Monday, May 23, 2011

Preschools Checked Less than Dog Kennels - voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled: The Education Blog

Preschools Checked Less than Dog Kennels

Photo by Sam Hodgson
This Mountain View child care program run by the Neighborhood House Association is reviewed at least every three years through a federal program, but others may be inspected only once every five years.

Posted: Sunday, May 22, 2011 2:55 pm | Updated: 7:35 am, Mon May 23, 2011.

By Emily Alpert

Dog kennels are inspected once a year in San Diego County. Restaurants get vetted twice as often. But here and across California, preschools and child care centers can go five years without a checkup from state evaluators — and sometimes even longer.

State inspectors from the Community Care Licensing Division hasten to investigate complaints such as rat

Bill Gates, “Teacher pensions are a free lunch.” « Fred Klonsky's blog

Bill Gates, “Teacher pensions are a free lunch.”

by Fred Klonsky

As teachers in Illinois mobilize to stop the teacher pension killing SB512, I’m reminded of Bill Gates’ commentsat the Apen Ideas Festival last summer.

Bill Gates, who has devoted much of his time to education since stepping down from full-time work with the company in 2006. Undermining public education, he said, is a system that channels too much money to pensions for retired teachers. He predicts that state and local governments will have to lay off 100,000 active teachers in the next couple of years. “I’m very much against that,” said Mr. Gates who noted that many of the teachers who lose their jobs will be younger, more

Release of : An Appeal to All Americans - The National... - Eventbrite

Release of : An Appeal to All Americans - The National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education

Event Details

A landmark report by the National Commission on Civic Investment in PublicEducation calls upon the nation to strengthen its commitment to public schools and ensure that it provides a high-quality education for all young people. An Appeal to All Americans calls with new urgency for an increase in the nation’s civic investment in public elementary and secondary education and creates standards and guidelines for the fast-growing field of public education assistance organizations that provide a means for this kind of civic investment. Education funds, a key type of public education assistance organization, inAlabama, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Washington are cited in the report as case study examples of representing good practices among such groups.

For more than 25 years, nonprofit community-based public education assistance organizations have provided billions of dollars in private funds to support local school projects and implement systemic school reform strategies in districts. As states and local communities face extreme budget cuts, or seek innovations to improve the quality of their local schools, these public education assistance organizations are playing a greater role.

To support their growth and impact, the National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education, co-chaired by former Secretary of Education Richard Riley and Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, makes an unprecedented call upon these organizations to adopt operating standards that are consistent with the highest levels of nonprofit practices and accountability to the public.

The framework provided in the report demonstrates how these groups can operate in both a transparent and ethical manner, and describes what school districts, prospective donors, and the public can expect from these organizations.

The National Commission was created by Public Education Network (PEN) and charged with making the renewed case for civic investment, highlighting the work of organizations that can build and channel that investment, and developing standards for these organizations. The standards are designed for adoption by these groups so they can demonstrate their effectiveness and hold themselves accountable within their communities. A PEN-commissioned study by the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, “Who Helps Public Schools?,” will also be released at the event. The Commission used the study’s look at public education assistance organizations to inform its findings.

WHO: Honorable Richard W. Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education, and co-chair, the National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education

Wendy D. Puriefoy, President, Public Education Network

Warren Simmons, Executive Director, Annenberg Institute for School Reform

Elizabeth T. Boris, Ph.D., Director, Center on Nonprofits and PhilanthropyThe Urban Institute

Virginia B. Edwards, President, Editorial Projects in Education and Editor, Education Week

WHEN: Thursday, May 26, 2011, 9:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. Eastern

WHERE: The Pew Charitable Trusts, Americas Room (2^nd floor)

901 E St. NW

Washington, D.C. 20004

Daily Kos: Why I'm Marching

Why I'm Marching

byTeacherSabrina

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PERMALINK	2 COMMENTS

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.
-Joanne Weiss, Chief of Staff to Education Secretary Duncan and former CEO of the New Schools Venture Fund

When I talk to teachers, students, and parents, and when I think about education policy and politics, two simple questions almost always come to the fore.
• If America needs to reform its public schools, why aren't public school teachers, students, and families leading the education reform movement?
• If teachers, students, and public school families are most familiar with the problems with our current school system, why aren't our voices being heard when we question education policy, or suggest better alternatives?

For years, public school stakeholders have struggled with the burden of reform policies they ha

James Baldwin/Margaret Mead: On Denying Your Brother « Student Activism

James Baldwin/Margaret Mead: On Denying Your Brother

by Angus Johnston

I recently finished reading A Rap on Race, the book-length transcript of a conversation between James Baldwin and Margaret Mead, recorded in
the summer of 1970. As I noted over the weekend, it’s a fascinating book, and I’m going to be posting excerpts off and on for the next while. Here’s the first, from the third page of the book:

MEAD: I recall a boy whose father married again, married a woman who had a son about the same age. They weren’t related, of course, they were stepbrothers. And then that father and mother, the father of the first boy and the mother of the second, had a child. And the first boy said, “Now I feel differently about it. We have a brother in common.”

BALDWIN: Ah, that makes a great deal of difference.

MEAD: You see, this is true in a sense. Because as far as I know — and this is all any white person in the United States can ever say — as far as I know, I haven’t any black ancestry. But you’ve got some white ancestry.

BALDWIN: Yes, yes.

MEAD: So we’ve got a brother in common.

BALDWIN: So we’ve got a brother in common. But isn’t the tragedy partly related to the fact that most

Union files complaint over use of AmeriCorps volunteers in Twin Rivers schools -Sacramento Bee

Union files complaint over use of AmeriCorps volunteers in Twin Rivers schools - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Union files complaint over use of AmeriCorps volunteers in Twin Rivers schools

By Melody Gutierrez
mgutierrez@sacbee.com

Published: Monday, May. 23, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1B

Twin Rivers Unified School District's use of AmeriCorps volunteers has pleased parents and angered the California School Employees Association, which has filed an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board.

It is the second charge the CSEA and its Twin Rivers chapter have filed with PERB since April. Both charges are in the initial review stage, a PERB official said.

Parents are countering the first charge with a petition to keep the youthful AmeriCorps volunteers, who tutor kids, hold after-school activities and assist in school cleanup events.

Officials at the CSEA and its Twin Rivers chapter say the district is replacing trained teacher aides

Schools Matter: Bill Gates's Call Boy, Rick Hess: "Everybody's implicated."

Gates's Call Boy, Rick Hess: "Everybody's implicated."

by Jim Horn

I know that it makes selling yourself to the Oligarchs feel more justified, Rick, but no, that's another lie you can add to the ton of them that you have told for Sugardaddy Bill. There are many "everybodys" around the world who aren't "implicated," even though their voices often go unheard and their messages aren't bought to the top of the Google search list. You made your bed, Hess, just like Finn at Fordham I., and the Eduwank at Bellwether, and the Sorority Sisters at Education Mistrust. But don't call all of us whores, Rick--it's just not so. In fact, shut up, roll over, and do what you're paid to do.

From a political angle, the Times decision to allow this story to be written and to appear just under the fold in the middle of page 1 of the Sunday Times may presage an Obama ed strategy moving forward. Having been brought to the White House by Oligarch cash, Team Obama is now boxed in on one side by their school-as-testing policies that are hugely unpopular with teachers, students, and parents who see no reason to keep in place a pedagogical model built upon inculcating memorization skills that Gutenberg made passe over 500 years ago.

This Week In Education: AM News: LA Teachers Union Battles Reform Efforts

AM News: LA Teachers Union Battles Reform Efforts

by Alexander Russo

Obama Presses Congress for Overhaul of No Child Left Behind Law AP: President Barack Obama nudged Congress to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law by the end of the year and give states and local schools more flexibility in a student's education... L.A. teachers union seeks to halt school district initiatives LAT: Union opposes testing of a new teacher evaluation system and wants to thwart plans to hand over South Los Angeles campuses to a charter organization... Los Angeles teachers union seeks to block test of evaluation program LAT: Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy appeared to have momentum in the effort to revise educator evaluations in the LAUSD, but the teachers union is digging in its heels...Pawlenty, an Education Guy, to Run for President EdWeek: For a glimpse into what Pawlenty's education platform will look like, check out this recap of a campaign stop he made in Iowa earlier this year...Gender Games: Born on Sideline, Cheering Clamors to Be Sport NYT: The N.C.A.A. is being asked to put cheerleading on track to gain full status as a championship sport...Small, Poor, Successful School Waits for Obama, in Vain NYT: One of three finalists in the White House’s 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge had hoped for a graduation speech delivered by the president himself... Tennessee Senate Passes 'Don't Say Gay' Bill AP: If you're a young Tennessee student and you want to talk about what it means to be gay, you might just have to wait till high school... Leaf recognition software TDW: Leafsnap currently includes the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., and will soon grow to include the trees of the entire continental United States.

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Monday, May 23, 2011