Wednesday, November 3, 2010

A first for NJEA: Acting N.J. education commissioner declines to speak at convention | NJ.com

A first for NJEA: Acting N.J. education commissioner declines to speak at convention

Published: Wednesday, November 03, 2010, 6:07 PM Updated: Wednesday, November 03, 2010, 6:24 PM

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The Star-LedgerActing Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks, left, announced today she will not be attending the teacher union's convention, headed by NJEA President Barbara Keshishian, right.

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The state’s largest teachers union has been rebuffed once again by the Christie administration after acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks said this week she would break tradition and not address the group at its annual two-day convention in Atlantic City, which begins today.

Hendricks wrote to New Jersey Education Association President Barbara Keshishian to "respectfully decline" the union’s offer to address tens of thousands of teachers, citing the NJEA’s uninterest in working with the governor on "reforms that put results for our children first."

"When the NJEA is willing to work with the Christie administration as a true partner in an effort to reward good teachers instead of protecting bad teachers, when the NJEA is willing to modernize the tenure system and improve

Did Only 4.7% Of Blacks Vote Yesterday? � Student Activism

Did Only 4.7% Of Blacks Vote Yesterday?

by Angus Johnston

A depressing statistic about black voter participation in yesterday’s elections spread like wildfire through Twitter earlier today. Only 4.7% of blacks, the story went, had bothered to show up.

It’s not true. It’s not even close to true.

About 38% of the voting age population of the United States turned out to vote in yesterday’s election. There are about 26.5 million African Americans of voting age in the United States, which makes blacks 11.7% of the voting age population. According to exit poll data, blacks made up about 10% of the total electorate this year.

About 90 million people voted in this election. If 10% of them were black, that makes 9 million. Nine million is

Schools Matter: What the "Free" Means in Free (Charter) School

What the "Free" Means in Free (Charter) School

by Jim Horn

I am beginning to think "free" school is a better descriptor than charter school. For Brits looking at the American model for inspiration, "free" most often means

free to collect public dollars without public oversight,

free from democratic governance,

free to not admit special ed or ELL children,

free to push out low scorers or those who challenge the totalitarian regimen,

free to not offer children libraries or gyms or lunch rooms or school nurses or art facilities,

free to hire and fire at will with no due process rights for teachers,

free to pay CEO principals 4 to 5 times as much as public school principals,

free to set up penal pedagogy systems that middle class parents would never allow for their children,

free to offer the lowest cognitive levels of test prep curriculum,

free to hire teachers who aren't certified or qualified,

free to ignore accounting rules that public schools must abide by,

More D’s and F’s likely mean additions to closure watch-list | GothamSchools

More D’s and F’s likely mean additions to closure watch-list The number of schools the city is considering for closure — already a record-high 47 — will likely increase after today’s public release of progress report scores. GothamSchools has identified a total of 10 schools that could be added to the city’s ...

For some schools, report cards bring about a quick turn in luck [image: img_08422] Chancellor Joel Klein said the city would consider schools' new grades before deciding which ones to close. For a few high schools, the grades they got on this year’s progress reportscould make the difference between life and death. ...

The Answer Sheet - Will new ed policy affect all districts equally?

Will new ed policy affect all districts equally?

Here’s some interesting analysis on the fallout from the midterm elections by Anne Geiger, who writes as the Public Policy Blogger. You can see more of her analysis here.

From Anne Geiger on the fallout from the midterm elections and the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives:

The good news and the bad news.

First, some important data...

As this table and this table show, there are 47.7 million students enrolled in public schools and 14,229 school districts in the U.S. Just over 13% (1,883) enroll 67% of all students (32 million students).

Among this 13% are the school districts of our major cities, such as Washington D.C, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Houston. Member districts of the Council of the Great City Schools (I served on the council’s board while on the Orange County (FL) School Board), a member organization of the 65 largest, serve over 7 million students.

Obama could push education reform in effort to work with a divided Congress

By Nick Anderson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 3, 2010; 2:24 PM

If President Obama is seeking common ground with Republicans in the next Congress, one major domestic issue seems ripe for deal-making: education.

Obama aides say the administration plans early next year to accelerate its push for a rewrite of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. That effort will face plenty of obstacles from both sides of the aisle in a divided Congress.

But key Republican lawmakers appear receptive to the president's overtures on education reform in part because Obama backs teacher performance pay, charter schools and other innovations that challenge union orthodoxy.

"This is a top, top priority for the president," said Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. "This is and has been a bipartisan issue. We think it transcends ideology."

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), who is in line to become chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said: "We need to fix No Child Left Behind. That is going to be a

Shanker Blog � Shedding Tears for an Elusive Unity

SHEDDING TEARS FOR AN ELUSIVE UNITY

by Ahmed Elzobier

As anyone who has a paid attention to the tragic history of Sudan knows, its internal conflict has been marked by extreme violence toward civilians. In the Darfur region of Northern Sudan, war-related killings, starvation and death from disease have been labeled “genocidal” by international human rights organizations, who have accused the Sudanese government, led by Omar al-Bashir, with attempting to wipe out the black African population of the region. In July, 2010, al-Bashir was charged by the International Criminal Court at the Hague with three counts of genocide in Darfur. He has also been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. For detailed background of this terrible conflict, readers are directed to sites here, here, here, and here. This article by a Sudan Star journalist mocks the sudden emotion over the prospect of Sudan’s partition by politicians, especially from a hitherto ruthless leader of north Sudan, Dr. Nafie Ali Nafie. Dr. Nafie is known for torturing his teacher, for example, simply for teaching evolution.

Tensions are mounting in Sudan, in the run-up to a January 2011 referendum in which Southern Sudan will vote on independence. The Sudanese conflict, which began in 1989, has been driven by historic animosities between the predominantly Arab north, and the black African animist and Christian population in the south. At stake,

The Tragedy of Under-Reaching | California Progress Report

The Tragedy of Under-Reaching

by christine

By Norman Solomon

We need to build a grassroots progressive movement -- wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party.

The stakes are too high and crises too extreme to accept "moderate" accommodation to unending war, regressive taxation, massive unemployment, routine foreclosures and environmental destruction.

A common formula to avoid is what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the paralysis of analysis." Profuse theory + scant practice = immobilization.

It's not enough to denounce what's wrong or to share visionary blueprints. Day in and out, we've got to organize for effective and drastic social change, in all walks of life and with a vast array of activism.

Creepy Election Story of the Day � Student Activism

Creepy Election Story of the Day

by Angus Johnston

James C. Russell is a perennial candidate for Congress in Westchester, NY, a suburb of New York City. After running and losing in three Republican primaries in a row, he managed to win the GOP nomination to take on Democratic incumbent Nita Lowey in New York’s 18th CD in 2008. He lost that race in a landslide, but came back to get the nomination again this year.

It’s a standard story in lopsided districts, and was never one that drew — or deserved — much attention. Until this September.

That was when the news broke that back in 2001 Russell had written an essay in which he described school integration as a conscious plot to foster race-mixing in America. Specifically, he wrote, the integration of schools

NYC Public School Parents: Both candidates endorsed by NYC Kids PAC are victorious

Both candidates endorsed by NYC Kids PAC are victorious

by Shino

For Immediate Release: November 3, 2010

Contact: Shino Tanikawa: (917) 770-8438

Mel Meer: (718) 428-3659

Mona Davids: (917) 340-8987

Last night, NY State Comptroller Thomas Di Napoli and State Senator-elect Tony Avella from Queens won their respective races, the only two candidates for office who were endorsed by NYC Kids PAC this fall because of their exemplary records on education. NYC Kids PAC was formed by public school parents in 2009 to support candidates who work to improve our schools in ways that matter to parents, including reducing class size, alleviating overcrowding, and ensuring more fiscal transparency and accountability.

As Shino Tanikawa of the Parent Commission on School Governance and NYC Kids PAC said, “Since he became Comptroller in 2007, Thomas Di Napoli has provided an invaluable public service to parents and

Tom Torlakson elected superintendent of public instruction | PolitiCal | Los Angeles Times

Tom Torlakson elected superintendent of public instruction

November 3, 2010 | 5:41 am

Assemblyman Tom Torlakson will be the state's next superintendent of public instruction after defeating former county superintendent Larry Aceves.

Torlakson is a Democratic assemblyman from Antioch. Aceves was a Democrat but registered as a decline-to-state voter earlier this year.

Torlakson's campaign was boosted by teachers unions, which spent more on his campaign throughindependent expenditures than Torlakson raised himself. The California Teachers Assn. spent more than $2.1 million on Torlakson's campaign. School administrators spent more than $1.5 million for Aceves, who also received the backing of NetFlix Chief Executive Reed Hastings, a former member of the state Board of Education.

Aceves is a relative unknown in California politics. He was the top vote-getter in a crowded June

Urban Farming Produces So Much More Than Vegetables | Poverty in America | Change.org

About a month ago, Michigan House Bill 6458 was introduced to specifically exclude urban farmers from the Right to Farm Act. An action in support of urban farmerscreated by my colleague Brittany Shoot struck a chord with me. As I signed the petition, I realized I needed to share with the rest of you why it's so important.

I'm the co-founder of Long Island Food Not Bombs, an organization that shares food and other necessities weekly with thousands of people in the NYC/Long Island metro area.

I know when many people think of Long Island they think of rich towns and yacht clubs but what really exists underneath it all is extreme poverty, tent cities, persistent racism and discrimination. Many people don't know about the routine hate crimes, the "beaner jumping" and the lynching of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero.

On top of all the social divisions where I'm from, poverty doesn't help. So that's why I do what I do. Part of Long Island Food Not Bombs is about sharing the basic necessities people need, like a week's worth of groceries, clothing, a hot meal or school supplies. The other part of Long Island Food Not Bombs is about bringing people together, creating solidarity and confronting social ills like racism.

That's where urban farming and the petition to support it fit

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: "Superman" scene was a set-up

"Superman" scene was a set-up

by Mike Klonsky

“It’s two different worlds,” the mother, Maria, tells the filmmaker in an interview interspersed with scenes of the tour, comparing it with her son’s Bronx public school. “I don’t care if we have to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning in order to get there at 7:45,
then that’s what we will do.”

The only problem is, this heart-wrenching scene of hope and anticipation from Davis Guggenheim's film,Waiting for Superman, never really happened. Guggenheim set it up.

NYT City Room critic Sharon Otterman, "In 'Waiting for Superman,' a Scene Isn’t What It Seems", asks other documentary filmmakers what they think the scene.

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Wednesday, November 3, 2010