Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Martinez picks Florida reformer to be education secretary | NMPolitics.net – Get the real story

Martinez picks Florida reformer to be education secretary

By Heath Haussamen • 12/21/10, 3:34 pm •

Hanna Skandera

Gov.-elect Susana Martinez has nominated a woman who implemented education reforms in Florida to be New Mexico’s public education secretary.

Hanna Skandera “served as the deputy commissioner of education under (Florida) Governor Jeb Bush, where she promoted and implemented middle and high school reforms that instituted greater accountability, incentives for high performance and the end of social promotion,” a news release from Martinez’s transition team states.

“As a result of the education reforms put in place in Florida, reading scores improved dramatically across ethnic groups, with Hispanic students outperforming all students in 31 other states,” the release states.

Skandera has also served as a senior policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Education and undersecretary for education for the State of California.

“Hanna is a proven reformer who has successfully implemented education innovations and

Rep. Fattah Cites Unequal Educational Opportunity as National Defense Threat -- WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

Rep. Fattah Cites Unequal Educational Opportunity as National Defense Threat

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.), preparing legislation designed to compel equal access to educational opportunity across school districts, today pointed to a significant new report that documents the little-understood impact of educational disparities on military recruiting.

The Education Trust's report released today, "Shut Out of the Military: Today's High School Education Doesn't Mean You're Ready for Today's Army," cites compelling evidence of the effect of inequitable educational opportunity on the ability of Americans to serve in the military.

The report finds that almost one-quarter (23 percent) of recent high school graduates fail the enlistment entrance exam for the armed services. That number is considerably higher for African Americans – 39 percent of whom do not reach the qualifying minimum score, versus 16 percent of White applicants and 29 percent of Hispanics.

The Education Trust report comes as Fattah, the Congressional champion for leveling the playing field between rich and poor

Is a Good Teacher Worth $400,000? | The Atlantic Wire

Is a Good Teacher Worth $400,000?

by Uri Friedman

1 person liked this

Over the course of a school year, a good teacher produces $400,000 more in future earnings for a class of 20 students than an average teacher. What's more, replacing the worst-performing five to eight percent of teachers with average teachers could catapult the U.S. to near the top of international math and science rankings, padding GDP by $100 trillion and generating returns that dwarf "the discussions of U.S. economic stimulus packages related to the 2008 recession ($1 trillion)."

These are the findings of a National Bureau of Economic Research study by Stanford's Eric Hanushek, which investigates the interplay between teacher effectiveness and the economic impact of higher student achievement, specifically in terms of test scores.

Hanushek notes that one challenge his paper doesn't tackle is how to link pay to effectiveness; instead, the research "simply suggests that the economically appropriate rewards for particularly effective teachers in the context of a performance pay plan could be very large."

How are commentators receiving the findings?

There Are Two Ways to Interpret This Data, argues Adam Ozimek at Modeled Behavior. Studies like this show that teachers are valuable and that we should raise wages to attract better talent. But:

If good teachers are very valuable, then bad teachers are very costly. This means we should be willing to pay more for good teachers, but it also increases the benefit of getting rid of bad teachers and ensuring we have a system that can do that. After all,

Looking back: What Joel Klein said about leaving last year | GothamSchools

Looking back: What Joel Klein said about leaving last year

by Anna Phillips

screen-shot-2010-12-21-at-44410-pm Here’s a reminder of exactly how much can change in a year.

Though Chancellor Joel Klein now says that he told Mayor Bloomberg he would stay through the mayor’s second term and leave in the third, that wasn’t what the public heard at the time.

Nearly a year ago, Klein sat down for an interview with NY1 education reporter Lindsey Christ to talk about what Bloomberg’s third term would bring for the city’s schools. Here’s a snippet of the dialogue:

Christ: Are you planning on staying on for the next four years as chancellor? There’ve been a lot of

Opinion: A superintendent responds to the governor - NorthJersey.com

Opinion: A superintendent responds to the governor

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

BY BERNARD JOSEFSBERG

THE RECORD

Bernard Josefsberg will retire in June 2011 as superintendent of Leonia public schools.

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KUDOS to our governor for riding the zeitgeist and making fear, anger and loathing the wind beneath his wings. As a result of his formidable skills, is anyone absolutely certain that greed does not motivate everyone who seeks or leaves the position of public schools superintendent?

Even I wonder whether my self-professed commitment to the mission of public education was all sham all of the 38 years that I’ve made it my living.

Too many are unemployed, underpaid, underappreciated or otherwise underwater. Recognizing the opening these plights present, our governor draws a direct line from their taxes to the salaries, pensions and benefits of public employees who should not only “share the pain” but who might be proffered as reasons for why the

Opinion: On our shrinking police and superintendent numbers

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

By JAMES AHEARN
RECORD COLUMNIST

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NEWARK has laid off 167 cops, 13 percent of the city’s force, including nearly every officer hired since 2006.

Facing an $83 million budget gap, Mayor Cory Booker says layoffs are unavoidable. This batch is the largest since 1978, when Kenneth Gibson, then mayor, dismissed 200 officers, resulting in a spike in crime.

There will be no such spike this time, vows Police Director Garry McCarthy. He has reorganized the department’s command structure to keep crime in check. Well, we will see.

Camden, struggling with the second-highest violent-crime rate in the country, is taking even more drastic action to hold down costs. It is preparing to lay off nearly

Washington Post's Kaplan Higher Education Sued for Racial Discrimination - Bloomberg

Washington Post's Kaplan Higher Education Sued for Racial Discrimination

By Tiffany Kary - Dec 21, 2010 12:36 PM PT

Washington Post Co.’s Kaplan Higher Education division was sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over claims the company rejected job applicants based on credit history, a decision which discriminated by race.

The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in Cleveland, alleges that Kaplan’s hiring practices have violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 since at least 2008. The lawsuit seeks lost wages and benefits, and offers of employment for people who weren’t hired.

“This practice has an unlawful discriminatory impact because of race and is neither job-related nor justified by business necessity,” the EEOC said in a statement.

Kaplan Higher Education enrolls 110,000 students, with about 70,000 attending class online, and has 75 campuses nationwide. The Chicago-based school derived 87 percent of its revenue

Nearly a Third of Working Families Considered 'Low-Income' | The Atlantic Wire

Nearly a Third of Working Families Considered 'Low-Income'

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By ALEX EICHLER | December 21, 2010 11:06am

According to a report released this week, nearly a third of American working families are now considered low-income, earning less than twice the poverty threshold. The report [PDF], released by the Working Poor Families Project, shows that 30.1 percent of working families--about 45 million people, including 22 million children--"are struggling to meet basic needs." The report also notes that the percentage of low-income working families "with at least one minority parent" is nearly twice as high as the percentage of low-income white working families. These findings are reminiscent of last month's report that 15 percent of households struggle to put food on the table. Here's how bloggers and journalists are

The Answer Sheet - A sobering look at Florida school reform

A sobering look at Florida school reform

Florida is increasingly being looked to as a national model of education reform. The state began to overhaul its public education system after Jeb Bush became governor in 1999, and it has been a leader in reforms centered around standardized tests and the expansion of charter schools and virtual education. To separate fact from fiction about Florida’s reforms, I had an e-mail conversation with Professor Sherman Dorn of the University of South Florida, who has spent years researching and writing about public education in the Sunshine State. He maintains a blog about public education at www.shermandorn.com. Please describe the package of reforms launched when Jeb Bush became governor and the philosophy behind them. When Jeb Bush was governor, there were changes in education policy in the state that were initiated by him and his allies in the legislature and also some changes he either did not start or actively opposed.

John Lennon Happy Xmas (War is Over)

The Death of the CIA “Honeypot” Theory of the Julian Assange Rape Allegations « Student Activism

The Death of the CIA “Honeypot” Theory of the Julian Assange Rape Allegations

by Angus Johnston

The “honeypot” explanation for the rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange — the theory that his accusers had been CIA plants, recruited for the purpose of seducing him and crying rape — was always a weird one.

The whole thing had a bit of an Ian Fleming vibe, for starters. The one accuser’s supposed links to the CIA turned out to be embarrassingly tenuous. And then there was the problem of the scripting — if these women had been sent to lie, why wouldn’t they have been sent with a simpler, cleaner lie? Why not claim rape that would be immediately understood by all as rapes, rather than assaults that would themselves become the subject of

Promise Academy teaching staffs overwhelmingly new, inexperienced | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Promise Academy teaching staffs overwhelmingly new, inexperienced

by Benjamin Herold

The School District of Philadelphia has met its goal of radically overhauling the teaching staffs at six newRenaissance Promise Academies.

According to District data obtained by the Notebook, almost 75 percent of the 280 teachers working in Promise Academies are new to their schools. Forty-three percent are in their first year teaching in the District. Although unable to provide exact data, District officials said the majority of those are in their first teaching position anywhere.

Public Education’s Silver Bullet - Reason Magazine

Public Education’s Silver Bullet

School reformer Terry Moe argues that technology will finally accomplish what vouchers never could.

Shikha Dalmia from the January 2011 issue

With the public-school documentary tearjerker Waiting for Superman stunning audiences from coast to coast, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty losing his re-election bid largely because of his support for education reform, and NBC devoting an entire week of prime-time coverage to the nation’s ongoing K–12 crisis, many Americans are newly focused on the negative impact teachers unions are having on student performance. Terry M. Moe has been considering the problem for more than two decades now.

Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford University, has been one the most intrepid critics of the unions ever since his first book, Politics, Markets, and American Schools, came out in 1990. Co-authored with John Chubb, the book offered a devastating account of how unions thwart reform and trap children in a dysfunctional education system. Chubb and Moe made an emphatic early plea for school vouchers and parental choice. “We believe existing institutions cannot solve the problem because they are the problem,” they wrote.

The book “rocked the education world,” as the Chicago Tribune put it in 1990. The conservative

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