State may delay quick return to local control of Newark’s schools | Bob Braun's Ledger

State may delay quick return to local control of Newark’s schools | Bob Braun's Ledger:
State may delay quick return to local control of Newark’s schools

NESB members (from left) Mary Bennett, Grace Sergio, Donald Katz, Rev. Perry Simmons, Ross Danis, Christopher Cerf and Jose Leonardo. Absent were Al Koeppe and Rochelle Hendricks.

The head of a committee established to find a “road map” to return local control to Newark’s public schools revealed Wednesday night that the end of state operation of New Jersey’s largest school district may be delayed further into the future than originally hoped. Mary Bennett also warned an audience of some 100 city residents that the district that is returned to a locally elected school board, it “will not look very much like” the school system seized by the state in 1995.

Bennett, one of nine members of the so-called “Newark Educational Success Board,” (NESB) said the panel had been told by state education officials that the current school board will have to “demonstrate over time that (it) can govern itself.”  She said the state officials alone would determine how long that “over time” would last.

Bennett, the former principal of Malcolm X Shabazz High School,  was one of four Newark residents appointed to the panel by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. The other five were appointed by Gov. Chris Christie. She said the judgment of those state officials might be overturned by state Education Commissioner David Hespe.

“We were told the education commissioner had great latitude in determining when State may delay quick return to local control of Newark’s schools | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Hillsborough County Schools Loses Both Gates Money and Financial Reserves | deutsch29

Hillsborough County Schools Loses Both Gates Money and Financial Reserves | deutsch29:

Hillsborough County Schools Loses Both Gates Money and Financial Reserves

In November 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Hillsborough County (Florida) Public Schools a $100 million grant as part of its “Empowering Effective Teachers” effort:

Hillsborough County Public Schools

Date: November 2009 
Purpose: to support Hillsborough County as part of a cohort of Intensive Partnership Sites to improve teacher effectiveness to transform outcomes for low-income, minority students 
Amount: $100,000,000 
Term: 80 
Topic: College-Ready 
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA 
Program: United States 
Grantee Location: Tampa, Florida 
Grantee Website: http://www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/

The grant was to be paid in 80 installments; if such installments were monthly, then the grant would be paid over roughly seven years, with the final payment made at the end of the 2015-16 school year.

Of course, Gates had some ideas about how this “teacher effectiveness” business should work. The report linked above has as its second sentence, “A teacher’s effectiveness has more impact on student learning than any other factor under the control of school systems, including class size, school size, and the quality of after-school programs.” When pro-corporate-reform organizations toss around such statements, they never seem to follow it with the fact that factors external to the classroom hold far more sway that does the teacher. (In analyzing the proportion of teacher influence captured via value-added modeling– VAM– the American Statistical Association notes that teacher influence accounts for between 1 and 14 percent of variance in student test scores. Thus, between 86 and 99 percent of a student’s test score is out of the teacher’s control.)

Nevertheless, ignoring that the teacher controls so little of student outcomes in the form of market-driven-reform-loving test scores, in its efforts to try to purchase higher student test scores, the Gates Foundation offered ten school districts nationwide the multi-million-dollar-funded opportunity to prove that teachers could indeed be cajoled into producing better “student achievement” (i.e., ever-higher test scores) when such teachers were measured by their students’ test scores and offered more money for “raising” said scores.

As a 2009 winner of an Empowering Effective Teachers grant, Hillsborough was thrilled (“We’ll be a national model!”). A December 21, 2015 archive of Hillsborough schools’ “Empowering Teachers” webpage includes a number of enthusiastic Hillsborough County Schools Loses Both Gates Money and Financial Reserves | deutsch29:

Friends, foes of Vergara ruling file briefs to appeals court | EdSource

Friends, foes of Vergara ruling file briefs to appeals court | EdSource:

Friends, foes of Vergara ruling file briefs to appeals court

Two former Republican governors joined an impressive array of law professors, education scholars, teachers of the year, civil rights advocates and state and civic leaders submitting briefs on both sides of the appeal of the Vergara lawsuit.

Last week was the deadline for experts supporting or opposing the lawsuit to submit friend of the court briefs, called amicus curiae, to the judges of the Second District of the California Court of Appeal. The court will review the landmark ruling of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu, who struck down five state teacher protection statutes affecting tenure and the processes for teacher dismissal and layoffs based on seniority.

Both sides are hoping there will be a ruling sometime next year, although the court of appeal has not yet set a date for oral arguments for the case, and there is no statutory deadline for an appeals court to make a ruling. Some cases take years before Friends, foes of Vergara ruling file briefs to appeals court | EdSource:

Why Integration In New York Won't Work | The Jose Vilson

Why Integration In New York Won't Work | The Jose Vilson:

Why Integration In New York Won’t Work

The New York Times has stepped up its race and class conversations in education, highlighted by this article from NYT’s Kate Taylor on the proposed rezoning of a school district in Brooklyn. While it makes sense to de-zone our schools in an effort to temper down the flurry of studies showing NYC as one of the most segregated school districts in the country, the resistance to integration has come from both white parents for the typical reasons and black parents for atypical reasons. Typically, the resistance against integration comes from a vocal set of white parents who don’t want their children matriculating with kids they view as uncouth or less intelligent. A faux-integration often takes place when a school creates a specialized or magnet program on the penthouse floor, not ironically letting the cream rise to the top.

This time, however, I’m curious about the black parents’ responses:

“We fought hard to build this school, and we’re not just going to let people come from outside when 

Why Integration In New York Won't Work | The Jose Vilson: 

Some of the struggles in public education in September 2015 | Dudley aka Origin

September 2015 | Dudley aka Origin:

Some of the struggles in public education in September 2015

•  

about

This track was made to document some of the struggles in public education in September 2015.

lyrics

Kicking off the New year, standing up with no fear,
reformers got It wrong and to us it's so clear,
All types of battles for our schools across the nation,
Communities outraged at the situation,

In many different ways we stand up, can't stay quiet,
shout out to the dedication being shown in Dyett,
Almost a month later and there's still no resolution,
It's time they understand that closing school is no solution,

It's so bad in Seattle that the teachers have to strike,
with the parents on their side, all can see it's time to fight,
In New York they tell their Regents to stop the insanity,
While somehwere Jesse Turner's asking where is the humanity?


And then a telethon, Thinkitup give a donation,
But that supplemental money can not fix the devastation,
That's been done by harmful policies and years of deprivation,
In a place that shouldn't happen, public education,

credits

released 23 September 2015
Written by: Dudley aka Origin
Production by: The Passion Hifi

September 2015 | Dudley aka Origin:

CURMUDGUCATION: Gates Plan Crashes, Burns School District

CURMUDGUCATION: Gates Plan Crashes, Burns School District:

Gates Plan Crashes, Burns School District

Back in 2012, "teacherpreneur" Ryan Kinser wrote on the Gates Foundation blog, Impatient Optimists, to sing the praises of the Gates partnership with Hillsborough County schools in a program called Empowering Effective Teachers.

Back in 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Hillsborough County, Florida, school system a $100 million grant to revamp teacher evaluation. The Empowering Effective Teachers Initiative (EET) resulted in a massive overhaul of how we view teaching and learning in the nation’s eighth largest district. 

Sure-- the Gates had made yet another commitment to completely changing the whole teaching profession, because, hey-- they're rich and they think they know what needs to be done.

In 2012, Kinser talked about three big lessons from the program.

1) View teachers as the solution, not the problem. That lesson must have come later, because part of the original plan was to fire the bottom 5% of the teaching force every year (there's that magic 5% again).

2) Teachers and  evaluators must build trust. The plan cycled teachers out of the classroom for stints as evaluators, because, reasons. Apparently, that was not always a big team-building exercise.

3) Use multiple measures that are transparent and authentic. Yeah, the fact that this was a CURMUDGUCATION: Gates Plan Crashes, Burns School District:

The Education Reform Oligarchy & Stiff Accountability - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice

The Education Reform Oligarchy & Stiff Accountability - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice:

The Education Reform Oligarchy & Stiff Accountability

Who convinced a nation that we should put “stiff accountability” in place without first ensuring that all schools and children had the necessary resources to achieve the excellence in education we demand of them? It was “them,” the rulers; not we, the People.

The education reform oligarchy marketed “accountability,” tied their sales pitch to freedom of choice, used statistics to the point of outright trickery, and suppressed the truth.

They set a game plan and methodically stuck to it.

They shifted our focus from what was set by the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) — better educating teachers and counselors, providing sufficient instructional materials, ensuring students are supported, and engaging parents and the community —to— stiff accountability for student outcomes as judged by standardized test scores. And they took aim at teachers…from the start.

Hired to do public opinion polling by the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy under the direction of Marc Tucker, Mr. Lou Harris explained his findings at the 1986National Governor’s Association (NGA) meeting.

“…people are convinced the heart of the matter lies in what is done about teachers.…

Of course, this means, in turn, new ground rules for teachers…such as, paying teachers by a new bottom line, …and finally, finally, at last, paying teachers competitive salaries on a level, for example, with accountants.

But then with these upside inducements must also go stiff, stiff accountability, such as annual reporting of school-wide student 

The Education Reform Oligarchy & Stiff Accountability - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice:

Report: Economy improves, but not for California's poor kids | 89.3 KPCC

Report: Economy improves, but not for California's poor kids | 89.3 KPCC:

Report: Economy improves, but not for California's poor kids

A new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that despite better job numbers and consumer spending nationwide, the lot of poor children has not improved. 

The findings are based on data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, a comprehensive population snapshot used to understand demographic changes between census years.

The numbers are stark: One in five children live in poverty, according to the report, and it’s most harshly felt by children of color. Black (38 percent), Latino (32 percent) and Native American (36 percent) children have about a one in three chance of being poor. For white and Asian kids, it's 13 percent. 

In 24 states, the lot of poor children did improve slightly between 2013 and 2014, but in California, progress has been stagnant.

About 900,000 children, 10 percent of the state’s children, remain classified as living in "extreme poverty." This classification is defined as a family of two adults and two children with household earnings of no more than $11,812.

There was some good news: for the youngest age group of Californians, the numbers did improve slightly. The data show that the portion of children under 5 in California living in poverty dropped from 25 percent to 23 percent. That's 45,000 children who moved just above the official poverty line. 

The states that did the best job of lifting children out of poverty with the largest declines in child poverty were Mississippi, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Arkansas and Montana. In the other direction, Alaska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Hawaii, Vermont and Minnesota all had more children fall into poverty in 2014.  Report: Economy improves, but not for California's poor kids | 89.3 KPCC:

4LAKids - Cortines says (+ the data proves): “OUR LAUSD MAGNET SCHOOLS OUT-PERFORMED CHARTER SCHOOLS AT ALL GRADE LEVELS”

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Cortines says (+ the data proves): “OUR LAUSD MAGNET SCHOOLS OUT-PERFORMED CHARTER SCHOOLS AT ALL GRADE LEVELS”:

Cortines says (+ the data proves): “OUR LAUSD MAGNET SCHOOLS OUT-PERFORMED CHARTER SCHOOLS AT ALL GRADE LEVELS”

from the report:

“Of the 192 LAUSD magnet schools and centers, 37 are for gifted or highly gifted students. However when overall scores are disaggregated by gifted or highly gifted magnets, students at magnets still out-performed the charter and state of California average, when all grade levels are combined.”

“Economically disadvantaged students scored lower than non-economically disadvantaged students in charter and magnet schools, similar to LAUSD and statewide. In charter schools, economically disadvantaged students scored higher than LAUSD at all grade levels. At magnet schools, economically disadvantaged students scored higher than the LAUSD average and charter schools at every grade level.”

“Among ethnicity groups in charter schools and magnets, Asian and white students had the highest percentages meeting or exceeding standards compared to African-American and Latino students. African-American students in charters scored lower than LAUSD in grades 6, 7, and 8. For grade 6, 12% of African-American students met or exceeded standards at charter versus 15% at LAUSD. In grade 7, 12% met or exceeded standards at charters versus 14% in LAUSD. In grade 8, 9% in charters met or exceeded standards compared to 14% in LAUSD.

“All other ethnic groups in magnets scored higher than charter schools and overall LAUSD scores with the exception of grade 3 where 100% of Asian students in charters met or exceeded standards.”

“For students with disabilities, magnet schools and centers out-performed charters and the LAUSD average. An equal percentage of students met or exceeded standards in grades 6 and 11 among charters and LAUSD.”

_____________________

View the report here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/282531634/SBA-Informative-LAUSD-Charters-Magnets
View the test score data here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/282531795/Attach-a-SBAC-LAUSD-Charters-Magnets

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Cortines says (+ the data proves): “OUR LAUSD MAGNET SCHOOLS OUT-PERFORMED CHARTER SCHOOLS AT ALL GRADE LEVELS”:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/23/15

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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 9/22/15

CORPORATE ED REFORMFeds Admit U.S. Education Department ‘Forced’ States To Accept Common Core From Its Start - BreitbartFeds Admit U.S. Education Department ‘Forced’ States To Accept Common Core From Its Start - Breitbart: FEDS ADMIT U.S. EDUCATION DEPARTMENT ‘FORCED’ STATES TO ACCEPT COMMON CORE FROM ITS STARTIn a remarkable admission, the former director of the Race to the Top (RttT) competitive

by mike simpson / 1d