Monday, October 11, 2010

Teens urge parental involvement at suicide summit: AP Alaska | adn.com

Teens urge parental involvement at suicide summit

By ALEX DEMARBAN / The Tundra Drums

Published: October 8th, 2010 11:09 PM
Last Modified: October 8th, 2010 11:09 PM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Distraught over the suicides of their friends, teens from Southwest Alaska fought back tears as they pleaded with parents to connect with children. They blamed the deaths on family abuse, bullying, alcoholism and other problems.

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Now is not the time to be quiet, they said Monday at a suicide roundtable convened in Bethel by Sen Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

"I myself was thinking suicidal," said Anna Stone, a 15-year old from Hooper Bay. "But my friends, they were talking to me about if I was gone ... who's going to take your part in your family? And that really got me thinking."

Stone bit her lip and trembled during a long stretch of silence. She said keeping quiet will cost more lives.

"Talking to your kids would help a lot and building a relationship and having family meetings would help a lot," she said.

Excerpt from voices.washingtonpost.com/answersheet

Valerie Strauss

Monday, October 11, 2010

Twice in the same week, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a chance to skewer the wacky world of education reform and blew their opportunities.

Both Lewis Black's piece on "the public school crisis" that aired on Stewart's "The Daily Show" last Tuesday and Colbert's Thursday night interview with "Waiting for 'Superman' " director Davis Guggenheim left me wondering why education reform hasn't been more of a high-value target for these two funny men.

The reform world is dripping with hilarious promise.

There are characters to lampoon: School superintendents who are education's fundamentalists, believing that only they know the way to reform heaven.

There are issues to rip open: The standardized testing obsession; the charter school obsession; the insistence of first the Bush administration, and now the Obama

“Unusual — And Important — Parent Engagement Study Validated” | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

“Unusual — And Important — Parent Engagement Study Validated” Unusual — And Important — Parent Engagement Study Validated is the title of my latest post at my other blog, Engaging Parents In School. I think it’s pretty intriguing. You might want to check it out.

“Chilean miners arguing about who comes up last” Chilean miners arguing about who comes up last is the headline of an article in the Telegraph. The article includes links to multimedia features. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The Trapped Miners In Chile.

“Technology Tools to Get Teachers Started” Technology Tools to Get Teachers Started is nice post over at Edutopia. I’m adding it to My Best Posts For Tech Novices (Plus A Few From Other People).

The Best Examples Of “Unusual” Art These links are great both for English Language Learners and for my IB Theory of Knowledge students. The ELL’s can describe what they see, and both they and the TOK students can use them to debate if they are art, and if so, why. Here are my ...

Introducing…the Corporate Reform Action Pack! � Failing Schools

Introducing…the Corporate Reform Action Pack!

OCTOBER 11, 2010

by Sabrina

You know, the first time I read the manifesto by Klein, Rhee & company, I was pretty disgusted. It seemed like just another bit of heavy-handed propaganda from more or less the same people who are always hamming it up for the cameras to promote their ideologically driven vision for America’s schools.

But then I read it again. This time, I was inspired to join the McGraw family and everyone elsecashing in on America’s anxiety about public schooling tidal wave of pro-reform energy

Texting in class has become widespread �“ more than 40 percent of teens say they do it despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of schools ban cell phone use, according to a recent survey. - NorthJersey.com

Texting in class has become widespread �“ more than 40 percent of teens say they do it despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of schools ban cell phone use, according to a recent survey. - NorthJersey.com

Texting in class has become widespread €“ more than 40 percent of teens say they do it despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of schools ban cell phone use, according to a recent survey.

Monday, October 11, 2010

BY PATRICIA ALEX

THE RECORD

STAFF WRITER

display story on 1 pagePage 1 2 >>

They text in their pockets, they text the person sitting next to them and they even text their parents.

"It’s addictive," said Joshua Ortiz, a senior at Clifton High School. "During class and in between classes and even when there’s a teacher around."

Texting in class has become widespread — more than 40 percent of teens say they do it despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of schools ban cellphone use, according to a recent survey.

Anecdotally, local teens say the percentage may be higher still, and educators concede that the phenomenon may be here to stay.

Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality? | Seattle Education 2010

Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?

by seattleducation2010

Illustration: Michael Duffy

Posted in Spring 2009, Rethinking Schools

By Jitu Brown, Eric (Rico) Gutstein, and Pauline Lipman

When ex-President Bush was elected in 2000, he brought with him former Houston Superintendent of Education Rod Paige to be Secretary of Education. He also brought the “Texas miracle” who supposedly increased test scores attributed to Texas’ strict accountability system. All eyes smiled on Texas as those measures quickly became part of No Child Left Behind, passed into law in 2001 by both political parties. Before the end of Bush’s first term, Paige would leave in disgrace, thanks to revelations of cooked scores, forced-out students, and other

LAUSD Snooker OR Sustainable Public Education (LAUSD Snooker O Educaci�n P�blica Sostenible) - Perdaily.com

LAUSD Snooker OR Sustainable Public Education (LAUSD Snooker O Educación Pública Sostenible)

by Leonard

(en español después) If you have ever watched a professional snooker tournament, you come to a realization about those who are best at the game know how to play shape. While they are capable of making the impressive difficult shot, they only do so when a prior miscalculation has left them in a an impossible position. No great pool player would ever put themselves in a position where they had to make a difficult shot every time. They play shape, so that they can make it look relatively easy as they rack up points and victory.

In public education our formidable opponent is ignorance and it behooves us to also play shape, so that we can best use our limited resources in a manner that gets the best return on our investment. Sadly, what we have done up until now is set up a system of public education that makes it even more difficult, if not impossible, for

DFER’s “Guerilla Fighting” in WA � DFER Watch

DFER’s “Guerilla Fighting” in WA

by kennethlibby

From some recent commentary by Tom Vander Ark (over at EdReformer): The new conventional wisdom arrived in full force in 2010 with documentaries, monster grants, and targeted guerilla fighting from DFER and friends. Old assumptions and alliances are being challenged as Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson pointed out at a DFER kick-off in Seattle. When a traditional … Read more

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Best Posts About The Appalling Teacher-Bashing Column Superintendents Wrote In The Washington Post | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Untabbed Is A Good Search Engine For ELL’s…For As Long As It’s Around Untabbed is a new search engine that lets you see a large screenshot of any search result. It’s very similar, though, to the system that Google began unveiling last week (see Google Search Has Just Gotten Better For English Language Learners). Given ...

The Best Posts About The Appalling Teacher-Bashing Column Superintendents Wrote In The Washington Post Last week, a group of School Superintendents wrote an incredibly appalling column in The Washington Post. It is titled How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders. It’s astounding to me that so many ...

Schools Matter: Participating in our own destruction

Participating in our own destruction Priscilla Gutierrez posted this penetrating comment on Huff Post. "I wonder how the medical profession would take the news that their standards of practice and efficacy were in need of reform, and that said reform would be orchestrated by a group of ...

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean to Use $10 Million of Public Education Funds to Renovate KIPP, Inc. School Karl Dean has just shown a level of arrogance and disregard for the responsibilities of his office that has to impress even Prince Bloomberg. Dean has decided to take 10% of the amount he has set aside for public school renovation during his whole ...

Race to the Top Act of 2010 The Race to the Top reauthorization bill (HR 6244) introduced by CO Rep. Jared Polis is now available on Thomas.gov. Here's a link to the xml copy. Joe Lieberman introduced the Senate version. The bill would make $1.35 for FY 2011 and "such funds as ...

The Stepford Wives of Race to the Top: Our PTA | Seattle Education 2010

The Stepford Wives of Race to the Top: Our PTA **My Day with the PTA This is going to be one of those long ones, so get yourself a cup of coffee or hot tea and get comfortable. Because of my interest in education and legislation, I volunteered to be the PTA Legislative chair at my daughter’s ...

Vicki Phillips: Director of Education, College Ready United States Program The Gates Foundation hires Portland’s former superintendent as its new head of education By Beth Slovic *Hurricane Vicki* The new education director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation left her previous job as the superintendent of Portland ...

Race to the Top Reauthorization Bill � DFER Watch

Race to the Top Reauthorization Bill

by kennethlibby

The Race to the Top reauthorization bill (HR 6244) introduced by CO Rep. Jared Polis is now available on Thomas.gov. Here’s a link to the xml copy. Joe Lieberman introduced the Senate version.

NYC Public School Parents: DOE hiring for highly confidential post of Portfolio Data Analyst

DOE hiring for highly confidential post of Portfolio Data Analyst

by Leonie Haimson

The most interesting aspect of this just-postedDOE job description is the extreme emphasis on confidentiality:

The Portfolio Data Analyst will be privy to confidential information, as either part of the regular assignment or on a project basis, and will participate in decisions related to the development and implementation of Portfolio Planning policies, plans and initiatives. This work includes suc

Queens Teacher: Education Communication day ~ Oct. 29, 2010

Education Communication day ~ Oct. 29, 2010

by Queens Teacher

Popout

Make a mission to contact your elected officials and let them hear you are NOT happy with the direction our public schools are headed in.

Civil rights groups to hold 'black Boston' forum - Boston.com

Civil rights groups to hold 'black Boston' forum

October 10, 2010

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BOSTON—A coalition of civil rights groups has scheduled a forum on African Americans in Boston.

The "State of Black Boston" will be held Tuesday at United Way of Mass Bay in Boston. Organizers say the event will be aimed at discussing the causes of racial inequality and disparity in the city of Boston and how to tackle different solutions.

Among those taking part are Darnell Williams, president & chief executive of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, and James Jennings, professor of

Slow math? | School Zone | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Slow math?

JENNIFER S. ALTMAN/The New York Times

Students work with numbers in Kerri Gega's fourth grade class, which she teaches using Singapore math, at the Quaker Ridge School in Scarsdale, N.Y. Singapore math, an increasingly popular approach to teaching mathematics, emphasizes visual aids and a slow pace, with kindergartners spending a week on the numbers 1 and 2.

The New York Times has an interesting article about a new math curriculum making its way to the United States. It's called "Singapore math" or "slow math." By introducing topics slowly and covering them deeply, Singapore has managed to produce consistently top-scoring students.

The pace is so slow, the article says, that teachers spending days teaching children about the number 1. (Here's a little more about the curriculum from the company that makes U.S.

Solomon Burke - Everybody Needs Somebody To Love (2003)

US soul singer Solomon Burke, who wrote the classic song Everybody Needs Somebody to Love, has died at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport aged 70

NYC Public School Parents: Arianna Huffington Sells Out on American Education

Arianna Huffington Sells Out on American Education

by Steve Koss

Click on Huffington Post these days, and you are immediately inundated by the presence of Arianna Huffington. Watch Arianna on MSNBC's "Hardball" or "Countdown"! See Arianna on "Meet the Press" or CNN! Laugh as Arianna makes a (very teeny) funny on "Real Time with Bill Maher"! Read about Arianna's new book! See how Arianna sums up the previous week's news! Who cares about politics or the news when there's Arianna and her opinions to read or watch? It's wall-to-wall, 24/7, all-Arianna-all-the-time, in a self-promotional onslaught that would make Donald Trump blush.

Never one to let her principles, such as they might be (a former rabid conservative, she was an active supporter of Newt Gingrich and a strident caller for Bill Clinton's impeachment until she noticed the talking heads vacuum on the left), stand in the way of self-promotion and making a buck, Arianna has apparently taken the pulse of the current education debate. Seeing where the money and the

The Education Optimists: Misleading Manifesto

Misleading Manifesto

I'm sorry, but the "manifesto" published in today's Washington Post really pisses me off because it is built upon a false premise. It is authored by a number of urban school superintendents, including Chicago's Ron Huberman, New York City's Joel Klein, Washington DC's Michelle Rhee, and New Orleans' Paul Vallas. And it -- intentionally? -- misstates educational research.

"[T]he single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income -- it is the quality of their teacher."

No. That is patently false.

Now, listen here. I work for a teacher-focused, non-profit organization, the New Teacher Center (NTC). Wouldn't it be powerful to go out and say that teachers matter more than ANYTHING else? But they don't. In terms of school-based variables, they do. But in terms of all variables that impact students, they simply do not. No research says that. In our messaging at the NTC, we are always careful to say that teacher quality is the most important school-based variable for student achievement (examples here and here (on page 4)). That's accurate, honest and powerful in its own right.

So why not make the case for improving teaching in a honest fashion? There is an incredibly strong case to make that improving teaching quality is a critically important and policy amenable part of the solution to increasing student achievement and closing achievement gaps for disadvantaged students. But it's only part of the answer which

The potential curse of money deferred | Thoughts on Public Education

The potential curse of money deferred

The potential curse of money deferred Districts will feel pressure to spend what may soon vanish

October 8, 2010

Even in suspending Proposition 98, after hemming and hawing all night long, for only the second time, the Legislature approved Prop 98 spending of $1.2 billion more than Gov. Schwarzenegger proposed in May. And

Yes, we now have a budget!

Yes, we now have a budget! Governor gets pension reform as part of the deal

October 8, 2010

The deed is done. At 8:26 am, the State Senate passed the last bills connected with the budget and went home. The $87.5 billion budget is headed to Gov. Schwarzenegger for his signature later today. It happened two hours after the Assembly finished its work and only after Republican Sen. Jeff Denham changed sides to vote to suspend Prop. 98, and Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth crossed over on another part of the […]

What the LA Seniority Settlement Does and Doesn’t Do � The Quick and the Ed

What the LA Seniority Settlement Does and Doesn’t Do

by Rob Manwaring

There has been much concern that somehow the proposed LA Seniority Settlement is eliminating seniority. Lets be clear here – this settlement does not eliminate seniority either at the protected school sites or in the district. This settlement simply means that some schools would be protected from experiencing the mass layoff when budget cuts are required. These schools will not even be protected from cuts. When the district has a cut, say 5 percent of staff in the district, this settlement will mean that only 5 percent of teachers at a protected site can be cut. And, those teachers would be selected based on seniority. What will this mean for other schools at the district? It will mean that more senior teachers will be laid off in the wealthier parts of the district, but isn’t that fair? And how will those layoff decisions be

Sunday links. � Fred Klonsky's blog

Sunday links.

by preaprez

Logan Square. 10.10.10

“Die-in.” Friday rush hour. Grand Central Station, New York. Homophobia kills.

When LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was first running for the California Assembly he was a wuzza. “I wuzza a labor union organizer. I wuzza union guy.” Blah. Blah. Now when it’s politically expedient and he wants to drive a stake into the heart of teacher union seniority rules to get rid of higher paid teachers, it’s another story.

If this is the Democratic Party strategy for winning, stamp the “L” on their foreheads now.

The Wall.

by preaprez

Argentina.

Get Congress Out of the Classroom - New York Times

Get Congress Out of the Classroom

DIANE RAVITCH

Published: October 3, 2007

DESPITE the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998.

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Thomas Fuchs

The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year — has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects.

What Teachers Make Final Moviebk2 0001

Taylor Mali's inspirational poem cleaned up a bit (aka censored) for a teacher's inservice audience.

Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, October 11, 2010

Teens urge parental involvement at suicide summit

Excerpt from voices.washingtonpost.com/answersheet

Introducing…the Corporate Reform Action Pack!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Civil rights groups to hold 'black Boston' forum

Slow math?

Get Congress Out of the Classroom