NYC Educator: Where Is This Man?

NYC Educator: Where Is This Man?:

Where Is This Man?

by NYC Educator

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This is the President I voted for in 2008, speaking for the power of people to organize. This is the President I've missed for four long years, as he failed to find those comfortable shoes and materialize in Wisconsin, as he failed to support, let alone pass, the Employee Free Choice Act, as he failed to stop the ruinous Bush tax cuts.

Now he has another term, and teachers are saying it's time to dump Arne Duncan, who lacks the sensitivity of a number two pencil, who publicly declared that Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans. Sure, if you're a privatizer, or a corporate shill looking to beef up your portfolio on the backs of helpless 

Millions in CA Prop 30 Tax Revenues Will Be Diverted from Higher Ed to Wall Street, Thanks to UC Board of Regents | The Dissenter

Millions in CA Prop 30 Tax Revenues Will Be Diverted from Higher Ed to Wall Street, Thanks to UC Board of Regents | The Dissenter:

Millions in Prop 30 Tax Revenues Will Be Diverted from Higher Ed to Wall Street, Thanks to UC Board of Regents

by Leighton Woodhouse

UC regents have cut programs & hiked tuition for years

Millions of dollars in new tax revenue earmarked for the University of California system as part of the state’s recently passed Proposition 30 will instead be routed to major financial firms, because of bad bets made by a Wall Street-influenced UC Board of Regents.
Over the last decade, tuition and fees for undergraduates in the UC system have tripled, adding enormous debt burdens to UC graduates and pushing lower-income students into the already overburdened state college and community college systems, or out of higher education altogether. Members of the UC Board of Regents, which governs the system and which approved the tuition hikes, have blamed the increases on the bad economy and on politicians.
However, according to a new report written by five doctoral students at UC Berkeley, in the years preceding the 2008 financial collapse, members of the Board of Regents themselves had overseen “a qualitative shift in the financial practices of the University of California” by employing the same kinds of exotic financial instruments 

Analysis Examines L.A. Teacher Characteristics - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Analysis Examines L.A. Teacher Characteristics - Teacher Beat - Education Week:

Analysis Examines L.A. Teacher Characteristics

by Stephen Sawchuk

Los Angeles has an unusually wide spread in the relative effectiveness of its teachers, according to an analysis released today by the Strategic Data Project, an initiative housed at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.
The study looks primarily at math teachers in the district who were teaching in grades 3-8 from the 2004-05 to 2010-11 school year, and uses a growth measure to arrive at the calculations.
Among the findings:
• The difference in performance between top- and bottom-performing elementary math teachers was one-quarter of a standard deviation, or nearly eight months of learning, a figure the report characterizes as larger than in other districts that have been studied.
• Teachers who entered the district through Teach for America or the district's Career Ladder program, which helps paraprofessionals obtain full teaching positions, were slightly better on average than other teachers in 

Engineering School Cultures for Successful Teacher Evaluation — Whole Child Education

Engineering School Cultures for Successful Teacher Evaluation — Whole Child Education:

THE WHOLE CHILD BLOG

Engineering School Cultures for Successful Teacher Evaluation

November 14, 2012 by ASCD Whole Child Bloggers

Post written by Elle Allison, cofounder and president of Wisdom Out in Danville, Calif. Wisdom Out is a leadership and organizational development company that helps people sustain transformational change and bring their best initiatives to deep implementation. Connect with Allison by e-mail at elle@wisdomout.com. This post was originally featured in ASCD Express.

As many states prepare to launch new educator evaluation systems and amidst ongoing controversy about how to make them fair and meaningful, teachers and administrators alike would do well to ask these questions: What is it about the current culture in which we are introducing these new instruments that will imperil their effectiveness and prevent them from helping teachers and students? How can we engineer cultures for effective teacher evaluation?

Historical Assumptions

In a recent performance-improvement coaching workshop held at the Rhode Island Center for School Leadership, administrators and teacher leaders from school districts throughout the state explored these questions. We began by surfacing the tacit assumptions that seem to operate when teachers receive an "unsatisfactory" or "in need of improvement" rating on their evaluations. The candid list that emerged (not the personal views of the participants!) included the following notions:

• Teachers in need of improvement are not good teachers.
• Teachers in need of improvement do not know

Among biggest cities, Philadelphia has most charter students | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Among biggest cities, Philadelphia has most charter students | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Among biggest cities, Philadelphia has most charter students

by David Limm on Nov 14 2012 Posted in Latest news

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With nearly one in four city students in publicly-funded schools attending a charter, Philadelphia is among the top 20 cities in the country for charter market share, according to a report released this week.

Philadelphia, though, is by far the largest city in the country with such a big proportion of students in charters. With more than 200,000 students, the Philadelphia's School District is nearly twice as large as the next biggest district in the top 20, Detroit, which has 113,000 students.

According to the report, compiled by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), a nonprofit advocacy organization, 23 percent of students in Philadelphia, attended charters in 2011-12. That amounts to nearly 47,000 

Several NYC teachers on state’s new Teacher Advisory Council | GothamSchools

Several NYC teachers on state’s new Teacher Advisory Council | GothamSchools:

Several NYC teachers on state’s new Teacher Advisory Council

by Philissa Cramer

Jeff Li, who stepped down at Teach for America to return to the classroom this year, is one of seven city educators on the state's new Teacher Advisory Council.

Among the 23 teachers from across the state that Education Commissioner John King has tapped to give him feedback about how policy is playing out in the classroom, seven work in New York City schools.
The commissioner’s Teacher Advisory Council, announced today, will meet periodically to discuss the policy agenda that the state’s Board of Regents is advancing. That agenda, aimed at helping more students become college ready, includes adopting more challenging standards; overhauling low-performing schools; facilitating data-driven instruction; and improving teacher preparation and evaluation.
“The teachers on the Council will give direct feedback from the frontlines of reform – the classroom,” King said in a statement. “The most important thing we can do as educators is maintain focus on the students, and these extraordinary teachers will help us do just that.”
The teacher council parallels ones that already exist for superintendents, school boards, and other groups, 

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Mayor Daley’s brother not in favor of New Orleans-style school privatization

Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Mayor Daley’s brother not in favor of New Orleans-style school privatization:

Mayor Daley’s brother not in favor of New Orleans-style school privatization

by admin

The latest “our schools suck” report from Advance Illinois would seem to suggest that the testing and privatization policies this group has been successfully promoting in the state legislature for the past 4-5 years are not helping much. But instead, AI CEO Robin Steans wants to double down on failure: “We’re going to have to hit this with a 2-by-4,” Robin told the Tribune.
Reminds me of when Paul Vallas called his student flunking policy “The Hammer.” That didn’t work either.
My friend Jim Broadway put it more kindly than I in today’s Illinois School Policy Update:

“(T)he business community’s factory model of educational reform, driven by high-stakes tests aligned to ever more ‘rigorous’ learning standards and intensified ‘accountability’ on everyone involved – has failed. Educators were not involved in the formulation of this model 15 years ago…. But it became law in Illinois and throughout the U.S…. (T)wo AI Board members – Edgar and State 

Superman has left the house. Even Idaho. « Fred Klonsky

Superman has left the house. Even Idaho. « Fred Klonsky:

Superman has left the house. Even Idaho.

by Fred Klonsky

I received an email from my friend Bill Ayers directed me to an article by David Sirota in Salon.
Sirota continues to report on last Tuesday’s good news.
Phony ed reform got a push back in three states.
Colorado:

In Colorado, the out-of-state, corporate-funded group Stand for Children, which previously made national headlines bragging about its corrupt legislative deal making, backed a campaign to hand the state Legislature to pro-privatization Republicans, specifically by trying to defeat Democratic legislators who have stood on the side of public education. Though the group and its affiliated anti-union, pro-privatization allies have become accustomed to getting their way in this state, 2012 saw them handily defeated, as the targeted Democrats won election, giving their party full control of the statehouse.

Indiana:

There, as the Indianapolis Star reports, Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Bennett became “the darling of the reform movement” by “enthusiastically implement(ing) such major reforms as the nation’s most expansive private 

New York Teacher | Edwize

New York Teacher | Edwize:

New York Teacher

by W.J. Levay

Highlights from the latest issue of New York Teacher:

Answering the call
Thousands of UFT members volunteer at evacuation sites to help victims of Hurricane Sandy 
While Hurricane Sandy was still swirling around the Caribbean, the UFT was already reaching out to members to tell them how they could volunteer when the storm hit New York. And they volunteered — by the thousands. UFT members spent days and nights in 76 hurricane shelters, most in city public schools, helping however they could.
Tough return for members, students
Despite the enormous challenges still facing New Yorkers in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, most teachers and students, many of them storm victims themselves, headed back to school on Monday, Nov. 5 bundled up against the cold in those buildings still without heat.
How to get assistance
Although the storm has subsided, the devastation left in its wake is tremendous. The UFT is marshaling its resources and providing services to our members and their families who have been affected by the storm.
Manhattan district schools protest Moskowitz co-locations
“Hey, Eva, we’re no fools! We won’t let you ruin our schools!” chanted more than 70 teachers from the six schools on the Washington Irving Campus, near Manhattan’s Union Square, as they rallied on the campus steps on Oct. 18 against the possible co-location of a new Success Academy charter school inside their building.
Mayor’s EarlyLearn NYC a travesty, providers say
Parents, children and child care providers have been left in chaos in the wake of the Oct. 1 launch of EarlyLearn NYC, Mayor Bloomberg’s long-anticipated and ambitious overhaul of New York City’s early childhood education services, according to officials at the UFT, which represents 21,000 family child care providers.
UFT: Where’s the curriculum?
A high-level gubernatorial commission on education reform on Oct. 16 got a rapid-fire earful from UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who warned that most teachers still do not have the curricula to prepare students for new state assessments this year that will incorporate challenging Common Core Learning Standards.
UFT: Special ed reform ‘pilot’ had weak results
Students with disabilities in schools that piloted the Department of Education’s new special education reform actually showed less improvement in performance over the last two years than their peers in other schools, a UFT analysis has found.
President’s Perspective: Thank you for staying strong
Teams of UFT members were volunteering in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, including the Rockaways, Coney Island, Staten Island and Gerritsen Beach, having volunteered to spend Election Day bringing relief to their fellow New Yorkers.

Kids, Not Cuts | Mocha Momma

Kids, Not Cuts | Mocha Momma:

Kids, Not Cuts

by MOCHA MOMMA on NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, wants to extend George W. Bush’s break to the 1% of America, but that’s exactly what will increase the wealth gap we see in schools. In January of next year there will $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts to reduce the deficit over 10 years.What do I mean by the wealth gap in schools? Let me explain..

When Weren’t There Budget Cuts to Teachers? Ever Since I Can Remember…

The first year of teaching for me was a tough one. Illinois had just done a massive early-out retirement and jobs were available. I was offered a job at my first job fair after college graduation. At the time, I had 2 children at home and had gotten married and pregnant within that first year while teaching high school sophomores and seniors. I spent the better part of the year wondering what I had gotten myself into. All of my hubris and optimism about teaching went out the door when bureaucratic policies and cuts seemed to bury every effort I strained to carry out. The first time I picked up my paycheck I walked back up the stairs to my office, opened it up, and cried. I tirelessly wrote lesson plans and graded papers and fretted about my evaluation of those efforts for this? It couldn’t be right.

That was 19 years ago and, since then, I began a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and abandoned that for one in educational administration. As a single mother trying to hang on to what little my profession afforded me, it was working out until I lost my 

L.A. school board rejects charter oversight measure - latimes.com

L.A. school board rejects charter oversight measure - latimes.com:

L.A. school board rejects charter oversight measure

November 14, 2012 | 10:57 am

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A majority on the Los Angeles Board of Education wanted no part of a resolution that sought to impose more oversight on charter schools.

The proposal, by school board member Steve Zimmer, was voted down 4-2 Tuesday after a brief discussion.

Charters are independently operated and exempt from some rules that govern traditional schools. L.A. Unified has more charters than any other school system in the nation.

Zimmer’s resolution, introduced in September, originally included a moratorium on new charters that would have lasted while a committee and the district superintendent developed new guidelines for approving and overseeing charters. It also called for new rules on when and how a charter would be allowed on a campus also shared by a traditional school.

Charter advocates responded by flexing their financial and organizational muscle through three rallies at the school board, including one outside Tuesday’s school board meeting involving more than 1,000 participants.

In addition, a political action committee, the California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, paid for a political-style mailer against Zimmer, who is up for reelection in March. It also paid for a radio ad that aired on three stations.

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest; engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory tidbits.

Couldn't Find Your Own Special Charter School Scandal

Just Type the name of your city or charter school in the box below

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

If you don't find yours today

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CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

Be sure to check out two other Great blogs:

-THE BROAD REPORT (as in Eli) -THE PERIMETER PRIMATE

Educación Sexual Integral : vivirlaeducacion

Educación Sexual Integral : vivirlaeducacion:

Educación Sexual Integral

by Maju

Hoy más que nunca se observa en varios países, como una cuestión importante y urgente, incorporar en todos los ámbitos educativos, formales y no formales, la temática sobre la sexualidad.

Muchos educadores, y en especial muchos padres, probablemente se encuentren anonadados, y hasta atemorizados, con la simple idea de tener que hablar de sexo con sus niños pequeños, y se rehúsan a que estos temas sean abordados en el ámbito escolar.

En pos de disminuir las ansiedades, los miedos, y en especial, los tabúes sobre este tema tan complejo, cabe señalar que no se habla exclusivamente del acto sexual cuando se refiere uno a la educación sexual integral.

Entonces, ¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de educación sexual?

Los puntos que se relacionan con ello son tan variados, que deberíamos abordar desde la cuestión de género (respeto e igualdad), la discriminación (en todas sus vertientes), la intimidad y el respeto por las opiniones ajenas, la adopción, la concepción, embarazo y nacimiento, los nuevas formas de organización familiar, la homo y heterosexualidad, los cambios corporales en las distintas etapas de desarrollo psicofísico, los ideales de 

Shift the Paradigm on Family Engagement for Literacy «

Shift the Paradigm on Family Engagement for Literacy «:

Shift the Paradigm on Family Engagement for Literacy

November 14, 2012 by Irene Sege

(From left), Karen Mapp, Theresa Lynn, Carolyn Lyons, Maryellen Coffey, Tanisha Harris, Joan Kelley, Francheska Reveron and Kelly Kulsrud. (Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children)

CAMBRIDGE — Tanisha Harris and Francheska Reveron, two mothers who live in the Robinson Gardens public housing complex in Springfield, were the final speakers at our event yesterday on family engagement and literacy. Their stories reinforced the messages delivered by the panel of other experts who preceded them.

Harris and Reveron are parent ambassadors for Talk/Read/Succeed! – a place-based initiative at two public housing developments in the Western Massachusetts city. They read daily with their children. They attend play groups and enroll their children in summer programs. They talk with their children and enjoy such activities as mapping the neighborhood together. Both women are active in the PTO; Reveron became its president.

Before participating in Talk/Read/Succeed! the women didn’t yet realize the importance of reading aloud to their children. They didn’t yet understand how or why to engage their children in the kind of conversation that builds the 

A Winning Advantage: Cash Contributions for: YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS

contributions:

Cash Contributions for: YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS

Total Raised: $10,928,862.03 Total Spent: $10,801,109.53 (Cash Contributions (Inkind Contributions (Anonymous (Loans (Miscellaneous (Small Contributions $10,768,540.00 $148,169.52 $1.00 $0.00 $9,279.10 $0.00 NOTE: Click on a column header to sort by that column, or click on the  icon to filter your results                    Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on printMore Sharing Services2 Drag a column header and drop it here to group by that column Report Name Filter Date Filter Amount Filter P/G Filter City Filter State Filter Zip Filter Employer Filter Occupation Filter Report GATES BILL 10/4/2012 $2,000,000.00 N KIRKLAND WA 98033 BGC3 LLC FOUNDER Report ALLEN PAUL 10/24/2012 $1,500,000.00 N SEATTLE WA 98104 VULCAN INC. FOUNDER Report WALTON ALICE 10/5/2012 $1,100,000.00 N BENTONVILLE AR 727121860 SELF SELF-EMPLOYED Report GATES BILL 6/19/2012 $800,000.00 N KIRKLAND WA 98033 BGC3 LLC FOUNDER Report WALTON ALICE 7/11/2012 $600,000.00 N BENTONVILLE AR 727121860 SELF-EMPLOYED Report HANAUER NICOLAS J 9/14/2012 $550,000.00 N SEATTLE WA 98101 SECOND AVENUE PARTNERS PARTNER Report BALLMER CONNIE 10/10/2012 $400,000.00 N HUNTS POINT WA 98004 HOMEMAKER Report BEZOS JACKIE 8/28/2012 $250,000.00 N MERCER ISLAND WA 98040 RETIRED Report BEZOS MIKE 8/28/2012 $250,000.00 N MERCER ISLAND WA 98040 RETIRED Report DINNING ANN 10/2/2012 $250,000.00 N NEW YORK NY 10013 DE SHAW & CO. MANAGING DIRECTOR Report HANAUER NICOLAS J 7/11/2012 $250,000.00 N SEATTLE WA 98101 SECOND AVENUE PARTNERS PARTNER Report WOLF MICHAEL 10/2/2012 $250,000.00 N NEW YORK NY 10013 RETIRED Report BROAD ELI 10/10/2012 $200,000.00 N LOS ANGELES CA 90024 THE BROAD FOUNDATIONS FOUNDER Report GATES BILL 6/7/2012 $200,000.00 N KIRKLAND WA 98033 BGC3 LLC FOUNDER Report HANAUER NICOLAS J 6/28/2012 $175,000.00 N SEATTLE WA 98101 SECOND AVENUE PARTNERS PARTNER