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Thursday, November 4, 2010

Applying Developmental Science to Impact Teaching and Learning � Whole Child Blog - Whole Child Education

Applying Developmental Science to Impact Teaching and Learning � Whole Child Blog - Whole Child Education
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Justices debate tax credit for religious schools - The Boston Globe

Justices debate tax credit for religious schools - The Boston Globe

Justices debate tax credit for religious schools

Arizona group says it violates Constitution

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post / November 4, 2010

WASHINGTON — Deciphering the constitutional principle that government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’’ is almost always a guarantee of a divided Supreme Court.

And so it was again yesterday as the justices reviewed an Arizona program that lets taxpayers send part of their state taxes to organizations that provide millions of dollars in scholarships to private religious schools.

The court’s liberal members sharply questioned whether the program is just a way for the state to provide tax money to religious schools and noted that it almost certainly would be unconstitutional if the contributions came directly from the state.

Conservatives indicated that the program offers just a different version of the

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UPDATE: Teachers union-backed candidates sweep mayor's picks in Sac City Unified - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee

Teachers union-backed candidates sweep mayor's picks in Sac City Unified - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee

MORE INFORMATION

  • County election workers still have hands full
  • Sacramento City Unified School District
    ELECTION RESULTS
    Area 1
    Precincts Reporting: 100%
    Ellyne Bell50.3%
    Paige Powell32%
    David Ross17.8%
    Area 2
    Precincts Reporting: 100%
    Jeff Cuneo40.1%
    Andie Corso34.8%
    Mary Hernandez18.6%
    Matthew G. Easley6.5%
    Area 6
    Precincts Reporting: 100%Sacramento County results
    Darrel Woo49.3%
    Shane Singh27.8%
    Robert Bartron11.3%
    Sharon Owens Thomas9.4%
    More Results:
POPULAR COMMENT
I think the election was won starting at the vetting process. SCTA picked candidates who were highly qualified and who care about the quality of education our students receive. The Mayor, however, has chosen to pick candidates that meet his political needs. Teachers and retired teachers and many others then volunteered to help support the individual candidates that SCTA recommended. We knew that Ellyne Bell had stood up to help a librarian at McClatchy High School, and that she supports arts education and when the voters in her area were reminded of that they too decided she was the best candidate. The same process occurred in the other two districts. Better Candidates with better ideas won votes. The campaign was to make sure people knew of their experience and ideas. One thing that appeared to be going against the Mayor's candidates was the Mayor's recommendation itself. Almost no one I talked with think he is doing a good enough job at being Mayor to allow him to interfere with the schools. Almost everybody knows something about the federal funds scandal that St. Hope fell into under the Mayor's influence. Perhaps it is time for the Mayor's friends to tell him to focus on fixing Sacramento by doing the Mayor's job instead of pretending to be the sport and education czar that he had diverted his attention to.

-- JoeBarnett

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Capitol and California - Elections

Teachers union-backed candidates sweep mayor's picks in Sac City Unified

By Ryan Lillis and Melody Gutierrez
rlillis@sacbee.com
Published: Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 4B
Last Modified: Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010 - 6:46 am

There won't likely be a significant shift in ideologies on the Sacramento City Unified School District board as a result of this week's election.

The teachers union, which backed all three winning candidates, is fine with that.

Mayor Kevin Johnson, who got behind three unsuccessful candidates, is not.

A sweep by candidates endorsed by the Sacramento City Teachers Association means that all seven members of the Sacramento City Unified School District board are backed by the union – just as they were before Tuesday.

Union-supported candidates Ellyne Bell (Area 1), Jeff Cuneo (Area 2) and Darrel Woo (Area 6) all were headed for victory Wednesday, with thousands of ballots left to be counted. All three were poised to defeat Johnson's picks.

"Once again, we won," SCTA President Linda Tuttle said. "I think we have a track record of working to get people elected to the school board who listen to teachers."

Unlike the late Mayor Joe Serna Jr., who in the mid-1990s campaigned for as long as 16 months to get a lineup of candidates elected to the school board, Johnson waited until three weeks ago to make his choices known. By then, the teachers union and its chosen candidates had heavily canvassed the city with campaign mailers and phone banks.

"To win, you have to get out there early," Tuttle said.

Johnson said he wishes his candidates "had been identified a year out instead of three months."

"That was the primary reason why our candidates did not fare better – there wasn't enough lead time," he said. "But I think what was good about this was that we started a dialogue. This reform topic is … not going away."



Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/04/3158169/teachers-unioni-backed-candidates.html#mi_rss=Education#ixzz14KDvZDJu
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Daily Kos: Student Grades, Test Scores, and Rankings

Daily Kos: Student Grades, Test Scores, and Rankings

Student Grades, Test Scores, and Rankings

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by teacherken

Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 02:32:07 AM PDT

Some want to tie teacher evaluation to student performance on external tests. They may advocate a value-added methodology, which in theory should allow us to rank teachers by how much their students improve. While there are methodological issues about whether we can truly isolate what the teachers have actually contributed to the student performance, I found myself asking, if the way some propose to evaluate teachers is by how much the students improve, why are we not similarly evaluating students? Why do we insist upon artificial levels of performance, determined by percentage scores and weights, as if in converting things to a 100 point number scale, we therefore communicate something meaningful about that student -- s/he performed at an A level, or got a 93 percent overall. Is that really meaningful? Who has done more, the student who begins at a very low performance and then achieves at what we would classify as a C level, or the student who begins with a high A and stays there?

(more)

Here, I think of a class many moons ago. There were 27 students in a "Talented and Gifted" class, all 9th graders. 23 finished with final grades of A. Consider several students from that class whose names have been changed to protect their identity.

Natalie was early on getting 94s on my tests and written assignments when no one else was over a 90. I pulled her aside and told her that if she did not improve what she was doing, she would be

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