The question is how do Mayor Johnson’s words measure up to his deeds, Sandronsky Cities of Opportunity

Sandronsky Cities of Opportunity:

Cities of Opportunity?

By SETH SANDRONSKY

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a second-term Democrat, kept the city’s NBA team, the Kings, from leaving town. Anaheim and Seattle beckoned this pro sports franchise, without success. A former NBA star player, he now helms the US Conference of Mayors. On June 22 at its yearly meeting, Johnson tapped New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to chair a national task force, Cities of Opportunity, to reduce inequality. This project kicked-off Aug. 10 in the Big Apple.

“The purpose of cities is to lift up residents and build a community and economy that works for everyone,” said Mayor Johnson. “That means having a higher minimum wage, expanding the supply of affordable housing and ensuring every child has access to Pre-K.”

Mayor Johnson’s words are spot-on. The minimum wage has stagnated for decades. Rent inflation is rampant.

The question is how do Mayor Johnson’s words measure up to his deeds, now that he heads the US Conference of Mayors? A brief review of his record on labor rights and public schools is instructive.

Mayor Johnson is a strong supporter of public charter schools. On that note, employees at St. HOPE Public Schools, a public charter school system he launched, are not labor union members.

Rather, they labor at the will of their bosses. Such workers’ services can and do end at a moment’s notice, like the vast bulk of the private-sector US workforce.

Walmart workers, or “associates,” are also at-will employees, who can be and are fired without representation from a labor union that could collectively bargain pay and working conditions with the global retail giant. Just ask Sacramento resident Meiasha “Meme” Bradley, 27.

She alleges Walmart fired her illegally for legally protesting its labor practices, a charge the company denies. While on its payroll, she sought and received taxpayer help for the necessaries of life due to the employer’s insufficient hours and pay.

Bradley alleges the company fired her for legally protesting its labor practices. “Walmart claimed it terminated me after three disciplinary actions,” she said. “Among the three “coachings” (the company’s term for associate discipline), leading up to my firing was an absence management referred to as a ‘no call no show.’

“In reality I was out on a legally protected strike which shouldn’t have counted against my attendance,” Bradley said. That one-day walkout took place last November 23 at the Florin Rd. Walmart and at other company stores throughout the Sacramento area, according to her.

“We took a stand against Walmart’s bullying of associates, retaliating against us for speaking out and voicing our opinions in support of all company employees nationally seeking annual earnings of $25,000 to provide better for our families,” Bradley said of her former employer that reported sales of $473 billion in fiscal year 2014.

Against the backdrop of Mayor Johnson’s rhetoric about raising the minimum wage, he is a public official whose nonprofit groups such as St. HOPE accept dollars from private sources, namely the Walton Family Foundation. The WFF is the charitable arm of the Walmart Inc. retailer.

During his first mayoral term in 2009, Mayor Johnson began an education nonprofit Stand Up for Sacramento Schools, a 501(c)(3). His nonprofit accepted $500,000 between Jan. 19, 2012, and June 5, 2012, from the WFF. This amount Sandronsky Cities of Opportunity:

Teachers as Expert Trainers | Connected Principals

Teachers as Expert Trainers | Connected Principals:

Teachers as Expert Trainers

by Jonathan VanderEls • September 10, 2014 • 0 Comments

This past August I had the opportunity to participate in an incredibly effective model of professional development hosted by our school district. It consisted of workshops and presentations from national, state, and local experts focused on various topics related to assessment, including competency education, building Quality Performance Assessments, and the development of high-quality rubrics.

The varied roles, responsibilities, and experiences of the many presenters added to the uniqueness of our “Assessment Summit.” Participants and presenters included Rose Colby, Competency Education Specialist, Rob Lukasiak, mathematics and assessment specialist, district and building-level administrators, and teachers from grades K-12. This allowed for differentiated PD for the 100-plus participants, while supporting the professional development needs identified in our district related to competencies and Quality Performance Assessments.

Our district, the Sanborn Regional School District in New Hampshire, has continued to push forward in the world of competency education. Despite the bumps we have experienced, we fully realize that this is an educational practice that truly captures each student’s ongoing growth and progression within their learning. Teamed with instruction that is differentiated, personalized and based upon a solid understanding of the Core standards, students are engaged in learning that is focused, are provided with opportunities for support or extension as needed, and understand their role and responsibility in their learning.

In the spring of 2014, our curriculum director, Ellen Hume-Howard, posed an opportunity for a summit in which some of the “expert” speakers would consist of the teachers in our classrooms who are engaged inTeachers as Expert Trainers | Connected Principals:

5 Questions You Should Ask Your Principal

#173092166 / gettyimages.com   I was recently asked by a superintendent if I had some questions to ask his principals to start off the year.  The questions I gave him were based on the following areas: Fostering Effective Relationships Instructional Leadership Embodying Visionary Leadership Developing Leadership Capacity Creating Sustainable Change In my opinion, the principal is probably the

16 by George Couros / 5h 

Blue Jersey:: Newark Students Hold the Line Against Police Horse & Motorcycle

Blue Jersey:: Newark Students Hold the Line Against Police Horse & Motorcycle:

Newark Students Hold the Line Against Police Horse & Motorcycle by: Rosi Efthim Wed Sep 10, 2014 at 05:48:59 PM EDT

Arne Duncan, are you seeing this?Washington Post, are you watching? Time Magazine? CNN? CBS? This is happening now, outside the headquarters of Newark Public Schools where students have been waiting all day, protesting the 'One Newark' corporate education takeover of their local schools and demanding Christie-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson come out from her hiding place and listen to them.

Wall Street downgrades NJ for record 8th time - 2nd time this week - on Christie's watch

Hey, it's a swanky party Bill Palatucci's throwing Chris Christie and Mitt Romney tonight. Big doings at the East Brunswick Hilton. White folks with checkbooks forking over $150 to get in the door or $5 grand to snuggle up close to special guest Mitt Romney and Governor Wannabe President. What do you think they'll chat about in their 20 seconds while the photog snaps their souvenir pic? Bridgegate

by Rosi Efthim / 2h 

Newark Students Hold the Line Against Police Horse & Motorcycle

Arne Duncan, are you seeing this? Washington Post, are you watching? Time Magazine? CNN? CBS? This is happening now, outside the headquarters of Newark Public Schools where students have been waiting all day, protesting the 'One Newark' corporate education takeover of their local schools and demanding Christie-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson come out from her hiding place and listen to them

by Rosi Efthim / 3h 

TONIGHT: Christie & Romney party down on the Bridgegate anniversary

Scandal? What scandal? We gonna party DOWN and raise more money for da party of NO!                                                         - Chris 'n Mitt Governor Christie has been in Illinois all day while Newark students staged a sit-down strike in front of his state-controlled school superintendent Cami Anderson's office, demanding she come out and talk to them. Christie only took notice eno

by Rosi Efthim / 4h hide  //  save

Another Failed Christie Nominee

Chris Christie has two main characteristics that make people -- and in particular journalists and editorial writers -- think he is competent and deserving of high office. The first is that he is a truth teller.  This has taken a beating over the past year or so as he dissembled, hid and fibbed over a number of issues, not the least of which is Bridgegate and an unwillingness to speak on issues the

3 by vmars / 6h 

Right now: Newark students blockade school HQ, demand Cami Anderson

"1 We are the students! 2 We are united! 3 This demonstration is not ending!" Newark Students Union and NJ Communities United have just launched a civil disobedience at Newark Public Schools HQ. Students and their supporters have chained themselves across Broad St and refuse to move until Cami Anderson comes down to address them. Anderson has refused to attend school board meetings and m

14 by Rosi Efthim / 9h 

Stop. Listen. Little Voices are Calling to Us - Lily's Blackboard

Stop. Listen. Little Voices are Calling to Us - Lily's Blackboard:

Stop. Listen. Little Voices are Calling to Us

September 10, 2014 by Lily

Categories: Education, I just had to say this, Policy

Tags: Central America, Immigration, refugees, unacompanied minors

In the past few weeks, I’ve been mesmerized by the voices of young refugees from Central America, telling their stories. One little girl I read about was described by the reporter as no more than eight or nine. She sat in a chair holding a doll before the immigration authorities, swinging her feet beneath the chair, her little legs too short to touch the floor. She was to act as her own attorney as they questioned her to determine if she qualified to seek asylum, which would determine which set of laws, protections and rights would be laid out before her and her little doll to navigate. Imagine, eight years old and acting as your own attorney, yet more than half of these children must represent themselves.

There is a crisis. The world sees these children as refugees running for their lives.

They are fleeing, for some of them, certain death, and they deserve the full protection of laws our country passed to safeguard and defend the rights of vulnerable children. They deserve a proper hearing with proper representation and the chance to tell their story before a proper authority before any decision is made to send them back to the nightmare of terror they escaped.

It is hard to imagine the desperation of parents who might have sent their children on this treacherous journey. Some of the children, according to reports, decided toflee death threats, rape, kidnapping, brutal extortion and constant terror without the permission of their parents. They just left.

The vast majority of these children, over 90 percent, have relatives who are willing to take them in while their claims for asylum are taken under consideration. We Stop. Listen. Little Voices are Calling to Us - Lily's Blackboard:

Feds add parent engagement condition to new SIG money :: SI&A Cabinet

Feds add parent engagement condition to new SIG money :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Feds add parent engagement condition to new SIG money

by Tom Chorneau

(District of Columbia) Parent and family engagement requirements will become a central tenet of new rules governing the federal government’s largest program for turning around the nation’s lowest performing schools.

The School Improvement Grant program, which has provided more than $5 billion to struggling schools since 2009, has undergone a restructuring as a result of the budget agreement last December between Congressional leaders and President Barack Obama.

The key deal point agreed to by the administration was that states would be allowed to design their own intervention option to go with the four, aggressive and rigid improvement models that Obama had previously required.

The appropriation bill also gave the U.S. Department of Education an opening to introduce new conditions for schools receiving SIG money – including one over parent and family engagement.

As part of the rule-making process, the department issued proposed regulations published in the Federal Registry Monday, opening a 30 day public comment period.

Among the changes is that schools would be given five year grants instead of the three years they now receive. Also, rural schools would be given new flexibility over intervention options and all schools would be allowed to pursue an “evidence-based, whole-school reform strategy” with a partner experienced in school turnaround.

The new family engagement policy, which echoes school spending policies introduced in California last year, requires states to consider how a school district will “meaningfully engage families and the community in the implementation of the intervention on an ongoing basis” before approving a SIG application.

Under Gov. Jerry Brown, local educational agencies in California are now required to engage in “meaningful, two-way” consultation with parents over spending decisions that impact Feds add parent engagement condition to new SIG money :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

It’s time to do accountability right – and yes, we know how

Using standardized tests as the sole measure of educational performance is a bit like using a measuring tape to calculate weight. You’ll get a number, all right, but it will have limited meaning.

by Lee Funk / 9h 

Russ on Reading: Why Corporate Education Reform Will Fail (Eventually)

Russ on Reading: Why Corporate Education Reform Will Fail (Eventually):

Why Corporate Education Reform Will Fail (Eventually)

In my post on Monday I explored the work of historian and social theorist, Michael Katz, especially his 1968 book The Irony of Early Education Reform, which so uncannily presaged the current education reform movement. One line I read from Katz’s updated introduction to the 2003 edition of that book is staying with me. Katz said that the book “‘highlights how education has been used in America as a way out of public dilemmas—as a painless substitution for the redistribution of wealth—and how and why that gambit always fails.”

History will tell us if the reforms touted by the corporate education reformers will take firm root in the country. Perhaps the reformers will be successful in getting their laundry list of reforms in place. After all they are very well financed and they have powerful political support on the federal and state government level. Bill Gates and other plutocrats are spending millions to have their way with public education. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has used his office and power of the purse to bribe states into his favored reforms. Governors in Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and New Jersey have seized on the education reform mantras of “choice” and union bashing to extend the agenda in their states. The court in California has at least temporarily struck down tenure and highly publicized campaigns to do the same in New York and other states are well under way.

It may very well be that in some time in the future, we will see the installation of the Common Core nationwide, the reduction of teacher unions to toothless tigers, the extension of charter schools to the point where no urban district has a public school system, voucher programs proliferating and robbing school districts of funds, and teachers being reduced to “at will” employees at the mercy of evaluations based on student test scores.

This could well happen; we don’t know. There is one thing we do know, however. If every single reform cherished by the corporate education Russ on Reading: Why Corporate Education Reform Will Fail (Eventually):

Choosing Democracy: U.S. Teachers Work Really Hard

Choosing Democracy: U.S. Teachers Work Really Hard:

U.S. Teachers Work Really Hard

American teachers work hard. Like, really hard.

Rebecca Klein

This year's education report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development outlines the state of education in the world's most developed countries. It finds that American elementary school teachers spend more hours actually teaching students than peers in any other surveyed country.

The graph below details how much time elementary school teachers spend in front of the classroom:

American middle school and high school teachers spend more time educating students than peers in every OECD country except Chile, according to the report. In addition to classroom time, U.S. teachers are required to be at school for more hours than most of their international peers.

Despite the long hours, American teachers aren't well compensated, Andreas Schleicher, OECD director of education and skills, explained in a call with reporters Monday. While U.S. raw teacher salaries are high compared with the rest of the world, the pay lags behind that of similarly educated American workers.

“Teacher pay relative to other countries, in absolute terms, is quite competitive in the United States," said Schleicher. "But when you look at this relative to the earnings of other people with college degrees, actually the United States is pretty much at the end of the scale."

The OECD graphic below shows how teachers' salaries compare with other college-educated workers in each country. The report found that teachers are paid more than comparably educated workers in only seven countries.

U.S. teacher pay looks especially bleak when it's calculated over a working career. The OECD report shows American teacher salaries increase less than the average of OECD countries after 15 years of experience.

A study from the Center for American Progress in July found that slow teacher salary growth contributes to high turnover. Research shows that 13 percent of teachers each year move schools or leave the profession.

"The bottom line is that mid- and late-career teachers are not earning what they deserve, nor are they able to gain the salaries that support a middle-class existence," says the report.

It continues: "As a nation, we need to do far more to attract -- and keep -- mid- and late-career teachers. In the end, if we truly want to retain top talent in our classrooms, we need to offer top-talent salaries.”

HUFFPOST:Choosing Democracy: U.S. Teachers Work Really Hard:

My Contribution To #FergusonSyllabus [Edutopia] | The Jose Vilson

My Contribution To #FergusonSyllabus [Edutopia] | The Jose Vilson:

My Contribution To #FergusonSyllabus [Edutopia]

 SEPTEMBER 10, 2014 MR. VILSON LEAVE A COMMENT

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Hey everyone,

I wrote up a resource on how to teach about and beyond the events of Ferguson, and included examples of how some teachers are already doing it. Please read and let me know what you think.

3. Bring it back to the individual.

We don’t often get the chance to reflect about our misgivings or perceptions of each other. Especially in diverse communities (and I do mean diverse and not just communities of color), we often dodge racial conversations because we pretend that avoiding the subject means peace. Instead, confronting our own prejudices head-on would make us better people and leaders. Understanding the lens through which we see the world and how others see the world will combine to grow a sense of empathy within our communities, so that when conversations like Ferguson do come up, everyone understands how to approach it.

Read, share, and let me know what you think. Thank you!

About Jose Vilson

José Luis Vilson is a math educator, blogger, speaker, and activist. For more of my writing, buy my book This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education, on sale now.

My Contribution To #FergusonSyllabus [Edutopia] | The Jose Vilson:

9-10-14 Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Former Bok principal surrenders credentials in cheating scandal

Sub Title:  Melton is the seventh principal punished in cheating probe. Arthur "Larry" Melton, the retired principal of the now-defunct Bok Technical High School, has become the seventh Philadelphia principal to face official punishment as a result of a probe into widespread PSSA test cheating in the Philadelphia School District.  Melton, who was at Bok for a decade, surrendered hi

5 by Dale Mezzacappa / 6h hide  //  save

Philly parents file suit against Pa. Department of Education

Overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of guidance counselors, a lack of proper coursework. These are among the reasons parents in the Philadelphia School District filed a lawsuit this week in Commonwealth Court against the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Parent Tim Allen sent his son to Bodine High based on its reputation as a high-achieving magnet school with an international focus. But budget

1 by thenotebook / 7h 

33 new computers come to Emlen just in time for the new school year

Balloons lined the hallways of Eleanor Emlen Elementary School on Friday. The school's new computer lab opened in a ceremony that included City Councilwoman Cindy Bass, State Rep. Cherelle Parker and community members. School dinosaurs The school's 26 computers — many older than the students themselves — were replaced during the summer by 33 new iMac desktops at the K-5 public school in Mount Airy

1 by thenotebook / 7h 

Coalitions can change the game for Philadelphia schools

As we begin a new school year and approach a gubernatorial election, let’s celebrate the work of teachers, students, parents, community members, labor unions, and faith communities in Philadelphia who are coming together to improve education in our city. Never before have people from so many sectors of the city joined together to pursue their common goal: high-quality education for all.read more

21 by thenotebook / 9h 

9-9-14 Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Philadelphia Public School Notebook: Pa. Republicans flog Corbett's Common Core call as politics, not policyWant to boil the blood of some Pennsylvania voters? Utter four words: "Common Core State Standards." For those leery of all things federal, all things Obama, the push to align academic expectations on a consistent, nationwide basis causes heart rates to rise exponentially. This wee

by mike simpson / 15h