ponzi Schemes that are foisted on the public.
When I first looked at the returns on this pension report they immediately reminded me of the returns promised by the fraudsters shown on the aforementioned shows.
Then I began to think about this a bit more. I wonder if this these reported returns were really valid at the time or if they were artificially concocted to those seemingly impossible levels?
You might say "You must be a conspiracy theorist! "
(Well, I don't think I am a conspiracy theoristbut maybe!)
"Why would anyone want to inflated those numbers? "
Someone who wanted to "borrow" (steal) money from the fund so as to give tax breaks and thereby enhance his/her reelection chances and just might like to use these return numbers to justify the "theft", that's who !
More stuff by Walt at: www.wsautter.com
Get Schooled: DeKalb school chief unveils 90 day plan
DeKalb Superintendent Michael Thurmond finally released his 90 day action plan today. It is not rife with details or specifics.
While brief, it still is a plan. Thurmond was originally supposed to deliver his plan to the school board by March 15, but received an extension to today
Free digital-textbook project drives down cost of college
Washington’s community colleges have expanded a program that is creating low-cost digital textbooks and curricula for the state’s most popular courses.
high stakes testing moratorium? @slekar says not enough!
Sorry, but Randi Weingarten’s call for a “moratorium on the consequences of high stakes testing with the Common Core standards” is worthless! We don’t need a moratorium on “consequences” associated with the Common Core. We need the abolition of all high-stakes testing and dissolution of the Common Core. Anything else is a capitulation to the [...]
Bloomington High students show up for prom a week early
BLOOMINGTON -- Without a doubt, no one at Bloomington High will forget Saturday night's prom. Somewhere along the line, there was a clerical error: The school believed the prom was scheduled for April 27, but Santa Anita officials were expecting them on May 7.
Despite parent, teacher pleas, Council still not moved on District budget woes
by Bill Hangley
Day two of City Council’s education hearings was a long string of bleak predictions and passionate calls for funding from public school supporters faced with the prospect of what one parent called “trying to do the impossible with nothing.”
Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell called the day’s testimony “disheartening” but gave little indication that she and her colleagues are eager to move on meeting the Philadelphia School District’s request for $60 million in additional funding.
“The governor cut all this money,” said Blackwell, a co-chair of Council’s education committee, who along with Council President Darrell Clarke presided over the day’s testimony. “These people think that was our agenda,
"My Resume is Ready": Losing Good Teachers!
Not my words. I live and breathe teaching. I really can't imagine doing anything else, well, except writing. These words were spoken by a teacher friend of mine. He sounded so down when he said it.:( He is overwhelmed, as are we all. The kids. The parents. The kids. And then all the crap from above. He put in four years so far, and doesn't know how many more he will do. He said his first
Teaching: A Pi Poem!
Pi = 3.14159265 Love them dearly (3) Students (1) They drive me crazy!(4) Boisterous(1) Teaching them is a task(4) But I could not dream of doing anything else!(9)
Mixed Messages?
Reblogged from An Antique Teacher: Today, my inbox had two very interesting bits of information. 1. Commissioner King's "News and Notes" showed up telling me: "As you know, the Common Core will not just arrive in the mail in a shiny, new box. (The truth is, the CCSS show up at schools in brown cardboard [...]
A Principal Retires on Principle
A colleague of mine shared this letter from her child’s beloved principal here in Western New York. Kathleen Knauth’s “early retirement” is another example of how the current education reforms are driving dedicated, child-centered leaders out of our public schools. With Mrs. Kanuth’s permission, I would like to share the letter to the parents at [...]
Bonds would fund for business investment in schools under Steinberg proposal - by Kathryn Baron
The leader of the California State Senate says the way to encourage more and stronger bonds between industry and education is through, well, bonds. With California facing a shortage of qualified workers for 21st century jobs, Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg wants to entice businesses to become more involved in job training by asking them to invest in a new type of school bond that...
Video and news from our explosive Town Hall meeting on student privacy
Yesterday we held a Town hall meeting at Brooklyn Borough Hall about the state and city plan to share personally identifiable student information with a corporation called inBloom inc. and other third party vendors.
About 150 people showed up, including two Regents (Regent Kathleen Cashin of Brooklyn and Regent Betty Rosa of the Bronx), and two representatives from the State Education Department (Dennis Tompkins, Chief of External Affairs and Nicolas Storelli-Castro, Director of Governmental Relations), who listened to the presentations and the passionate objections of parents. Adina Lopatin, Deputy Chief Academic Officer of NYC DOE spoke and answered questions. I also gave a presentation about inBloom and DOE provided a FAQ here. Unfortunately, inBloom and the Gates Foundation refused our invitation to attend.
Some of the disturbing revelations from Adina: The city and state have already shared confidential student data with inBloom. They don't know how much they will have to pay for
Yes Men say “No”. An accreditor tells the truth
Originally posted at educatedtodeath.com
I was asked to sit on a panel of teachers to represent my school district during the accreditation process. I assume I was chosen because I am eager to speak in meetings and apparently speak well. This makes me think my administration has only enjoyed the sound of my voice and not the content of my O so bold oration.
I noticed quickly that I was in a room full of yes men and women who teach in the more affluent schools in our district. They all smiled and sat nicely. They were there to be slaughtered like good little lambs. The team of teachers surrounding me, my co-teachers, were, not unlike me worse for wear and doubting. Lips pursed, eyebrows cocked, notepads out. We were prepared for whatever we were going to he expected to swallow without question. Of course, my group did not act in complete accord. One just parroted off whatever was
Remainders: Technical difficulties stall Indiana state tests
- Server problems halted the state’s computer-based tests for a second straight day. (State Impact)
- For a second straight year, Florida’s parent trigger bill died in dramatic fashion. (Miami Herald)
- A DOE official faced tough questions from parents over a student data-sharing plan. (Village Voice)
- A mother wonders how to deal with teachers who enable her underperforming son. (MotherLode)
- Obama covered a lot of ground at presser today. But he didn’t touch education. (Answer Sheet)
- Buffalo’s teachers union head says he’ll fight to win back an abandoned teacher eval side deal. (WGRZ)
- The Walton Foundation announced it was giving a $8 million donation to StudentsFirst (L.A. Now)
- Edward R. Murrow HS was evacuated while police investigated an abandoned backpack. (DNAInfo)
- New research suggests that math tutoring for some young students doesn’t improve learning. (Reuters)
12% cash reserve for our UW system? Radio callers say it’s “prudent”.
Right about now I really appreciate getting news that the common Wisconsinite still has common sense. Such came to me via the always pleasing blogger Tim Morrissey (Pleasing, I might add, even when he does not exactly see things my way. Could be it’s because this guy knows how to write.) Tim says he was listening to the radio on the way to the gym. Mitch Henck’s show to be exact. The topic on Mitch’s show turned to the supposedly outrageous 12% cash reserve that the University of Wisconsin System of colleges has set aside for various things. AM radio host Mitch was ranting against it in line with a certain right wing “CPA Caucus”. The callers, however, did not fall in line. “The next caller was a woman, who also said she thought it was prudent. Mitch said “well, you must not be the parent of a UW student, because the parents are the ones who are getting jabbed here”. The woman paused a beat, and then said “I put two kids through the UW. I had to take a second job to do it, but I did it. And I think they got a great education and I more »
Prince George’s school system forwards e-mail opposing overhaul
A government watchdog group says the Prince George’s County school system “crossed a line” when a schools official sent an e-mail late Monday that urged residents to join a petition drive that opposes the county’s new school governance structure.
