Big Education Ape - Mid Day Banana BreakWhy Precisely Do Teachers Leave High Poverty Schools?Why Precisely Do Teachers Leave High Poverty Schools?. Recently, I participated in a 9 minute podcast, via BAM Radio Network, with host Larry Ferlazzo, an inner-city High School teacher. Mr. Paul Bruno, a middle school teacher in Los Angeles, California, and I discussed the following topic: Why do teachers

Hansen's Crowing About his Campaign Is a Little Premature | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education: Hansen's Crowing About his Campaign Is a Little Prematurepublished by Kate_Lenox on Wed, 02/12/2014 - 12:41pm                Jay Hansen, California Medical Assn. lobbyist and appointed SCUSD school board member for Area 1 is running  for election to the seat he now occupies. He recently i

California's Annual State Application for 2014 - Administration & Support (CA Dept of Education): California's Annual State Application for 2014Annual State Application under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act  is to be submitted by May 12, 2014, for federal fiscal year (FFY) 2014.The California Department of Education (CDE), Special Education Division, completed its app

SKrashen: Why Invest in Libraries: Why Invest in LibrariesWHY INVEST IN LIBRARIESStephen KrashenPresentation at LAUSD Board of Education meeting, Febuary 11, 2014To discuss libraries, several important results from educational research will be of use.POVERTY COUNTSThe impact of poverty on educational achievement has been documented again and again. Poverty means, among other things, inadequate die

High school in America: A complete disaster.: What’s Holding Back American Teenagers?2.7k260519Our high schools are a disaster.By Laurence SteinbergHigh school, where kids socialize, show off their clothes, use their phones—and, oh yeah, go to class.Photo by Creatas/Getty ImageEvery once in a while, education policy squeezes its way onto President Obama’s public agenda, as it did in during last mo

What’s Effective Teaching? | Gatsby In L.A.: What’s Effective Teaching? I demand an effective teacher in every classroom!  Don’t you?  Doesn’t every child deserve an effective teacher?  I am outraged that there are so many teachers who are not effective!But wait…What do I even mean by an “effective teacher?”Right now in this country, we are all about “effective” teachers.  Here in a courtroom in L

Mandatory Reporters AB 1432 - Year 2014 (CA Dept of Education): State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Announces Support for AB 1432SACRAMENTO—California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today his support for legislation authored by Assembly Member Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) that would require formal training for all school employees on the identification and reporting

I Love To Watch Tucker When He Is Learning — Whole Child Education: THE WHOLE CHILD BLOGI Love To Watch Tucker When He Is LearningFebruary 12, 2014 by Jeffrey BensonI love to watch Tucker when he is learning. His eyes widen, his face lights up, and he cannot contain himself, shouting out answers—no, not answers but ideas and concepts and "ah has"—and he often gets in trouble for being in

Student Voice: Twitter Chat 2.17.14 at 8:30PM EST – Alternatives to Higher EducationJoin us this Monday, February 17th at 8:30PM EST using the #StuVoice hashtag to discuss alternatives to the current higher education model. We will be joined by pioneers exploring alternatives to the current college model to discuss:- The viability of current alternatives to college- What alternatives can offer tha

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District): LA Unified board votes against a caretaker (twice) for vacant seatPresident Vladovic: His vote doomed caretaker The LA Unified school board on Tuesday quashed any chance for temporary representation for the 110 schools and nearly quarter million students in board District 1, twice defeating measures that

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm and Byrd-Bennett lied about shrinking suspenstion rate. It's worse than ever.: Rahm and Byrd-Bennett lied about shrinking suspenstion rate. It's worse than ever.Rahm & Byrd-Bennett claim a 23 percent drop in suspensions. Really?I didn't think it could get any worse. I thought the Daley/Duncan era of schoolhouse-to-jailhouse, Zero Tolerance and mass suspensio

Take It Till U Make It | EduShyster: Take It Till U Make It At a growing number of urban schools, it’s all testing, all the timeRemember how just the other day you were despairing that public education has devolved into a sad synonym for testing of the standardized variety? Well I’ve got great news, reader—it turns out that you were wrong! According to a new study by an organization called Teach P

Early Common Core testing will be a jarring wake-up call — what then? | The Lens: Early Common Core testing will be a jarring wake-up call — what then?NSNONeerav Kingsland expects Common Core to deliver a rude awakening.Here’s a prediction: When Louisiana students first take high-stakes exams aligned with the Common Core curriculum, no more than three out of every 10 children will achieve proficie

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Why Cerf jumped ship in N.J.: Why Cerf jumped ship in N.J.Cerf bails on ChristieIf Jersey Jazzman tells me that the Christie's Bridgegate scandal has nothing to do with the timing of Chris Cerf's jumping ship and heading for Murdoch (see comments) I believe him. There's no one who knows N.J. ed politics better than JJ.I never meant to imply that the bridge scand

Subprime Learning: Early Education in America Since the Great Recession | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity: Subprime Learning: Early Education in America Since the Great RecessionPosted on: Wednesday February 12th, 2014As the US recovers from the Great Recession, pre-k and early learning have moved into the national spotlight. Advocates, organize

FCMAT » Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team: Charter schools association continues push to weed out low-scoring schools | EdSource TodayEducation HeadlinesWednesday, February 12, 2014FCMAT provides links to California K-12 news stories as a service to the industry. However, some stories may not be accessible because of newspapers' subscription policies.San Ysidro schools face $12M judgm

BIG EDUCATION APE - MORNING WINK  AM POSTSLISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 2-12-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for allDiane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Carol Burris: How the NY Regents Fooled the Public on Common CoreCarol Burris explains here how the New York Board of Regents hoaxed the public into thinking they had agreed to major changes whe

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Carol Burris: How the NY Regents Fooled the Public on Common CoreCarol Burris explains here how the New York Board of Regents hoaxed the public into thinking they had agreed to major changes when they actually changed nothing. She writes: “The press was led to believe the Regents pulled back the passing scores on the Common Core En

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: TUESDAY’S BOARD MEETING: Six votes in search of a censensusI watched Tuesday’s festivities from the comfort of my couch and my fuzzy slippers, consuming mass quantities of NyQuil and drinking glass after glass of water. (Drown a Cold/Bore a fever.)  The phone kept ringing with successively bad-to-worse news. The goings on at Beaudry made nothing any bet

Me on BAM Radio on Teacher Turnover | Paul Bruno: Me on BAM Radio on Teacher TurnoverBy PAUL BRUNO | Published: FEBRUARY 12, 2014I made a brief appearance on Larry Ferlazzo’s BAM! Radio show to talk more about an upcoming piece about why teachers leave high-poverty urban schools.Time was short, so I thought I’d collect here, in one place, many of the interesting data points I came across while thi

Wait What?: When real teachers speak… Elected officials should listenBarth Keck is an English teacher and assistant football coach in Connecticut.  He also writes commentary pieces for CT News Junkie.  His pieces should be mandatory reading for every federal, state and local elected official in Connecticut. In his latest column entitled, Already Feeling Squeezed As I Attempt to ‘Align’ With Common

The Answer Sheet: Principal: Time to hold NY education leaders accountable for Core messNew York Principal Carol Burris has chronicled the flawed implementation of school reform and the Common Core State Standards across the state for some time (here, and here and here and here, for example), and, in the following post, she tells us more. Burris, who leads South Side High School, was named New Yor

The Answer Sheet: Principal: Time to hold NY education leaders accountable for Core messNew York Principal Carol Burris has chronicled the flawed implementation of school reform and the Common Core State Standards across the state for some time (here, and here and here and here, for example), and, in the following post, she tells us more. Burris, who leads South Side High School, was named New Yor

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Teach for America Contract Due to Expire but Hires can ContinueSeattle Public Schools' Agreement with Teach for America was approved by the Board on November 17, 2010. The agreement terminates on August 31, 2014 unless renewed by mutual consent of both parties. I don't believe that a majority of the current Board would vote to extend it. The Agreement has been more

Schools Matter: Standards as Political FootballsIn a piece published in a 2001 issue of English Journal, "Standards, Standards Everywhere, and Not a Spot to Think," I opened with a story about my daughter, then in middle school:[M]y eleven-year-old daughter, Jessica, made an observation: “All they care about is the PACT test; they don’t care if we learn anything.” She was speaking of the

Schools Matter: Standards as Political FootballsIn a piece published in a 2001 issue of English Journal, "Standards, Standards Everywhere, and Not a Spot to Think," I opened with a story about my daughter, then in middle school:[M]y eleven-year-old daughter, Jessica, made an observation: “All they care about is the PACT test; they don’t care if we learn anything.” She was speaking of the

Ms. Jablonski's Class Blog: The Love Affair Between Dictators and the Olympics Like Hitler’s 1936 games, Putin’s campaign to hold the Olympics in Sochi is all about adding to his personal glory, not any desire to better Russia.Garry Kasporov, former World Chess Champion and Russian (Soviet) Chess Grandmaster is also a political activist and writer.   In this piece he dares to suggest that there ar

Paul Horton: Charter School Design: The New Streamlining - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: Paul Horton: Charter School Design: The New StreamliningBy Anthony Cody on February 12, 2014 9:30 AMGuest post by Paul Horton.Do a simple online search of "charter school design" and see what pops up. While some of the images you might see might be urban warehouse and public school gut

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL: More Valentine’s Day ResourcesHere are some new additions to The Best Sites To Learn About Valentine’s Day: Valentine’s Day – Hitting The Sweet Spots is from the ASIDE blog. Last Minute Love Lessons is from Online TEFL Training. Valentine’s Day – Resources for class is from David’s ESOL Blog.by Larry Ferlazzo / 2h “Why Do T

New York Students With Disabilities May Soon Take Easier Tests Than Their Peers: New York Students With Disabilities May Soon Take Easier Tests Than Their PeersState Education Commissioner John King Jr., second from right, speaks during a forum on Common Core learning reforms at the Stephen and Harriet Myers Middle School on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. The meeting Thursday was King's

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: John Dillon. Tax relief? Here’s a “fair” explanationBy John Dillon who posted this on his blog, Pension Vocabulary. Tax Relief for Illinois and a Revenue Fix! Tax Relief?  Here’s a “Fair” Explanation… I just received my latest update from Republican Representative Dwight Kay.  Representative Dwight ma

Engaging Parents In School… | Going Beyond Parent "Involvement": What Has Gotten In To These Guys? Now Leader Of Britain’s Labor Party Appears To Call For A “Parent Trigger”I just don’t understand how people who consider themselves progressive here in the United States and, now, in Great Britain can support such a fundamentally undemocratic tool as the parent trigger (where a small numbe

Charter schools association continues push to weed out low-scoring schools | EdSource Today: Charter schools association continues push to weed out low-scoring schoolsFebruary 11th, 2014 | Add a Comment | By John FensterwaldUpping its campaign to root out what it views as its lowest performing schools, the California Charter Schools Association last week criticized a San Jose school district for a

Ed Notes Online: Peter Lamphere: New York takes on Common CoreUNFORTUNATELY, THE New York State United Teachers actually has a mixed record on Common Core. Led by its largest affiliate, New York City's United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union officially supports the Common Core, but disagrees with the implementation that has occurred, calling for a three-year moratorium on high-stakes conseq

@ THE CHALK FACE: Does the Gates Foundation’s Evidence Argue For or Against Vergara?The corporate reform group Students Matter wants to strike down the duly-enacted laws of California that protect the rights of teachers. Their case, Vergara vs. California claims that laws protecting teachers damage poor children of color. Vergara is known as the “bad teacher” lawsuit. I have joked, however, that i

V.A.M.: Value Added Measure: The Sounds of Failing (Based on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence")Governor Andrew Cuomo is tenaciously holding to his APPR schemes to evaluate teachers based largely on student test scores.  Last Spring, 70% of N.Y.S. students failed the Common-Core tests. If one believes in junk science, one might seek to fire 70% of the State's teachers.  In sch

the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L. Thomas, Furman University): Standards as Political FootballsStandards as Political Footballs1 by plthomasedd / 3h2-11-14 the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness by P. L. Thomas, EdDthe becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L.

GoPublicSchool.com « An open discussion of public school issues. GoPublicSchool.com: GPS Viewpoint – Mike Weston…CC – The wrong focus now… I am greatly troubled by the rushed implementation of the common-core standards. With common-core comes an entire new student testing, school grading and teacher evaluation paradigm; things Florida already does poorly. There are many arguments against common-co

Perdido Street School: The Cost Of Common Core And The Race To Top Reforms: The Cost Of Common Core And The Race To Top ReformsFrom State of Politics:New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights, an education advocacy group, is suing Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Board of Regents and state Education Commissioner John King, claiming the state has systematically shortgaged the public school system by faili

Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública: Queens Parents Say Their Kids’ Reports On Malcolm X Were RejectedNOTE: This is why we need a structured curriculum and teacher training that centers on Black/Latino Culture and History. Demand that the new Chancellor implement this progressive education policy by the Fall of 2014!! Added by daphne R on February 11, 2014.By David Bl

Two Important Articles Describe Widespread Attack on Core Value of Public Education | janresseger: Two Important Articles Describe Widespread Attack on Core Value of Public EducationPosted on February 12, 2014 by janressegerHere is a particularly strong critique of what the North Carolina legislature is doing to undermine that state’s public schools.  Helen Ladd,  one of the chairs of the Broader,

Terry Grier Has to Go! HISD is Choking the Life Out of Our Community: 11 FEBRUARY 2014 WRITTEN BY  JEFFREY L. BONEYTerry Grier Has to Go! HISD is Choking the Life Out of Our Communityfont size   Print EmailThe Houston Forward Times (HFT) has been covering a myriad of complaints and issues involving the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and HISD Superintendent Terry B. Grier over the years

What Superintendents Do Daily (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: What Superintendents Do Daily (Part 1)In this blog over the past few years, I have posted accounts of a day in the life of a principal and what some teachers do daily. But I have not looked at what district superintendents do at work.In this three-part post, I will present what I have found over the years

False Compromises In The Education Debate: False Compromises In The Education Debate Legend has, political disputes are supposed to be resolvable only when parties “meet in the middle” and shake hands on points of agreement that are possible.But in the much-contested issue of “education reform,” only one of the disputing parties in the debate tends to be implored to seek compromise.The latest exam

Louisiana Educator: The Truth About Stand for Children and Common Core: The Truth About Stand for Children and Common CoreJust Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTERAstroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups ar

Nite Cap UPDATEUPDATE UPDATE UPDATE UPDATECORPORATE ED REFORMQ&A With Randi Weingarten, head of American Federation of TeachersRandi Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the most influential teachers' unions in the country. She attended the ...34min On The Postponement of Common Core AccountabilityOn Monday, New York State found out that its Board of Regents,

CCSS, STEM and the Hypocrites of Education Reform | Reclaim Reform: CCSS, STEM and the Hypocrites of Education ReformPosted on February 11, 2014by Ken PrevitiLiving on Florida’s Space Coast surrounded by many engineers who are now receiving half to two-thirds of the salaries they had a few years ago, the harsh realities of economic life are evident. As a matter of fact, under-employed and unemploy

Portland Public Schools strike preparation: District asks teachers whether they plan to work as union urges them to remove personal belongings from classrooms | OregonLive.com: Portland Public Schools strike preparation: District asks teachers whether they plan to work as union urges them to remove personal belongings from classroomsPORTLAND, OREGON -- February 5, 2014 -- Supporters of the teacher

Regents Reverse Course, Pull Teacher Protections from Common Core Changes - WNYC: Rhee-lated $tory: Michelle Rhee answers Ravitch in New Bookal$o $ee Rhee-lated $tory: Excerpts from "Rhee The Art of the Deal" a new $tory about Corporate Education Reform and the Woman that make$ it Happen!Regents Reverse Course, Pull Teacher Protections from Common Core ChangesTuesday, February 11, 2014 -

solidaridad: EmpowerED 2014 – Elevating Student Power in Los Angeles: EmpowerED 2014 – Elevating Student Power in Los AngelesHannah Nguyen article on GenYNot about the conferenceOfficial Conference Website2014 ARE ConferenceMore Details

James Baldwin said it best: "For these are all our children, and we will profit by or pay for whatever they become."A BIG EDUCATION APE NITE CAP2-11-14 Jersey JazzmanJersey Jazzman: Chris Cerf's Top Ten Reformy MomentsThe resignation of former Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf deserves a contemplative and appropriately serious response.Until then, I present...Chris Cerf's Top T