John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen? | Crazy Crawfish

John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen? | Crazy Crawfish:

John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen?

Those who follow k-12 education in Louisiana closely know about state supt. John White and his illusionist tricks.  There have been several times over the last few years I expected John to hightail it out of here, only to see him double down on his egregious and dishonest behavior and come out stronger than before each crisis.  Amazing and mystifying, but he is a true magician.

In the last BESE (BESE is the State School Board responsible for hiring and firing the state superintendent) election John White’s out-of-state billionaire supporters (led by education crime syndicate boss and chairman of LABI, Lane Grigsby) poured millions into the race to save his lying ass from getting canned for all the atrocious, dishonest, and antagonistic behavior he’s exhibited over his entire tenure as State Sup and local Sup of the New Orleans Recovery School District.

White even received some national notoriety (and praise) for “standing up” to Governor Bobby Jindal over the issue of Common Core State Standards. While this dispute may have been staged for the benefit of Jindal’s National presidential ambitions from the outside it looked like Jindal was really giving White a hard time.

(Fighting something controversial is a good way to stay in the media – see Donald Trump’s entire campaign – but actually resolving issues has a way of removing that spotlight so I don’t believe Jindal actually wanted to resolve the Common Core issue.)

Jindal is now leaving office in disgrace, unable to become more than a sad footnote in this presidential race, unable to extricate the state from Common Core, leaving a mortgaged state in shambles with a budget held together by rusty screws and tattered, generic Scotch tape, and a gaping multi-billion dollar deficit for years to come for governor elect John Bel Edwards.

Whatever the truth, Jindal looks like Tweedle-dum, and White looks like the John White’s final days or rabbit trick waiting to happen? | Crazy Crawfish:

Hope and the Teacher | The Jose Vilson

Hope and the Teacher | The Jose Vilson:

Hope and the Teacher

My colleague asked me point-blank: “You’re saying you don’t think you’re having an effect on kids?”

I guess I should have been more poignant. I’m also not one for small talk, an affliction I acquired from years of nervous ticks when I spoke in normal situations. I also suffered from an extreme case of “I respect this person’s current work on these issues to not be honest.”

The thing about teaching, writing, and advocating at the same time is that I’m simultaneously aware of the energy it takes to teach my 150 students at 45 minutes a class for an entire day and the legions of self-interested actors who, at any given moment, would turn these very children against me. That’s our current educational discourse, an overlay of the socioeconomic and political realities of a nation at risk of every and anything at all times. Everything is right or wrong and the only way to fix it is to double down or completely change course. Every person is either good or evil. We must choose a side, one for each eye, if we’re granted that at all.

In my positionality, I am hopeful things will change. I am doubtful anything will.

In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog, he says that writers, specifically those who write with history in mind, who only work with a hopeful lens haven’t done much homework, or are willfully ignorant of Hope and the Teacher | The Jose Vilson:

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/16/15

CORPORATE ED REFORM

With A Brooklyn Accent: Exposing Young People to Beauty Is Giving them Hope:

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Transitional Kindergarten Data - Student & School Data Files (Downloadable) (CA Dept of Education)

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The Important Education Issue Leaders Are Still Ignoring

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A Teachable Moment: Frustrated California Online Charter Teachers Educate Shareholders of Controversial K12 Inc

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Bid to Spike Federal Teacher-Preparation Regs Fails - Teacher Beat - Education Week

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All in the Family | EduShyster

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CURMUDGUCATION: Homework and Flipping

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Don't grade us like school districts, charter school sponsors say; state might do it anyway | cleveland.com

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Report finds school segregation not simply a result of housing | POLITICO

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With A Brooklyn Accent: The Hidden Costs of Gentrification and Rising Rents on Educational Opportunity

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Debating Rahm's viability

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Politics In The Classroom: How Much Is Too Much? : NPR Ed : NPR

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Success Academy Network to Shorten Its School Day Next Year - The New York Times

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At the Intersection of Money and Reform Part III: On Cost Functions & the Increased Costs of Higher Outcomes | School Finance 101

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Ohio: Where Theft of Public Money is OK | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: Where Theft of Public Money is OK | Diane Ravitch's blog: Ohio: Where Theft of Public Money is OKBill Phillis, former deputy Commissioner of Education in Ohio, runs the Equity and Adequacy Coalition.Highway robbery is legal in the Ohio charter industryThe charter industry has been largely deregulated from the beginning. The charter promoters and operators have had unrestrained freedom to use

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PSAT score delay spells more bad news for Connecticut SAT mandate - Wait What?

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School Reform, Passion and Mic Drops | Cloaking Inequity

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Guest Blog: Renaissance at Rogers High School - Lily's Blackboard

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How should schools respond to anti-Muslim actions against students? - The Washington Post

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How students reacted when their beloved school librarian was let go - The Washington Post

How students reacted when their beloved school librarian was let go - The Washington Post: How students reacted when their beloved school librarian was let go"Chicao School Librarian Layoff Inspires Outrage—& Support" https://t.co/FchGmEO7pq via @sljournal #SaveOurLibrary pic.twitter.com/8Iug7RVzuU— ChiTeacherSolidarity (@CTSCampaign) December 15, 2015Students at a public school in C

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Affirmative Action exists because the US educational system was built for white kids - Quartz

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Emailed threats to NY, LA highlight worries schools face - Yahoo News

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Politicians spar over education reform at the Capitol | Sacramento News - KCRA Home

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Rolling back school reform in New York City - The Washington Post

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How Charter School Governance in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Measures Up

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Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayers

Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayers | StAugustine.com: Charter schools remain a bad investment for students and taxpayersAn Associated Press study of Department of Education records published last week showed that taxpayers have funded these privately-run, but publicly-funded schools to the tune of $760 million since 2000.Of that, $70 million has been spent on charte

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YESTERDAY

Jersey Jazzman: Dear Reformies: You Got Nothing

Jersey Jazzman: Dear Reformies: You Got Nothing: You Got NothingWe haven't played Spot The Pattern™ in quite a while. Who's up for a round [all emphases mine]?The Washington Post, 12/12/15A nonprofit group has begun a public relations campaign to defend Teach for America against critics of the program that places newly minted college graduates in teaching jobs in some of the country’s most challen

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Cerf finds a “tremendous” job done by his staff in dismal test scores | Bob Braun's Ledger

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The College Board under David Coleman: Another Delay– This Time, PSAT Scores | deutsch29

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School Segregation Persists in Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Maps Suggest - The New York Times

School Segregation Persists in Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Maps Suggest - The New York Times: School Segregation Persists in Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Maps SuggestAt the Margaret Douglas school in Morningside Heights, near Columbia University, the median income in 2014 was $36,000, and the student population was 96 percent black and Hispanic. Credit John Taggart for The New York TimesThe segregati

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Tale of two cities – to close or not to close schools? | EdSource

Tale of two cities – to close or not to close schools? | EdSource: Tale of two cities – to close or not to close schools?What would you do if you were a superintendent of a school district with hundreds of thousands of children – actually any number of children – and received a bomb threat that you weren’t 100 percent sure was a hoax?And the threat came less than 10 days after the worst terrorist

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Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 12/15/15

CORPORATE ED REFORMChilling Words | Save Maine SchoolsChilling Words | Save Maine Schools:Chilling Wordsst spring, before my fourth graders took the Smarter Balanced Assessment, I knew that it would not be a test worth administering.In addition to knowing that it would be long, developmentally inappropriate, and unlikely to inform my instruction in any meaningful way, I also knew that I would be r

by mike simpson / 1d