Sunday, June 7, 2015

Inequitable school funding called ‘one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our time’ - The Washington Post

Inequitable school funding called ‘one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our time’ - The Washington Post:

Inequitable school funding called ‘one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our time’



Funding for public education in most states is inadequate and inequitable, creating a huge obstacle for the nation’s growing number of poor children as they try to overcome their circumstances, according to a set of reports released Monday by civil rights groups.
Students in the nation’s highest-spending state (New York) receive about $12,000 more each year than students in the lowest-spending state (Idaho), according to the reports, and in most states school districts in wealthy areas spend as much or more per pupil than districts with high concentrations of poverty.
In addition, many states were spending less on education in 2012 than they were in 2008, relative to their overall economic productivity, according to the reports.
The two reports – the Education Law Center’s fourth annual report card on school finance and a companion piece co-authored with the Leadership Conference Education Fund – are meant to help galvanize policymakers and activists to take on longstanding school funding disparities.
“School funding decisions are one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our time,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Leadership Conference Education Fund. “The evidence from across the country is clear and compelling: Our nation must dramatically change the way that educational resources are distributed so that there is true equity in America’s classrooms.”
Henderson pointed to a little-known 1973 Supreme Court case as one reason for why inequitable funding has been such a difficult problem for activists to tackle.
In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, justices ruled that it was legal to base state school funding formulas on local property taxes, even though doing so resulted in unequal resources. The court also ruled that there is no federal constitutional right to an education.
Henderson called the decision a “triumph of states’ rights over human rights,” Inequitable school funding called ‘one of the sleeper civil rights issues of our time’ - The Washington Post:
Source: "Is School Funding Fair?" by the Education Law Center
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The Truth Behind Your State's High School Grad Rate : NPR Ed : NPR

The Truth Behind Your State's High School Grad Rate : NPR Ed : NPR:

The Truth Behind Your State's High School Grad Rate 



 STATE: 

GRADUATION RATES IN CALIFORNIA



NATIONAL RANK (2013)PERCENTAGE POINT CHANGE (2011-2013)201120122013
30th+476%79%80%

WHAT DIPLOMAS DOES YOUR STATE OFFER?

California offers two types of diploma. Twenty-one states offer more than one.2 Different diplomas have varying credit requirements — so high achieving students can earn more rigorus diplomas and underperforming students can graduate without reaching normal academic standards.

DIPLOMADESCRIPTION
California High School DiplomaMinimum
California Readiness Curriculum a-gOpt-in: Honors/College-Prep

HOW HARD IS IT TO GET A DIPLOMA IN CALIFORNIA?

California requires students to pass the California High School Exit Examination in order to graduate. Often, there are workarounds if students cannot pass the exam.

COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS

California has a college and career ready diploma, butstudents must opt-in to it. “College and career ready” is a measure of rigorous diploma requirements developed by the policy organization Achieve.
ALAKAZARCACOCTDEDCFLGAHIIDILINIAKSKYLAMEMDMAMIMNMSMOMTNENVNHNJNMNYNCNDOHOKORPARISCSDTNTXUTVTVAWAWVWIWY
 

ALGEBRA II

California does not require students to take Algebra II in order to graduate. Experts say the class is essential: If you had to identify one requirement that shows rigor — it's Algebra II. But, in many states, students are not automatically enrolled or may opt into less-difficult courses.
ALAKAZARCACOCTDEDCFLGAHIIDILINIAKSKYLAMEMDMAMIMNMSMOMTNENVNHNJNMNYNCNDOHOKORPARISCSDTNTXUTVTVAWAWVWIWY

HOW DO STUDENTS PERFORM? LET'S LOOK AT THE ACT AND SAT.

ACT

In California, 29% of graduating students took the ACT exam in 2014. The ACT testing organization uses the results of these exams to publish its own, independent analysis of college readiness.

CALIF. AVERAGE SCORE (OUT OF 36)ACT BENCHMARK SCORE³ (OUT OF 36)% MEETING BENCHMARK
English21.81871%
Reading22.32251%
Math22.82257%
Science21.72343%

SAT

In California, 60.3% of graduating students took the SAT exam in 2014. 42.3% met College Board's benchmark score of 1550.4 (Out of 2400.) The College Board is the organization that administers the SAT.

FROM CALIFORNIA MEMBER STATIONS

Follow the story to Oakland with Zaidee Stavely of member station KQED.

Notes

1 Idaho, Kentucky and Oklahoma were granted a reporting extension. Graduation rates for these states are incomplete.
2 Diplomas also refer to courses of study and/or pathways available to students.
3 ACT calculates benchmarks by measuring how students perform in their first year of college. Learn more »
4 SAT's benchmark is also a measure of how students perform in their first year of college. Learn more »


Credit: Christopher Groskopf/NPR


 The Truth Behind Your State's High School Grad Rate : NPR Ed : NPR:
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The Washington Teacher: Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers

The Washington Teacher: Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers:

Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers


Written By Candi Peterson, WTU General Vice President

Somebody dropped the ball. Who’s to blame for the eight years we waited for an independent evaluation of mayoral control? Well accountability is reserved only for us peons (teachers, school personnel, principals, vice principals and; central office staff). Right? Not for mayors and other elected officials.

Under a 2007 law, known as PERAA (Public Education Reform Amendment Act) gave control of DC Public Schools to the Mayor (Former Mayor Adrian Fenty) as well as other changes in school governance. The purpose of the law was to give leaders more flexibility in making changes in light of the school systems history of failed fix it plans and floundering student achievement.

The reform law required the mayor to submit an independent annual evaluation of our public schools annually on academic achievement,personnel policies and business practices. The law also included an option to skip annual assessments and deliver a five year independent assessment by September 15, 2012. Obviously that deadline was not met.

There was much ado on the road to selecting independent evaluators. In 2009, Fenty eliminated funding for an independent evaluation. Then there were two evaluator names that initially surfaced including Frederick Hess, of American Enterprise Institute and Kenneth Wong, of Brown University who were proponents of mayoral control and made many uncomfortable about their objectivity including former Chairman Vincent Gray, who raised concerns, to his credit.

Eventually funding was restored for the independent evaluation in 2009. A total of $325,000 was included in the DC government budget to hire the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct the evaluation. NRC is one of four non-profit organizations that operate under the National Academies. It was estimated that DC government would provide 20 percent of the funding, with NRC raising the remaining cost from private donations.

The road to this independent assessment has been a rocky one. Let's count the three mayors who presided while we waited for a glimpse of this assessment. Let's see first there was Adrian Fenty, then Vincent Gray and now Muriel Bowser.

At long last, members of the evaluation committee reported their findings and recommendations on June 3, 2015 at a public round table at the Committee on Education held at the Council of the District of Columbia. Tweets were rampant on June 3rd from inside DC City Council chambers as the committee unveiled its report.

The report findings are in excess of 300 pages and for purposes here, I will try to dissect this information in The Washington Teacher: Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers:



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Google: rauner sociopath | Reclaim Reform

Google: rauner sociopath | Reclaim Reform:

Google: rauner sociopath

rauner sociopath 1


Google the following: rauner sociopath.

Even Google knows that Illinois billionaire Gov. Bruce Rauner is a sociopath – by definition. He continues to steal from autism programs in particular to pay for his choice of pro-Rauner folks. This is NOT an insult. What is a sociopath by definition?
noun, Psychiatry.
1. a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
Rauner appointed Secretary of Education Beth Purvis as “his” Czar of Education to be paid a record high quarter of a million dollars a year. In the 2015 “Illinois Is Broke” state, where will this special level of salary come from?
Three weeks after Purvis’ contract was signed, the governor’s office announced that the Department of Human Services was strapped for cash, and sliced $26 million in services including for autism, epilepsy and burials for the indigent. The cuts, later known as “the Good Friday Massacre,” caused some programs to completely shut down.
“I had no idea that we’re paying the governor’s education staff out of the Department of Human Services budget,” state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago.
– The Chicago Sun Times
This isn’t the first time that Rauner has singled out autism as undeserving.
Gov. Bruce Rauner reinstated his defeated opponent’s [Gov. Pat Quinn (D)] 
Google: rauner sociopath | Reclaim Reform:



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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 6/7/15



SPECIAL NITE CAP 

CORPORATE ED REFORM





Agents Of The State | The Jose Vilson
Agents Of The State | The Jose Vilson: Agents Of The State“How many of you have a child that you believe in and no one else does?”Seats shift.“How many of you can relate to the children in front of you? How many of you have students who get thrown out of everyone else’s class but yours?”Some people blink, some heads turn to the side, but the general assembly hums and huffs.This is a Bronx auditori
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Louisiana's push for creationism in schools - Business Insider
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by mike simpson / 56min 
What Was Written on a Classroom Chalkboard 100 Years Ago? How Could Teachers Even Teach without Common Core Alignment? » Missouri Education Watchdog
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Join the Protest Against the Closure of West Seattle’s Middle College High School | Seattle Education
Join the Protest Against the Closure of West Seattle’s Middle College High School | Seattle Education: Join the Protest Against the Closure of West Seattle’s Middle College High School“Before I started Middle College I was lost, without it I would probably still be in the streets.”  Oliver Wilson, Graduate, currently studying computer technology at the City College of San Francisco.Middle College
by mike simpson / 2h 
Politically-birthed Common Core Turns Five. Let’s Celebrate by Ripping It Apart. | deutsch29
Politically-birthed Common Core Turns Five. Let’s Celebrate by Ripping It Apart. | deutsch29: Politically-birthed Common Core Turns Five. Let’s Celebrate by Ripping It Apart.On June 6, 2015, Huffington Post education editor Rebecca Klein published a piece entitled, 5 of the Most Extreme Claims Made Against Common Core in the Last 5 Years. (Interestingly, Klein chose to publish her post under the c
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This Is What Happens When You Criticize Teach for America | The Nation
This Is What Happens When You Criticize Teach for America | The Nation: This Is What Happens When You Criticize Teach for AmericaAn internal memo reveals how TFA’s obsessive PR game covers up its lack of results in order to justify greater expansion.Last year, Wendy Heller Chovnick, a former Teach For America manager, spoke out against her former organization in The Washington Post, decrying its “
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Sanders And Clinton Clash On Education Seeking AFT Nod
Sanders And Clinton Clash On Education Seeking AFT Nod: Sanders And Clinton Clash On Education Seeking AFT NodThose of us who have spent substantial time as classroom teachers teachers know that when it comes to politicians talking education, as John Mellencamp put it, “it’s what you do and not what you say,” that matters. Paying lip service to “educational excellence” and “high standards” is like
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Common Core Standards SBAC testing, the bully principal…and more | Seattle Education
Common Core Standards SBAC testing, the bully principal…and more | Seattle Education: Common Core Standards SBAC testing, the bully principal…and morePublic school is based on the the principle of inclusion, not exclusion. Kids are accepted however they arrive through the front door. Different ethnic backgrounds, economic status, personal triumphs or challenges –everyone is on equal footing. Most
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4LAKids - AALA: ACSA OPPOSES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
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Perdido Street School: Zephyr Teachout: Angry New York Teachers Can Get Get More Formal Political Power By Running For Office
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Judging an Iceberg by the Tip Only: The Cumulative Effects of Opportunities for Students | the becoming radical
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Dropout Nation » Wanted: Black Education Systems
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CURMUDGUCATION: Arizona's Teacher Desert
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Ms. Katie's Ramblings: It's Time to Bring Charters Back Into the Public Fold
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Surprise charter school loan program raises new questions
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YESTERDAY

Latinos criticize lack of representation on school board | Catalyst Chicago
Latinos criticize lack of representation on school board | Catalyst Chicago: Latinos criticize lack of representation on school boardA number of prominent Latinos in Chicago are criticizing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to make an already disproportionately white school board even more ethnically lopsided by removing one of his only two Hispanic appointees.“We are disappointed that in a school dis
by mike simpson / 1d 
30,000 Teachers Walk Out In Protest Of Big Class Sizes | PopularResistance.Org
30,000 Teachers Walk Out In Protest Of Big Class Sizes | PopularResistance.Org: 30,000 Teachers Walk Out In Protest Of Big Class Sizes In WA StateSince late April, Washington state teachers have been striking for reduced class sizes and better funding for classroom programs. (Washington Educators Association / Facebook)Seattle, WA – On Tuesday, May 19, thousands of demonstrators marched through do
by mike simpson / 1d 
Judge Rules Second Version of New York Teachers’ Exam Is Also Racially Biased - NYTimes.com
Judge Rules Second Version of New York Teachers’ Exam Is Also Racially Biased - NYTimes.com: Judge Rules Second Version of New York Teachers’ Exam Is Also Racially BiasedA federal judge on Friday found that an exam for New York teaching candidates was racially discriminatory because it did not measure skills necessary to do the job, the latest step in a court battle over teacher qualifications tha
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Jersey Jazzman: "Partially Ineffective" and "Ineffective" Are NOT the Same Teacher Rating
Jersey Jazzman: "Partially Ineffective" and "Ineffective" Are NOT the Same Teacher Rating: "Partially Ineffective" and "Ineffective" Are NOT the Same Teacher RatingSo the first "report" came out about New Jersey's new teacher evaluation system, aka Operation Hindenburg. And guess who was on the TV talking about it?Thanks to Briana Vannozzi for incl
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District Purchasing of High-Tech Devices: How Teachers Continue to Lose Out | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
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Students tell their stories: I tried cyber school ... I was going to give up school. | Philadelphia Public School Notebook
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Why a simple 30-year-old chart is an ingenious teaching tool today - The Washington Post
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Millions in costly real estate deals threaten Albany charter school foundation - Times Union
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“White Girl” Kati Haycock Takes On Marc Tucker and His Dissing Annual Testing | deutsch29
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CURMUDGUCATION: Hillary's Teacher PAC
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How Kevin Johnson Used Public Money To His Own Personal Ends
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by mike simpson / 1d 

JUN 04

Dumb Arguments About The Common Core Distract From What Matters Most
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by mike simpson / 3d 
The War of Attrition Over Public Schools - Living in Dialogue
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by mike simpson / 3d 
Five things people say about standardized tests and the opt-out movement that aren’t true - The Washington Post
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CURMUDGUCATION: Nevada Abandons Public Education
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by mike simpson / 3d 
Hillary Clinton Works For The Support Of An Old Ally: The Teachers Union - BuzzFeed News
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Thompson: The Truth None of Us Wants to Face This Week In Education
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Does Mayor Kevin Johnson's new downtown-housing plan actually bring new housing to the central city? Sacramento News & Review -
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It’s teachers vs. day care, as the children pay | The Sacramento Bee
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by mike simpson / 3d 
Appealing to Union, Hillary Clinton Calls Teachers 'Scapegoats' - First Draft. Political News, Now. - NYTimes.com
Appealing to Union, Hillary Clinton Calls Teachers 'Scapegoats' - First Draft. Political News, Now. - NYTimes.com: Appealing to Union, Hillary Clinton Calls Teachers ‘Scapegoats’Hillary Rodham Clinton at an event in Hampton, N.H., on May 22.Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York TimesHillary Rodham Clinton made an appeal for an endorsement from theAmerican Federation of Teachers this
by mike simpson / 3d 
Are students better off in charter schools? State says it’s unsure | The CT Mirror
Are students better off in charter schools? State says it’s unsure | The CT Mirror: Are students better off in charter schools? State says it’s unsureAmid the ferocious debate about whether Connecticut students are better off in charter schools, the State Department of Education has released the results of its first-ever research on the subject.It provides little clarity."The results were a m
by mike simpson / 3d 
The ultimate in school choice or school as a commodity? - The Washington Post
The ultimate in school choice or school as a commodity? - The Washington Post: The ultimate in school choice or school as a commodity?tarting next school year, any parent in Nevada can pull a child from the state’s public schools and take tax dollars with them, giving families the option to use public money to pay for private or parochial school or even for home schooling.The new law, which the st
by mike simpson / 3d 
Time to break up the Los Angeles school system | EdSource
Time to break up the Los Angeles school system | EdSource: Time to break up the Los Angeles school systemJun 3, 2015 | By Carl Cohn | No CommentsCarl Cohn467Now that the recent school board elections are over in the Los Angeles Unified School District, there will be the usual calls for a new beginning and getting down to the serious business of charting a bright future for the 600,000 or so deserv
by mike simpson / 3d 
Report: Despite D.C. school reforms, disparities persist in system - The Washington Post
Report: Despite D.C. school reforms, disparities persist in system - The Washington Post: Report: Despite D.C. school reforms, disparities persist in systemThe District’s public schools have made promising improvements after seven years of intensive reforms, but many disparities persist in academic resources and performance between poor and affluent students, according to the National Research Cou
by mike simpson / 3d 
Defies Measurement - what happens when the wrong people make decisions for schools.
shine on productions - Defies Measurement: Defies Measurementa documentaryWatch the film here for free!Plan a screeningWatch the trailerLike us on FacebookBuy a t-shirtDefies Measurement strengthens the discussion about public education by taking a much-needed, fresh, hard look at why it is so important to address the social and emotional needs of every student, and what happens when the wrong peo
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Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates - NYTimes.com
Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates - NYTimes.com: Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill GatesINDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.They described themselves simply as lo
by mike simpson / 3d 







at