Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Sacramento Press / Professor Michelle Alexander and the New Jim Crow American Social Justice Tour Will Stop in Sacramento

Professor Michelle Alexander and the New Jim Crow American Social Justice Tour Will Stop in Sacramento

by Faye Kennedy, published on April 12, 2011 at 11:02AM

http://www.newjimcrow.com/Professor Michelle Alexander (Image by: faye)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 from 6:30pm 8:00pm, the Sacramento Chapter of All of Us or None, Black United Fund of Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento Area Black Caucus (SABC) will co-sponsor and host noted author and legal scholar, Professor Michelle Alexander’s visit to Sacramento. The event will be held at the historic Women’s Civic Improvement Center, 3555 3rd Ave., Sacramento, CA. 95817.

Michelle Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar. She is also the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010). See http://www.newjimcrow.com. The book is a bold challenge to the widespread belief that our nation has finally "triumphed over race" with the election of Barack Obama. Jim Crow

Vouchers making a comeback but why? — Ravitch - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Vouchers making a comeback but why? — Ravitch

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch for her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website. Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” an important critique of the flaws in the modern school reform movement.

Dear Deborah,

When schools dictate what kids eat for lunch

by By Valerie Strauss

A Chicago public school forbids most of its students from bringing in food for lunch or snacks and instead offers them a $2.25 daily meal that, it turns out, a lot of the kids don’t want to eat.

Educating for Democracy: The Corporate System of Education :: Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action

Educating for Democracy: The Corporate System of Education

by NancyFlanagan

Guest blog by Joel Shatsky:

In a recent interview on CNN in the “Fix Our Schools” series, a Pennsylvania legislator, Senator Vincent Hughes, seemed to me to let the cat out of the bag, when he explained why he favored standardized testing as way of determining student achievement: it would provide the State of Pennsylvania with the data needed to see what it was getting for the taxpayers’ money within the “corporate structure” for education.

Now I, and many other critics of the so-called “educational reform movement” initiated by the Clinton Administration as “accountability,” codified by the Bush Administration’s NCLB program and now the Obama Administration’s RTTT, have rejected the methods used to measure improvement in student learning as a “corporate system” imposed on education. But I’ve never before heard a proponent publically admit it. Senator Hughes assumes that a specific amount of numerical data useful for determining industrial production can be

LAUSD to announce new measure of student, teacher achievement - LA Daily News

LAUSD to announce new measure of student, teacher achievement

Daily News Wire Services

Posted: 04/12/2011 10:50:37 AM PDT

Updated: 04/12/2011 10:53:33 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Unified School District is expected today to announce a shift in the way it ranks students and teachers.

The new system, dubbed Academic Growth over Time, will use a formula to rank students over time, using standardized test scores as the raw data. School officials are expected to discuss the system at the afternoon board meeting.

"With AGT over Time, we'll know how much students have progressed on standardized tests," said Lauren Mendoza, a spokeswoman for LAUSD. She stressed that the new system will not compare students to each other.

Asked if the program measures teacher achievement as well, Mendoza said: "Yes. It answers the question,

Daily Kos: Civil War

Civil War

by rss@dailykos.com (teacherken)

a nation goes to war with itself.

!50 year ago today, at 4:30 in the morning, Confederate forces under General Beauregard commenced firing with artillery on Fort Sumter, thus marking the beginning of the Civil War, at least as we commemorate it. The first shots had actually been in January, when an attempt to resupply the Union forces under Major Robert Anderson holding the Fort was driving back by shots fired by cadets from The Citadel, the military college of SC. Lincoln was attempting another resupply of the Fort, knowing the Union forces had only days of supplies, when the Confederates began their barrage.

Our official Civil War would last almost exactly 4 years. Papers were signed at the home of Wilmer McLean in Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was formally disbanded on April 12. By then at least 618,000 had died on both sides, perhaps as many as 700,000.

Today we begin a period of commemoration. It should not be one of celebration. And we certainly do not need to be going to war with ourselves yet again, even metaphorically.

This Week In Education: Teaching: Reformers Take (Another) Swing At Illinois

Teaching: Reformers Take (Another) Swing At Illinois

by Alexander Russo

While most of the Chicago media seems focused on a handful of school consolidations and whether kids should be allowed to bring their own lunch to school there are big things going on statewide: First and foremost among these is the effort to revamp the state evaluation and tenure process for teachers, and the possibility of a strike ban being adopted (and a longer day for Chicago schools) - a mixed bag of improvements and pet issues whose ultimate form is not known. Stand IL pushed hard for similar legislation in December only to be beaten back pretty easily. However, its PAC brought in $3.5 million in the last quarter of 2010, setting it up for even more influence in the upcoming months. There was premature word of an agreement on

The Promise of Implementing Project-Based Learning (Steven Davis) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Promise of Implementing Project-Based Learning (Steven Davis)

by larrycuban

Steven Davis is in his tenth year teaching English to high school sophomores and seniors in a large northern California urban school district

I have reached a turning point where I can implement the day-to-day standards-based
curriculum for most of my students, preparing them for high-stakes testing, while providing highly individualized and sometimes project-based learning for some students in each of my classes. The catch is that this level of individualization does not scale easily, especially for sophomore English classes, because much responsibility for learning is on the student and some students may be uninterested in the projects you offer them. It’s one thing to differentiate instruction by scaffolding or accelerating the curriculum, it’s quite another thing to truly individualize the learning process with topics and activities that each student will find relevant.

In the past, I have had the latitude to plan for students to do their own learning but some students were

Podcast: Interview with author Jo Scott-Coe « Failing Schools

Podcast: Interview with author Jo Scott-Coe

by Sabrina

This past Saturday, I had the privilege to speak with Jo Scott-Coe, longtime high school English teacher, current professor, and author of Teacher At Point Blank: Confronting Sexuality, Violence, and Secrets in a Suburban School. The book is an incredibly well-written collection of essays on the often harsh social and institutional realities of modern teaching, [...]

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Original audio source (interview-w_-jo-scott-coe.mp3)

Education Research Report: Michelle Rhee's DC Record

Michelle Rhee's DC Record

by Jonathan Kantrowitz

Ω

Two recent reports, one by a committee of the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council (NRC), the other by Alan Ginsburg, a former director of Policy and Program Studies in the U. S. Department of Education examine the record of Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of Schools for the District of Columbia from 2007-2010.

The two reports are:

National Research Council, “A Plan for Evaluating the District of Columbia’s Public Schools: From Impressions to Evidence,” a report prepared by the Committee on the Evaluation of the D.C. Public Schools, co-chaired by Christopher Edley, UC Berkeley Law School dean, and Robert Hauser, executive director of the NRC’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. The committee has issued a pre-publication version of its report on its website at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13114.

Alan Ginsburg, “The Rhee D.C. Record: Math and Reading Gains No Better Than Her Predecessors Vance and Janey.”

An analysis of these studies has been prepared by Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard University’s Program on

NYC Public School Parents: Good Day NY on Black's departure and Walcott's appointment

Good Day NY on Black's departure and Walcott's appointment

by Leonie Haimson

A panel discussion on Cathie Black's firing and the appointment of Dennis Walcott with Noah Gotbaum, parent and President of Community Education Council District 3, Erik Engquist of Crains, and Frank Macchiarola, former NYC Schools Chancellor and now Chancellor of St. Francis College.

Macchiarola calls Bloomberg's selection of Black "crazy," and says that the mayor's quick choice of Walcott, by

Their Push Is Relentless. | Dailycensored.com

Their Push Is Relentless.

Written by Ken_SayersDaily Journal (Opinion)Apr 12, 2011

0digg

Every once in a while you hear a sound bite of truth. KQED announced this a.m. that Barbara Boxer said that Social Security would be better tweaked now to fix it for later on, but it is not in major difficulty and could continue to pay out for the next quarter century before change is necessary.

If I hear one more Republican say that we cannot continue to borrow 40¢ for every dollar we spend I will, well, scream, I guess. I have been saying that for the last ten years. However, as long as we were spending it on what they wanted, it was perfectly OK. As long as they could give it to their friends and share it amongst themselves, it was fine. Now, when we are trying to actually mind the store, trying to fix infrastructure, trying to repair our damage to the environment and take care of the rest of us, they get religion.

Or so they claim, but not. They want to continue borrowing 40¢ on every dollar, but they want that dollar for themselves. Their tax breaks

Public Education Has Failed Chuck Norris (And Donald Trump, too!) - E.D. Kain - American Times - Forbes

Public Education Has Failed Chuck Norris (And Donald Trump, too!)

by E.D. Kain

This letter to the editor from Donald Trump to the New York Times is really incredible. I’m not sure what lessons to draw from it. Trump’s English teachers obviously failed him, but then again the guy’s a millionaire. He’s got his own TV shows. Maybe you don’t need a good education to spout off a bunch of nonsense about politics.

It reminds me of another celebrity-turned-political-activist on the far-right fringe: Chuck Norris.

Now, Chuck recently penned a piece on the public education system which he describes as a vast system of ‘progressive indoctrination camps’.

Scary stuff, I know. But I think we need to dig deeper, get to the heart of Chuck’s simmering resentment toward public education. Let’s explore this a little.

What Do Teachers “Produce”? « The Core Knowledge Blog

The Core Knowledge Blog

What Do Teachers “Produce”?

by Diana Senechal
April 12th, 2011

Tags: Eric Hanushek, student achievement, teacher quality, test scores
Posted in Assessment and Testing, Education News, Education Theory, Teaching | No Comments »

In a recent head-scratcher of an article in Education Next, economist Eric A. Hanushek puts forth the argument that effective teachers produce higher salaries in their students.

The logic? Well, according to labor data, students whose high school test performance is one standard deviation above average (that is, students at the 84^th percentile) can expect to earn 10 to 15 percent more per year than the student of average achievement. Hanushek assumes, apparently, that this high performance was the result of large gains

The GOP's War On Teachers | The New Republic

Toxic Combination

The GOP is simultaneously emasculating teachers’ unions while adopting the worst parts of their agenda. The result could be devastating

Kevin Carey
April 12, 2011 | 12:00 am
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The Disastrous Education Compromise That Marred Obama’s Best Week in Office

Is Education on the Wrong Track?

Are Charter Schools Overrated?

For years, teachers’ unions have claimed that education reformers are mounting a “war on teachers.” Now, in the Midwest and Republican-dominated states across the country, we are witnessing what a war on teachers really looks like. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s nuclear assault on public employees’ collective bargaining and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s overheated claims that teacher pensions are bankrupting the state reveal a Republican Party bent on using its current electoral advantage to permanently cripple unions nationwide.

Yet, at the same time, Republicans in Washington are embracing the worst elements of

This Week In Education: Thompson: The Fragile Success Of School Reform

Quote: NCLB Will Be "Done This Year" *[image: Quotes2] I think it'll be done this year. Not as soon as the Senate or the President would like it to be, but I think it'll be done this year, barring any unforeseen circumstances...* - Rep. Duncan Hunter, head of House K12 subcommittee

Thompson: The Fragile Success Of School Reform [image: Mag]In the closing passage of Jonathan Mahler's "The Fragile Success of School Reform," published over the weekend in the NYT Sunday Magazine, the reporter writes about being exhausted by just listening to the principal describe the ...

Vouchers Make a Comeback, But Why? - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Vouchers Make a Comeback, But Why?

by Diane Ravitch

Dear Deborah,

Vouchers are back in the news. Several conservative governors are pushing them, and Republican members of Congress—in a showdown with President Barack Obama—have succeeded in restoring funding for the District of Columbia's voucher program, which was cut by the previous Democratic-controlled Congress. In a post-colonial mood, the House leadership insisted on reviving funding for vouchers and eliminating funding for abortions, although the mayor of the District opposed both decisions. Just a few days ago, Indiana's legislature endorsed a voucher program, cheered on by Gov. Mitch Daniels and Michelle Rhee.

The issue is especially interesting in Milwaukee, because its voucher program is the longest-running in the nation. Launched in 1998 in response to the low academic performance of African-American students, the voucher program survived legal challenges and now serves some 20,000 low-income students in 111 non-public, mainly religious, schools. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, hoping to cement his reputation as an education reformer, wants to remove all income limitations from the program. His support for the expansion of vouchers and

Budget Deal Eliminates Summer Pell Grants « Student Activism

Budget Deal Eliminates Summer Pell Grants

by Angus Johnston

News reports this morning suggest that summer Pell Grants will be eliminated under President Obama’s budget deal with congressional Republicans, but that the Pell program would be otherwise untouched.

The elimination of summer Pell comes as no surprise, as Obama floated the cut in his own budget proposal two months ago. But as course offerings are being scaled back at campuses across the country, ending aid for summer classes will make it even more difficult for low-income students to complete their degree requirements in

Queens Teacher: Walmartizing Public Education

Walmartizing Public Education

by Queens Teacher

This is what corporate America would like to do with public education. After all, it's not THEIR kids who will be subjected to inexperienced, undedicated, high-turnover teachers. THEIR kids go to very expensive private