The Problems with the Common Core Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública

Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública:

The Problems with the Common Core

By Stan Karp 

This is a revised version of a talk on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) delivered in Portland, Oregon, Sept. 20, 2013. The CCSS have been adopted by 46 states and are currently being implemented in school districts throughout the United States.

MICHAEL DUFFY

The trouble with the Common Core is not primarily what is in these standards or what's been left out, although that's certainly at issue. The bigger problem is the role the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are playing in the larger dynamics of current school reform and education politics.

Today everything about the Common Core, even the brand name—the Common Core State Standards—is contested because these standards were created as an instrument of contested policy. They have become part of a larger political project to remake public education in ways that go well beyond slogans about making sure every student graduates “college and career ready,” however that may be defined this year. We're talking about implementing new national standards and tests for every school and district in the country in the wake of dramatic changes in the national and state context for education reform. These changes include:

• A 10-year experiment in the use of federally 

empathyeducates – Newark Still Not Making Progress Serving Children With Disabilities

empathyeducates – Newark Still Not Making Progress Serving Children With Disabilities:

• 

Newark Still Not Making Progress Serving Children With Disabilities

By | Originally Published at Education Justice. January 14, 2014

Nearly two years since the Newark Public Schools (NPS) agreed to a court-ordered Settlement to improve the delivery of special education services, the latest compliance report filed by NPS shows little progress in meeting deadlines for serving the district’s students with disabilities.

NPS’s July 2013 compliance report shows that only 32% of district students are receiving initial special education services in a timely manner. This represents a decline from the 40% compliance rate in February 2013, reversing recent progress. NPS is now back at the July 2012 starting line for compliance under the Settlement, a serious setback for students with disabilities in the State-operated district.

The Settlement was entered in M.A. v. Newark Public Schools, a class action lawsuit brought by Education Law Center (ELC), along with co-counsel Gibbons P.C. and Seton Hall Law School Center for Social Justice, on behalf of Newark students with disabilities. The Settlement was approved by the Federal District Court on January 27, 2012, and the Court retains jurisdiction to enforce the Settlement.

The Settlement mandates that students with disabilities receive special education services in a timely manner and obtain “compensatory education” for services they missed in the past. In addition, the Settlement requires NPS to put in place a comprehensive special education database, provide staff training, and regularly report on compliance activities. The Settlement also includes guidelines for corrective action if warranted, 

Leadership lessons from “Let it go”: not just a Disney song! | Connected Principals

Leadership lessons from “Let it go”: not just a Disney song! | Connected Principals:

Leadership lessons from “Let it go”: not just a Disney song!

by Amber Teamann • January 17, 2014 • 0 Comments

If you haven’t seen the movie “Frozen” yet, I highly recommend it. While I did see it with my girls originally, I absolutely saw it again with a grown up friend…it’s that good! One of the main characters is Elsa, who is voiced by Idina Menzel. She has an icy curse and at a climatic point in the movie, comes to terms with her powers and sings “Let it Go“. Several of the lyrics jumped out at me as “leadership lessons”…what do you think?

“A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I’m the Queen”

Being in a leadership position can feel lonely, like you’re on an “Admin Island” sometimes. This is why a PLN is so important to have. There should be people that you can share, grow, and learn from. Networking in any form is important, whether it be within your building or across the world. The smartest person in the room, IS the room, remember? That and any good leadership course will remind you that many voices can make good choices, that’s where the whole site based decision-making committee comes in.

“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see, Be the good girl you always have to be, Conceal don’t feel, don’t let them know, 

Why we march | Parents United for Public Education

Why we march | Parents United for Public Education:

Why we march

Posted on January 16, 2014 by HELENGYMLeave a comment

Tomorrow, Governor Tom Corbett will make his first ever visit into a Philadelphia public school. He’s coming to Central High on Friday to give achievement awards to Central, Masterman and Carver High Schools – all three of which have seen their budgets decimated since Corbett’s taken office. Pennsylvania Education Secretary Caroline Dumaresq will accompany Corbett in a photo-op sure to rival the alternate reality of any science fiction fantasy.

We assume that Governor Corbett will deliver a message of personal responsibility and accountability, a message where students can and should achieve no matter what the circumstances. And that’s a message to be heard – except when the person who should be held accountable and responsible is the deliverer of that speech himself.

Under Governor Corbett, consider what’s happened to these three elite Philadelphia schools:

(Chart: Parents United for Public Education)

• Masterman has lost 30% of its staff and has seen its extracurricular budget dwindle to a fraction of what it was before Gov. Corbett took office. As a result, programs like the school’s national championship chess team run on pure volunteers and almost no funding.
• Central High School went from eight counselors down to two, resulting in a two week wait to see a counselor and counselors unable to turn in letters of recommendation. The loss of more than $1.4 million from the school based budget alone means that Central educates its top notch students on just $5,177 per child, the lowest ratio in the entire School District.
• Carver, meanwhile has retained less than 10% of its pre-Corbett books and supply budget. Today it 

1-16-14 Seattle Schools Community Forum

Seattle Schools Community Forum:

Really? The Legislature isn't going to pay up on K-12 funding?

Publicola is reporting that some legislators - notably Senator Rodney Tom - aren't really interested in putting more money into our K-12 public education system.  Apparently, even with all the mandates (including Common Core),our schools have enough money.I keep asking - over and over - how Senator Tom would spend the money for better outcomes.  What are districts spending the money on that he thi

by Melissa Westbrook / 18min 

Seattle Ed Meetup Tomorrow: Student Data Privacy

From Seattle Education blog via writer Dora Taylor:Our first Meetup was a success with our guest, the newly elected School Board Director Sue Peters. We were also fortunate to have with us at the Meetup two previous board members Amy Hagopian and Sally Soriano. It was a great discussion and we learned more about the history of our district and how the school board works along with Sue’s priorities

by Melissa Westbrook / 3min

1-15-14 Seattle Schools Community Forum

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Jam-packed exciting C & I meetingThe C & I meeting on Monday began with a change to the agenda. An update on Advanced Learning was added as an eighth discussion item.Yearbook Contract. I learned a lot. The staff brought forward the news that they will recommend a one-year extension of the contract with the yearbook publisher at about $400,000 from the ASB b

by mike simpson / 11min 

1-16-14 With A Brooklyn Accent Go BATs

With A Brooklyn Accent:

Why the Term "School Reform" Has Lost Its Luster

The term "School Reformer" was once honorable or hopeful. No more. Now, the associations with those two words are so profoundly negative that most people, other than ambitious politicians, can no longer use them without choking. To me "School Reform" now is fatally undermined by policies that lead to child and teacher abuse on the one hand, and profiteering and corruption on th

by Mark Naison / 1h 

1-11-14 With A Brooklyn Accent Go BATs All Week

With A Brooklyn Accent:With A Brooklyn Accent Go BATs All WeekNotes on the Testing Catastrophe in New York StatePolicies Which Create Massive Stress in New York Schools(Notes for a Talk to Southampton Democratic Club)A.P.P.R- requiring that all teachers in the state must be evaluated with 40 percent of their evaluation coming from student test scores.Requiring that teachers rated “low performing”

by mike simpson / 10h 

Take This Test (Please) | Taking Note

Take This Test (Please) | Taking Note:

Take This Test (Please)

by JOHN MERROW on 16. JAN, 2014 in 2014 BLOGS

These five test questions may explain why American students score lower than their counterparts in most other advanced nations.  The first is a sample problem offered by the University of Wisconsin/Oshkosh [1] to high school math teachers. It was designed with the stated goal of ‘Closing the Math Achievement Gap’:

Jack shot a deer that weighted (sic) 321 pounds. Tom shot a deer that weighed 289 pounds.   How much more did Jack’s deer weigh then (sic) Tom’s deer?

Basic subtraction in high school?  The second comes from TeacherVision, part of Pearson, the giant testing company [2] :

Linda is paddling upstream in a canoe. She can travel 2 miles upstream in 45 minutes. After this strenuous exercise she must rest for 15 minutes. While she is resting, the canoe floats downstream ½ mile. How long will it take Linda to travel upstream in this manner?

While the second problem does not contain language errors, its premise is questionable.  Will some students be distracted by Linda’s cluelessness?  Won’t they ask themselves how long it will take her to figure out that she should grab hold of a branch while she’s resting in order to keep from floating back down the river?  What’s the not-so-subtle subtext? That girls don’t belong in canoes?  That girls are dumb?

And I found this on a high school math test in Oregon:

There are 6 snakes in a certain valley.  The population doubles every year. In how many 

NYC Educator: How About That Differentiated Instruction?

NYC Educator: How About That Differentiated Instruction?:

How About That Differentiated Instruction?

That's always a good question to ask when the principal or some stray AP is walking by. They may smile knowingly, laugh out loud, or simply ignore you. After all, who knows what goes on in the minds of administrators. But they never jump in and comment. That's because no one is really sure what the hell differentiated instruction is.

I've had teachers tell me their supervisors were demanding multiple lesson plans. That's idiotic. It's also a violation of the UFT Contract, article 8E. Anyone who thinks you need 15 lesson plans to reach a group of kids is a troglodyte. But I digress.

Any intelligent person addresses different people differently. You can joke with some people, but others don't like it. Still others don't even understand it. You might talk to your priest in church on Sunday morning differently than you speak to your friend in a bar on Saturday night. In fact, as you know people, you might adjust your tone and vocabulary for each one.

I'd certainly hope you do the same for your students. I just finished reading a bunch of essays my students wrote, and I really differentiate in the comments I make. I was very sad to hear that a girl in one of my classes, one of my best students, is unhappy and has no confidence in her English. She appears enthusiastic and amused, but what do I know? Two kids in my morning class who are eager and irrepressible, as far as I can see, told me they were bored out of their gourds.

I can relate to that. Actually, that's how I felt through most of high school. I read incessantly in high school, but my teachers asked me to read almost nothing of interest. A ninth grade social studies teacher had us read The Good Earth, which we found amazing. We had never heard of 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The view from the 'bottom of the academic barrel'

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The view from the 'bottom of the academic barrel':

The view from the 'bottom of the academic barrel'

Fred Klonsky's view of our Ed Sec.

Here's how things are looking from down here at the bottom of the academic barrel.

For one thing, there seems to be lots of energy and activity on the organizational front. The Network For Public Education is holding a national meeting in Austin, March 1-2. CTU Pres.Karen Lewis and Supt. John Kuhn, (Perrin-Whitt Independent School District in Texas) are the keynoters. It's probably worth the trip just to hear these two powerhouse speakers. The inclusion of AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten as a speaker has caused a stir. But I'm happy to see her there. I just got done having a scuffle with her on Twitter about the union's past wavering on the issue of teacher evaluation and hope dialogue continues.

I'm wondering about the purpose of holding another national conference and forming yet another national organization. I'm also wondering about who and what issues are going to be left in and who is left out of the process and how to keep the whole thing from blowing up in sectarian warfare?

But NPE staffer Anthony Cody tells me that NPE founder and leader, Diane Ravitchwants to build an alternative to corporate-reform groups like Stand For Children and others who have been using big corporate and foundation dollars to back anti-union, pro-

Operators of Failed WI Voucher School Move to Florida, Open Special Needs Voucher School | Larry Miller's Blog: Educate All Students!

Operators of Failed WI Voucher School Move to Florida, Open Special Needs Voucher School | Larry Miller's Blog: Educate All Students!:

Operators of Failed WI Voucher School Move to Florida, Open Special Needs Voucher School

Filed under: Vouchers — millerlf @ 2:51 pm 

1/15/14  Posted by Stop Special Needs Vouchers

For parents of students with disabilities in Wisconsin, the Florida version of special needs vouchers has loomed large as a cautionary tale.  In June 2011, the Miami New Times reported “McKay Scholarship Program Sparks Cottage Industry of Fraud and Chaos.”  The article related appalling accounts of schools held in strip malls, with inexperienced teachers and no curriculum or materials.  Fraud runs rampant, with almost no oversight or accountability from the state.  The vouchers, concluded the reporter, were “like a perverse science experiment, using disabled school kids as lab rats and funded by nine figures in taxpayer cash.”Since forming as a group in November of 2012, the parents of Stop Special Needs Vouchers have worked tirelessly to prevent such vouchers from being inflicted on the state of Wisconsin.  Special needs vouchers would funnel tax dollars from our already-underfunded public schools into unaccountable private schools, where students lose their federal special-education rights and protections.  Public schools educate everyone, regardless of disability; private voucher schools are notorious for cherry-picking the students they deem “easier” to educate, while students with more intensive and expensive challenges remain in the public schools.We have seen this dynamic underway already in the Milwaukee Parental Choice voucher program, where private schools are not accountable to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  Many families have experiences of students with disabilities who were returned from voucher schools to the public schools, after the voucher schools had received tax money for the semester.  According to public testimony from Bob Peterson of Milwaukee this past October, “We know that between the ‘third Friday’ and second of January there is an exodus from certain voucher and charter schools… Last year between the ‘third Friday’ and the first of December, 448 students left the voucher and charter schools; 142 of them turned out to be special ed students.”

Now we have further troubling evidence connecting a failed voucher school in Wisconsin to the special needs voucher boondoggle in Florida.

Erin Richards of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel broke the story on Janaury 14: Milwaukee voucher school LifeSkills Academy closes ‘in the dead of the night’.  LifeSkills Academy had 66 voucher-funded students when it closed down overnight; only one of those students was proficient in reading and math.  The students ended up at other schools, but, as the article reported, “The DPI is not able to recoup public money spent by voucher schools that do not finish the year.”

The depth of dysfunction at LifeSkills Academy was laid bare by a parent review on the GreatSchools.com site in 2013.  According to the parent:

This is among the worst schools I have ever seen. Poor administrative leadership and accountability, low morale, extreme unprofessionalism, the lack of organizational structure, scarce resources, low teacher creativity, loose student environment, and low faculty talent are just some of the reasons why this school is not only a scam but it perpetuates the issues our city is experiencing with juvenile delinquency, student illiteracy, and dismantling any hope that any attending student might have for being successful. I quickly 

In Age of School Shootings, Lockdown Drills Are the New Duck-and-Cover - NYTimes.com

In Age of School Shootings, Lockdown Drills Are the New Duck-and-Cover - NYTimes.com:

In Age of School Shootings, Lockdown Drills Are the New Duck-and-Cover

Students were reunited with families following a shooting at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, N.M. Mark Wilson/Reuters

The bomb threat was just a hoax, but officials at Hebron High School near Dallas took no chances: School officials called the police and locked down the school earlier this week. Separately, a middle school 2,000 miles away in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class.

But the threat and the gun were real at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, N.M., where a seventh grader with a sawed-off shotgun walked into the gymnasium and opened fire on his classmates on Tuesday, wounding two of them. School officials and teachers, who had long prepared for such a moment, locked down the school as police officers and parents rushed to the scene.

RELATED COVERAGE

• 2 Injured in Shooting at New Mexico SchoolJAN. 14, 2014

For students across the country, lockdowns have become a fixture of the school day, the duck-and-cover drills for a generation growing up in the shadow of Columbine High School in Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Kindergartners learn to hide quietly behind bookshelves. Teachers warn high-school students that the glow of their cellphones could make them targets. And parents get regular text messages from school officials alerting them to lockdowns.

School administrators across the country have worked with police 

Real-world trends clash with promises made at White House summit | Hechinger Report

Real-world trends clash with promises made at White House summit | Hechinger Report:

Real-world trends clash with promises made at White House summit

By Jon Marcus

Just Another Cheerleader

A White House push to increase the college-going rates of of low-income students flies in the face of real-world trends that are heading in exactly the opposite direction—including institutional and federal financial-aid and tax policy that has been shifting in favor of high-income and not low-income families.

Students from the poorest families are less than half as likely as those from the wealthiest to get bachelor’s degrees by the time they’re 25, a statistic cited by the Obama administration as a reason 140 heads of universities, foundations, and advocacy groups were invited to the White House to unveil new ideas they promised would increase the number of low-income students who enroll in college and the rate at which they graduate.

It’s not only college financial aid that has been moving to higher-income rather than lower-income students. So have federal tax breaks, including the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which Obama signed into law.

These include connecting low-income students with colleges that are the best fit for them and waiving the application fees, providing more scholarships for them in science- and technology-related fields, working with primary and secondary schools to better prepare them for college while improving remedial education that often derails them once they arrive there, and connecting them with adult mentors and advisors.

All of these things have been proven in pilot programs to increase the college-going and success rates of students from the nation’s poorest families.

“We don’t want these to be the exceptions,” President Barack Obama told the college leaders and others assembled in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “We want these to be the rule.”

Progressive Voices, New Media: A Louisiana Social Media and Blogging Summit | Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Progressive Voices, New Media: A Louisiana Social Media and Blogging Summit | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:

Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Zesty Louisiana Education Politics

Progressive Voices, New Media: A Louisiana Social Media and Blogging Summit

Posted on January 16, 2014

0

Greetings my Crawfishalonians!

Are any of you feeling despondent over not being able to meet me in person or hear me speak in front of real people instead of from behind a keyboard????

I know I am!

Now may be your opportunity to change all that. . .

Louisiana Progress decided to create an event featuring me as the star (of course), along with some other less famous folks you may have heard of that will try to steal some of my spotlight. . . I’ve included the list of attendees and the agenda below in case you were curious about someone other than me, or wanted to know exactly when you needed to come to see me, and when you could safely skip parts of the summit . . . maybe to chill with Mike the Tiger or tour the campus or skip rocks in the lake or something?

Seriously though. . . . If you have been influenced by our outstanding local social media and would like to show your support for all these fantastic people and their voices please consider attending passing the word about this conference to other folks. I will most likely be handing out mints in the men’s bathroom or holding coats for these folks, but I would be happy to see any of you there.

Event Details

Louisiana Progress is excited to announce Progressive Voices, New Media: a Louisiana social media and blogging summit. We hope you’ll join us on January 25th to hear from some of the leading progressive voices in the state. 

Saturday, January 25, 2014 from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM (PST)

Louisiana State University: African American Cultural Center

 

12:15 – 1:15 Introduction by Bob Mann | Keynote address by Jennifer Berkshire of EduShyster  

 

1:30 – 2:30  Progressive Social Media Panel, moderated by Melissa Flournoy

                   Bob Mann, Something Like the Truth

                   Lamar White, CenLamar

                   Robert Wilson, Digital Media Coordinator, Louisiana Democratic Party

 

2:45 – 3:45  Education Blogger Panel, moderated by Carrie Wooten

                   Tom Aswell, Louisiana Voice

                   Jennifer Berkshire, EduShyster

                   Mike Deshotels, Louisiana Educator

                   Mercedes Schneider, deutsch29

                   ***Jason France, Crazy Crawfish*** ç
ç(super cool most important blogger guy)

 

4:00 – 5:00  Progressive Social Media Training Panel, moderated by Bruce Parker

                   Zack Kopplin, RepealCreationism

                   Lance Porter, LSU Professor, Director, Digital Media Initiative

                   Dayne Sherman, Talk About the South

To register, talk about, or recruit others to the event you can use these resources.

We have a Facebook event and Eventbrite page set up to promote the summit and need your help spreading the word!  If you could post something on your blogs and to your twitter followers, that would be fantastic.  We have started tweeting about it from @LAProgress with the hashtag #ProgressiveVoices.